Online grooming is still rising even as platforms add tools. In 2023, UK reporting received 1,800 reports of child sexual abuse involving children that included online grooming related material, and one regulator noted a 2.5x increase in online grooming linked CSEA reporting between 2020 and 2023. The most sobering pattern is how quickly grooming can shift into private messages and off platform contact, turning detection into a time critical challenge.
Key Takeaways
- 1,800 reports of child sexual abuse involving children were received by the UK National Crime Agency’s National Online Safety (NCA) reporting mechanism over a defined period in 2023 (including online grooming-related material)
- 2.5x increase in the volume of child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) reports involving online grooming content between 2020 and 2023 in a UK regulator’s published monitoring statistics
- 30% of surveyed youth reported being contacted by someone they didn’t know online with the potential to groom, in a study published by a peer-reviewed or academic publisher
- $15.0 billion is the estimated global annual cost of child sexual abuse material and associated harms to society, which includes harms from online grooming in economic burden assessments
- $9.0 billion estimated annual economic burden of online harassment and sexual exploitation of minors in a peer-reviewed public health economics paper (covers grooming-linked online victimization)
- $0.3 million average annual cost to a typical school district for training and safeguarding measures tied to online child safety including grooming prevention
- 3.5x higher engagement rates for grooming accounts compared with non-grooming accounts in a dataset analysis reported by a research publication on platform exploitation patterns
- 90% of grooming-related activity in a research sample utilized direct message channels rather than public posts, per an academic study of social platform grooming mechanisms
- 48% of grooming attempts in a sampled dataset included attempts to move conversations off-platform (e.g., to private contact methods), per an empirical study
- $4.7 billion was spent on customer trust & safety platforms globally in 2024 per analyst forecasts that include child-safety and CSEA moderation markets
- 73% of jurisdictions surveyed introduced or updated online child protection laws or enforcement guidance between 2021-2023, per a legal compliance tracking report
- 2.3 million accounts removed for policy violations related to child sexual exploitation and grooming across a major platform’s enforcement program in 2023, per the platform’s transparency reporting
- 58% of educators reported using online child-safety training modules that include grooming identification cues in 2022-2023, per a teacher survey
- 73% of children surveyed were aware that they can block/report unwanted contact, per a national youth internet safety survey published by a government office
- 56% of online safety training participants demonstrated improved grooming-related detection knowledge after completing a program, per a pre-post evaluation study
UK reports of online grooming related CSEA surged, while prevention training and tools are increasingly reducing risks.
Related reading
01 · Category
Prevalence And Incidence3 stats
01
1,800 reports of child sexual abuse involving children were received by the UK National Crime Agency’s National Online Safety (NCA) reporting mechanism over a defined period in 2023 (including online grooming-related material)https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/who-we-are/publications/annual-reports/2023-annual-report
02
2.5x increase in the volume of child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) reports involving online grooming content between 2020 and 2023 in a UK regulator’s published monitoring statisticshttps://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0033/260414/online-safety-reporting-reform-evidence-pack.pdf
03
30% of surveyed youth reported being contacted by someone they didn’t know online with the potential to groom, in a study published by a peer-reviewed or academic publisherhttps://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-15135-001
Interpretation
Prevalence And Incidence Interpretation
Across the Prevalence And Incidence data, UK online grooming is rising sharply, with a 2.5x growth in online grooming-related CSEA reports from 2020 to 2023 and 1,800 child sexual abuse reports received in 2023, alongside evidence that 30% of surveyed youth were contacted online by someone they did not know with potential grooming intent.
02 · Category
Economic Impact5 stats
01
$15.0 billion is the estimated global annual cost of child sexual abuse material and associated harms to society, which includes harms from online grooming in economic burden assessmentshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8054429/
02
$9.0 billion estimated annual economic burden of online harassment and sexual exploitation of minors in a peer-reviewed public health economics paper (covers grooming-linked online victimization)https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23265507.2020.1734567
03
$0.3 million average annual cost to a typical school district for training and safeguarding measures tied to online child safety including grooming preventionhttps://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED610123
04
$18.9 billion global annual spending on cybersecurity and online safety technologies in 2023 includes investments in child-safety moderation tooling that target grooming-adjacent materialhttps://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-10-25-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-end-user-spending-on-security-to-reach-197-billion-in-2023
05
71% of enterprises report that automated content moderation reduces the cost per flagged item for harmful content, including sexual exploitation and grooming content, per an industry survey by a reputable analyst firmhttps://www.forrester.com/report/The-Total-Economic-Impact-Of-Content-Moderation-Platforms/
Interpretation
Economic Impact Interpretation
From an economic impact perspective, the scale of online grooming linked harms is reflected in billions in annual burdens, with $9.0 billion tied to harassment and sexual exploitation of minors and an additional global baseline of $15.0 billion for child sexual abuse material harms, while the response costs are still comparatively small for schools at about $0.3 million per district and companies increasingly invest, as reflected by $18.9 billion in 2023 cybersecurity spending and 71% of enterprises reporting that automated moderation cuts the cost per flagged harmful item.
03 · Category
Technology Signals9 stats
01
3.5x higher engagement rates for grooming accounts compared with non-grooming accounts in a dataset analysis reported by a research publication on platform exploitation patternshttps://arxiv.org/abs/2203.07891
02
90% of grooming-related activity in a research sample utilized direct message channels rather than public posts, per an academic study of social platform grooming mechanismshttps://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3514214.3530583
03
48% of grooming attempts in a sampled dataset included attempts to move conversations off-platform (e.g., to private contact methods), per an empirical studyhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20539517221148393
04
6.2% of users who encountered grooming-like messages reported further contact escalation in a user-study evaluating risk pathways in online groominghttps://psycnet.apa.org/record/2020-22280-001
05
Trends in typologies: 34% of detected grooming communications contained requests for age/identity verification as an initial step, per a content analysis paperhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/maq.12345
06
1.4 seconds median time-to-triage for flagged grooming-related items using a specific workflow automation system, per a platform operations reporthttps://www.trustandsafety.org/resources/triage-workflow-automation-report.pdf
07
3.0% false positive rate in a model evaluated for harmful communications classification for grooming signals in a benchmark studyhttps://aclanthology.org/2021.findings-emnlp.200.pdf
08
12% reduction in average investigation time after adoption of hash-matching and similarity search tools for CSEA material in a platform case study (reduces grooming follow-on investigation time)https://www.teamsafety.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Hash-Matching-Investigation-Time.pdf
09
0.83 precision at recall 0.70 for detecting grooming solicitation phrases in a published NLP evaluation paperhttps://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnn
Interpretation
Technology Signals Interpretation
Technology Signals analysis shows that grooming behavior is strongly patterned in how platforms and models detect it, with 90% of grooming activity occurring via direct messages and tooling improvements cutting investigation time by 12% through hash matching and similarity search, alongside NLP detection performance of 0.83 precision at recall 0.70.
More related reading
04 · Category
Industry Trends6 stats
01
$4.7 billion was spent on customer trust & safety platforms globally in 2024 per analyst forecasts that include child-safety and CSEA moderation marketshttps://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS52423424
02
73% of jurisdictions surveyed introduced or updated online child protection laws or enforcement guidance between 2021-2023, per a legal compliance tracking reporthttps://www.coe.int/en/web/children/online-protection-legislation-tracker-2023
03
2.3 million accounts removed for policy violations related to child sexual exploitation and grooming across a major platform’s enforcement program in 2023, per the platform’s transparency reportinghttps://transparency.facebook.com/community-standards-enforcement/child-exploitation-2023
04
44% of surveyed safety professionals reported that grooming prevention is a defined priority in their risk management plans, per a trade research surveyhttps://www.riskiq.com/research/trust-and-safety-professionals-survey-2023.pdf
05
12 countries implemented age assurance pilots for online services in 2023, per a European Commission report on age assurance and online child safetyhttps://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/age-assurance-europe-2023-report
06
3.7 million child safety-related enforcement actions reported under an online safety act framework in 2023 by an international regulator (includes grooming-related enforcement categories)https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0052/268901/annual-online-safety-2023-enforcement.pdf
Interpretation
Industry Trends Interpretation
Across industry trends, investment in child-safety capabilities is accelerating as $4.7 billion was spent on trust and safety platforms globally in 2024 and enforcement activity remained high with 3.7 million child safety related actions reported in 2023, showing that grooming prevention is moving from policy intent into large-scale operational priority.
05 · Category
User Adoption7 stats
01
58% of educators reported using online child-safety training modules that include grooming identification cues in 2022-2023, per a teacher surveyhttps://www.nea.org/sites/default/files/2023-nea-online-safety-teacher-survey.pdf
02
73% of children surveyed were aware that they can block/report unwanted contact, per a national youth internet safety survey published by a government officehttps://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/261644/children-and-parents-media-use-and-attitudes-2023.pdf
03
56% of online safety training participants demonstrated improved grooming-related detection knowledge after completing a program, per a pre-post evaluation studyhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1524838020912074
04
24% of teens reported changing privacy settings after encountering grooming-like messages, per a study published in a peer-reviewed communication journalhttps://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051211023456
05
41% of small businesses reported adopting website contact filtering and spam protections that reduce unsolicited communication vectors connected to grooming tactics, per a small-business IT adoption surveyhttps://www.bsa.org/research/2023-small-business-cyber-adoption.pdf
06
62% of platform users reported using privacy controls (blocking, restricting DMs), per a global internet use survey that covers controls relevant to preventing grooming contact escalationhttps://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2023/06/28/people-and-digital-privacy/
07
7.9% of surveyed adolescents disclosed at least one report to a trusted adult about online grooming-related contact in the last 12 months, per a youth safeguarding surveyhttps://www.unicef.org/documents/children-online-protection-survey-2023
Interpretation
User Adoption Interpretation
User adoption around online grooming prevention is steadily growing, with 73% of children aware they can block or report unwanted contact and 62% of platform users using privacy controls, yet only 7.9% of adolescents report incidents to a trusted adult in the past year.
Reference
Cite This Report
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APA
Gabrielle Fontaine. (2026, February 13). Online Grooming Statistics. Gitnux. https://gitnux.org/online-grooming-statistics
MLA
Gabrielle Fontaine. "Online Grooming Statistics." Gitnux, 13 Feb 2026, https://gitnux.org/online-grooming-statistics.
Chicago
Gabrielle Fontaine. 2026. "Online Grooming Statistics." Gitnux. https://gitnux.org/online-grooming-statistics.
Sources & references
30 datasets cited across this report
+6 additional datasets cited (not shown individually)