A child sits in a bedroom with a phone.

She may be playing a game while another child watches videos after finishing homework. Then a message arrives.

Nothing about the moment looks dangerous, which helps explain why the risk can be easy to miss.

One Pakistani teenager recently described how an interaction while playing an online game began with ordinary conversation. The other person behaved like a friend before applying pressure for sexual images.

The teenager’s name was changed to protect her identity, but the experience behind the story is not isolated.

New research from UNICEF and ECPAT International, working with INTERPOL, estimates that nearly one in 16 internet-using children aged 12 to 17 in Pakistan experienced at least one form of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse during a single year.

The estimate translates to approximately 1.5 million children. I had to read that number twice.

Pakistan has spent years discussing how to bring more people online. Public debate often focuses on cheaper internet and smartphones, while digital education keeps expanding.

Governments celebrate digital services. Schools increasingly use WhatsApp groups and learning platforms, with online research becoming part of ordinary study.

Access, however, arrived faster than protection. Pakistan connected children without building an equally strong safety system around them.

First, understand what the 1.5 million figure means

Large numbers can become misleading very quickly.

The 1.5 million figure does not mean Pakistani police registered 1.5 million criminal cases. Nor does it mean 1.5 million children were assaulted by strangers they met online.

The research, published in September as Disrupting Harm in Pakistan, used a nationally representative household survey involving children aged 12–17 and their parents or caregivers. Researchers also interviewed professionals working in child protection and justice while examining Pakistan’s laws and policies.

It found that nearly six per cent of internet-using children in this age group experienced at least one of the forms of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse measured by the study during the previous year.

These experiences included unwanted sexual conversations or images. Children also reported requests for intimate images and the sharing of images without consent; some faced threats involving sexual material.

The research identified newer dangers as well, including sexual extortion and AI-generated abusive images. Blackmail can connect these forms of abuse and make an already frightened child feel trapped.

The internet did not invent child exploitation. It changed its reach.

The stranger may not be the biggest danger

Parents often teach children a simple internet rule: do not talk to strangers. The advice remains sensible, but one finding in the Pakistani research makes the familiar warning look inadequate.

In 85 per cent of incidents described by affected children, the perpetrator was someone the child already knew.

The finding changes how parents should think about online safety because digital abuse can begin inside an existing relationship. Someone may be a friend or acquaintance who gained the child’s confidence before the abuse started.

The phone then becomes the instrument through which an existing imbalance of trust or power is exploited.

The finding unsettles the familiar “stranger danger” model because it gives adults no simple filter. Blocking unknown accounts and rejecting strange friend requests remain useful precautions, but familiarity itself can be used to lower a child’s guard.

Social media is a major part of the problem

The research found that 44 per cent of reported incidents occurred on social media platforms, making social media the most commonly identified digital environment in the study.

The figure does not mean social media caused 44 per cent of all child abuse in Pakistan. Among the technology-facilitated incidents captured by the research, social media was simply the most frequently reported setting.

Games and messaging systems can also provide opportunities for contact. A conversation may start during a game, move into private messaging and later cross to another platform.

Adults tend to think about applications separately. Children experience one connected digital world, making supervision much more complicated than occasionally checking a Facebook account.

More than half told nobody

For me, one of the darkest findings concerns what happened afterwards.

According to UNICEF, more than half of the children subjected to technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse did not tell anyone. Among the children surveyed, none reported their experience through formal channels such as police or social workers, including available helplines.

The official system may therefore see only a fraction of the problem. A child can be threatened online while sitting in a family home, with no obvious warning sign for parents or teachers and no complaint reaching police.

The abuse is real, yet the child can remain almost invisible to the institutions meant to provide protection.

Researchers identified fear and stigma as barriers to disclosure, compounded by possible repercussions inside the family. Victim-blaming can deepen that silence.

If a child’s first expected response from an adult is “Why did you send that?”, disclosure becomes frightening. A response focused on “Who is threatening you?” can instead direct attention toward the person causing the harm.

The difference can decide whether a child asks for help.

Boys are being missed too

Another assumption deserves attention.

Girls and boys in the Pakistani survey experienced technology-facilitated sexual exploitation and abuse at similar overall rates, according to ECPAT’s interpretation of the findings.

Boys, however, can face a different obstacle because expectations around masculinity may silence them. A boy may fear ridicule if he says he was manipulated or sexually exploited, while adults may be less likely to recognise him as a possible victim.

The abuse can therefore occur while social expectations make acknowledging it unusually difficult. A child-protection system that imagines vulnerability mainly through girls will inevitably miss some boys.

Pakistan does have laws

It would be wrong to say Pakistan has no legal response.

The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act contains specific offences relating to online grooming and sexual exploitation of minors.

Section 22A addresses online grooming and solicitation, including forms of cyber enticement. It covers deliberately developing a relationship of trust with a minor through digital communication with the intention of facilitating sexual abuse or obtaining sexual content.

The punishment can reach ten years in prison, along with a substantial fine. Other provisions address commercial sexual exploitation as well as the use of information systems to facilitate kidnapping or abduction of minors for sexual exploitation, including trafficking.

The problem, then, is not simply the absence of criminal offences. A gap appears between the law on paper and what happens when a frightened child needs the system.

The Disrupting Harm study points out, for example, that Pakistani law does not systematically require forensic interviews of children to be conducted by specially trained professionals.

Poor questioning can force a child to relive the experience, turning the pursuit of justice into another source of distress.

Even the language in our law needs updating

A smaller detail in the report reveals a larger problem.

Pakistan’s electronic-crime law continues to use the term “child pornography.” The researchers recommend child sexual abuse material, or CSAM.

The change is more than a matter of terminology. Pornography normally describes sexual material involving consenting adults, while an image documenting the sexual exploitation of a child is evidence of abuse.

Language should make that distinction unmistakable.

Technology is changing faster still. Generative AI can create or manipulate sexualised images without requiring an original photograph of actual abuse.

UNICEF has warned internationally that AI-generated sexualised depictions of children can themselves constitute abusive material and cause real harm. Pakistan’s laws and investigative capabilities will have to keep moving with that technology.

Pakistan is beginning to build investigative capacity

There has been some progress.

Earlier this year, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency launched an AI-enabled investigative system called Katalyst to help investigators identify and prioritise digital evidence involving online child sexual exploitation.

The system was developed with support from the UK-Pakistan Serious Crime and Law Enforcement programme. Investigators can face enormous volumes of digital material, so technology can help identify urgent cases faster.

Software, however, is only one part of the response. A sophisticated investigation tool has limited value when a child never reports the abuse, which brings the problem back to families and schools.

Should Pakistan simply ban children from social media?

Punjab has already started debating a much more restrictive approach.

In August, the Punjab Assembly passed a resolution calling for legislation to prohibit social-media accounts for children under 16. Supporters pointed to risks including cyberbullying and sexual exploitation.

The instinct is understandable: if a platform contains danger, keeping a child away can look like the simplest answer.

Evidence, however, suggests that a ban alone would be incomplete. UNICEF’s broader research on childhood in the digital world warns that simply preventing children from going online can undermine development of digital skills without necessarily solving the underlying harms.

The better objective is neither unlimited access nor the assumption that every teenager can realistically be kept offline. Pakistan needs safer access instead, with platforms carrying part of the responsibility.

Children carry too much of the responsibility

Many online-safety campaigns tell children not to share photographs or trust strangers. They also stress strong passwords and encourage children to tell an adult.

The advice is useful, but notice who carries most of the burden: the child.

UNICEF’s latest recommendations challenge that model. Children need digital literacy, while companies should design safer systems and governments should maintain functioning reporting mechanisms. Police and courts also need child-sensitive procedures.

Schools need safeguarding policies that recognise the playground now extends into the phone. Parents, meanwhile, need enough digital knowledge to understand the environments their children inhabit.

A twelve-year-old should not be expected to defeat an adult manipulator through superior cybersecurity awareness.

Parents need conversations, not surveillance alone

I understand the parental instinct to inspect everything: take the phone, read the messages and block applications that appear dangerous.

Sometimes intervention will be necessary. Permanent surveillance, however, creates its own problem because a child who expects punishment or humiliation after admitting an online mistake gains another reason to remain silent.

Pakistan’s digital-safety guidance developed by PTA with UNICEF and other partners encourages parents to talk openly with children about online activity and risks.

Open conversation may be more powerful than many technical controls. A child should know before trouble begins that a threatening image, a mistake online or a betrayal by someone trusted can be brought to a parent without making the child the first target of blame.

The message is simple: deal with the person causing the harm first. It needs to arrive before the blackmail message does.

Schools cannot treat the phone as somebody else’s problem

Pakistani schools increasingly use digital systems. Teachers send work electronically, while students research online and class communication can move through messaging applications.

Yet online safeguarding is often treated as something parents handle at home. The boundary no longer makes sense once education itself requires digital access.

Students need age-appropriate instruction on grooming and coercion. They also need to understand that forwarding another child’s intimate image is not entertainment.

Teachers need procedures for responding when a student discloses abuse, and children need to know where help exists before a crisis begins.

The NCCIA currently lists 1799 as its cybercrime helpline and provides an online complaint channel. Pakistan’s Ministry of Human Rights also operates the 1099 helpline for legal advice concerning human-rights violations.

Numbers are useful, but trust determines whether a frightened child uses them.

Pakistan’s digital future cannot be measured only in connections

Pakistan’s digital divide is often discussed as a problem of connection. The policy response then becomes predictable: expand broadband and put affordable devices into more hands, with education becoming increasingly digital.

Those goals matter, but a country has not completed digital inclusion when a child gets internet access. Connection is only the first part.

The second part is building an environment in which a child can use that connection without being left alone against adults who understand manipulation better than the child understands risk.

Nearly 1.5 million is an estimate, but behind it are individual experiences that often never reach a police station. The scale should change how Pakistan thinks about digital progress.

The internet has already entered Pakistani homes and classrooms. It can sit beside a child while a parent is only a few metres away, yet the danger remains invisible.

The question is no longer whether Pakistani children should live in a digital world. They already do.

The real question concerns whether the adults around them and the institutions responsible for protecting them are prepared to live there too. Technology companies belong inside that responsibility as well.