Where are children abused? Overview of variables This section examines where technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse occurs, using the comparable seven-indicator measure described in Section 1. Analyses in this section are conducted at the incident level rather than the child level. This is because children may have been subjected to more than one form of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse. Subsequently, each instance may have involved different locations or platforms. To facilitate incident-level analyses, the dataset was reshaped so that each reported instance of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse represented a single observation. Consequently, the numbers and proportions presented in this section refer to instances of abuse rather than the number of children who experienced abuse. For each reported instance, children were asked whether the abuse occurred on a social media platform or in an online game, rather than exclusively through in-person interactions. Children who reported that the incident occurred on a social media platform were subsequently asked which platforms were involved. In the second round of Disrupting Harm, some social media platforms were added or removed to account for changes over time and regional differences in platform use. To enable comparisons across both rounds of data, 15 social media platforms were included in the analysis below: Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Telegram, Viber, LINE, Twitch, Discord, Flickr, Pinterest and Tinder. Page 25 Finding: “On average, almost 60 per cent of cases of technology-facilitated sexual abuse across 21 countries happened on social media platforms. In contrast, 14 per cent of cases of technologyfacilitated sexual abuse across 23 countries happened in an online game.” Table overview: Table A132 presents the distribution of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse instances by the reported online environment where the incident occurred, by country. The analysis combines data from both rounds of the Disrupting Harm study. As this was a multiple-choice question, the percentages sometimes add up to more than 100 per cent. The average percentage across the 21 countries included in the analysis is presented in the final row of the table. Table A13: Percentage of technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse instances by the type of online environment where the incident occurred, by country (2020–2025). Through Children’s Eyes Appendix 73