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Ages of children

 

Frontline observations

The age profile of children depicted has remained largely consistent, with the 11–13 age group accounting for the highest proportion, followed by 7–10 year–olds. However, we are seeing an increase in reports involving 14–15 year–olds which we believe reflects an increase in the number of children using the Report Remove service. Our CAID partnership aids us in age-confirming older child victims and despite finding this age group challenging to age-assess, our highly skilled team have extensive experience in applying age-assessment skills and knowledge to children in this age range.

The age of a child can only be recorded for single‑image cases; for multi‑image collages, only the severity classification is recorded.

In 2025 we recorded 370,001 children in child sexual abuse images.

Number of children by age over the past two years

More insights into Report Remove in 2025 are available in our Report Remove section.

IWF Image Classification Assessor
Frontline observations

Some readers may find the following descriptions distressing, please feel free to skip this section.

We see children of all ages in the child sexual abuse imagery that we grade and find online; from babies a just few months old up to older teenagers. There are instances where we see a child appearing in sexual abuse imagery throughout their childhood; we see them as young children, all the way through to later stages of puberty.  

Some child sexual abuse images present us with a challenge in terms of aging the children within them. The bodily development of some older teenage children is almost adult-like, and when we see cropped or zoomed-in images of them, it can be difficult to confidently grade them as children.  

Images of older teens can sometimes reach us in large sets found by our analysts, or as part of a workstream sourced from the UK Home Office’s Child Abuse Image Database (CAID). Victim intelligence from CAID is extremely helpful in helping us accurately grade the material depicting older teenagers, and means our hashes are reliable, and informed by police intelligence.