Children as young as five are being targeted by online predators, police warn
Guardii Analysis
New data published by NSPCC in September 2026 shows Snapchat was mentioned in 324 Childline counselling sessions about online sexual abuse between April 2025 and March 2026, a 19 percent increase on the previous year. TikTok was mentioned 234 times and Instagram 197 times. Avon and Somerset Police child exploitation prevention officer Andri Nicolau warned that children as young as five are being targeted through social media, gaming and messaging platforms, describing online grooming as becoming quicker and easier than ever before. The Internet Watch Foundation reported a sharp rise in young people contacting its confidential Report Remove helpline over fears that intimate images had been shared or could be shared online, indicating record levels of sextortion.
Real-time detection of escalating contact patterns closes the gap these statistics reveal. Anti-grooming and anti-sextortion filters built by the Meta Business Partner Guardii intercept coercive patterns before a child shares an image or replies to a threat, surfacing the conversation to a parent, school or professional at the point where intervention can still prevent harm. Guardii does not require a platform to ban a child or an adult to monitor every word; it detects sustained targeting, escalation and coercion across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and others, blocking hostile contact before it reaches the target and enabling rapid escalation to the right authority in an emergency.