The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received more than 36.2 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation in 2025, a 12 percent increase over the previous year, encompassing over 104 million files reported by registered electronic service providers. The volume reflects both the scale of online child sexual abuse material in circulation and the increased deployment of detection technologies by major platforms. Electronic service providers reported approximately 21.7 million suspected CSAM incidents across online services, underscoring the central role of digital monitoring in identifying exploitation. The data demonstrates that proactive detection at scale, rather than reliance on user reports, has become the primary mechanism by which law enforcement receives actionable intelligence to locate victims and apprehend offenders.
The 36 million reports represent what platforms detected; the harm that occurs in unmonitored channels generates no report. Monitoring systems that scan direct messages in real time across multiple platforms simultaneously close the visibility gap, detecting grooming, sextortion and child sexual abuse material as it occurs rather than after it has been distributed. Cross-platform AI detection—such as the real-time scanning Guardii provides across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox—generates the timely, evidence-supported reports that enable law enforcement to intervene while the abuse is active and the child is identifiable, directly contributing to the detection infrastructure the NCMEC figures reflect and that investigators depend upon to locate children at immediate risk.
