Welcome to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s (C3P) e-newsletter. We look forward to keeping you up-to-date on our resources, services, and initiatives aimed at protecting children.

Twenty years ago, children typically shared one desktop computer with their family, splitting their dial-up internet usage with their parents and siblings to explore the internet and maybe even send an AIM. Today, youth have instant, unlimited access to the internet and connect online more than ever, leading to far more complex and potentially harmful encounters than we knew growing up.

Over the past few months, we’ve continued pushing governments around the world to acknowledge and adapt to the harms children now face online, along with researching, challenging, and developing steps policy makers and industry can take to better protect our youth. We’ve also launched several campaigns to hold the tech industry accountable and demand they better protect their young users. Our latest report tackles how popular mobile app stores have failed to properly enforce app age restrictions.

Read through this edition of the C3P e-newsletter to learn more about how we’re fighting to protect children and reduce their victimization online.

What we’ve been up to

Unwanted Film Festival

On June 15, we launched The Unwanted Film Festival, which highlights the proliferation and trauma of online child sexual abuse material (CSAM) with a powerful visual representation of the 85 million pieces of material that were reported in 2021.

We created an immersive installation in New York City at the tail end of the Tribeca Film Festival, which attracted hundreds of visitors, as well as a website that continues to garner global attention. Attendees entered a dimly lit room that quickly began to fill with film posters featuring titles and taglines taken from CSAM survivor statements describing how the continued distribution of their material impacts their lives.

Join the almost 2,000 people who have already signed our petition demanding tech companies stop the upload of known CSAM online here.

Think Tank on Changing the Paradigm of CSAM Removal

International experts met in Winnipeg starting May 16 for a three-day think tank to develop strategies aimed at fighting back against unsafe digital spaces putting children at risk and the removal of CSAM online. C3P welcomed representatives from the Five Eye governments, the European Union, along with globally recognized legal and child protection experts.

What we focused on

	Potential strategies to enhance CSAM removal and increase industry transparency and accountability.
	The clear need to remove “lawful but harmful” material of children online.
	The ongoing harm experienced by victims of CSAM when removal is not prioritized.
	Online sexual violence trends we’ve seen through Cybertip!ca® reports.
	Gaps in education and care for survivors to help people learn more about how to prevent and approach child sexual abuse and online sexual violence using our trauma-informed support model.

For a personal perspective of the impactful think tank, read one visiting expert’s experience here. John Carr is the secretary of the Children’s Charities’ Coalition on Internet Safety in the U.K. and an adviser on internet safety legislation.

Responsibility to keep children safe while using popular app stores falls on parents

In our latest report, we looked into how Apple’s App Store® and Google Play® enforce app age ratings across popular apps downloaded by millions of youth. By creating testing accounts for 11- and 13-year-olds in both mobile app stores, we found that youth are at risk of accessing inappropriate content because of inconsistent enforcement of app age ratings that can be easily bypassed.

Three things parents should know

	Age app ratings vary across Apple, Google, and the terms of service for the same apps. YouTube® is rated 17+ on Apple, 13+ (“Teen”) on Google Play, and 13+ in YouTube’s terms of service.
	There is inconsistent enforcement of app age ratings. In Apple’s App Store, 13-year-olds could download 17+ apps by simply clicking a pop-up box “confirming” they were 17+ even though Apple knows the user is 13 based on the age entered in the account.
	When children and youth search for apps, some promoted apps that were visible were rated older than the age associated with the account. Searching for Yubo™ in Google Play as an 11-year-old brought up the recommended apps “3Fun: Threesomes Couples Dating”, and “Chatous: 18+ Live Video Chat.”

To read the full findings and see our recommendations for tech to make app stores safer, visit https://protectchildren.ca/en/resources-research/app-age-ratings-report/.

Update

Cybertip.ca, Canada’s national tipline for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children, reported a rise in sextortion incidents. The report showed that some offenders are employing grimmer techniques to pressure children into sharing sexual images, like threatening to leak their address or harm their family.

On ProtectKidsOnline.ca™ we’ve written several blogs covering how to start conversations about these challenging topics with children and youth. We cover sextortion tactics, sextortion on Snapchat®, and the danger of cappers.

In the news

Lianna McDonald, our Executive Director, talked to Forbes about Meta’s content moderation and the need for more legislation that forces companies to take action against content that is harmful and abusive to children.

Associate Executive Director Signy Arnason’s expertise was sought after on CBC’s The National in their investigation into Amazon selling material sexualizing children.

Among 50 other civil society organizations, C3P signed an important letter supporting the European Commission’s new legislation that will help fight child sexual abuse.

Statistics Canada’s report on online child sexual exploitation and abuse was released in early May. The report relied on C3P data to bring context to a nearly three-fold increase in online child abuse in the past six years.

Noni Classen, our Director of Education, talked to CBC Manitoba about the systemic failures that enabled former phys-ed teacher and football coach Kelsey McKay’s alleged abuse.

Join our fight

We started as a grassroots organization and have grown into a national centre to help protect children around the world, and we couldn’t have done it without support from people like you. You can join our fight and stand with survivors by donating or signing our Unwanted Film Festival petition.

Donate

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