Ella*, a 13-year-old girl from Glasgow, said: "Snapchat has disappearing messages, and that makes it easier for people to hide things they shouldn't be doing. Another problem is that Snapchat has this feature where you can show your location to everyone. If you're not careful, you might end up showing where you are to people you don't know, which is super risky. And honestly, not all the rules in Snapchat are strict, so some people take advantage of that to do bad things."
New figures from 45 UK police forces show 7,062 sexual communication with a child offences were recorded in 2023-24 - an increase of 89 per cent since 2017-18 when the offence first came into force. The data, unearthed by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), shows social media app Snapchat was the most common platform which perpetrators wielded to prey on children online. Almost half of grooming cases where the type of communication was revealed - which was 1,824 cases - involved Snapchat.
Thomas*, who was only 14 when he was groomed online, said: "I did send him pictures, but I didn't like it and I didn't want to do it anymore. Our first conversation was quite simple. I was just chatting. The only way I can describe it is like having the most supportive person that you could ever meet. After about a month, the pressure started to build of him trying to prove that I was gay. That's when he star..."
Collection
[
|
...
]