Six-year-old girls found sending sexually explicit texts in lockdown

Girls as young as six have been sending sexually explicit texts during the coronavirus lockdown, researchers have found.

SafeToNet, a British cybersafety firm, found “sexts” written by children in the UK have risen 183 per cent in comparison to before the government implemented the lockdown – with a 55 per cent surge in sexts drafted during school hours.

The firm, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to protect children by unearthing cyberbullying and sextortion, examined around 70 million potentially harmful messages sent by children using their safeguarding app.

It discovered girls are sending the overwhelming majority of troubling messages which are highly sexually graphic in nature.

Researchers found 11-year-old girls and 13-year-old boys attempted to send the highest proportion of sexts and messages identified as cyberbullying.

Detected cyberbullying messages plummeted sharply in the UK as lockdown was implemented, but since some schools resumed classes rates on Sunday evenings have started to rise, suggesting fear of the week ahead.

Richard Pursey, the chief executive and founder of SafeToNet, told the PA news agency children were killing themselves daily due to online activity and he has been left “scarred” by viewing some of the material.

He said: “This is happening pretty much every day around the world, and I know it’s happening. And I don’t know these children, but I know today, some children will take their lives. And that’s because of things like bullying and sexting, not necessarily because of grooming, it’s just kids being nasty to kids.

“I know that well, because I can see from the statistics on my platform, the significant amount of harmful messages that we’re filtering, so we’re hopefully stopping it from happening, but of course, not every child on the planet is using our platform.”

Mr Pursey said he has seen a video of an 11-year-old girl killing herself and of a man blowing his head off with an automatic rifle circulated by UK children.

“When I press the button to look at this content – because I have to look at it to check my software and filter it – I’m hanging on, I’m bracing myself ready to see what I see,” he added. “And I’m scarred as a result of it. Now you imagine a nine-year-old boy gets sent a link, which other boys send them as a joke: ‘Look at this, you’ll find it very funny’. It’s not funny – it’s a trick for them to see a guy have his head chopped off.”

Data shows the number of aggressive messages detected and stopped has risen 47 per cent since lockdown measures started to be lifted.

The father-of-four believes the app is the only one of its kind to track threats to children in real time and said such safeguarding software should be on every child’s phone. The app managed to stop messages being sent from girls as young as six and boys aged nine.

It was developed in consultation with more than 2,000 children and uses artificial intelligence and behavioural analytics to balance the child’s right to privacy with the “primal need of a parent to keep their child safe”.

Mr Pursey argued interventions by parents to manage screen time by taking devices off kids are “flawed” and could be causing further harm, as a child being bullied will simply receive a ”tsunami of abuse“ when their phone is returned.

The app’s AI technology detects linguistic patterns on the device but stores no data on cloud platforms, meaning nobody ever sees what the child is typing or what they are seeing, while the user is kept anonymous.

Installed by the child, it replaces the phone’s native keyboard with SafeToNet’s safeguarding keyboard which flashes amber when a threat is detected in their typing, educating them in the moment to help stop harmful outgoing messages

The keyboard will turn red and stop children from sending potentially dangerous messages if the risky behaviour persists or increases.

Parents are also notified that their child may be at risk, but do not see the content of any messages, encouraging dialogue with their child.

The firm offered parents a million free downloads of a cybersafety app which can be accessed via the government’s website.

It comes after The Independent reported girls are at increased risk of being groomed online during the Covid-19 pandemic as they spend more time on the internet and out of school.

Children’s charities warned they were seeing teenage girls struggling with their mental health due to the upheaval of the public health crisis and perpetrators could take advantage of this increased vulnerability. They said lockdown measures created “a perfect storm” for abusers to “find, trick and coerce” young girls into exposing themselves on livestreaming sites – with the footage later distributed on child sex abuse sites.

Additional reporting by Press Association

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