“It is up to us to stop seeing [technological] progress… as a stream of unlimited blessings, and rather view it as a gift from on high, sent down for an extremely intricate trial of free will,” Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said.
In Canada, where online child sexual exploitation has risen significantly over the past decade, and where children can easily access explicit material, we are failing that trial.
According to Statistics Canada, from 2014 to 2020, police reported more than 40,000 incidents of online child sexploitation and incidents increased during the pandemic. Police-reported incidents of making or distributing child pornography rose to 7,400 in 2022. Cybertip.ca, a national tip line, says that online sexual luring is up by more than 800 per cent in five years.
Beyond the issue of direct exploitation, there is another serious challenge of children accessing explicit and violent material online.
A Canadian study of 470 adolescents found that 98 per cent had been exposed to pornography, with the average age of first exposure at 12 years old. The effects of early exposure to explicit content can include an increase in aggressive sexual behaviour, depressive symptoms, anxiety and delinquent behaviour, according to Alberta Health Services, a provincial health authority.
In non-digital spaces, it is not controversial for laws to limit children’s access to harmful substances, such as drugs and alcohol. It is time for the government to introduce age-verification requirements for online platforms that host explicit content. (Even Pornhub, a Canadian-owned porn site, is reported to have lobbied Ottawa to block adult websites on kids' cell-phones by default).
