Technology and sexual abuse - The role of technology in facilitating child and adolescent sexual abuse: A systematic review

Abstract

Child and adolescent sexual abuse is a reality that affects countless children and adolescents, harming and violating the physical, emotional and psychological integrity of the victims. There are numerous factors that cause vulnerability in this public, one of them being the technological means, due to the influences that the media causes, the exposure of children and adolescents and the facilitation of communication between aggressors and victims. To analyze the relationship between the use of technologies and child and adolescent sexual abuse, exploring how these technological tools have been used to facilitate the sexual abuse of children and adolescents. This is a systematic review of the literature. The search for articles was carried out from the Virtual Health Library (VHL); Lilacs; Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO); National Library of Medicine (PubMed). The descriptors used to search for the articles were: Child and adolescent sexual abuse, technologies and pedophilia. The Boolean operator AND was used to cross-reference the terms. Regarding the inclusion criteria used: complete articles, available and indexed in the aforementioned databases, free of charge, in the Portuguese language, published in the last five years between 2019 and 2023 related to the theme. Monographs, book chapters, paid articles, duplicate studies, in another language, and published before 2019 were excluded as exclusion criteria. Modern technologies, such as the internet and social networks, are means that facilitate the increase in cases of child and adolescent sexual abuse.