The children's and youth hotline, known as the KJT, continues to be a vital lifeline for young people in Luxembourg. Last year, volunteers held almost 400 conversations with young callers, while close to 300 requests were received by email. The demand for anonymous advice and support shows no sign of easing, according to the service's annual report.
The themes young people raise remain broadly consistent from year to year. More than a third of the issues brought to the KJT related to mental health, anxiety, suicide or grief. Family difficulties came next, with adolescents and young adults making up the majority of those seeking help.
Reaching young people in the first place is not easy, as those running the service acknowledge. Increasingly, contact is made online, and in direct chat sessions, KJT volunteers find themselves measured against the instant responsiveness of artificial intelligence. They continue to insist, however, that warmth and empathy remain their greatest assets, and ones that AI cannot replicate.
The KJT does not only offer support to young people. A parents' hotline is also available, with half of its cases centring on family difficulties and around a quarter on psychosocial issues.
Alongside the KJT, the Bee Secure service has expanded its offering, and usage is growing. This year, adults over the age of 25 also turned to the Bee Secure hotline, 8002 1234, with almost half of those cases involving internet crime.
The scale of illegal content online is brought into sharp focus by the figures from the Bee Secure Stopline, an anonymous platform where users can report potentially illegal content, primarily videos and images of child sexual abuse. Last year alone, more than 15,000 such items were reported, of which over 4,600 were forwarded to the police and the public prosecutor's office.
Since September, Bee Secure has also taken on the role of National Trusted Flagger, allowing it to report content to major online platforms for priority removal. Under European rules, platforms must treat reports from a National Trusted Flagger with urgency, hugely improving the chances of harmful content being taken down as fast as possible.
