Cybercrime against children is on the rise

In today's digital age, cybercrime has become an all-too-common occurrence, including nefarious activities such as phishing and cyberbullying. Unfortunately, children are not immune to these dangers. To this end, Surfshark has compiled a chart of cybercrime against children from 2015 to 2022, highlighting the number of victims affected and their financial losses.

Key insights

• 2022 saw an increase in cybercrime against children. According to the FBI Internet Crime Center reports (2015-2022), there were nearly 20% more child victims of cybercrime in 2022 than the year prior. To put this into perspective, 7 children per day faced online exploitation in 2022.
• This decade has already seen nearly 8k child victims of cybercrime. That means over half of the children that fell victim to cybercrime since 2015 were targeted over the last three years.
• Financial losses saw an even greater year-over-year increase than the number of victims, rising by more than two times. To put this into perspective, the average loss per victim in 2021 was $92, while the number grew to $223 in 2022. In fact, 2022 saw the highest loss per victim this decade.
• Overall, from 2015 to 2022, the FBI recorded 14.5k child victims of cybercrime, totaling 2.9M in financial losses from these crimes.

Methodology and sources

This study used data from the yearly Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Reports (2015-2022). Data on cybercrimes against children was aggregated and analyzed according to victim count and financial losses.

Data was collected from: