YOUNG people are better connected today than ever before, but with the great benefits of the internet come grave concerns and dangers.

Hundreds of counselling sessions were delivered by Childline last year to children and young people who had been blackmailed or threatened into sharing sexual images online. Child sexual extortion - or sextortion - was the reason behind more than 900 Childline contacts in 2023/24. There were more than 150 contacts to the NSPCC Helpline from adults about the same issue.

Counsellors heard from young people who’d experienced financial blackmail over images of themselves and others pressured into sending more nude or semi-nude pictures to prevent images being shared. More than two-thirds of these contacts, where gender was known to Childline, were from boys. However, police data suggests more than 80 per cent of recorded online grooming offences are against girls. One 16-year-old boy told Childline: “Their profile pic was just some random girl smiling, nothing sexual. There were loads of other pics and videos on their feed too. It never occurred to me that the pics might belong to someone else. It was only once they convinced me to send nudes that I realised they were a fake. They messaged to say they’d been playing me and that I had to pay them, otherwise they would release my nudes, and my reputation would be destroyed.”

The impact of online abuse crimes on children and young people includes guilt, shame, depression, confusion, anxiety and fear. All this can be exacerbated if they go through it alone. A further Childline report found children were worried about the response they might get from their parents, peers, teachers or tech companies if they reported online harm. Some young people said they were worried about upsetting others, being judged or punished if they spoke up.

Almost 2,900 counselling sessions were provided by Childline in 2023/24 where the main worry was online harm, sexual abuse and exploitation. The NSPCC Helpline responded to 2,199 contacts from adults on these issues.

So what should a young person do if they’ve experiencing online abuse? We advise speaking to a safe adult such as a parent, carer or teacher. If a young person is worried about an image which appears online, the first step is report it to the platform. Though we also believe online platforms need to act more effectively when children are at risk.

Childline created the Report Remove tool with the Internet Watch Foundation, which is an easy way for young people to report sexual images of themselves which they think may have been shared online. Once reported, the IWF will work to remove this content from the internet. Find out about the NSPCC’s sextortion report at nspcc.org.uk