platforms make connection easy and immediate, allowing unknown people to contact children, quickly learn about their interests, build rapport around a shared hobby and create a sense of familiarity that can later be used to manipulate, isolate, or abuse. A young woman in Montenegro shared how she opened a Facebook account at an early age and shortly after began receiving unsolicited sexual images from adult men: “I was really young when I opened it [Facebook], I mean back when I was in elementary school (…) In the beginning it was more closed off, but then groups started, meeting other people and things like that, and then it started happening – I had some of those minor experiences where adult men would simply send me pictures of their genitals in a message request, even though they knew – I mean, I had my profile picture, you could see it was a child, and that didn't bother them at all.” Digital platforms should not be seen as simply the location where abuse takes place, but as platforms that can enable or facilitate multiple stages of abuse, including initial contact, relationship-building, sexual solicitation, image-sharing, coercion, blackmail and the continued circulation of sexual content. Digital service providers therefore have the capacity to prevent harm before it occurs, especially in situations where abuse begins online and is enabled by design. Privacy protections, limits on unsolicited adult contact, rights-respecting detection of abusive material and responsive reporting systems should be built into platforms from the outset, not offered as optional features. Companies that fail to provide these basic protections should be held accountable. For more details about the statistics presented in this section, view the Appendix Children should not carry the burden of keeping themselves safe from risks that are created or amplified by digital environments. That responsibility rests with the companies that design, operate and govern the platforms where these interactions take place. The need for children to protect themselves online reflects a broad failure by digital service providers to design digital environments that are sufficiently safe for children. Through Children’s Eyes Where are children abused? 24