What is Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)?

Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) refers to content involving a child, including photographs, videos, computer-generated images, or live streaming that depicts minors in sexually explicit situations. The terminology we use to describe this content carries profound implications for how society views these crimes and treats survivors.

In recent years, professionals have shifted away from the formerly common term “child pornography” toward “Child Sexual Abuse Material.” The word “pornography” implies content created for sexual gratification between consenting individuals, suggesting voluntary participation. This fundamentally mischaracterizes what CSAM materials represent. 

When we discuss sexually explicit content involving children, we must recognize that what we’re seeing is evidence of child sexual abuse. Every image and video documents a crime against a child who, by definition, could not consent to the sexual activity, much less to its recording and distribution.

For survivors, the language of “child pornography” can inadvertently minimize the severity of their trauma and the criminal nature of what happened to them. By properly labeling the crime as CSAM, we recognize that these materials are permanent records of crimes against children.

Advocacy, legal, and law enforcement communities have increasingly adopted CSAM terminology precisely because it more accurately reflects the reality of these cases. Unlike adult pornography, which can portray consensual activity, anyone under the age of 18 cannot legally consent to sexual activity or its documentation.

The scale of the crisis

The numbers surrounding CSAM reveal a deeply troubling picture of growing harm. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), 20.5 million reports of suspected online child sexual exploitation were received through the CyberTipline in 2024. While this represents a 43% decrease from 2023’s 36.2 million reports, the reduction is largely due to new “bundling” features that consolidate duplicate reports from viral content. When adjusted for bundling, this equals 29.2 million separate incidents containing 62.9 million files.

The Internet Watch Foundation reports that one case of online child sexual abuse is documented every second worldwide. Even more concerning, their 2023 data shows that 23% of all reports were classified as Category A (the most severe classification), representing a significant increase from 18% in 2021. Among imagery of children aged 0-2, a staggering 92% was Category A material.

But where does all of this material live? As of 2024, the United States has become the world’s largest host for this illegal content, accounting for 30% of global CSAM URLs.

CSAM exists across a spectrum of abuse severity, typically categorized into levels ranging from non-sexual images of children in various states of undress to content depicting extreme violence. But as the data points out, recent trends show alarming increases in the most severe categories. This indicates that predators are not only producing more content but are inflicting increasingly violent harm on their victims.

The reality of who creates CSAM contradicts common narratives about “stranger danger.” Research from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics shows that the majority of child sexual abuse cases involve someone known to the child.

This pattern is consistent with broader child sexual abuse data, where the vast majority of cases involve someone with seemingly normal access to children. In our digital world, perpetrators with physical access to children can now easily create, store, and distribute evidence of abuse using smartphones.

While offline access remains the primary pathway for creating CSAM, online grooming has also become increasingly widespread. Predators actively use social media platforms, gaming environments, and messaging apps to build relationships with children, gradually normalizing inappropriate conversations in an attempt to desensitize potential victims to sexualized interactions. These online relationships can lead to self-generated content, where children are manipulated into creating and sharing explicit images or videos of themselves, often leading to sextortion.

Because of the digital nature of the crime, the harm inflicted by CSAM extends far beyond the moment of initial abuse, creating trauma that can persist throughout a survivor’s lifetime. Children depicted in CSAM experience immediate psychological, emotional, and physical trauma from the abuse itself, which often leads to developing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD. However, the digital reality of their abuse creates a unique form of ongoing victimization that distinguishes CSAM from other forms of child sexual abuse.

One available set of comprehensive research on survivor experiences comes from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s groundbreaking 2024 study of 281 CSAM survivors. This research revealed that 75% of survivors worry constantly about being recognized from their abuse imagery. Of those who were actually recognized, 95% experienced further harassment or abuse, highlighting the ongoing nature of digital victimization.

The permanence of digital content means that a single instance of documented abuse can result in millions of subsequent viewings and shares. NCMEC has documented cases where individual children’s imagery has circulated for decades, viewed millions of times across various platforms and investigations. For adult survivors, this means their childhood trauma has been viewed, shared, and potentially used for sexual gratification by countless individuals—a scale of revictimization that was only made possible by our advanced technology.

The Phoenix 11 and Survivor Advocacy

Many survivors are leading the way in taking back their agency and advocating for change online. The Phoenix 11 is a group of coordinated CSAM survivors working to advocate and serve other CSAM victims. Formed in 2018 through collaboration between the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and NCMEC, these anonymous young women describe themselves as individuals who were “sexually abused as children, reduced to child sex abuse images, and stripped of our dignity and humanity” but have “risen together as powerful young women who are retaking our identities and self-worth.”

The Phoenix 11’s contributions to ongoing professional understanding of the crime have been substantial, providing first-person insights into survivor experiences, aiding action steps, and recommendations for leading technology firms through their collaboration with researchers.

The rise of artificial intelligence has introduced an entirely new category of threat with AI-generated CSAM. NCMEC data shows that AI-generated CSAM reports increased by 1,325% in 2024, jumping from 4,700 to 67,000 reports. This dramatic increase reflects both technological advancement and improved detection capabilities, with NCMEC noting this represents “a nascent problem expected to grow as AI technology advances.”

AI technology now allows perpetrators to create custom “deepfake” CSAM featuring specific children, often using innocuous photos from social media as source material. Even more troubling, in some instances, AI is being used to generate new material featuring past survivors, extending their victimization into the present day and creating fresh trauma for individuals who may have thought their childhood abuse was finally behind them.

Technology’s Critical Role in Detection and Prevention

While the crime of CSAM is, by nature, dependent on the advanced technologies we all enjoy today, the fight against CSAM is also made increasingly possible by technological solutions that can operate at the scale and speed required to address the volume of illegal content being produced and shared.

Hash matching technology is one such advancement that serves as the foundation of most detection systems, with tools like Microsoft’s PhotoDNA, Google’s CSAI Match, and Meta’s PDQ algorithms creating digital “fingerprints” of known CSAM that can be rapidly identified across platforms and devices. These tools form the backbone of key survivor assistance technologies like NCMEC’s TakeItDown service. 

Hash-based systems work by analyzing the visual characteristics of images and videos to create unique mathematical signatures that remain consistent even when files are modified, resized, or reformatted. NCMEC maintains a database of over 9.8 million verified CSAM hashes that technology companies use to scan their platforms, enabling rapid identification and removal of known illegal content.

While technological solutions are essential for detecting and removing CSAM, prevention through education and awareness is also crucially important for protecting children from exploitation. Parents and caregivers can play a critical role in creating safe digital environments for children by establishing open communication about online experiences and teaching children about safe online practices from an early age.

Digital safety education must emphasize that children should never share personal information or images with people they meet online, while also creating safe spaces for children to report concerning interactions without fear of punishment or blame. Parents need to understand that the permanence of digital content means that any image or video shared online could potentially be misused, even if it seems innocent at the time.

Resources like The Exodus Road’s Influenced™ program address these prevention needs. The Influenced™ program brings a comprehensive approach to digital safety education, featuring materials designed for parents, educators, childcare professionals, and children themselves. The Influenced™ curriculum addresses critical safety issues, including sextortion, online grooming tactics, and the connection between online exploitation and human trafficking. 

Drawn from The Exodus Road’s more than 14 years of anti-trafficking experience, their flagship Influenced™ Parent Academy offers video-based courses designed for parents and guardians concerned about the digital world their children navigate, with 100% of participating parents recommending the program to others.

Recent legislation represents encouraging steps toward governmental assistance in responding to the CSAM crisis. In the United States, the REPORT Act, implemented in May 2024, significantly expanded reporting requirements for technology companies, increasing penalties for non-compliance and extending data retention requirements. This legislation represents the most substantial update to CSAM reporting obligations since the establishment of the CyberTipline in 1998.

In the United Kingdom, new mandatory reporting laws introduced in February 2024 create professional obligations with substantial penalties for non-compliance, requiring designated professionals to report suspected child abuse, including online exploitation.

Legislative efforts like the Kids Online Safety Act in the United States represent ongoing attempts to create frameworks for increased platform accountability and better child protection laws centered on our online world.

If you experience or encounter CSAM or suspect child sexual abuse, it’s important to know that you aren’t alone or helpless. There are services that can help. If someone is in immediate danger, always call your local emergency services first. In the U.S., you can call 911.

Reporting CSAM

You can report CSAM immediately by visiting report.cybertip.org or calling 1-800-843-5678 (NCMEC CyberTipline). Reports can be completely anonymous and are processed 24/7. International reports can be filed at report.iwf.org.uk.

Before reporting, make sure to capture exact URLs and take screenshots of context (never download CSAM content). NCMEC forwards reports to law enforcement within minutes and removed over 63,000 urgent cases in 2023.

For image removal, visit Take It Down (takeitdown.ncmec.org), which is a free anonymous removal tool for CSAM content using secure hash-based technology.