Sexual Extortion & Young People: Navigating Threats in Digital Environments

Introduction

Since 2015, Thorn has researched the scale and impacts of sexual extortion, (or “sextortion”), tracking how this threat has evolved and affected young people’s lives. Recent years have shown increases in financial sextortion, at times with dire consequences. The landscape continues to expand, with new forms centered on victim domination and self-harm breaking into the headlines. Ongoing research remains essential to accurately assess the current nature of sexual extortion and develop more effective protective strategies.

Thorn explored this development in its recent Emerging Threats to Young People survey, which examines evolving online risk areas to understand better how current technologies create and/or exacerbate child safety vulnerabilities and identify areas where solutions are needed.

This report marks the third report within the series and sheds light on young people’s experiences with sexual extortion.

Growing up fast in an online world

Technology is interwoven into everyday life for most young people in the United States. Nearly all teens (96%) are online daily, and almost 1 in 4 kids reported having a personal cell phone by age 8. Kids today are growing up digitally connected to their classmates, family, and a far wider world from an early age.

While this opens opportunities for learning, connection, and discovery, it also comes with risks. Young people are exposed to mature content at earlier ages – often without the support of safe adults to help them understand such experiences. At times, this is driven by innocent curiosity, with many kids sharing that they had accessed age-gated sites intended for romantic interactions or pornography, and as many as 1 in 4 who consider sharing intimate images with peers normal.

Within this digital landscape, sexual extortion – often called sextortion – is a form of technology-facilitated abuse where someone threatens to share private sexual content unless the victim complies with their demands. Perpetrators exploit technology at every stage: leveraging catfishing to manipulate victims into sharing content or creating deepfakes using AI generative technologies, harassing and intimidating victims across popular platforms and at all hours, and distributing images to extend abuse.

Sextortion can take many forms, and the demands vary – perpetrators may seek to cause fear, gain control, or secure payment. Victims are often left feeling isolated and powerless.

And these threats don’t always originate from strangers. The extorter might be a current or former romantic partner or someone else within the child’s community, such as school friends, family members, or neighbors.

Sextortion is more widespread than many realize, and the threat is evolving fast. To protect young people, we must listen to their lived experiences and ensure they are at the center of the solutions we build.

Lived experiences: perceived and actual risks

Many young people are aware of the risk of sexual extortion. 1 in 4 (24%) young people we surveyed indicated they had personally been the victim of sexual extortion while under the age of 18, including 1 in 5 (20%) who were teens at the time of the survey. While most were in their teens when this happened, predominantly between the ages of 13 and 15, still 16% said it happened while they were 12 or younger.

When surveyed, 1 in 4 (26%) respondents indicated they knew of someone (not including themselves) who had experienced sexual extortion while under the age of 18, including around 1 in 5 (21%) teens and 1 in 3 (33%) young adults. LGBTQ+ teens (36%) were twice as likely to have experienced sexual extortion compared to their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts (18%). These findings align with recent research demonstrating rising levels of sextortion, notably up from much of the research conducted over the last 5 to 10 years. Still, further research is needed to validate these findings and confirm the increasing trends in both perpetration rates and youth awareness.

Perceived and actual risk

There is an important gap between perceived and actual risk. Many young people feel safe because they follow basic precautions, trust their contacts, or avoid sharing explicit images. However, the lived experiences of victims show that sexual extortion can still occur. Participants shared their thoughts on why they did or did not feel protected from sextortion.

While others shared their reasons why they thought they could be at risk:

Extortionist profile and victim access

Historically, sextortion has been predominantly studied as a form of digital dating violence or child sexual abuse involving an online offender looking to coerce a victim into additional sexual activity. However, the “traditional” persona of sextortion perpetrators and how they meet their victims appears to be evolving.

Extortionist profile

While around two-thirds of respondents believed their extortionist was a man or boy, male victims were considerably more likely to identify their extortionist as female. This was twice as much as seen among girls and four times as much as seen among LGBTQ+ youth.

Both adults and other minors are initiating sextortion. Younger victims were the most likely to describe an adult perpetrator. Still, older victims painted a picture that is more split, with 16-17-year-olds almost equally likely to describe being extorted by an adult as by another minor. Overall, 38% of victims reported they had been sexually extorted by someone they believed was another minor.

Online versus offline connection

Sextortion is often looked at through the lens of online safety; however, not all cases originate online. In many examples, while technology facilitates the abuse, the perpetrators come from the victim’s offline worlds. The research showed that 1 in 3 (36%) victims of sexual extortion knew their sextortionist in person, while the majority (61%) knew their sextortionist exclusively online. This suggests a shift toward online perpetrators, as historical studies found that perpetrators were equally or more likely to come from victims’ offline communities.

Overall, victims extorted by someone they knew offline were more likely to describe the person as another minor, while adult perpetrators were more likely when the sextortion originated online. Nearly half (45%) of those extorted online believed the perpetrator was lying about their identity. More broadly, 53% believed they had been catfished at some point for various purposes, including attempts to scam them, play jokes on them, or obtain explicit imagery.

Relationship between victim & sextortionist

When victims knew their sextortionist offline, 52% of young people reported that the perpetrator was a romantic connection or former partner, while 47% identified them as a current or former friend or someone from school. One in 10 (10%) said it was an adult family friend, and 6% reported it was a family member.

How sextortion unfolds

We asked young people about how extortionists had acquired the sexual imagery they were threatened with, together with the types of demands and threats made about using them.

Image Acquisition

Among young people who indicated they had knowingly shared their sexual imagery, most reported feeling coerced or manipulated into sharing (74%) or believing it was an expected part of the relationship (71%), and 25% said it was tied to commercial incentives.

Many described situations where the images were acquired surreptitiously.

Nearly half (44%) of sextortion victims indicated the imagery that was used to extort them was acquired through a recording or screenshot without their consent, including 1 in 3 (32%) who said it was screenshotted from a disappearing message.

Demands

The demands made by extortionists can vary significantly. Among victims of sextortion, the top three identified were demands for more sexual imagery of themselves (39%), demands to meet in person in some capacity (31%), and demands to stay in or return to a relationship (25%). Around 1 in 5 victims indicated they received demands for money (22%) or to meet online for sexual activity (e.g., by webcam) (19%).

Notably, the number of those threatened for money is higher than has been reported in surveys conducted before the recent surge in financial sextortion (beginning around late 2021).  This increase is heavily driven by boys and men who were more than twice as likely to be victims of financial sextortion as women and girls. Worryingly, nearly 1 in 10 young people experienced a demand to self-harm.

Threats

Among those who reported they had knowingly shared an image, threats began within one week of sharing for roughly 1 in 3 (37%), including within 24 hours for roughly 1 in 6 (17%). The timeline was accelerated when victims were dealing with online contacts rather than people they knew offline.

Threats to release explicit imagery or personal information were the most common (72%), followed by threats of stalking or physical violence (37%), or threats to get the victim in trouble with family/friends, school, or police (30%). LGBTQ+ victims were more likely than their non-LGBTQ+ counterparts to indicate some form of distribution (of imagery or personal information) was involved in the threats they received (+12%).

While threat types followed similar patterns regardless of whether victims only knew their extortionist online or knew them offline, those extorted by people they knew offline reported higher rates across nearly all threat categories. Perpetrators known offline likely have greater access to victims’ communities and personal information, making their threats—particularly regarding physical violence or sharing content with friends and family—more viable. Further research is needed to explore this dynamic.

Carrying out threats

While threats are central to sexual extortion, a minority of victims reported that the perpetrator followed through on these threats. Still, 1 in 6 (17%) victims were aware of their sextortionist fulfilling a threat they made, most frequently by distributing imagery or personal information about the victim. LGBTQ+ victims were twice as likely to report threats being fulfilled (26% versus 13%), and knowing someone offline increased the likelihood of threats being carried out (33% versus 8%).

Communicating with extortionist

Nearly all sexual extortion interactions are enabled by technology. Only 6% of victims experienced threats exclusively in person, while an overwhelming 81% were threatened solely via technology (online platforms, direct messaging, or video calls).

Social media (such as Snap, Meta, or Discord) (60%) and messaging services (such as text messaging or iMessage) (56%) are the most dominant channels used in threats. A complete list of platforms described by respondents can be found in the pdf report.

Among victims whose sextortionists demanded money, an overwhelming 79% paid via payment apps (such as Cash App, PayPal, and Venmo), while 23% used gift cards and 20% transferred cryptocurrency.

Reacting to sextortion

A majority of the young people who had experienced sexual extortion described high-risk and harmful experiences in response to the demands made.

Around 1 in 6 victims sent additional sexual imagery of themselves (18%) or performed specific acts on camera (17%). Additionally, 1 in 7 reported self-harming (15%) or remaining in/returning to a relationship with their extortionist (15%), while 1 in 10 sent imagery of someone else (10%) or met their extortionist offline for sexual activity (10%).

People who were younger at the time of extortion, or who were extorted by someone they knew offline, were more likely to engage in high-risk behaviors such as sending additional imagery or meeting for sexual activity. For example, older victims were twice as likely as younger victims to report they had done ‘none of these things.’ In contrast, victims extorted by someone they knew offline were less likely (-12%) than those with online-only perpetrators to give the same response.

Seeking help

Most victims of sextortion reported taking steps to get help, most often by attempting to block the extortionist. Roughly half turned to offline support, most commonly by telling parents (23%). Sadly, 1 in 7 said they hadn’t disclosed what had happened, which is similar to rates we’ve seen with other forms of online sexual exploitation.

These findings underscore two critical considerations regarding sexual extortion. First, children confronted with sextortion face significant barriers to getting help, and too many navigate this danger alone. Second, both digital platforms and offline support systems—friends, family, and community members—play vital roles in improving outcomes. Regardless of the rapid pace of evolving threats to young people in digital environments, the availability, quality, and accessibility of protective resources remain key determinants of a child’s safety and recovery.

Related research

This report is part of Thorn’s Emerging Threats to Young People (ETYP) series, which explores how evolving technologies contribute to online child sexual abuse and exploitation. Since 2019, Thorn has centered youth voices to understand how young people navigate complex digital spaces, with a focus on technology-facilitated harms like online grooming, sextortion, and self-generated CSAM.

Previous reports in this series have examined:

• Deepfake Nudes & Young People — An investigation into the growing availability and impact of AI-generated sexual imagery depicting minors, and how these synthetic images contribute to a broader ecosystem of harm.
• Commodified Sexual Interactions Involving Minors — A look at the shifting landscape of minor-targeted content creation, including the normalization of transactional sexual dynamics and their links to broader exploitation patterns.

Together, these reports offer critical context for understanding the broader threat landscape young people face online. Continued research is essential to anticipate emerging risks and build effective, youth-informed solutions.