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This study examines a “boy-lover” darknet forum, home to nearly 100,000 members with sexual interests in children, analyzing user-generated polls to understand the psychosexual dynamics of this hidden community. Being neither scientifically structured nor motivated, these polls provide a rare, non-reactive insight into sexual preferences, behaviors, and social interactions in an ecosystem shielded from societal scrutiny. Exploring age preferences, consumption of child sexual abuse material, and child sex cues, we elucidate how these behaviors are communicated, reinforced, and normalized. The findings contextualize these behaviors within existing research and underscore the critical role of digital ecosystems in perpetuating sexual exploitation.
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Lehmann et al. (2025) studied this question.
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