Abstract:

Easy access, reliability, and flexibility of services provided via the internet have created a constant demand for new products. Online services are very popular on a worldwide scale, much so that they have become an essential part of everyday life, both in the work environment and personal life. One of the main reasons for their popularity is the ability to dynamically stay in touch in the fast-living society. However, indirect communication on the internet introduces, besides many indisputably positive aspects, also some negative aspects, some of which are committing crimes or various morally unacceptable acts. The aim of this article is to point out the real problem of distributing child sexual abuse materials during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sexual abuse does not have to take a physical form, it can happen online, in form of posting or distributing indecent videos or images. We offer an overview of limited options that help reduce or eliminate these crimes with a focus on law enforcement authorities, as well as the need for supporting legislation, and mass preventive measures for both internet service providers and users. Using Pareto analysis, we select locations of the most frequent occurrences of child sexual abuse materials and compare the respective frequencies in 2020 and 2021. Additionally, in the short span of 2 years, we can observe a rapid, thirtyfold increase in the number of occurrences of child sexual abuse materials posted on a relatively new application used for creating and sharing short videos. Similarly, the number of occurrences of child sexual abuse materials increased over 17 times on a social media platform used prevalently by youth. Considering the sensitivity and importance of this issue together with a relatively high number of child victims, we need to involve the wide public in this issue. This is especially important for those that directly come in contact with children, such as parents, teachers, psychologists, and social workers.

Keywords:

Online services, distributing materials, sharing, social media platform, child sexual abuse materials.