Sextortion is a serious and sometimes deadly crime that has increased more than 300% in the past couple of years – and most of it is happening on Instagram. As this crime spreads on their platform, Instagram’s response is getting worse. By not taking sextortion seriously, Instagram is putting thousands of kids at risk of exploitation, abuse, and even death.

Sextortion is a crime where a predator blackmails a victim over sexual or nude images – for money, more images, or something else of value. Teens are the most common victims of sextortion, and predators often initiate contact by pretending to be a peer and asking to exchange sexual images. The #1 place this happens online: Instagram.

Recent analysis of data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) by Thorn found Instagram was the #1 platform where sextortionists meet kids, as well as the top platform where these predators threaten to share and actually share the images of the kids they are blackmailing. As the top social media platform for sextortion, Instagram should be investing in preventing and reporting this crime. They’re not.  

Instagram’s new sextortion prevention approach is to put the onus on teens to recognize, respond to, and get themselves out of exploitation. They’ve also significantly delayed sextortion reporting – from reporting incidents within a week a couple years ago to taking nearly two months on average today. This delay can be deadly for terrified, abused children in a sextortion situation – many kids have died by suicide hours or days after becoming sextortion victims.

Instagram is utterly failing to prevent or report the frequent and growing sextortion on their platform. They need to do better.