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Offlimits, an expertise center focused on online abuse in the Netherlands, revealed that 85 percent of this self-produced content came from children under the age of 12. A significant portion of those children were between 7 and 10 years old.
How It Starts — and Why It's Getting Worse
The pattern usually begins innocently enough. A child picks up a phone or tablet and lands on a platform like TikTok, believing they are chatting with someone their own age. Before long, they are guided — sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully — to other platforms where things take a darker turn.
Madeleine van der Bruggen, deputy director of Offlimits, has watched this trend grow with deep concern. She spent years working in law enforcement and says this wasn't something they encountered a decade ago. Children are being seduced or pressured into sending nude images at ages when they have no real understanding of sexuality. "They often don't even interpret it sexually," she noted. "Later they do."
Once an image is sent, it rarely ends there. Children are blackmailed into sending more, trapped in a cycle they don't fully understand and cannot easily escape. Therapists working with affected children report that many come from backgrounds involving abuse or family violence, though that is not always the case. What is consistent, however, is the disruption this causes to normal childhood development.
The numbers surged in 2025, following a sharp increase in 2024, prompting authorities to commission a major study through the WODC, the country's scientific research and data centre. The goal is to better understand how children end up in online spaces where sexual imagery is exchanged — because right now, officials openly admit they don't have that answer.
What Needs to Change
Van der Bruggen is clear that the blame lies entirely with the perpetrators. But she also believes prevention has to start at home and in schools. Parents are encouraged to simply check in with their children — not in an interrogating way, but with genuine curiosity about how their day online went. Sitting beside a child while they browse, or asking casual questions, can make a real difference.
Schools also need to do more, and earlier. Digital safety education is currently introduced too late in many curricula, she argues. By the time children reach upper grades, the damage may already be done for some. These skills need to be woven into learning from the very beginning.
Public sentiment appears to be shifting in response to these revelations. A survey conducted in April showed that 70 percent of people in the Netherlands now support a social media ban for children under the age of 15 — a figure that reflects just how seriously this issue is being taken at a community level.
