Article by Dawn Hawkins | Director of National Center on Sexual Exploitation

March 13, 2015

A new research study from The Internet Watch Foundation and Microsoft was released this week showing that there is a rise in youth-produced child pornography.

The study established that 85.9 percent of content depicting children aged 15 or younger was created using a webcam and 93 percent featured girls. While much of the content appeared to be knowingly created for websites, the study indicates that 100 percent of the content was shared to third party websites, which cannot be traced. The researchers noted a specific concern that the young people featured, “took no steps to conceal their identity or location, even in many cases using their real names.” The study also found that 667 of the images and videos evaluated featured children 15 years and younger, and of this group, 286 were 10 years or younger…