Thorn report: 40 percent of teens report unwanted sexual solicitation online in past year
Guardii Analysis
Child safety organisation Thorn published research on 28 August 2024 showing that 40 percent of teenagers aged thirteen to seventeen in the United States reported experiencing unwanted sexual solicitation online in the previous twelve months, with contact occurring most frequently on social media platforms, messaging apps and gaming services. The survey of over 2,000 young people found that unwanted requests for sexual images, conversations or meetings came from both strangers and known contacts, with many teens reporting they did not know how to respond and few disclosing the contact to a parent or trusted adult.
When four in ten teenagers encounter sexual solicitation but lack the recognition or support to escalate the contact, detection must occur at the conversation layer rather than relying on the child to report. Guardii flags sexual solicitation, coercive image requests and escalation toward offline meetings as the conversation unfolds in real time across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord and Roblox, surfacing the child to a parent or school professional before the request succeeds and enabling immediate intervention without requiring the teenager to self-identify as at risk or disclose the interaction unprompted.