Thorn Publishes Sexual Extortion and Young People Study: 1 in 5 Teens Report Sextortion Experience

Drawing on responses from 1,200 young people aged 13 to 20 surveyed between September 27 and October 7, 2024, Thorn's research found that one in five teenage respondents reported a lived experience with sextortion, and an additional one in five reported knowing someone who had been sextorted. The study found that one in seven victims engaged in self-harm following extortion, with LGBTQ youth three times as likely to report this outcome. Common responses to sextortion demands included sending more sexual images, altering appearance or behavior, and self-harm, with younger respondents and those who knew the perpetrator offline more likely to comply.

The documented prevalence of compliance, self-harm and escalation among sextortion victims demonstrates that the harm intensifies rapidly once a predator establishes leverage. Real-time detection of coercion, threats to distribute imagery, and demands for payment or additional content allows intervention before a child complies or suffers acute psychological harm. Guardii's anti-sextortion module, developed as part of a world-leading AI safety platform, identifies these threat patterns in direct messages across platforms including Instagram, Snapchat and Discord, surfacing a child in crisis to a parent, school counselor or emergency contact and enabling rapid escalation to law enforcement where threats are credible and imminent, addressing the harm during the critical window when intervention can still prevent escalation.