Sextortion Is Exploitation: What It Is, Why It’s Growing, and How We Stop It.

Sextortion is one of the fastest-growing forms of exploitation in the world. Every week, hundreds of new cases are reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Most people don’t understand how it works until it’s too late. Many victims never speak up at all.

At Project Mona’s House, we recognize that exploitation takes many forms. Still, the core dynamics stay the same: someone asserting control over another’s body, choices, and safety. Sextortion isn’t just an internet scam. It’s digital coercion, a threat, a form of sexual violence. It is exploitation, plain and simple.

If you work with young people, care about prevention, or simply exist online, you need to understand what sextortion is and how to stop it.

What Is Sextortion?

Sextortion happens when someone threatens to share your private images, videos, or conversations unless you do what they say. That demand might be for more photos, money, or sexual acts. It is a form of blackmail and abuse.

There are three defining parts:

• A threat: usually to expose or shame

• Intimate content: real or fake

• A demand—more images, money, or silence

  
  

There is currently no universal legal definition of sextortion, which makes prevention and enforcement harder. Without clear language, some young victims are criminalized instead of protected. Others are ignored or blamed for what happened to them.

How Widespread Is It?

If you think this is rare, think again.

A 2017 study by Thorn surveyed young people aged 13 to 25 and found that 47% had experienced sextortion. One in four experienced it before they turned 12.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) receives more than 800 sextortion reports per week. In just one year, the FBI received over 18,000 complaints tied to sextortion schemes, with $13 million in losses. Canada and the U.K. have reported similar spikes.

The top platforms where sextortion starts are social media, especially Instagram, Snapchat, and Discord, but it also happens in gaming apps, chatrooms, and dating sites. Increasingly, perpetrators use multiple apps at once, creating fake accounts, recording video calls, and collecting information across platforms.

What It Looks Like: Stories from Survivors

It often starts small. A new follower with 1,000 Instagram followers slides into a teen’s DMs. They flirt. They swap pictures. But suddenly, the tone changes. The person demands more and threatens to post what they already have.

Victims have shared stories of:

• Perpetrators pretending to be classmates or romantic partners

• Hacked iCloud accounts and stolen photos

• Nude images leaked to family members

• AI-generated photos using victims’ faces

  
  

One girl explained: “I started getting flirty with my boyfriend and sent him some pictures. I woke up and realized it wasn’t him. It was my uncle. Now he says if I don’t do what he says, he’ll tell my family.”

Another victim said: “They made Instagram accounts pretending to be me and sold the videos on adult sites. I was sixteen.”

These aren’t just worst-case scenarios. They’re common & devastating.

Why Some Youth Are More at Risk

There’s no “type” of person who gets targeted, but there are patterns in who’s most vulnerable.

Research shows that young people with high impulsivity or attachment anxiety are more likely to be victimized. Youth who meet people online or engage in sexting are also at higher risk. Many survivors are targeted during periods of stress, loneliness, or isolation.

Queer youth face especially high risk. LGBTQ+ individuals report significantly more sextortion experiences than their straight peers. And although girls are often targeted for sexual acts, young boys are the most common victims of financial sextortion, blackmailed for money rather than more images.

Offenders know who to target. They prey on people with fewer supports, deeper insecurities, and the most to lose.

Who’s Behind It?

It’s easy to imagine a predator in a dark room behind a screen. Sometimes that’s true. But often, the person exploiting someone is someone they know.

Studies show that boyfriends and girlfriends are the most common perpetrators of sextortion, followed by friends, relatives, and online acquaintances. Many survivors are manipulated by someone they once trusted. Others are targeted by strangers who pretend to be someone else entirely.

Perpetrators come in different forms:

• Ex-partners using images to control or punish

• Online predators using fake accounts to trick and extort

• Relatives who gain access through family devices or shared networks

  
  

This is not just happening in dark corners of the internet. It’s happening in schools, group chats, and homes.

Sextortion is also uniquely complicated because the same groups that are most vulnerable to victimization (young people, LGBTQ+, and boys) are often the same groups most likely to perpetrate it.

For example, most financial sextortion targets are boys. But boys and young men also make up the largest group of known perpetrators. LGBTQ+ youth are disproportionately targeted for sextortion and in some cases, disproportionately involved in it. The same systems that create silence, shame, and vulnerability for these groups can also lead them to act out harm in others, often in the same online spaces where they were once exploited.

This doesn’t excuse the abuse. But it shows how exploitation is a cycle shaped by peer pressure, isolation, gender roles, and digital culture. Until we create safer systems that honor the dignity and autonomy of all young people, some will continue to repeat the very violations they survived.

Gendered Differences: A Violence That Respects No Norms

Though sextortion affects people of all genders, the way it plays out is deeply shaped by gender rolesand in many cases, those roles make the harm even harder to talk about.

For girls and young women, sextortion often involves non-financial demands: being coerced into sending more photos, performing sexual acts, or enduring repeated harassment. Many are targeted by people they know, ex-boyfriends, classmates, even relatives. These cases echo the broader patterns of sexual violence that girls experience offline.

For boys, the picture looks different, but no less devastating. Nearly 98% of boys targeted in sextortion cases are asked for money, a pattern researchers have named financial sextortion. Offenders often pose as women, lure boys into sexual exchanges, and then blackmail them for hundreds or thousands of dollars. These cases are on the rise, and suicide attempts among male victims are tragically common.

But even though boys make up a growing share of sextortion victims, this is still a form of gender-based violence.

Why? Because boys are targeted precisely because they are not seen as typical victims. The system doesn’t know how to hold space for male vulnerability. When boys are victimized, they’re more likely to be met with disbelief, blame, or silence. They're told they should’ve known better, or worse - that it’s their fault for engaging at all.

Girls who survive sextortion may be able to turn to peers for emotional support. They’re often met with comfort or protection. But boys look around and often see perpetrators. The same friend who they’d turn to is bragging in the group chat and sharing explicit photos of female classmates without their consent. The result is isolation. And that isolation is deadly.

This dynamic, where the victims of one group mirror the tactics of another,  is not a coincidence. Sextortion is what happens when patriarchal culture denies both consent and care. It punishes girls for existing and punishes boys for feeling. Until we reckon with that, the cycle continues.

The Mental Health Toll

Sextortion is traumatic. It’s designed to isolate, shame, and terrorize. Victims often experience:

• Panic attacks, insomnia, and intrusive thoughts

• Depression, anxiety, and self-harm

• Suicidal ideation, especially within hours of the threats beginning

  
  

One study found that 1 in 6 sextortion victims attempt suicide. Many described feeling “ruined,” “filthy,” “jailed,” or “worthless.” Some feared their images would go viral. Others feared going to prison themselves.

Offenders use countdowns, threats of arrest, and photos of friends and family to escalate pressure. Many victims describe the experience as “life-ending” even when the photos never get posted. The damage doesn’t go away when the threats stop.

What We Can Do to Prevent It

Stopping sextortion means more than catching predators. It means creating environments where coercion doesn’t work.

1. Talk About It Before It Happens

Youth need to hear about sextortion long before it becomes their reality. These conversations should happen in classrooms, group homes, youth programs, and at home. They should be direct, age-appropriate, and rooted in empathy.

Make sure young people know:

• What sextortion is

• That they’re not alone if it happens

• That it’s never their fault

  
  

2. Use Peer Power

Teens are more likely to listen to each other than to adults. Low-pressure peer callouts can shift behavior. As hard as it can be to understand, successful intervention can be seen when we frame callouts as being a good friend. Friends don’t want to see their peers get in trouble, and will promote respect and protection as loyalty, not weakness. Shaming doesn’t work, but solidarity does.

An example of peer call-out.

3. Train Adults to Intervene

Teachers, coaches, counselors, and staff should be trained on how to recognize signs of sextortion and how to respond. That includes knowing:

• How to respond to a disclosure

• What trauma-informed support looks like

• What local mental health and legal resources are available

  
  

When a young person comes forward, they need to hear one thing first: “You are not in trouble. You are not alone.”

Resources That Can Help

Reporting

• FBI: tips.fbi.gov

• NCMEC CyberTipline: cybertipline.org

  
  

Image Removal

• Take It Down: An anonymous, free tool to help remove non-consensual images from the internet

  
  

Crisis Support

• Text “THORN” to 741741 for immediate mental health support

  
  

Prevention Education

• NetSmartz, Thorn for Teens, PMH Training for students and faculty

  
  

The Bigger Picture

Sextortion isn’t just a digital issue. It’s a reflection of deep cultural problems.

At the root of this epidemic are:

• Toxic masculinity and the belief that sex equals power

• Peer pressure and the normalization of sharing nudes

• Platform design flaws that allow predators to thrive

• Lack of accountability for digital violence

• Apathy toward sexual violence, especially against young people and marginalized groups

  
  

Until we shift how society views consent, privacy, and online harm, sextortion will continue to grow. If you or someone you know is experiencing sextortion, don’t wait. Get support. Speak up. You’re not alone.

Project Mona’s House exists to confront all forms of exploitation, including the ones that happen behind a screen. Through prevention, outreach, and survivor support, we’re creating a world where no one’s body is a commodity and no one’s dignity is for sale.

Want to learn more? Host a training. Book a speaker. Join our prevention efforts. Contact bella@projectmonashouse.com or visit www.projectmonashouse.com to get involved.