For nearly eight years, I was the national policing lead for child protection, and ever since, I have watched as the scale of online child sexual abuse has grown year on year, to the point where it is now a crisis unlike anything we have seen before.

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And I saw exactly where it starts.

So when the Prime Minister finally announced plans to raise the age limit for harmful social media to 16, I applauded him. It is a bold move, and one that is vital to keeping our children safe. But there is one glaring omission in this policy that should alarm us all: the gaming industry.

Gaming platforms are one of the main places offenders go to find children, and they do it at an enormous scale. Not every approach goes anywhere, but once an offender has a child's attention, they set about building trust, posing as another child, offering gifts such as in-game........

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