It’s a stunning and stark reality. A 2022 University of New Hampshire study found that 16 percent of young people in the U.S. experienced at least one type of sexual abuse online before age 18.
At a time when the likes of Meta (Facebook, Instagram) grow creepier and even more dangerous, Ethan Arensen and the Tech Coalition, where he is Board Chair, are doing substantive, tangible work to confront and reduce the massive threat to children posed by online sexual predation.
Yes, the Tech Coalition includes Meta, Google, TikTok, and others, so the “bros” deserve some credit here. But let there be no doubt. These companies understand how their brands can be severely damaged by the existence of child sexual exploitation on their platforms. They believed they needed to act out of self-interest, so they did so in forming the Tech Coalition.
Arensen’s work rises above such marketing and legal precautions, however. Far, far above! Arensen, who is a senior executive at Verizon with a portfolio that includes digital safety, has instilled a mindset at the Tech Coalition that values the sharing of data among the tech companies. “This type of signal sharing has never been in the child exploitation space, and I believe it is revolutionary,” he recently told George Washington University’s alumni magazine.
The approach appears to be working. For example, a Coalition program called Lantern has enabled companies to take action on over 30,000 accounts for violations of online sexual exploitation and abuse. In the process, more than 1,200 individual uploads of child sexual exploitation were removed in the reported period. Some of these cases also resulted in individuals being reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. “It’s very much a dark side of the Internet that people don’t talk about,” Arensen said.
The state of social media is pitiful and getting worse these days. At least there is one individual and organization doing something about it. Our children are a bit safer as a result.
