IN PAKISTAN, a disturbing trend is emerging. While parents breathe a sigh of relief thinking their children are safe at home — occupied with smartphones and tablets — a different kind of danger is silently taking root.
Child sexual abuse cases in the country rose by eight per cent in 2025, with 3,630 incidents reported nationwide. That works out to more than nine children abused every single day. But the numbers only tell part of the story.
Pakistani children are growing up in a world where smartphones have become their primary entertainment, where extracurricular activities are nearly non-existent, and where age-appropriate sex education is virtually absent. Together, these gaps are creating a perfect storm of vulnerability.
THE SCREEN EPIDEMIC
The link between excessive screen time and harm to children is well documented. A 2025 study found that nearly one in four school-aged children in Pakistan is overweight or obese, largely owing to sedentary, screen-based habits. The physical toll, however, is only the beginning.
Children aged seven to ten with excessive screen exposure showed measurable delays in fine motor skills and visuospatial learning, along with weaker academic performance. In Islamabad, researchers recorded a median daily screen time of four hours among children — time linked directly to declining interest and participation in class.
What children are watching during those hours is just as troubling. Another 2025 survey found that 67.5pc of young Pakistanis aged 16 to 24 had viewed adult-themed content. Asked why, 91 of 151 respondents said the absence of sex education had pushed them to look for answers online — a search that frequently ends at pornography instead. A FALSE SENSE OF SAFETY
Many Pakistani mothers feel relieved when their children stay indoors with a phone in hand: at least, they reason, the child is safe. A study of 314 Pakistani families found that 80.6pc of children spend their weekdays primarily at home, with 48.1pc getting less than an hour of outdoor play; 16.9pc get none at all.
This sense of safety is an illusion. A systematic review across South Asia identified weak parental supervision as a key risk factor for child sexual abuse. When children are left alone with unrestricted internet access, predators find their way in — through social media, gaming platforms and messaging apps.
THE MISSING AFTERNOONS
Pakistan's education system offers little in the way of structured after-school life. A qualitative study in Karachi found that when children described their routines, they spoke mostly of schoolwork, screen time and religious instruction; outdoor play barely featured.
As one reader put it in a letter to this newspaper, the academic journey of the average Pakistani student runs in a straight, narrow line from school to college to university to job, with little room for exploration or personal growth along the way. Without safe spaces to play, build friendships and develop under adult supervision, children default to the one space always available to them: the digital one.
THE SILENCE AROUND SEX EDUCATION
Perhaps the most damaging gap is cultural. When children have questions about their changing bodies, relationships or boundaries, there is often no one to ask. Only 30.5pc of young Pakistanis surveyed had ever received any form of sex education, and 76.8pc said they were uncomfortable raising such topics with parents or guardians. Of those who did receive some instruction, a mere
7.9pc were taught about puberty — precisely the knowledge children need most during these vulnerable years.
Without this guidance, children struggle to recognise inappropriate behaviour in adults, lack the vocabulary to describe what has happened to them, and may not even understand that they have been victimised. Research also links the absence of sex education to higher pornography consumption, which normalises coercion and distorts a child's understanding of consent.
LESSONS FROM ELSEWHERE
Other countries facing similar pressures have responded with deliberate policy. Japan's elementary curriculum includes health and physical education covering puberty, consent and personal safety, paired with community-run after-school clubs that keep children supervised. The United Kingdom made Relationships and Sex Education compulsory in 2020, teaching four-year-olds about safe and unsafe touch and older children about recognising online grooming. In the United States, "Erin's Law" requires abuse-prevention education in many states' schools, alongside paediatric guidance capping recreational screen time at one to two hours a day for older children. Finland begins sex education in preschool, built around body autonomy, and funds free, supervised sports and community centres for every child.
What unites these models is not affluence but intent: each treats child protection as a matter of deliberate policy, not parental luck.
WHAT PAKISTAN MUST DO
Pakistan's crisis is not inevitable; it is the result of policy failure, cultural taboo and neglect, and each of these can be addressed.
Parents need practical education on the risks of unrestricted screen time and the tools available to manage it, with schools and mosques well placed to spread that awareness. The education system should mandate and fund sports, arts and scouting programmes, and cities need safe public parks and youth centres so that structured, supervised activity becomes a realistic alternative to a screen. A nationally developed, culturally sensitive sex-education curriculum is overdue — one that teaches personal safety to five- to nine-year-olds, puberty and consent to ten- to fourteen-year-olds, and online safety and respectful behaviour to teenagers. Reporting mechanisms also need strengthening: only 82pc of reported cases are even registered with the police, a figure that itself masks significant underreporting, and teachers, police and healthcare workers need training to handle disclosures with sensitivity. Finally, Pakistan needs a single, reliable national data system; at present, figures are scattered across departments that each tell a different story, making it difficult to grasp the true scale of the problem or target a response.
CONCLUSION
The rise in child sexual abuse cases in Pakistan is not simply a story of "bad people" doing evil things. It is a systemic failure — of screens that have become surrogate caregivers, of schools that offer no outlet for a child's energy or curiosity, and of a culture that silences the very conversations that might protect them.
Parents who hand over a phone and feel relieved are, without realising it, exposing their children to risk. Children with no hobbies, no sport and no supervised company turn to the internet, and the internet too often turns against them.
What is needed now is deliberate action — from government policy to community programmes, from religious leaders speaking openly to parents setting firmer boundaries. Above all, it requires breaking the silence: about sex, about abuse, and about the dangers hiding inside the glowing screens our children hold. Pakistan's children deserve more than a screen. They deserve guidance, safety and the chance to truly thrive.
By Dr Aiza Sarwar
The writer holds a PhD in Health Economics from Nagoya University, Japan. Her doctoral research focused on public health policy, child welfare economics and the socioeconomic determinants of access to maternal health facilities.
