What proportion of CyberTipline referrals are categorized as possession vs. production vs. online enticement each year?

1. What the raw numbers show: child sexual abuse material dominates the dataset

NCMEC’s category “Child Pornography (possession, manufacture, distribution)” accounted for very large raw counts across recent annual reports — for example 21,669,264 in 2020, 29,309,106 in 2021 and 31,901,234 in 2022 — making that category the dominant volume driver in the CyberTipline dataset ^[1].

2. Online enticement is rising fast in absolute terms but remains a small share of total reported incidents

Online enticement reports have increased steeply year-over-year — from tens of thousands in prior years (44,155 in 2021) to 186,819 in 2023 and then to more than 546,000 in 2024 — reflecting both policy changes that broaden reporting obligations and a real increase in flagged incidents ^{[2] [3]}. When compared to NCMEC’s published annual totals, online enticement represented about 0.52% of CyberTipline reports in 2023 (186,819 of 36.2 million) and roughly 2.66% in 2024 (546,000 of 20.5 million) ^{[2] [3] [4]}.

3. Interpreting “possession vs. production vs. enticement” in CyberTipline data — label complications

CyberTipline’s published category labeled “Child Pornography” bundles multiple behaviors — possession, manufacture (production) and distribution — into a single count, so direct splits between possession versus production within that category are not separately published in the public summaries available here; the reports therefore allow confident statements about the combined volume of child sexual abuse material but not a precise year-by-year percentage breakdown between possession and production alone without internal breakdowns not present in the cited public documents ^{[1] [3]}.

4. Year-by-year snapshot using available public figures (what can be computed)

Using NCMEC’s published totals where available, online enticement was ~0.5% of reported incidents in 2023 (186,819 of 36.2M) and ~2.7% in 2024 (546,000 of 20.5M) ^{[2] [3] [4]}. For child sexual abuse material, explicit annual category counts are available for 2020–2022 (21.7M in 2020; 29.3M in 2021; 31.9M in 2022), establishing that that category comprised the bulk of CyberTipline volume in those years, but because a total-for-year figure is not paired in the sources for 2022 within the provided extracts, a precise percent-of-total for 2022 cannot be computed from the supplied documents alone ^[1].

5. Why proportions shift — reporting rules, “bundling,” encryption and data-file distinctions

Year-to-year proportional change is driven less by sudden changes in child victimization than by changes in who must report and how platforms submit data: the REPORT Act mandated platform reporting of online enticement and child sex trafficking, producing an immediate jump in enticement reports; NCMEC also changed how platforms “bundle” and submit data files and some platforms decreased submissions (or were limited by encryption), which reduced overall reported totals in 2024 and therefore changed category percentages even where absolute category counts rose ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

6. Bottom line and data limits

The public CyberTipline summaries show that child sexual abuse material (possession/production/distribution combined) is by far the largest category in raw counts while online enticement — rapidly increasing in absolute numbers — has remained a small share of total CyberTipline reports when totals are published (about 0.5% in 2023, about 2.7% in 2024); however, the public reports do not publish a consistent, year-by-year split that