Snapchat accounts for nearly half of the reported 7,000 cases of “sexual communication with a child” or child grooming online in the United Kingdom over the past six years. This makes Snapchat way ahead of other platforms, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram, accounting for nearly 30% of the cases.
These figures, shared by 45 UK police forces, emphasise the disturbing effect of social media on the security and privacy of children and teenagers.
Data from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) shows an 89% increase over the past six years. As a platform that allows messages to disappear, Snapchat has been flagged by experts and parents alike as a significant concern for child safety.
These social media platforms are designed to facilitate easy and private communication. Perpetrators often manipulate them to lure young users into isolated and encrypted channels, where further abuse becomes challenging to track.
The statistics paint a sobering picture: 81% of known victims were girls, many of them quite young. The youngest victim documented in the past year was just five years old, underscoring the indiscriminate nature of these crimes.
Offenders commonly make initial contact on widely used apps and websites that cater to children and teenagers, often attempting to gain their trust before escalating the interaction to encrypted messaging platforms.
Amidst rising cases, safety advocates are urging Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, to adopt a more rigorous and preventive approach. Current policies, they argue, rely heavily on intervention only after harm has been done.
Experts and researchers are urging the government to abandon its ‘wake-up-after-the-event’ mentality and take proactive measures. These include extending the legislation to monitor and curb abuse within private messaging systems like Snapchat and WhatsApp.
Not only Snapchat is failing to prevent sextortion and child grooming, but the platform also negatively impacts teenage mental health. This increased scrutiny prompted many platforms like Instagram to take crimes like sextortion seriously.
TikTok isn’t far behind. In June 2024, the United States Department of Justice received a child privacy complaint against TikTok.
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