Nearly one in five children aged 12–17 — around 20 million children — experienced some form of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation or abuse in just one year across the 21 countries covered by a new UNICEF report. Montenegro is among them. Around 9 million children were asked to engage in sexual conversations or share sexual images or videos against their will. More than two in five children who experienced abuse told no one what had happened, while fewer than 1 per cent reported their experience to the police, a social worker or a helpline. This is not a call for children to be more careful. It is a call for institutions to act. Decision-makers must: * strengthen laws and regulatory frameworks and ensure accountability, including responses to sexual extortion and AI-generated child sexual abuse material; * invest in reliable reporting systems and child protection, health, justice and social welfare services that children can trust; * require digital platforms to be safe by design — through stronger privacy protections, limits on contact between children and unknown adults, algorithms that do not recommend harmful content to children, and better mechanisms for detecting and reporting abuse. The burden of protection must not fall on children. A safer digital environment is possible, but only if governments and technology companies act now. 🔗 UNICEF global press release: bit.ly/4zXEEZu #ForEveryChild #OnlineSafety #DisruptingHarm