Online grooming offences have reached a record high, with police data revealing a four-year-old boy as being among the victims.
The NSPCC described the figures, which show an almost doubling of such crimes over the past eight years, as "deeply alarming".
A new offence of sexual communication with a child was introduced in England and Wales in April 2017, specifically to tackle groomers targeting under-16s through mobile phones and social media.
This offence has been recorded in Northern Ireland since 2015, while Scotland implemented a similar law in 2010.
Data obtained by the NSPCC from police forces across the UK showed 7,263 online grooming offences were recorded in the year to March – almost double the 3,728 recorded in the year to March 2018.
The NSPCC, which sent freedom of information requests, said it received data from all forces except Lincolnshire.
In 2,111 of the recorded offences in the past year a tech platform was identified.
Around 40 per cent of those offences took place on messaging app Snapchat while 9 per cent happened on WhatsApp and 9 per cent on Facebook and Instagram, the NSPCC said.
While girls made up 80 per cent of victims in cases where the gender was known in the past year, the youngest victim in that period was a four-year-old boy, the charity said.
The NSPCC said it was not informed of the means of communication which had been used to groom the boy, and declined to say which police force recorded this crime amid concerns the child might be identified.
The charity noted that each offence recorded by police could involve more than one victim and multiple methods of communication.
It also cautioned that the true number of grooming offences being committed is likely to be “much higher, due to abuse happening in private spaces where harms can be harder to detect”.
Asked about the possible reason for the high proportion of offences happening on Snapchat, the charity’s associate head of child safety online said almost three-quarters of British children use the platform and pointed out the ease with which users can add each other.
Raising the issue of being able easily to send direct messages, Matthew Sowemimo said: “There’s a ‘quick add’ that allows adults to really reach out to a very large number of child users.”
The NSPCC said it had done new research which identifies cycles of behaviours among perpetrators, including creating multiple different profiles and manipulating young users to engage with them across different platforms.
It called on tech firms to analyse the metadata they have access to in order to spot suspicious patterns of behaviour.
The charity said this would not involve reading private messages, but could flag where adults repeatedly contact large numbers of children or create fake profiles – strong indicators of grooming.
It also suggested restrictions should be brought in on adult profiles, limiting who they can search and how many people they can contact.
The charity has also recommended implementing tools on a child’s phone to scan for nude images and identify child sexual abuse material before it is shared.
NSPCC chief executive Chris Sherwood said: “It’s deeply alarming that online grooming crimes have reached a record high across the UK, taking place on the very platforms children use every day.
“At Childline, we hear first-hand how grooming can devastate young lives. The trauma doesn’t end when the messages stop, it can leave children battling anxiety, depression and shame for years.”
The internet has “opened a door into millions of homes, giving predators access to children” with “very real” consequences, chief executive of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) Kerry Smith said.
She added: “Tech companies must do everything they can, including in end-to-end encrypted spaces, to keep children safe. It is clear now that this can be done effectively without compromising users’ privacy.
“There really is no excuse – and the alternative is allowing children to continue to suffer.”
Assistant Chief Constable Becky Riggs, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for child protection and abuse investigations, said while police forces are “working tirelessly to investigate these crimes, safeguard victims and bring offenders to justice”, policing alone “cannot stem the tide of online abuse”.
She added: “We need technology companies to take responsibility for the safety of children on their platforms.
“Children’s safety must be embedded into platform design – not treated as an afterthought. We urge tech companies to act swiftly and decisively, working in partnership with policing and child protection experts to ensure online spaces are safe for all users.”
Snapchat and Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp, have been contacted for comment.
