A young woman from Mexico, who was 14 years old when the abuse started, recalls how requests for sexual content were framed in the context of love or fidelity: “After that, he started asking for pictures things like, ‘Send me a photo of your pajamas’ or ‘Show me what you’re wearing’. Eventually, it escalated to, ‘Take off your shirt’. When I said, ‘No,’ he’d pressure me, saying, ‘If you won’t do it, it’s because you’ve already sent it to someone else or because you don’t love me.’ I’d try to reassure him, ‘No, I love you’ and he’d reply, ‘Then send me a photo without your shirt’. Over time, I started sending them. All of this happened through [Facebook] Messenger.” In many cases, abuse unfolds within young people’s own relationships and social circles, where trust, emotional connection and pressure can become intertwined. A young woman in the Dominican Republic described how, at age 14, she was introduced by a friend to an adult man she had only met online. They developed a relationship and exchanged sexual images. Two years later, the man threatened to share those images with her family and community unless she sent him more. What began as an attempt to maintain closeness quickly became an experience of vulnerability and harm: An estimated 1.5 million children were subjected to threats or blackmail to engage in sexual activities in the year prior to the survey. A further 1.2 million children were threatened with the distribution of sexual images or videos of themselves.† Through Children’s Eyes “So, we started talking, and we became boyfriend and girlfriend. It was my first relationship, and it was a telephone relationship because we never saw each other in person. When we were in a relationship, as a teenager, your hormones are all over the place, and unfortunately, you listen to everything people tell you, and unfortunately, you fall for the so-called test of love. The person asked me for photos. First, he made me build that bond of trust with him, and then he asked me for intimate photos of myself.” How does digital technology enable sexual exploitation and abuse? 14