Unsafe online

The internet has become an ordinary part of childhood, but the protections surrounding young users remain anything but ordinary. A new Kaspersky analysis offers a revealing picture of where Pakistani children are spending their time online. During the first eight months of 2026, YouTube accounted for 31.2% of their mobile app activity, followed by Instagram at 18.8% and WhatsApp at 17.4%. Multiplayer games and platforms such as Roblox and Discord also featured prominently in their digital lives. Such spaces offer entertainment and companionship. The concern is that the same features that make them attractive to young users also make them accessible to people seeking to deceive or exploit them. Multiplayer games allow strangers to communicate directly with children. Phishing links can arrive disguised as offers of free game currency or rewards, while friendships formed online can gradually become vehicles for grooming or blackmail. The scale of the problem in Pakistan is already difficult to dismiss. Research released by UNICEF, ECPAT International and Interpol last month found that nearly one in 16 internet-using Pakistanis between the ages of 12 and 17 had experienced some form of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse within a year. That translates into roughly 1.5 million children. The research also found that fear, stigma and possible repercussions within the family often discourage victims from seeking help. AI is making an already difficult problem more complicated. Across an 11-country study, at least 1.2 million children reported having their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes during the preceding years. Children will not retreat from the digital world, nor should they be expected to. The task is to make that world safer for them. As technology becomes better at creating convincing falsehoods and predators become more adept at exploiting trust, Pakistan's safeguards must evolve just as quickly. Connectivity without protection leaves children carrying risks they are too young to manage alone.