New research finds sextortion reports up 300% among teens since 2022, boys disproportionately affected

A report published by child-safety organisation Thorn documents a 300 per cent increase in sextortion reports involving teenagers between 2022 and 2025, with boys representing approximately 80 per cent of victims. The research, which analysed data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and surveys of over 2,000 young people, found that the majority of incidents begin on mainstream social platforms including Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, with offenders frequently moving victims to encrypted messaging apps before making extortion demands. The study also identified a growing trend of offenders using AI tools to manipulate or fabricate explicit imagery when victims refuse initial requests, intensifying the coercive leverage available to perpetrators.

The speed and privacy of direct messaging create the conditions sextortion exploits, but they also define where detection must operate. Guardii's world-leading platform monitors the direct-message environment across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other services where these interactions unfold, using AI to recognise escalation, coercion and the request patterns that precede extortion before a child is locked into a threat scenario. Rather than handing parents or schools a feed of what was said, the system reports the seriousness and trajectory of a conversation, flagging those that exhibit sextortion markers and enabling intervention at the point a child is still in contact but not yet compliant, turning the operational insight from research into a preventive capability deployed at the moment of risk.