Reports of criminal targeting of children online are on the rise, and advocates are discussing what Connecticut can do to address it.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said the number of reports of “online enticement” of children across the country rose to more than 518,000 in the first six months of 2025 from about 293,000 in the same period in 2024 — an increase of 77%. 

The use of generative AI in crimes against children has also increased: From January through June 2025, the center received 440,000 reports of generative AI use in crimes, up from about 7,000 over the same period in 2024. 

Erin Williamson, the chief programs and strategy officer of Love146, an organization that supports trafficking survivors, said while trends in Connecticut haven’t been quite as stark as the nationwide figures, the internet is increasingly used to target children.

“The internet [is] changing very rapidly, and AI has just expedited the rapidity with which things are moving. And yet we still don’t have basic internet safety for all children in the school system. And even how that’s defined within certain schools looks vastly different,” Williamson said.  

Data for Connecticut was not immediately available.

A Connecticut law passed in 2023 prohibits companies from using features that “significantly increase, sustain or extend a minor’s time online without consent” and bans the collection of geolocation data of minors without their approval. 

Last year, the legislature criminalized “synthetically created” revenge porn, a law aimed at preventing people from disseminating AI-created sexual or “intimate” images without the knowledge or consent of the person being depicted. It also put aside money for the Connecticut Online AI Academy and for several Boys and Girls Clubs for AI education.

This year, Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed a bill that would require social media companies to make an effort to verify that someone is over 18, would impose default privacy settings for minors, require that parents opt-in to allow minors to use platforms that use an algorithm and prevent notifications to minors after 9 p.m. and before 8 a.m. 

Lawmakers are also weighing measures to protect children online by placing regulations on social media and gaming companies. And last week, Attorney General William Tong said he was investigating certain online companies for failures to take measures. 

[RELATED: CT legislature to weigh online safety, data protections for minors]

But advocates say there’s more to be done. At an October meeting of Connecticut’s Trafficking in Persons Council, Williamson of Love146 said she wants Connecticut to require internet safety training for students in schools. 

Law enforcement officials agreed that Connecticut’s current regulations fall short. 

Officer Paul Fressola of the Stratford Police Department said his department investigated 37 sextortion cases — in which an adult connects with a child online, convinces them to share explicit material and then blackmails the child — last year, and the growing case load has strained staffing. Fressola said there’s no law in Connecticut dealing specifically with sextortion. 

Fressola said his department has observed another disturbing trend, where young people offer to send suggestive photographs of themselves to adults in exchange for money or gift cards — a kind of reverse sextortion, he called it. 

Connecticut’s Trafficking in Persons Council has discussed convening a working group to explore policies and best practices, as well as potential laws addressing the rise in online sextortion.

Education is a start

The rising volume of reports signals how widespread online targeting has become — but it also shows how much education about the issue has improved, making consumers more wary of online behavior and providing avenues for them to report what they see.

Scott Driscoll, a former youth officer with the Glastonbury Police Department, spent about a decade in the late ’90s and early 2000s working with an FBI task force investigating internet crimes against children. He frequently went undercover online, posing as a brown-haired, green-eyed teenager to find and arrest predators. 

But the work made him realize that there was a different role he needed to play: educating parents, teachers and kids to understand their vulnerabilities online. 

“I was getting phone calls from parents all over the country going, ‘This can’t be true. It can’t be happening.’ So I realized education was the key,” Driscoll said.

Driscoll shifted into a role facilitating training on internet safety across Connecticut and the Northeast, which he’s been doing for nearly two decades now. Over that time, technology has rapidly advanced, making his work that much more critical, he said.

On a cold Monday in early February, about 50 people packed into a room at the Wethersfield Community Center to hear Driscoll speak. The evening was organized by several community groups, including a local chapter of the Balance Project, a national organization that promotes removing phones from schools and keeping kids off social media and phones until they’re teenagers. 

Driscoll guided the group through several social media applications — Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube — showing them how to activate privacy settings on each app and disable location detection. 

Driscoll said parents often don’t understand some of the features of social media. For example, many social media companies say in their terms of service that children under 13 shouldn’t use the platforms.

He thinks the cutoff age should be much higher. “I think the minimum age for social media should be 25,” he said. “It’s those years [when] we’re developing and figuring out who we are.”

Driscoll advises parents to talk to their children and develop a plan of action before problems arise. How should a parent respond if their child comes to them and admits they are being extorted online? “First thing is, give the kid a hug,” he said. 

After that, the parents should notify the police, have the child end communication with the blackmailer and change the passwords to their accounts. 

Sarah Rubelmann, an educator, parent and founder of Wethersfield’s chapter of the Balance Project, said she wasn’t surprised to hear what elementary school students were doing with technology. Rubelmann works as a counselor for Glastonbury Public Schools, and she said high school administrators spend a lot of time dealing with cyberbullying. 

Jamie Manirakiza, the executive director of the Partnership to End Human Trafficking in Greenwich, said parents and educators need to start talking to children about internet safety beginning at age 8 or 9.

She said children need to know it’s not their fault if they experience online exploitation, particularly because of the “serious mental health impact” it can have on kids. And she noted the difficulty young children have understanding that a social media “friend” is different from a real-life friend.

According to Driscoll, younger children often don’t distinguish between friends, followers and strangers when they’re using online platforms. He said he encourages kids to only approve followers they know personally. 

But that’s easier said than done with many kids. 

Neela Thakur, the principal of Emerson-Williams Elementary School in Wethersfield, also attended Driscoll’s training. Afterward, she described the enormity of the challenge, from her vantage point.

“Kids are talking to all sorts of people at all hours of the night,” Thakur said. 

Driscoll said social media has vastly changed the way online predators operate, giving them access to more and more personal information. 

It used to be that predators grooming children would ask a lot of questions to get information from the victim, Driscoll said.

“Now … depending on how much we share, they can collect all the information before they even ask their first question,” he said.

In his remarks last week, Attorney General Tong echoed Driscoll’s emphasis of the importance of knowing the dangers people are exposed to in their everyday online activities.

“ I think everybody just needs to recognize how really powerful these technologies are, and how dangerous they can be for kids — all kids,” said Tong.