By Olivier Acuña Barba •
Revealed: 09 Aug 2025 • 23:03
• 2 minutes learn
Sextortion is a criminal offense that destroys youngsters’s and youngsters’ lives and generally results in suicide | Credit score: nito/Shutterstock
Snapchat logged about 20,000 instances final yr of adults grooming youngsters on-line, greater than different social media platforms mixed. This yr, Tech corporations, together with Snapchat and Fb, reported greater than 9,600 instances of adults grooming youngsters on-line within the UK in simply six months final yr – the equal of about 400 per week.
The FBI and the UK’s Nationwide Crime Company (NCA), amongst others, have expressed their growing alarm over the rising menace from sextortion and different crimes concentrating on youngsters, the Guardian reported on Saturday, August ninth.
The US-based Nationwide Centre for Lacking and Exploited Kids (NCMEC) obtained 546,000 reviews from tech corporations of adults the world over soliciting youngsters – a 192 per cent enhance in 2024 in comparison with 2023.
Heartless crime with devastating results
“Sextortion is a heartless crime which may have devastating penalties for victims. Sadly, youngsters within the UK and around the globe have taken their very own lives due to it,” mentioned the NCA in an official assertion.
Tech by US legislation is chargeable for alerting suspicious materials to NCMEC. The figures present that Snapchat reported about 20,000 cases of regarding materials – together with sextortion and baby sexual abuse photos – within the first half of final yr.
Rani Govender, of the NSPCC, mentioned sextortion and different financially motivated sexual crimes had a “devastating” influence on kids, affecting their means to belief or search assist and in some instances resulting in suicide.
NCMEC mentioned it was conscious of “greater than three dozen” teenage boys worldwide who had killed themselves after falling sufferer to sextortion since 2021.
It isn’t, nevertheless, the primary time the FBI has expressed concern over this heinous crime that threatens the way forward for all international locations, that are youngsters.
A rising menace to minors
In a report in January of 2024, the FBI alerted that sextortion was a rising menace concentrating on minors. “Offenders deceive and manipulate youngsters to create sexually express materials for extortion functions,” the FBI mentioned.
Financially motivated sextortion is a legal act that entails an offender coercing a minor to create and ship sexually express materials, the FBI defined.
The company mentioned offenders threaten to launch that compromising materials except they obtain cost, which is usually requested in present playing cards, cellular cost companies, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency.
Monetary achieve, not neccessarily sexual gratification
“These offenders are motivated by monetary achieve, not essentially simply sexual gratification,” the FBI famous.”Victims are usually males between the ages of 14 and 17, however any baby can grow to be a sufferer.”
These crimes can lead victims to self-harm and have led to suicide. From October 2021 to March 2023, the FBI and Homeland Safety Investigations obtained over 13,000 reviews of on-line monetary sextortion of minors. The sextortion concerned no less than 12,600 victims—primarily boys—and led to no less than 20 suicides.
In March of this yr, the FBI revealed it had greater than 250 investigations at the moment underway into sextortion.