Educating parents and youth about online sextortion

In May 2017, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection went public with disturbing news. 

Over the prior two years, the national charity dedicated to protecting children online had recorded an 89 percent increase in reported cases of “sextortion” among teenage boys.

At the time, there was a significant lack of public awareness about this disturbing crime which involves criminals who exploit the secrecy provided by social media to trick teenage boys into sending intimate images of themselves. They then blackmail them with the threat of sharing those images online for all their friends and family to see. 

It’s a paralyzing shock to young men at an age when many are extremely private about the changes taking place as they pass through puberty, adolescence and into adulthood. 

Having that exposed for all the world to see? Mortifying. Talking to their parents about it? For many, equally difficult.

So the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) decided to hand teens two weapons to fight back. 

First, knowledge. Teach them what sextortion is, how more and more online predators will pretend to be someone they're not (often a pretty girl), and if you don’t 100 percent know the person on the other end of those instant messages, don’t send any images of yourself.

Second, dark humour. Part of the Don’t Get Sextorted campaign offers young men a set of memes and gifs to use in their arsenal when anyone asks for compromising images. 

“Don’t get sextorted. Send a naked mole rat,” the website declares. 

The campaign offers digital files for download of a naked mole rat; a burrowing rodent native to Africa that shares a resemblance to a particularly sensitive piece of the male anatomy. 

(Canadian Centre for Child Protection)

Turning the tables on the predators with a prank response provides teens with an easy way to escape a conversation that could turn harmful. It also gives them an easy way to break the ice with their parents. 

“We must break down the communication barriers around embarrassing topics for teenagers. Our campaign gives teens, parents and educators an easy ‘way-in’ to a tough conversation,” Lianna McDonald, Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, communicated in a press release when the campaign was launched. “We’re hoping that this character will be effective in capturing the attention of boys to bring widespread attention to the issue. We want our communications to empower boys to think twice before sending a nude. The threat of sextortion is scary enough, but having the conversation doesn’t have to be.”

In the eight years since, more social media platforms have populated the internet; online anonymity tools like VPNs are commonplace and the amount of time teens spend scrolling is higher than it has ever been. The average teenager is now spending between four and six hours on social media, every day. 

It’s the perfect ecosystem for sextortionists. 

A pop-up message has been added to the C3P campaign’s website. 

“Sextortion has evolved significantly since this campaign was created in 2017. It is now a public safety crisis,” the message underscores.

“The statistics they’re astronomical,” Gavin Portnoy, the VP of Communications and Brand with the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), says. 

Since the end of 2021, reports of sextortion to NCMEC have increased 18,000 percent—from 139 cases in the fourth quarter of 2021 to more than 26,000 in 2023. The C3P receives, on average, seven reports of sextortion every day. Between September 1, 2023 and August 31, 2024, the organization recorded more than 2,600 reports; 83 percent of the victims were young men, and most were extorted through contacts made on Instagram or Snapchat.

This crime has led to a rash of teen suicides in North America. Since the increase in cases began at the end of 2021, the United States has recorded 44 teen suicides linked to sextortion. In one case, it only took 27 minutes from when the teen was first contacted, to the death by suicide.

The U.S.-based Network Contagion Research Institute calls sextortion incidents a 'digital pandemic'. 

NCMEC was on the frontline of detecting the startling increase in this crime, driven by organized criminal organizations, often overseas, that have learned it can be financially beneficial to exploit vulnerable North American teens. According to data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Centre, there were more than 54,000 victims of sextortion in 2024, and $65 million in financial losses from the crime over the last two years. 

“We were able to very quickly look at the trends of sextortions and alert (internet providers) and law enforcement,” Portnoy explains. “If we hadn’t been there as the sieve for those reports, I can’t even imagine the tragedy that could have happened.”

Like those at the C3P, he has the difficult task of directing fundraising and awareness campaigns about incredibly difficult topics many prefer to avoid. But in this case, avoidance can be deadly for young teens who feel unable to talk to their parents about embarrassing personal issues.

Finding news ways to talk about difficult subjects is critical to pulling back the digital curtain that keeps this crime in the dark, advocates say. 

That’s the reason NCMEC launched No Escape Room. 

The interactive video platform allows the viewer to experience sextortion through the eyes of a teenager, and make decisions to respond to criminals. All the messages featured in the video are taken from real sextortion cases. 

“The reality is the white van is in our pockets, it’s in our living room, it’s in our bedroom in the form of technology,” Portnoy says. “The real goal of this was to let parents see what their kids are going through.”

The video opens with Mark, a teen in the midst of playing a round of Fortnite with his friends when he receives a friend request from Ella Peele that interrupts his game. The cute profile picture is enough to pull his attention away from the game and consider the request. 

But the decision is yours to make for him. 

(National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC)

The answer is obvious, right? This is a campaign about sextortion by online strangers.

Even if you deny the request the video continues, offering useful information for parents to understand how social media apps work. In this case, informing the viewer that many apps allow direct messages even if the two profiles aren’t linked. 

The two start chatting. She asks for a selfie and tells him he’s cute. Then the next prompt appears. Mark keeps responding, telling her he plays basketball and sharing casual details about what he’s doing that day.

Ella wants to know what school you go to. If you decide to tell her, the conversation continues with her sharing that she goes to a nearby school.   

Mark is called downstairs by his parents before his mother drives him to play a basketball game with friends. 

Finishing his day on the basketball court, Mark high-fives his friends then heads for the sidelines, immediately picking up his phone to message Ella who has been sending flirty messages to him throughout the day. 

Back at home, Ella asks if he wants to have some fun. She eventually asks for a nude image and, after Mark wants assurance that nothing will be shared with anyone else, she messages that no one else will see anything. 

If you make the right choice and choose not to send the picture, the video informs you that many teenagers do not realize that sending intimate images online could be dangerous. According to NCMEC data 1 in 5 teens have shared intimate images online. 

The cautionary video, based on actual sextortion cases, then reoffers a prompt, giving you the chance to experience the rest of the scenario. 

(National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC)

After taking then sending a nude image of himself the situation with Ella immediately changes. At the dinner table, he receives a threat from the previously flirty Ella. Send $500 in the next 30 minutes “or I’ll make you go viral”. She threatens to share the image on group chats so all his friends and family will see it. According to data from the FBI, $65 million in financial losses from this crime have been reported over the last two years.
 

(National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC)

Do you send the payment? Will the blackmail stop if you do? What if you tell your parents immediately?

The innovative campaign answers all these questions, while providing a disturbing window for parents and others to see how these situations could unfold with their children. 

“We wanted to give people a realistic look at what these kids are experiencing,” Portnoy says.

Governments in Canada and the United States have been grappling with how to address the rising rates of online sexual exploitation of children for years, with mixed results. 

Canada’s latest efforts, the Online Harms Bill, introduced by the Liberals under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, died on the order paper when an early election call was made by Prime Minister Mark Carney earlier this year. The legislation would have enhanced the responsibility of internet service providers to make certain types of content inaccessible as soon as they became aware of it; including content that victimizes children, intimate images shared with consent and AI deepfakes. 

In May, the United States signed into law the Take it Down Act, which makes it a federal crime to share intimate images without consent. 

Portnoy says strong age-verification systems on social media platforms is the strongest tool to protect children online. 

Until those are put in place, NCMEC relies on community groups and other organizations to help spread their awareness tools and educational material. While it seems like a natural fit, school systems have historically been ineffective at spreading NCMEC materials. 

“We’ve found, globally, cutting through the school system to actually be one of the most difficult ways to get our prevention and education resources out there,” he says. 

Instead, NCMEC connects with church groups, scouting organizations, boys and girls clubs and other community gathering spaces for youth.

“We found they are the best distribution arm for us.”

Since it went live in December, 2.7 million people have already participated in the No Escape Room experience, while thousands of young people continue to be preyed upon by online predators hunting for their next sextortion victim.

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