Children are ‘not safe’ on the internet: Stark warning as head of ‘Britain’s FBI’ tells Mail there are now up to 900 reports of child abuse online EVERY day
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The head of the National Crime Agency, Graeme Biggar, has warned that the internet is "not safe" for children, as reports of suspected child sexual exploitation online reach as many as 900 a day. He said the UK has "already failed two generations of teenagers" by leaving them exposed to online dangers without adequate safeguards, and urged urgent action as families consider buying children smartphones before the new school year. Investigators warn that reports are growing not just in number but in severity, increasingly involving younger children and cases where children themselves are offending as well as being victimised.
The NCA now receives an average of 400 reports a day about the abuse of British children, a fourfold rise in seven years, with 92,000 reports logged last year alone and over 12,000 in the past month. Platforms flagged include Instagram (about 75 images a day), Snapchat (100), Discord (50), Roblox (25) and Google and X (25 each). Biggar said between 710,000 and 840,000 adults in the UK pose some degree of sexual risk to children, and criticised Facebook's move to end-to-end encryption, which he said caused a 50 per cent drop in reported child abuse detections as the platform effectively "blinded" itself to the problem.
- NCA chief says internet is "not safe" for children
- Up to 900 daily reports of suspected child abuse online
- Encryption on platforms like Facebook is hiding abuse, warns NCA
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Children in the UK have widely accessible internet access through smartphones, apps and games, and campaigners, police and child protection bodies have long warned that this exposes them to grooming, exploitation and abuse. The National Crime Agency, sometimes described as Britain's equivalent of the FBI, is the body responsible for tackling serious and organised crime, including online child sexual abuse, and works with tech companies and international partners to identify offenders and protect victims.
Reports of suspected abuse are generated when technology firms detect harmful material or behaviour on their platforms and pass this information to law enforcement, a system that has expanded significantly as more children use social media, messaging and gaming apps from a young age. Companies such as Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram), Snapchat, Discord, Roblox, Google and X operate platforms popular with children and teenagers, and face ongoing scrutiny over how effectively they detect and prevent abuse on their services, including decisions such as introducing stronger encryption that can limit what illegal content is visible to them.
This subject matters because it touches on child safety, parental decision-making about when to give children smartphones, and the wider debate about how much responsibility technology companies, government and regulators bear for policing online spaces. It also intersects with ongoing discussions in the UK about online safety laws and how they balance privacy, free expression and the protection of minors.
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