Has someone soft-blocked you? Maybe someone’s made subtweets about you, told others in your class things about you, or tagged bad photos of you and refused to take them down. These things are hard and mean.
The ultimate form of harm online comes from sextortion.
Sextortion is what happens when someone takes photos or videos of or from you and then threatens to release those pics and vids.
He was 23. I was nervous to trust him, but we’d been texting for weeks. He said he was on the football team, showed me pictures, and seemed nice.
After a while, he asked for more pics. At first, I felt shy, but he always made me feel good about myself.
Then things changed. He started demanding them, getting angry when I didn’t. He kept threatening to post my photos if I didn’t send more.
I searched for him online. No real name, no trace. Nothing.
I felt trapped. Afraid. Ashamed. I didn’t know how to make it stop.
If you feel trapped, you are not alone. 1 in 7 teens reported being targeted by sextortion at some point in 2023-2024. And 1 in 3 teens said they knew someone who had experienced sextortion1.
It’s not just girls, either. Young men are more likely to be targeted in financial sextortion cases, while young women are more often victims of image-based sextortion.
Sextortion is illegal. There are legal and technical ways of stopping this abuse.
Here’s what to do:
- Don’t send any more photos or videos.
- Avoid engaging with the thread.
- If you have read-receipts on, turn them off if your app allows it.
- Let a trusted adult know.
Telling your parents, a teacher, or another trusted adult can be scary, but they have to know to help. Sextortion is abuse!
