Study looks at language used by online groomers

The growth of the online world in recent decades has had a huge impact on all our lives from the way we consume media to how we socialise to how we shop.

Depressingly, these rapid changes have been accompanied by a corresponding growth in online issues around child protection. These challenges include the production and proliferation of child abuse images, bullying among children on social media, body image anxieties felt by young people and the danger of children being groomed by sex offenders masquerading as one of their peers.

For the NSPCC, online safety is among the key child protection issues of the 21st century. Governments and law enforcement are of the same mind - in Wales alone our police forces are recording increases in crimes stemming from the online world year-on-year as they get to grips with the problem.For example, there were 150 recorded crimes of adults meeting a child following sexual grooming over the last five years across Wales' four police forces with more than 60 per cent of these cases having an online element.