The number of children who have reported being preyed on by sextortion criminals has more than doubled, the NSPCC has warned.

The children’s charity revealed a surge in reports of kids being threatened with the release of their nude images unless they pay criminals.

The new data is being released as the government deadline for Big Tech companies to implement nudity blocking technology for children on all smartphones and tablets expires today.

Andy Burnham is facing calls to quickly honour Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to legislate to force Apple and Google to enforce the device-level nudity safeguards.

In new data shared exclusively with Metro, the NSPCC said contacts with its Childline service about financially motivated sexual extortion (sextortion) had more than doubled.

Of the 2,444 counselling sessions about online child sexual abuse and exploitation, between April 2025 and March 2026, 242 cases mentioned sextortion.

This is twice the number of sextortion scams reported to Childline in 2024/25, which sat at 120.

Childline dealt with 103 sextortion cases reported in 2023/4.

The NSPCC said that a large proportion of cases they came across involved male victims aged 14 to 17, who had been tricked into sending naked images to criminals.

Some young people revealed that they’d already sent money to a perpetrator – hoping that this would resolve their situation and they’d be left alone – only to find the perpetrator coming back with further demands.

This included demands to pay a higher ransom or, in some cases, demands to pay in regular instalments.

Criminals were threatening to expose children’s naked images if they did not pay sums ranging from £20 to as much as £3,000.

Many young people are also tricked by fake profiles of people they think they know, but are in fact criminals.

Rani Govender, the NSPCC’s Head of Child Safety Online, told Metro: ‘This is a very real concern impacting children in the UK.

‘Sextortion is incredibly distressing for children. When they get in contact with Childline, they feel completely helpless.

‘We know this can have such a devastating toll on children, which is why we are so focused on stopping this happening in the first place.’

The NSPCC has already revealed that of the 2,444 Childline sessions aboutonline child sexual abuse and exploitation, more than a 1,000 mentioned non-financial blackmail and threats to share intimate images of children.

This more typically involves girls and involves demands for the victim to share more images or meet the criminals.

The NSPCC and other campaigners have warned that a new law to force big tech companies to block nude imagery on a child’s device is the best way to stop children falling victim to sextortion scams.

One of Sir Keir’s last acts as Prime Minister was to order Big Tech companies to implement device-level protects to stop children taking, receiving or viewing nude images.

He gave firms like Apple and Google three months – until September 8 – to activate the nudity blocking safeguards and vowed to change the law to force them to if they didn’t.

The September 8 deadline is today, but Apple and Google have not announced the measures requested by ministers.

The NSPCC’s CEO Chris Sherwood said: ‘Children can’t continue to bear the brunt of tech companies’ inaction and excuses.

‘Apple and Google needed to urgently introduce these protections to ensure online sexual abuse is disrupted and prevented on children’s devices.

‘Now the deadline is up, Government must crack down and legislate. Only they can compel services to make these vital changes that children so desperately need.’

Google’s Sensitive Content Warnings blur sensitive imagery in Google Messages for supervised users and signed-in unsupervised teens, but the feature covers images only, not video.

Apple has introduced age checks for iPhone users, which activates safety features as default for those who are not verified as over 18.

However nudity detection is not applied to the camera or broader apps, meaning children can still take, view, share and save nude images.

Campaigners and the government say this is not enough and want nudity across the whole device to be blocked by default, so they can only be deactivated via age assurance.

Anna Sabine MP, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport, said: ‘Burnham needs to grow a backbone and stand up to the Silicon Valley tech bosses profiting off this awful content.

‘Social media platforms cannot be let off the hook – they must be truly held to account to protect children online.

‘The Government should immediately bring forward emergency legislation to force platforms to introduce new safety protocols or face business disruption measures.’

The NSPCC has also revealed the top 5 platforms children talked about in Childline counselling sessions where they also spoke about their experience of online sexual abuse.

Between April 2025 and March 2026, Snapchat was mentioned in 324 counselling sessions where a young person also spoke about their experience of online sexual abuse, which was a 19% increase on the previous year.

TikTok was mentioned 234 times in similar conversations, followed by Instagram, with 197 mentions.

The messaging service Discord was mentioned 92 times, while WhatsApp came up 39 times.

The NSPCC has said that online sexual abuse has been the most commonly discussed concern in Childline counselling where Snapchat and Instagram were mentioned over the past three years.

The charity has stressed that this data comes from word search data of notes from Childline sessions and that while the main concerns are likely to focus on negative experiences, mentions of apps in these counselling sessions could also be neutral or positive.

Meta, which owns Instagram and WhatsApp, has developed more than 50 tools they say provides teens with safe experiences.

This includes putting teens in private accounts and protections on who can directly message them.

Instagram Teen Accounts also have content controls, time limits and automatically hide potentially offensive comments and message requests.

A Discord spokesperson said: ‘Discord is a communications platform built to connect people around playing games.

‘Our safety systems combine advanced technology and human-led investigations, alongside user reports to help identify accounts or spaces engaged in harmful activity.

‘We take a proactive approach to combatting bad actors who seek to abuse our service and continuously invest in improving our efforts. Discord requires all users to be at least 13 to use our platform and we believe nowhere is our safety work more important than when it comes to teen users.

‘We’ve built a suite of protections for teen users that are now the default experience for all UK users, including sensitive content filters, safety alerts on unfamiliar senders, limited visibility to content of message requests, and enhanced privacy settings. We also provide teen users and their parents and guardians with important privacy and safety tools, including Teen Safety Assist and our Family Center.’

A Home Office spokesperson said: ‘We are committed to making it impossible for anyone under 18 to take, receive, view or send nude images on their mobile phones and tablets as part of our pledge to halve violence against women and girls.

 ’We are working closely with both Apple and Google to make this happen. We are clear that if they do not act, we will legislate to protect our children from predators who seek to exploit them online.’

Apple, Google, Meta, TikTok and Discord were contacted for comment.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

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