2020 Impact Report
Building Every Day
Last year presented its fair share of challenges, but the collective impact of our efforts is clear. Here’s what we accomplished together in 2020.
Building a world where every child can be safe, curious, and happy means choosing to prioritize children every day. In 2020, our community did just that. Looking back at a challenging year, we wanted to know – what does our collective impact look like on a daily basis?
Identified 8 children, identified 215 files of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) for removal from the internet, and connected with over 155,000 youth about risk, prevention, and safety.
We work across three core strategies to create systems-level change:
For perpetrators of sexually exploitive crimes against children, technology has made it easier to connect with, groom, and abuse children regardless of where they live or their socioeconomic background.
Our child sex trafficking investigations tool, Spotlight, reduced agents’ investigation time by over 55% last year and supported the identification of over 2,000 children.
Behind every CSAM file is a child victim in need of support, or a survivor whose trauma continues to spread online. Identifying this content for removal and reporting disrupts the cycle of trauma and in some cases can lead to the removal of child victims from harmful situations.
In 2020 alone, the Safer community of tech companies protected their users and defended victims and survivors by identifying for removal 79,000 child sexual abuse files. Through collective proactive measures, we are moving the needle on eliminating CSAM from the internet.
The world’s most innovative companies protect their platforms using Safer. These are some of the companies that we’re working with to build the internet we deserve:
Our youth-based research showed that the sharing of nudes is increasingly common among 9-17 year olds, and the resharing of these images is happening at an alarming rate. According to our survey, 1 in 3 teens had seen nudes of someone else shared non-consensually and boys aged 9-12 are more likely than any other group to reshare an image they received.
We’re continuing to build foundational research to ensure we are supporting kids where they need us. Our NoFiltr brand is designed specifically for youth navigating these challenges in a digital world, increasing awareness, changing toxic attitudes, and equipping youth with the knowledge and tools they need to enjoy safe online experiences.
If you’d like to keep up to date with Thorn’s impact all year, join our community and get our latest research, best insights, and most important wins delivered straight to your inbox.
Want to share the impact? Download the report here.
2020 was a challenging year, but thanks to you and our community of supporters, we made great progress towards our goal of stopping child sexual abuse online. No matter what the next year holds, we will continue building best-in-class technology on behalf of the children who need us most. You make that possible. Together we are building a world where every child can simply be a kid.
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