Reacción a "A study warns that more than 10 million children in Asia and Africa have been subjected to online sexual exploitation or abuse"

The study is undoubtedly very interesting, both because of its scope and because it provides insights into child sexual abuse in a region where there is not as much evidence available as in other parts of the world.

The study by Sakshi Ghai and colleagues provides empirical evidence of great interest for understanding technology-facilitated child sexual abuse and exploitation (CSEA), as it presents robust data on the prevalence of this phenomenon across a wide range of countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. In this regard, the study is doubly significant, as it not only sheds light on this phenomenon in these countries but also represents a scientific milestone as one of the first multi-country studies on this issue in this region of the world. That said, the results obtained by the research team are very much in line with previous studies conducted worldwide, which follow relatively stable patterns in the field of child sexual abuse (digital or physical), with global trends placing its prevalence at around 20% for the general population.

In the digital realm, and while it is true that this is an area still under study due to the rapid expansion of digitalization, the findings confirm the global scope of this problem, as highlighted by previous studies conducted in specific online spaces such as video games, social media, or public internet forums.

Going further, one of the main findings of this study, in my opinion, is the confirmation that child sexual abuse (whether physical or digital) is not an issue that specifically or exclusively affects girls, but rather a cross-cutting problem that impacts boys and girls almost equally (16.9% vs. 17%), requiring holistic solutions.

Regarding patterns of reporting or disclosure of victimization experiences, while the underreporting rate found by the research team is high (51% do not tell anyone), this figure is actually on the optimistic side compared to previous studies in this field, which highlight that between 50% and 80% of child victims of sexual abuse do not report such experiences during childhood.

Methodologically, this is a robust, multi-country study with large community samples that are statistically representative at the national level of the connected child population. It should be noted, however, that it is important to exercise some caution when attempting to extrapolate and interpret these results, as while the research team was able to control for a number of variables in the multi-country comparisons (rural vs. urban population; societal connectivity, etc.), many others have been difficult to control (cultural, social, legal factors, etc.), which makes it difficult to conduct more in-depth comparisons.

Finally, and although the authors of the study repeatedly point this out, it is important to remember that cross-sectional studies such as that by Sakshi Ghai and colleagues allow us to view a specific situation at a specific moment, and this snapshot is important for understanding the state of the issue surrounding a given problem at a given time. However, these studies do not allow for the establishment of causal relationships between the different variables and problems observed; longitudinal studies are required for this purpose.