KEY MESSAGES
Project Beacon – Public Polling in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands
As these findings are being released across Europe in multiple languages, it is important that we include a few key messages consistently in all of the national and EU-wide releases. Please find these messages below.
Key Messages
- ECPAT released findings from research exploring public attitudes towards online child protection. It was carried out in eight countries across the European Union.
- Commissioned by ECPAT International in partnership with their member Defence for Children – ECPAT Netherlands, the research delivered by YouGov was based on representative adult populations (18+) in France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Sweden, and The Netherlands.
- 73% of respondents believed children cannot go online without being approached by adults looking to harm them.
- Nearly 7 out of 10 people feel that there is not much privacy online anyway. Those who believe online privacy does not exist (68%) outnumber those who believe it does (25%) by more than two to one.
- 68% of respondents across all the countries surveyed support plans by the European Union to introduce new legislation to mandate online providers to use automated tools to help keep children safe online.
- ECPAT calls on the European Union to bring forward new legislation that will make it mandatory for technology companies to turn on automatic tools to scan and detect for images of child sexual abuse and exploitation materials.
- Coming from some of the largest countries in the European Union, the message is clear: the public wants action taken to protect children online. They want to see automated tools that can help to keep children safe online to always be used, with online platforms having a legal duty to do so.