Online live streaming a 'magnet for paedophiles', police and NSPCC warn

Live streaming has become a "magnet for paedophiles", Britain’s top police chief on child safety has warned as the NSPCC revealed more than twice as many children are doing it as previously thought.

Last year, it was estimated that 10 per cent of seven to 16 -year-olds live streamed, but this has leapt to 24 per cent as social media platforms have raced to add video to their sites and apps, according to the biggest-ever study into children’s online lives by the NSPCC and London Grid for Learning (LGfL).

More than one in 20 of those who said they live streamed reported being enticed by someone at the other end of the webcam to take off their clothes - and to the alarm of researchers primary school aged children were more likely to be asked to do so than secondary pupils.

Chief Constable Simon Bailey, child protection lead for the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), told The Daily Telegraph: “The two greatest threats from my perspective are the use of live streaming apps by children coming home from school, just turning it on, then it being a magnet for paedophiles, and people paying to watch child abuse live streamed from abroad.”

He cited the Twitter-owned Periscope app which children use to livestream on their phones in their bedrooms unbeknown to their parents which “then becomes an incredible opportunity for people that have a sexual interest in children to get into their feed and to groom them.”

“We had not seen that 12 months ago but children now have access to all these different types of live streaming apps and all of a sudden the threat has changed. That is why we are playing a game of catch-up all the time.”

The study of 40,000 children aged seven to 16, revealed today by The Telegraph, also found one in eight (12 per cent) children had video-chatted, as opposed to live streaming, with someone they did not know in person.

Of those, more than one in 10 said they had been asked to take off their clothes during chats. One in 10 also admitted meeting an adult for the first time online.

Peter Wanless, NSPCC chief executive, said: “The popularity of live streaming has led to a dangerous cocktail of risks for children. Its immediacy means children are being pressured into going along with situations that make them feel uncomfortable.

“The lure of a big audience, or thinking that they are chatting to someone they can trust, piles on that pressure. What’s really disturbing is that groomers can then screenshot or record live streamed abuse, and use it to blackmail the child or share it with others.”

Some 19 per cent of primary schoolchildren said they had live-streamed with 8 per cent of those saying another person live streaming was semi-naked at the time.

One girl, aged 10, told researchers: “My friend was doing a live stream and an adult man was asking for her to video request him, so he did and he showed his private parts.”

Another girl aged 11 said: “On Omegle this man was pulling, touching and showing his privates.”

The NSPCC, which wants new laws to regulate tech firms, said social media firms should guarantee real-time nudity detection on children’s accounts to prevent children being lured into sexual activities.

It said there should also be extra protections designed into children accounts and their live video contacts should be automatically limited to those approved by the child.

The Daily Telegraph is campaigning for a new statutory duty of care to be imposed on the companies to better protect children from online harms.

The study indicated widespread nudity and porn on the internet might be fuelling the problem. Almost a fifth (19.2 per cent) of seven to eight-year-olds said they had seen people online without all their clothes on.

More than one in seven (14.5 per cent) of all secondary pupils had seen porn online, ranging from 5.3 per cent of year seven students, aged 11 to 12, to 31.9 per cent of 15 to 16-year-olds.

Some was extreme and violent, either stumbled across or shared. “Someone sent violent, extreme porn to everyone in the year,” said one 14-year-old boy.

Children were, however, reluctant to reveal their concerns. Two in five pupils said they had never told anyone about the worst thing that had happened to them online.

While almost three quarters (73 per cent) said they trusted their parents on online safety, just 56 per cent said they spoke to them about it more than once a year.

One in four reported being bulled online, while in six said they had seen material that encouraged people to self-harm. Over a fifth (22.4 per cent) had seen violent images or videos online, from beheadings to bullying, glorification of self-harming or suicide and animal cruelty.

Mark Bentley, LGfL online safety and safeguarding manager, said the study reinforced the need for tougher age verification rules, similar to those that are being planned for porn at 18, to help ensure children experienced only that content that was appropriate to their age.

Children also complained they got no response when they alerted the social media firms to a problem. “Reporting channels for users could be improved massively,” said Mr Bentley,

He wanted increased moderation of sites and for the firms to deploy the technology they use to promote adverts to root out paedophiles and crackdown on indecent images – moves he believed should be backed up with new legislation.