Financial sextortion most often targets teen boys via Instagram, according to new data
A new report on financial sextortion reveals that Instagram appears to be the most used platform for sextortion in the U.S.
A new report on financial sextortion reveals that Instagram appears to be the most used platform for sextortion in the U.S., and that teenage boys appear to be the ones most frequently targeted.
The report, released jointly by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) and the anti-child sexual abuse technology company Thorn, reviews data on financial sextortion cases reported to NCMEC between 2020 and 2023. The number of reports of sextortion increased dramatically after 2022, up to more than 600 reports a week in the past year.
NCMEC is the U.S. organization tasked with receiving tips about child exploitation, and most of the victims were based in the U.S. and spoke English, though the data also indicated there were victims in other countries who spoke other languages.
Sextortion is the act of threatening to disseminate someone’s nude, intimate or sexually explicit imagery if they do not comply with your demands. Historically, child sextortion has primarily victimized girls with demands for further imagery, sexual acts or relationships, according to the report. But NCMEC’s child sextortion data shows the emergence of financial sextortion specifically, in which perpetrators extort victims for money, as a rising trend that is largely affecting boys.
Of the financial sextortion reports that were part of the study and contained data about gender and age, 90% of the victims were boys between the ages of 14 and 17.
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