Teenagers are the most frequent targets of financial “sextortion” schemes, often conducted through Instagram and other social media platforms, according to a new report.
O report was jointly released by technology company Thorn and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) on Monday and examined more than 15 million reports made to NCMEC’s CyberTipline from 2020 to 2023.
It found that sextortion is on the rise, with an average of 812 reports of sextortion made per week to NCMEC over the past year.
The report defines sextortion as “the threat to expose sexual images of someone if they do not give in to demands”. The report found that about two-thirds of all reports involved requests for money.
The investigation noted that, in the past, sextortion schemes often affected girls and included demands of a “sexual or relational nature”.
However, the latest report concluded that the majority of victims of financial sextortion are now boys. The report found that 90% of victims of financial sextortion were boys aged between 14 and 17.
“These reports often include the use of ‘catfishing’ – in this case, a perpetrator posing as another young person – to manipulate a teenager into sharing sexual images or videos of themselves. This perpetrator then threatens to share these images with family, friends or followers unless they are paid,” the report states.
The report found that Instagram was the most common platform listed in financial sextortion data. Facebook and YouTube were also common platforms mentioned as platforms where perpetrators threatened to publish content.
Instagram was discussed in 81.3% of threats to disseminate online content and was the platform chosen in 60% of reports in which content ended up being disseminated online.
Instagram and Snapchat were also the two main platforms where initial contact with the victims was made. Instagram was listed as an initial contact platform in 45.1% of reports mentioning an initial contact platform, while Snapchat was listed 31.6% of the time.
The Hill has reached out to Instagram and Snapchat for comment.
YouTube said in a statement: “These schemes are abhorrent and we are committed to removing content intended to harm our community. We take this issue very seriously and have strict policies in place to protect our users from scams and other harmful behavior, and strictly enforce them using a combination of human review and machine learning technology.”
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