identified as one driving factor behind the trend towards collections of larger quantities of material, as well as material depicting younger victims and higher levels of violence.102 The prevalence of child sexual abuse material may also fuel a vicious cycle. As new material features increasingly violent imagery with ever younger victims, offenders may seek more extreme material to derive the same levels of gratification from child sexual abuse material. Non-contact offenders who view and trade child sexual abuse material may feel spurred on to abuse children and create abuse material themselves, either during the grooming or the immediate abuse (which may or may not have been initiated online).103 Recent arrest statistics from the United Kingdom, for instance, suggest that some offenders had watched and had in their possession child pornography before assaulting or even consequently murdering their victims.104 With regard to the commercial sexual exploitation of children, developments in mobile communications afford abusers more control over their victims’ movements. Not only can perpetrators require victims to call them at the beginning and end of each encounter, but they can also track victim movements by means of global positioning system (GPS) enabled devices. Moreover, the ubiquity of camera-equipped mobile phones and devices makes victims more vulnerable to the recording or live streaming of abuse for distribution, commercial or otherwise.105 Concerning cyberenticement, the widespread use of ICTs and the immediacy of online interactions can lead perpetrators to engage in ever more direct contact with and targeting of victims, to the point that they may solicit sexual contact after only a few brief interactions, unconcerned about offending or alienating victims, or resorting to threatening them into compliance.106 For example, perpetrators may convince children to share a compromising image and then threaten to send it to their parents or to upload it to a public website in order to extort more graphic content or in-person meetings.107 The magnitude and pervasiveness of bullying have also been exacerbated in the current technological environment. Wolak, J., Finkelhor, D., Mitchell, K., 2011. Howitt, D. Sheldon, K., 2007. “The Role of Cognitive Distortions in Paedophilic Offending: Internet and Contact Offenders Compared”, Psychology, Crime, & Law 13:469-486. 104 Bose, A., 2013. 105 U.S. Department of Justice, 2010. P. D-20. 106 See Choo, K. R., 2009. P. 12. 107 CEOP, 2013. 102 103 Bullies use websites and social media to broaden their audience and to increase their impact on victims. Use of the Internet and other ICT platforms enables perpetrators to quickly and easily enlist others to join in bullying the victim.108 The semi-anonymous nature of the Internet may increase the viciousness of perpetrators and thus aggravate the harm inherent in the initial bullying. Children may feel trapped in a vicious cycle of online abuse. Such abuse often has a continuous nature due to the always “open” nature of Internet connections on personal mobile devices that may be kept on the person of the victim at all times. Victims may also hesitate to confide in their parents because they doubt their level of technical sophistication or fear that they will lose access to their personal devices. In addition, caregivers may have less opportunity to observe online abuse and to intervene than otherwise possible in a physical environment.109 With regard to exposure to harmful content, according to an anonymous survey published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2009, 55.4 per cent of teens reported that they had visited a sexually explicit website.110 Provision of social affirmation for offenders The use of ICTs affords unprecedented access to social ­affirmation for offenders. Whereas in the pre-digital era perpetrators who openly discussed these matters would likely have become ostracized from mainstream communities, accepting online communities exist for all areas of abuse and exploitation, particularly with respect to child sexual abuse material and cyberenticement.111 Such social reinforcement of child abuse and exploitation can be particularly strong due to its immediate and interactive nature.112 Massive quantities of readily available child sexual abuse material online may create the false impression of social acceptability, which in turn 108 Shariff, S., 2011. Child Safety Online. Defining the Lines on Cyberbullying: Navigating a Balance Between Child Protection, Privacy, Autonomy and Informed Policy. Available at http://www. unicef-irc.org/research-watch/Child-Safety-Online/839/. 109 ECPAT International, 2005. Violence Against Children in Cyberspace. Pp. 60-64. Available at http://www.ecpat.net/sites/ default/files/Cyberspace_ENG_0.pdf 110 Braun-Courville, D. K., Rojas, M. 2009. “Exposure to sexually explicit web sites and adolescent sexual attitudes and behaviors”, Journal of Adolescent Health. 45:156-162. 111 Choo, K. R., 2009. P. 11. 112 Bromberg, H. Identity, Belonging and Consciousness in Virtual Worlds. In R. Shields (ed.), 1996. Cultures of the Internet: Virtual Spaces, Real Histories, Living Bodies. 20 STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES ON THE ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN