What You Need To Know Now To Keep Your Kids Safe Online

Teresa Huizar
·5 min read

Online predators are using increasingly sophisticated tactics to sexually extort American teens and pre-teens. This “sextortion” is so widespread that FBI Director Christopher Wray dubbed it a “rapidly escalating threat.”

Sextortion can refer to a few different crimes. But when it concerns children, it usually goes like this: An adult pretends to be a friend or a peer online and gains the trust of a child or teenager before blackmailing them.

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Most kids think they’re communicating with someone they know, or with someone their own age who is interested romantically in them. Maybe the adult is masquerading as a friend of a friend, or peer from a neighboring school.

After gaining a minor’s trust, the adult asks for sexually explicit photos or videos — usually after providing their own. Once the child complies, the game is up. The adult threatens to distribute the material to family, friends, or social media followers unless the child sends money or more photos or videos. Girls are more likely to be targeted for additional sexual imagery, and boys are more likely to be targeted for money.

According to the FBI, offenders who use sextortion to blackmail kids for money tend to come from organized rings in Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and the Philippines. Offenders who aren’t financially motivated might be someone the teen met online, someone they know in real life, or even an ex-partner.

Perpetrators can now use artificial intelligence to make it easier for them to target children. They might use ChatGPT to mimic authentic American teen slang or use AI platforms to generate sexually explicit images of a teen using only an innocuous, fully-clothed picture of the young person in question. In January, pictures of Taylor Swift were used to generate graphic images, which were then widely distributed online.

Reports of sextortion rose 82% from 2021 to 2022, according to NCMEC. In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received on average 100,000 cyber tips of child sexual abuse material every day — almost an 8,000% increase from 2013. And financial sextortion, where perpetrators ask for money, is the fastest growing crime against children in the United States. Tragically, over 20 children and teenagers have died by suicide in recent years after being targeted in a sextortion scheme.

“This disturbing growth in child sexual exploitation is driven by one thing: changes in technology,” said U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said at a recent congressional hearing with the leaders of top social media companies including TikTok, Meta, Snapchat, and Discord.

Unfortunately, social media platforms and technology companies haven’t jumped at the opportunity to protect children from online sexual abuse. That’s because age restrictions and identity verification measures, while essential to protect children, mean fewer users for their sites.

We can’t protect kids’ internet safety without holding these companies accountable. Nearly 90% of reports of child sexual abuse material originate from Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Discord, Facebook, and WhatsApp.

When Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress, he faced a room full of parents holding up pictures of their children who had taken their lives after being victims of online sexual exploitation or harassment. Zuckerberg apologized, but parents need more than apologies — they need action. Now.

Following the hearing, Meta, in partnership with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, released new tools to prevent and crackdown on sextortion.

One such tool, Take It Down, lets teens assign a “digital fingerprint” to intimate images or videos. Social media platforms can then track and take down the sexually explicit material and better identify individuals who are exploiting teens. This feature is available in 25 languages and applies to both Facebook and Instagram.

Such a tool is a step in the right direction. But lawmakers in Congress need to hold technology companies accountable for protecting kids, whether it’s requiring them to implement age verification measures so adults can’t masquerade as children, or strip them of their blanket immunity from lawsuits when it comes to cases of child exploitation.

In the meantime, here’s what you can do as a parent to help ensure your kids’ internet safety.

The most important thing is to talk to them continually about being safe online. This isn’t a one-time conversation. Parents should set the expectation that internet access and smartphones come with responsibility, and the largest responsibility is being aware of safety hazards.

Kids and teenagers need to know just how good people can be at pretending to be someone they are not. Pictures, social media profiles, voice messages — these can all be falsified. Adolescents also need to understand that any image or video sent on the internet, even if it’s through private messages or locked accounts, can be made public and distributed.

The adage still stands: If you don’t want your grandma to see it, don’t send it, text it, or post it.

Lastly, make sure your kids know that if they have sent or received explicit images or someone is trying to harm them, they can open up to you without fear of punishment or judgment, even if they’ve broken a rule that you’ve set for their social media use. So many children who are victims of sextortion grapple with feelings of shame that stop them from asking for help — and the adults targeting these kids know that. Ending the shame-secrecy cycle is critical to exposing and stopping people who want to harm children.

If your family or a child you know is dealing with online abuse, there is help and support available. There are hundreds of Children’s Advocacy Centers across the country that provide a safe environment for children and teens to get help. You can find the center closest to you on the National Children’s Alliance website.

We’re up against a new threat in our fight for child safety. Start the conversation with your kids and talk to your representatives to make online safety a legislative priority.

Teresa Huizar is CEO of National Children’s Alliance (nationalchildrensalliance.org), America’s largest network of care centers for child abuse victims.

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