Warning over 'terrifying' increase in abuse linked to nude image sharing

The abuse includes incidents where young people are coerced through “grooming, pressure or manipulation” to share images, according to campaign group Internet Matters, which has carried out the research.

This form of abuse also includes young people voluntarily sharing images between each other, which are then reshared without their knowledge or consent.

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Internet Matters warns that there is also a “significant risk” that nude images taken by children of themselves could pass “into the hands of adult offenders" and then be "shared and distributed within offender networks”.

The research involved interviews with teenagers and children as young as 11, parents and teachers.

Children aged 11 to 13 appear most frequently in self-generated nude pictures and volume of images being generated by this age group “continues to rise at a disturbing rate”.

Internet Matters says there has been a 14% increase in the number of nude pictures created by young people themselves, from 199,363 in 2022 to 254,071 last year.

A key concern raised is a lack of lessons in schools focusing on the problem. Many children surveyed said they had received no specific lessons on sexual image sharing and only “very superficial coverage” in relationship and sex education classes.

The campaign group is calling for schools to teach young people about the dangers of nude image sharing from the start of secondary school.

Specific lessons should also be gender based, something that girls are particularly keen on as they told researchers they “found it hard to share or discuss issues in front of the boys in the class for fear of being teased or bullied”.

“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 they felt often sped through the topic because they found it ‘awkward’,” said Internet Matters.

One 16-year-old girl surveyed said: “It should definitely happen early. We had one lesson, in Year 10, with people in the room and it had already happened to them, they were like ‘what good is this now? It happened in Year 8’.”

14% of teens under 16 have experienced image-based sexual abuse. Our latest research calls for earlier interventions to prevent children sharing sexual images of themselves.https://t.co/mAagy3pvYE

— Internet Matters (@IM_org) May 8, 2024

Internet Matters chief executive Carolyn Bunting said the increase in children sharing nudes of themselves “is terrifying”.

“We need to move towards a much stronger system of prevention,” she said. 

“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.”

Meanwhile, Ofcom is calling on social media companies to put in place “robust age checks to keep [platforms] safer”.

The media regulator’s draft children’s safety code also calls for firms to alter their algorithms, so pornography, self-harm or suicide related content is not recommended to children.

Sites may be banned for children if they fail to comply with new rules.

National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede said that “these new rules are a start” but called on the government to go further with the setting up of a parliamentary commission on the impact of social media on young people’s lives.

Esther Ghey, whose 16-year-old daughter Brianna was murdered, told the BBC she backed Ofcom’s tougher stance adding that the full extent of social media’s influence on young people’ s mental health was unknown.

“How many of them have been affected by self-harm that we don’t actually know about,” she said.