Research and insights: Connecting and moving the entire child safety ecosystem forward
July 9, 2025
7 Minute Read
Technology is moving faster than ever, and so are the ways it intertwines in young people’s lives. New apps, platforms, social trends, and cultural norms constantly influence young people’s online behaviors.
Let’s face it, children are growing up in a digital world. And, unfortunately, the digital age has made children more accessible to abusers. To protect children from sexual abuse in our digital world, we must understand how children are currently experiencing harm or risky interactions. These data-driven insights can help technology platforms design for child safety, helping prevent instances of abuse before they happen. They also help policymakers, NGOs, and law enforcement agencies understand emerging threats, enabling them to craft proactive solutions.
Research is essential to accomplish this. In 2019, Thorn significantly increased its investment in youth-centered research initiatives to deepen its understanding of the experiences and risks youth face online. In 2025, we’re establishing research and insights as the foundation of the digital safety net we’re building. We will not only gather critical data about online risks but also transform those findings into actionable frameworks and guidance that the entire child safety ecosystem can implement.
Why research matters in a digital world
With today’s technology at their fingertips, perpetrators can move quickly. They’ve become adept at exploiting young people’s desire for social connection and building communities online.
By understanding young people’s online behaviors, we can better grasp where sexual abuse and exploitation tactics intersect with technology. Research can show us how offenders use emerging trends, like generative AI, to their advantage. For example, perpetrators are already using gen AI to grow solicitation, grooming, and sextortion efforts while producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) at scale.
Identifying and monitoring these trends is the foundation for our innovative technology, victim identification, and platform safety pillars. Through Thorn’s novel and partner research initiatives, we can better understand how, why, and to whom these devastating crimes are happening. These insights equip us and the entire child safety ecosystem to create better detection, identification, and mitigation measures.
Our methodologies
Thorn’s research discipline was born of our innovative spirit. When we first set out to review the existing data on the threats children face online, we realized how little was actually out there. Confronted by this challenge, we addressed the need ourselves, developing our own robust research program.
Collectively, our team has surveyed more than 14,000 9- to 20-year-olds, published groundbreaking and globally recognized reports, and briefed sector stakeholders in the tech industry, law enforcement, government, and the media.
Our research also informs Thorn’s own internal strategy, products, and programs.
Elevating the voices of those with first-hand experiences in this space is imperative to understanding the real nature of these issues. That’s why our team conducts surveys and interviews with young people, caregivers, investigators, child safety advocates, trust and safety teams, and more. By analyzing these complex data sets, we can then create a holistic picture of the issues.
We hope our research leads to more data-driven interventions, increases public awareness, and equips platforms, policymakers, and law enforcement with actionable intelligence.
From research to insights: developing actionable frameworks
At Thorn, research is just the beginning. Our team of technical subject matter experts transforms data and findings into practical, implementable insights that drive real-world change.
Our Safety by Design framework for generative AI is a prime example of this research-to-insights pipeline. By combining our understanding of how offenders interact with emerging technologies with our analysis of potential exploitation vectors and Thorn’s technical expertise in AI, we created practical guidance that helps technology developers build safer systems from the ground up. These frameworks include concrete mitigation strategies that enable beneficial innovation by prioritizing protection, helping to prevent new technologies from being misused to sexually harm children.
Beyond frameworks, our insights work includes:
- Developing evidence-based recommendations for platforms on content moderation and safety features
- Conducting data analysis that helps identify new trends in offender behavior
- Translating complex research findings into accessible guidance for parents, educators, and policymakers
- Mapping the evolving landscape of online risks to help the entire ecosystem stay ahead of emerging threats
This bridge between research and practical application ensures that our work doesn’t just document problems—it actively contributes to solutions.
Our research areas
At Thorn, we focus our research efforts on key themes that help us understand and address the complex intersection of child safety, technology, and online behavior:
Conducting youth-centered research on emerging online risks
We place young people’s experiences at the center of our work, directly engaging with youth to understand how they navigate digital spaces. By understanding these behaviors from youth’s perspectives, we can develop more effective interventions.
Analyzing offender tactics and the intersections of technology with abuse
We study how perpetrators exploit technology to harm children, from grooming and sextortion to the production and distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). Our research examines how offenders build trusted connections with child victims and exploit those relationships to commit abuse.
Developing safety frameworks for emerging technologies
As new technologies emerge, we conduct targeted research to understand their implications for child safety. Our groundbreaking work on generative AI has created a cohort of companies committed to building child safety into their technology from the outset, to prevent generative AI from being used to perpetrate sexual harms against children. By studying these technologies early, we can develop safety frameworks that help guide responsible development and deployment.
Increasing public awareness and equipping stakeholders with actionable intelligence
We study how children seek help when facing online risks, including disclosure and reporting behaviors. Understanding whether and how youth seek help in potentially risky situations is critical to developing tools and resources that support them effectively. This research directly informs how platforms, policymakers, and investigators can better protect children online.
Sharing findings through our research hub
We monitor the overall state of child sexual abuse and exploitation online, tracking trends and emerging threats. The data we collect allows us to provide the child safety ecosystem with comprehensive insights that drive strategic action. By making our research publicly available through our Research Center, we empower everyone from parents to platforms with knowledge that can help protect children.
Through these interconnected research areas, we build a comprehensive understanding of the challenges children face online and develop evidence-based approaches to address them.
The impact
Thorn’s extensive research leads to tangible improvements to technologies, tools, and resources that have a real-world impact on child safety.
By capturing authentic first-hand perspectives, our research directly informs technological innovation that makes a tangible difference. We’ve identified blind spots in existing safety tools and built technology solutions that respond to the actual digital behaviors of children. This leads to better victim identification and platform safety tools.
Our insights can serve as an early warning system for the entire child safety community by identifying emerging threat vectors months before they become widespread issues. For example, in a trailblazing collaboration, our research on the risks generative AI poses to child safety brought pivotal and timely insights to the wider ecosystem — illuminating the current scale and nature of this potent technology and the threats of its misuse to children.
Finally, our research bridges critical knowledge gaps for decision-makers, caregivers, and communities. Data and insights highlight how technology changes create new opportunities and vulnerabilities for young people. The research team at Thorn can translate complex digital safety challenges into accessible insights for parents and educators, opening the door for more effective conversations between kids and the trusted adults who want to protect them.
A critical activity supported by philanthropy
Along with technical innovation and child victim identification, Thorn’s research and insights pillar is one of three funded by donor support.
By shining a light on the many factors that can put children at risk of abuse and exploitation, our donor-supported research and insights lay the groundwork for the entire child safety ecosystem to take critical action.
When you join Thorn’s cause community and support our work, you enable us to uncover powerful insights that inform our child safety strategies and innovative technologies. But your impact extends even further, because our research can also connect and advance child safety efforts worldwide, informing everything from prevention and intervention programs to trust & safety measures and national policies.
Build your own knowledge
If you’re curious about getting up to speed on the risks children face online or how you can help recognize and prevent child sexual abuse or exploitation, we invite you to explore our Research Center for easy-to-read explanations and resources.
We share our findings publicly to activate our broader community’s awareness and action. After all, it’s up to all of us to keep the children in our lives safe from sexual abuse and exploitation.
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