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One in seven teens experience abuse relating to online 'nude-sharing'

Safeguarding PSHE Pupil wellbeing E-safety
One in seven teenagers aged 16 and under have experienced abuse relating to online “nude-sharing”, sparking calls for the introduction of dedicated single-sex lessons earlier in secondary schools.
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A research report from Internet Matters (Hilton et al, 2024) has put forward a range of proposals to stop children from sharing sexual images of themselves.

The report highlights a specific risk for students aged 11 to 13, who it says appear most frequently in self-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Self-generated CSAM ranges from material that is voluntarily shared between peers (where material is re-shared without their knowledge or consent) to coerced “self-generated” imagery where grooming, pressure or manipulation has been used.

The report warns that with all forms of self-generated imagery there is a “significant risk” that it passes into the hands of adult offenders and is shared within offender networks.

The report – entitled Shifting the dial – says that there has been a 14% increase between 2022 and 2023 alone in the amount of self-generated CSAM featuring 11 to 13-year-olds – from 199,363 reported images in 2022 to 254,071 in 2023.

Survey findings published in the report show that 14% of teenagers under the age of 16 say that they have experienced a form of image-based sexual abuse. This would equate to more than 400,000 children in the UK.

Furthermore, a quarter of the teenagers in the same survey said they were aware of image-based abuse being perpetrated against another young person.

It comes after the National Crime Agency in April sent a warning to schools about a recent rise in reports of financially motivated sexual extortion targeting children and young people (NCA, 2024).

This practice involves an adult offender threatening to release nude or semi-nude images and/or videos of a child or young person unless they meet a financial demand. A large proportion of cases have involved male victims aged 14 to 18.

The report says that while most efforts to tackle the issue until now have focused on removing the content, this “must be supported with greater efforts to prevent sexual content from being created and shared in the first place”.

The report’s authors worked with focus groups involving 111 young people to try and discover what approaches might be most effective. The report reveals that many of the young people had not received any specific education in relation to image-sharing – or only brief references to the issue during RSHE lessons, and often too late to make a real difference.

The report states: “When the issue was discussed, it was not perceived to be detailed enough or to offer enough information and was usually delivered by teachers that were non-subject specialists who (the young people) felt often sped through the topic because they found it awkward.”

The research trialed a new, prototype, single-sex RSHE lesson designed by Internet Matters. The students in the focus groups responded well to the lesson, which was interactive and discussion-based, with revised, specific messaging for boys and girls.

The report states: “Girls in particular want smaller, gender-based groups. They said they found it hard to share or discuss issues in front of the boys in their class for fear of being teased or bullied.

“Girls say they want educational resources to acknowledge the much greater likelihood that boys will behave as perpetrators, pressuring girls for images, while girls are more likely to experience harassment for those images.

“Girls said boys should receive perpetrator-targeted messaging that would help them to understand the harmful impact of demanding nude images from others.

“Strikingly, boys saw huge value in messages which tackle ‘perpetrator’ behaviour with unequivocal and un-sensationalised information about the consequences and legality of this behaviour.”

The students also wanted information much earlier on in secondary school, with many criticising the fact that if lessons on image-sharing happened at all they came too late.

The report adds: “Above all, children are clear that this teaching must occur early on in secondary school – by the time that most are receiving lessons about sexual image-sharing (year 9 and above), it’s simply too late.”

One girl in the report, now aged 16, described how she had fallen victim to image-sharing in year 8 and only received a lesson on the topic once she was in year 10.

The research considered two further interventions: an interactive educational game and a nudge technique based on detection technology and designed for deployment in the moment a child attempts to send an image – both of which proved effective. Internet Matters will be developing these further to make them available to a wider number of children.

The not-for-profit body, which is funded by industry to offer child internet safety advice to parents and professionals, is now recommending teaching on this topic to be delivered by gender-based groups in the classroom, from an earlier age, and to be accompanied by digital prevention methods (such as nudges) to tackle this problem at scale.

Carolyn Bunting, CEO of Internet Matters, said: “The surge in children sharing nudes of themselves is terrifying, and some children are suffering significant harm. We need to move towards a much stronger system of prevention. Despite significant steps forward, including recent reforms to the statutory RSE curriculum, far too few children are receiving adequate support and advice on online sexual harassment and abuse.

“As this report sets out, there is a lack of programmes tailored by gender, despite girls being overwhelmingly the victim of online sexual abuse. Children need and want improved education on sexual image-sharing. This should begin with a move towards single-sex lessons when discussing this issue, and from a much earlier age. It is no use waiting until most girls have reached an age where they have already been using tech for many years.”