Law enforcement is aware of the growing issue of cybergrooming; however, the true scope of the issue is difficult to understand with only numbers. Below is a news clip about a local sting operation in Manchester, Iowa.
Source
ABC News KCRG-TV9. (2026). Manchester child grooming sting finds hundreds of predatory interactions online. Youtu.be; KCRG-TV9 Newsroom. https://youtu.be/OqbhAKek04U?si=reEYeaKZ-9JcoaKY
While underestimation of the pervasiveness of cybergrooming by law enforcement is eye-opening with regard to current policy in the legal structure, it is also important to understand the background factors that have permitted the ever-increasing scale of online sexual exploitation and cyber predation.
Below is a recording discussing cybergrooming, produced by the Social Media Victims Law Center. Please give it a listen as you read through the rest of the page.
The Danger of Accessibility
Cybergrooming is attractive to predators for many reasons, the most obvious of which is the accessibility the internet to both predators and victims. The perception of anonymity may be another factor, though some predators do not attempt to hide their identity online.
Predators will often operate on platforms or social media that lack age verification and / or content moderation (such as Kik or Omegle) so that inappropriate conversations or content will not be flagged[1]. In online gaming sites, such as Roblox, the in-game chat is not strictly moderated or may be moderated by artificial intelligence. In such chat rooms or forums, predators can easily engage in conversations with minors and may encourage victims to connect on other platforms for easier access.
While the lack of moderation on sites like Roblox is a massive contributing factor in the prevalence of cybergrooming, the current legal framework surrounding free speech online is another reason cyber predators often do not face repercussions for their actions.[2]
Sources
[1] Schittenhelm, C., Kops, M., Moosburner, M., Fischer, S. M., & Wachs, S. (2024). Cybergrooming Victimization Among Young People: A Systematic Review of Prevalence Rates, Risk Factors, and Outcomes. Adolescent Research Review, 10, 169–200. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40894-024-00248-w
[2] Manyame, A. (2023, June 8). Online abuse: US Supreme Court rulings on tech companies’ responsibility to protect users from harmful content. Equality Now; Equality Now. https://equalitynow.org/news/news-and-insights/online-abuse-us-supreme-court-rulings-on-tech-companies-responsibility-to-protect-users-from-harmful-content/
Active Legislation:
Section 230
Section 230, also known as the Communications Decency Act, states the following: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”
Section 230 is the broadest law governing free speech online. According to Section 230, the internet service provider (ISP) is not responsible for what users say on their platform – meaning they do not have a legal incentive to conduct thorough content moderation. It prevents the ISP from being found criminally or civilly liable for the content on the platform in question.
U.S.C. 11293
Educate yourself and others on U.S.C. Section 11293, which details the manner in which federal agencies should identify and prosecute child exploitation material online
Under Section 11293, federal agencies are tasked with:
- Partnering with online service providers to take down illegal content
- Creating detection technologies to prevent re-uploading
- Educational outreach focused on helping families identify online grooming signs and providing schools with tools to teach internet safety
State Laws
Five states and one district have still not criminalized AI-generated or photo edited child abuse material.
These areas are:
- Alaska
- Colorado
- Massachusetts
- Ohio
- Vermont
- Washington D.C.
To see a breakdown of cyber sexploitation criminal laws by state, visit Enough Abuse.org
How can you protect your loved ones?
Some argue that it is completely the parent’s responsibility to monitor their child’s activities online. Here is the advice journalists gave to Spokane, Iowa parents after a cybergrooming incident in the community.
While parents do need to make an effort to monitor thier child’s online activities, it is equally important to hold companies accountable when they fail to meet the standards promised. A game like Roblox, which is marketed to primarily to children, has a responsibility to its users. If the law does not hold these companies accountable for the harm that comes to them on these platforms due to lack of action or proper precautions on the part of the company, families and communities must be the ones to hold them responsible when harm arises due to negligence on the part of the company.
Predicting the Problems of the Future
The data emerging from the United Kingdom in 2025 and 2026 paints a troubling picture of where online child safety is headed — and what it will take to change course. Reports of sextortion among minors rose 66% in a single year. AI-generated child sexual abuse videos increased from 13 confirmed cases to 3,440 in the same period. These are not gradual trends. They are accelerations, and they demand that policymakers, technology companies, and families treat the next few years as a critical window for intervention.
The most immediate and visible threat is the rapid normalization of sextortion as a tool of exploitation. What was once a relatively rare form of abuse has become a scalable criminal enterprise. Offenders are no longer targeting individual children through sustained grooming relationships alone — they are casting wide nets, using automation and platform mechanics to contact large numbers of potential victims simultaneously, then deploying intimidation tactics that escalate rapidly once any foothold is established. The imagery they obtain is overlaid with threats, personal information, and criminal accusations designed to maximize fear and compliance. Boys aged 14 to 17 have emerged as the primary demographic being targeted in this way, accounting for 98% of sextortion reports to the UK’s Report Remove service in 2025 — a shift that challenges older assumptions about who is most at risk and how grooming typically unfolds.
The fact that reporting to services like Report Remove has increased is, in a limited sense, encouraging. Greater awareness means more victims are seeking help rather than suffering in silence. But the Internet Watch Foundation is explicit that these numbers represent only the tip of the iceberg. The true scale of the problem is almost certainly far larger, because the barriers to disclosure — shame, self-blame, fear of judgment from family and peers — remain deeply entrenched. For every child who reaches out, many more do not.
The emergence of AI as a tool for generating child sexual abuse material represents a qualitatively different and potentially far more dangerous development. The technology has crossed a threshold. In 2025, the IWF identified over 8,000 AI-generated images and videos depicting realistic child sexual abuse, with nearly two thirds of the videos classified under the most extreme category of abuse material. The conversations taking place on dark web forums about this technology are not cautious or exploratory — they are enthusiastic. Offenders are actively discussing the quality of AI-generated material, celebrating the ease with which it can be produced, and strategizing about how to use it to accelerate and intensify abuse. The technology is not being misused in ways its developers failed to anticipate. It is being used in ways that a more rigorous approach to safety design could have made significantly harder.
This is the core argument that the IWF and a growing coalition of child safety advocates are making to governments: the time to act is before the harm becomes irreversible, not after. More than four in five UK adults support government regulation requiring AI systems to be safe by design — a level of public consensus that rarely exists on any policy question. The question is whether governments will move quickly enough to match the pace of the technology itself.
The policy recommendations being advanced are concrete and actionable. Mandatory pre-market safety assessments would require AI systems to be tested before release to ensure they cannot be adapted to generate child sexual abuse material. Built-in risk mitigation would make abuse technically more difficult from the outset rather than attempting to moderate it after the fact. Robust content moderation standards, backed by trusted datasets like the IWF’s Hash List of over three million verified abuse image signatures, would prevent known material from being used to train future models. These are not radical proposals — they are the application of basic product safety logic to a technology that currently operates without it.
The broader legislative environment will shape how effective any of these measures can be. The fragmentation of accountability that currently characterizes the online space — where platforms are shielded from liability, state laws are inconsistent, and international coordination is limited — creates the conditions in which both human-facilitated grooming and AI-generated abuse can flourish. Meaningful progress will require not just technical standards but a willingness to hold platforms and developers legally accountable for foreseeable harms that they currently have little financial incentive to prevent.
What is clear from both the sextortion data and the AI abuse findings is that waiting is not a neutral choice. Every year of inaction is a year in which the tools available to offenders become more powerful, the scale of harm grows larger, and more children are left without adequate protection. The trajectory is visible. The window to change it is open, but it will not remain so indefinitely. The decisions made by governments, technology companies, and civil society in the next few years will determine whether online spaces become meaningfully safer for children — or whether the crisis deepens into something far harder to reverse.
Educate yourself on predator strategies
The endless harm of technology-assisted CSA
Check your state’s legislation and fight for change
Cyber Predation
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Victim Outcomes
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Become an Advocate
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