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Andy, a 16-year-old high school junior in New York City, received a message from a girl he didn’t know on Snapchat. She was cute, blonde, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, and her greeting was Midwestern nice. He barely paused before responding. They chatted on the platform for a few days before she asked him to send a nude photo of himself. Andy didn’t know what to do, so he texted his closest friends for advice. They told him to find a nude photo of a stranger online and send that, so he did. And that’s when everything changed.

The person posing as a college girl threatened to share the photo everywhere online and claim it was him — unless Andy sent a $100 gift card. Scared, he went to the drug store and sent it right away. But the threats didn’t stop, and the messages got more frequent and intense. The person texting revealed that they were an adult overseas, not a college student, and would be tortured if they didn’t succeed in getting Andy to send more money. The amounts increased to $300 at a time, and he scrambled to do it, using his parents’ credit card. Over the course of a week, he racked up a bill of nearly $2,000.

This is just one example of sextortion, the use of explicit content to threaten someone with exposure if they don’t do what is demanded. One large U.S. survey found that approximately 5 percent of middle and high school students have been victims of sextortion, while about 3 percent admitted to targeting others. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) notes that they have seen a dramatic increase of cases reported to their CyberTipline, in particular from teenage boys.

Sextortion is a form of exploitation where a child is threatened or blackmailed, most commonly with the possible public sharing of nude or sexual images of the child, by someone who demands additional sexual images or money.

A teen can be sextorted by a someone they know — often someone they are dating or used to date. But the perpetrator also can be an adult stranger pretending to be a teen to lure kids.   

With strangers, the interaction starts off innocuously enough: a friendly text or message online, often from someone who appears to be a similar age as the child and usually of another gender. That might be on video games such as Roblox or Minecraft for younger kids or Discord servers for teens. They may share connections in common on the platform because they’ve reached out to the child’s friends as well, so even though they’re a stranger, they don’t seem like one. “What’s tricky is who kids will describe as a friend versus a stranger is different than for adults,” says Megan Ice, PhD, a psychologist at the Child Mind Institute. “A kid may feel like they know this person” who they just met online and texted a few times.

The predator will establish a friendship or romantic relationship, then they may propose “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” to ask for a nude photo. Or they will secretly record a video or live chat to get explicit content. In the era of generative AI and “nudify” apps, a kid doesn’t even have to provide a nude — they can use regular photos of a child to create sexual images for blackmailing purposes.

There is also sadistic sextortion, a newer but growing form of sextortion where the child is forced to do dangerous and disturbing things like torture pets or hurt themselves and write their name in blood on the wall, all performed on camera. A global network called 764 has targeted children and adolescents with sadistic sextortion, and the FBI has posted warnings about the group.

The pressure to comply is intense — the texts might come every few seconds, dozens of messages an hour and progressively faster, to create a sense of urgency. The blackmailer might have a package delivered or send the police to a child’s house on a false report (known as “swatting”) to show they know where they live, so the threat of retribution feels very real. The fear, shame, and hopelessness have led some kids to die by suicide after being sextorted.

While all age groups are at risk for sextortion, teens are often targeted because they are particularly vulnerable. During adolescence, changes in the brain can lead teens to feel social rewards intensely, so they care a lot about what others think of them, Dr. Ice says.  And that makes them more likely to underestimate the risks of doing something that feels good in the moment.

“Adolescents are exploring their identity, they’re exploring their sexuality,” says Justin Patchin, PhD, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire, who studies sextortion. Their prefrontal cortex is still developing, so short-term rewards are prioritized over long-term consequences. That means “they’re more vulnerable to acting impulsively and sharing explicit images with somebody that they’re interested in.”

“The other reason high school students make a particularly good target is because if a 16-year-old girl sends a topless picture to somebody online, they’ve now created and distributed child pornography, which is a crime. Whereas if an 18-year-old girl does that, it’s not a crime,” Dr. Patchin says. Blackmailers may tell teens who send sexual images or other explicit content that they’ve broken the law and could be prosecuted, which makes the extortion even more effective.

“I teach criminal justice, and sexting is the only behavior that I can think of where teens are treated more harshly by the system than adults,” Dr. Patchin says.

Research shows that LGBTQ+ kids are more at risk for sextortion. They often find community online, and it’s common for them to have friendships with people that they haven’t met in person.

Kids with autism, ADHD, or mental health issues such as social anxiety may also be particularly at risk. “Neurodiverse kids may develop strong friendships in online communities related to niche interests, making them vulnerable to predators who take advantage of the lack of supervision in these spaces,” Dr. Ice says. She is especially concerned about autistic kids, who may not question the intentions behind other members’ communications, and kids with ADHD, whose struggles with impulsivity may mean they act quickly when responding to a request.

“Kids who are hiding behavior from adults” — such as kids with eating disorders or who self-harm — tend to be very active in online communities like Reddit, Dr. Ice says. Predators will commonly target those communities to find the kids who are most vulnerable and then work to build relationships with them.

Parents can’t prevent sextortion from happening, but they can talk to their kids to make them aware of it — and advise them to speak up immediately if something happens. “I tell parents if there’s an incident in the news, if you see an article that you’re reading online, that’s a good prompt to have that conversation with your kid and say, ‘Hey, look at this story,’” Dr. Patchin says. “You can ask them, ‘Has anything like this happened to you? If it does, please come talk to me. We’ll deal with it together.’”

You can discuss the risks of sexting, Dr. Patchin says: “If that image does get online somewhere and a bunch of people see it, what kind of potential consequences there might be. And in an extreme, terrible situation, maybe it could be a crime if a prosecutor or a police officer wants to pursue it.”

It’s also important to be aware of common tactics and tell kids about them. For example, predators often move the conversation to messaging apps disguised to look like a clock or calculator app, but when you click on it, you have to enter a password. That can help them avoid detection, because mainstream apps often have content filters. Private messaging apps also make it harder for law enforcement to track and prosecute them.    

“Kids need to be educated, because there are people online who will take advantage of them not knowing what is safe,” Dr. Ice says. “Just like you would take certain safety precautions when you’re walking down the street, you need to take safety precautions online.”

While you want kids to understand the risks of engaging in these behaviors, you want to emphasize they should come to you for help no matter what. “You want to make clear that if they tell you, they will not lose access to their phone or all the things that keep them connected to their friends,” Dr. Ice says. “I think that fear is what keeps it secret a lot of the time.”

NCMEC has useful resources about sextortion, including an interactive activity for teens, noescaperoom.org.  

Many signs of sextortion are similar to those of depression or even addiction, particularly online gambling. For example, a child might show sudden changes in eating or sleeping habits, uncharacteristic changes in behavior or routine, or engage in more secretive online behavior. Kids might become either distant or clingy because they are stressed out and afraid to tell you what is going on. According to NCMEC, other signs might include:

• Receipt of anonymous gifts (physical or digital)
• Law enforcement being called to your home under false pretenses
• Random occurrences at your address, such as unexpected deliveries

Signs of sadistic sextortion might include:

• Scarring on the thighs or forearms, especially if the scars form a pattern
• Sudden interest in collecting tools including drills, screwdrivers, hammers, blow torches, or large knives with no clear purpose
• Family pets or other animals being harmed or dying under suspicious circumstances

If your child tells you they are being sextorted, “you want to avoid shaming and blaming — of yourself or the child,” Dr. Ice says,  because these are professional scammers who know what works. “Let them know they did the right thing to tell you, and you can help them.” Don’t pay the blackmailer more money because it rarely makes them stop. Here are some steps you can take:

• Report the account on the platform where the interaction occurred.
• Block the person, but don’t delete your child’s profile or messages — they can be helpful to track the person and stop the blackmailing.
• Go to the police station to report the sextortion. You can also report the incident to the CyberTipline, run by NCMEC, which can connect you with legal, emotional, and other supports.
• Use NCMEC’s Take It Down, which helps youth remove online nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit photos and videos taken before they were 18.

When Andy finally told his mom Jackie about the sextortion — about a week after that first message — it was nearly 11pm, but his dad took him to the police station to report it. The police said that they were the fourth family to come in that day about sextortion and reassured them that the perpetrators would not come after them. “Hearing that was the biggest relief,” Jackie said. “Once we wiped his phone and computer, it was over.”  

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