Internet, Photographs and Mobile Phones

Often, adults who want to engage children in sexual acts, or talk to them for sexual gratification will seek out young people who want friendship. They will often use a number of grooming techniques including building trust with the child through lying, and then attempting to engage the child in more intimate forms of communication including compromising a child with the use of images and webcams. Child sex abusers will often use blackmail and guilt as methods of securing a meeting.

For older children and young people, the 'Report Abuse' button is available should there be a concern of inappropriate or malicious contact made by someone unknown. This provides a safe place for children and young people to report an incident if they feel they cannot talk to a known adult. Always make sure a child knows how to block or report another user who may be sending inappropriate messages. If a child receives any abusive messages etc keep them for evidence purposes to show to the police. You can also report problems directly to service providers and websites.

Be aware of how, when and where your child uses the net. Stay alert to any sudden changes in mood or appearance, or to any major change in habits. These are often tell-tale signs that something is not right, for example, if he spends much longer online than usual, or starts using the Internet only away from home. This may well be nothing more than typical adolescent behaviour.

Look out for changes that may signal your child is being bullied or abused. These can include loss of confidence, withdrawal from family life, anxiety or argumentativeness, insomnia or lack of concentration.

Social networking sites are websites where you can create a profile all about yourself and contact other people. You can also upload photos, music and videos to share with other people, and on some sites, chat to other people on forums. Popular social networking websites include Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and X (formerly known as Twitter), but there are others.

Social networking sites are often used by perpetrators as an easy way to access children and young people for sexual abuse. The Serious Crime Act (2015) introduced an offence of sexual communication with a child. This applies to an adult who communicates with a child and the communication is sexual or if it is intended to elicit from the child a communication which is sexual and the adult reasonably believes the child to be under 16 years of age. The Act also amended the Sex Offences Act 2003, it is an offence for an adult to arrange to meet with someone under 16 having communicated with them on just one occasion (previously it was on at least two occasions)

Most social networking sites set age restrictions on using their services, but there is no way of authenticating users. As a result, many younger children disregard the terms and conditions of the service.

Teaching the child to be cautious is important and can help when they start to use social networking sites like Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter).

When they do you should ensure the child's profile and postings contain nothing that might expose their identity or whereabouts. Explain this covers information such as: name, age, sex, home address, phone/mobile numbers, PIN numbers, passwords, email address, school name, sports club, arrangements for meeting up with friends and any pictures or videos of themselves, their family or friends, routes to and from school, identifying information, e.g. I am number 8 in the Youth Football Team.

Although most social networking sites enable a profile to be set to private and only viewed by approved contacts, many users do not apply them.

Encourage children and young people only to upload pictures that you as their carer would be happy to see - anything that could not be passed round the dinner table should not make it on to the web.

Help children/young people to adjust their account settings so that only approved friends can instant message them. This won't ruin their social life - new people can still send them friend requests and message them, they just won't be able to pester them via Instant Messenger.

Check if the child/young person has 'checked' the "no picture forwarding" option on their social networking site settings page - this will prevent people sending pictures from their page around the world without their consent

Encourage them not to give too much away in a blog. Friends can call them for the address of the latest party rather than read about it on their site.

Ask them to show you how to use a social networking site - getting involved will empower them to share the experience with you.

• It is advised to set and maintain profiles on such sites to maximum privacy and deny access to unknown individuals;
• Children and young people must never use social networking sites to contact staff or other adults in a care setting using personal profiles whilst in a private or home environment, and likewise you should not use your social networking sites to contact children and young people. The intention may be completely innocent, but this would be very difficult to prove in the event of the action being reported. Social networking sites of any kind should never be used to embarrass upset or bully, other adults or children and young people.

Again, you should be aware of and alert to indicators of grooming behaviour and possible sexual exploitation.

Radical and extremist groups may use social networking to attract children and young people into narrow ideologies that are intolerant of diversity: this is similar to the grooming process and exploits the same vulnerabilities. The groups concerned include those linked to extreme Islamist, or Far Right/Neo Nazi ideologies, extremist Animal Rights groups and others who justify political, religious, sexist or racist violence.

Children may be drawn to adopt a radical ideology through a failure to appreciate the bias in extremist material; in addition by repeated viewing of extreme content they may come to view it as normal.

‘Internet Abuse’ relates to four main areas of abuse to children:

• Abusive images of children (although these are not confined to the Internet);
• A child or young person being groomed for the purpose of Sexual Abuse;
• Exposure to pornographic or other offensive material via the Internet; and
• The use of the internet, and in particular social media, to engage children in extremist ideologies.

It should be noted that creating or sharing explicit images of a child is illegal, even if the person doing it is a child. A young person is breaking the law if they:

• Take an explicit photo or video of themselves or a friend;
• Share an explicit image or video of a child, even if it's shared between children of the same age;
• Possess, download or store an explicit image or video of a child, even if the child gave their permission for it to be created.

However, if a young person is found creating or sharing images, the police can choose to record that a crime has been committed but that taking formal action is not in the public interest.

The Online Safety Act 2023 introduced new criminal offences including:

• Sending a message with information the sender knows to be false with the intention of causing non-trivial psychological or physical harm to a likely audience without reasonable excuse;
• Sending a message with a threat of death, serious injury, rape or serious financial loss where the sender intends the recipient to fear that threat will be carried out (or is reckless as to whether the recipient has such fear);
• Sending or showing an electronic communication with flashing images with the intention to cause harm to a person with epilepsy;
• Communicating, publishing or showing material capable (and with the intention) of encouraging or assisting the serious self-harm of another, even if the sender cannot identify the recipients and even if the self-harm does not occur;
• Intentionally sending or giving images of any person’s genitals to another person with the intention to cause the recipient alarm, distress or humiliation, or for the purposes of sexual gratification whilst reckless as to whether the recipient will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation;
• Four offences in relation to intentional sharing or threatening to share intimate images without consent, which do not necessarily require proof that the sender intended to cause alarm, distress or humiliation. (This replaces the previous offences relating to so-called ‘revenge porn’ where there was a requirement for an intention to cause distress).