"Support for end-to-end encryption increases if child safety can be protected"

 "An NSPCC/YouGov survey1 found 33% of UK adults support using end-to-end encryption on social media and messaging services, but this jumps to 62%2 if it’s rolled out only if and when tech firms can ensure children’s safety is protected.

Private messaging is where most child sexual abuse happens online, and we're calling for an urgent reset of debates on end-to-end encryption to help keep children safe.

End-to-end encryption means only the devices communicating have the ability to decrypt and read the messages. While this is useful for privacy, it also presents risks for child safety and means abuse can go unnoticed online.

A major NSPCC roundtable event attended by the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, will bring together child protection, civil society and law enforcement experts from the UK, US, Canada, Ireland, and Australia. The reset of the debate will focus on showing how end-to-end encryption takes away platforms’ ability to find abuse in private messaging, and how this can be avoided. 

Currently, major tech firms use a range of tech to identify child abuse images and detect grooming and sexual abuse in private messages. But Facebook’s proposals for end-to-end encryption for Facebook Messenger and Instagram would make these tools useless, with an estimate of 70% of global child abuse reports lost. In 2018 these reports resulted in 2,500 arrests and 3,000 children being safeguarded in the UK"

Accessed 19-04-21 Link

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NSPCC "Sharing the Science evaluation"

Publication date 2021

"Sharing the Science (now known as Sharing the Brain Story) is a programme that aims to help professionals and families understand child brain development and how it can be affected by early adversity."

"The programme uses six metaphors to explain key aspects of early child development, the impact of adversity, and the factors that can lead to abuse and neglect."

Key finding

"A trauma-informed approach should be taken if sharing the metaphors with a wider audience"

"Parents, carers and young people felt that sharing the metaphors widely was important for improving understanding of early child development, and for helping parents to do the best for their children. However, desire for universal sharing needs to be balanced with being trauma-informed and making sure that support is available, as the metaphors have the potential to cause distress to individuals who have experienced trauma or abuse."

Other findings include:

"Participants felt the metaphors increased their knowledge and awareness"

"The Sharing the Science metaphors were perceived to increase knowledge of the six concepts they explain and were felt to be helpful for raising awareness of the impact of trauma and abuse on child brain development."

"The metaphors are relevant to people’s lives and can evoke discussions about personal experiences"

"The metaphors led to discussions about personal experiences, indicating that they may be a helpful tool for professionals to use to facilitate conversations in therapeutic work with children and families."

"Strong emotions and judgements about different parenting practices can arise from viewing the metaphor videos"

"Watching the metaphor videos led to the expression of feelings of blame and failure from parents/carers whose child had experienced adversity, as well as judgements about the acceptability of different parenting practices. It is therefore important to emphasise that recovery is always possible when raising awareness about the impact of adversity."

Link to full report