125% rise: How online predators are coercing vulnerable teens to self-harm

According to the reports, the coerced abuses may include forcing children to cut themselves, drink urine, eat their own vomit, die by suicide, or harm other children and pets at home.

Cases of coercing children into producing their own sexually explicit content have risen globally in the past year, child safety experts and law enforcement officials have warned.

In the phenomenon, termed “sadistic online exploitation”, the predators target vulnerable teenagers on social media platforms and through online games, The Guardian reported. The perpetrators then compel them into producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), inflicting harm on themselves and others, or even attempting suicide in extreme cases.

“We often see that the offenders will communicate with that child and, through that initial communication, ask them for nude or explicit imagery of themselves,” The Guardian quoted Kathryn Rifenbark, a director at the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), as saying “Then they’re using that as a leverage to cause the child to harm themselves or harm other children or other people in their home or create more explicit imagery of them or other children in their home,” she added.

In 2025, the NCMEC received over 3,000 reports of sadistic online exploitation across the world — a 125% surge with respect to the previous year. However, this count represents only a small percentage of the total number of incidents, since the NCMEC is notified only if the child sexual abuse material is detected and reported, experts say.

The perpetrators recruit their victims generally through video games popular with children, such as Roblox and Minecraft. A spokesperson for Microsoft, the company that owns Minecraft, said: “Our goal is to make Minecraft one of the hardest places for bad actors to operate, and we have a variety of tools we use to help foster a safe online experience, such as parental controls, chat filtering, in-game reporting, and dedicated moderation teams.”

The predators may also look for social media groups that focus on mental health issues to specifically target vulnerable children. Such groups often have members with eating disorders or suicide ideation, and are perfect fodder for the criminal minds, the child safety experts told Guardian.

According to the reports, the coerced abuses may include forcing children to cut themselves, drink urine, eat their own vomit, die by suicide, or harm other children and pets at home. Some groups are also involved in mass casualty planning, doxing and cyber-harassment, reported The Guardian.

Among the recent cases was a 21-year-old Maryland man getting 30 years in jail in June for sexually exploiting 10 female minors and cyberstalking.

In April, a 16-year-old boy was sentenced after targeting other internet users — mostly teenage girls, encouraging them to harm themselves. He, who was 14 at the time, used an online username to conceal his identity while connecting with the victims and asking them to harm themselves, the BBC reported. He instructed them to send him images of what they had done and saved those.

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Cases of coercing children into producing their own sexually explicit content have risen globally in the past year, child safety experts and law enforcement officials have warned.

In the phenomenon, termed “sadistic online exploitation”, the predators target vulnerable teenagers on social media platforms and through online games, The Guardian reported. The perpetrators then compel them into producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), inflicting harm on themselves and others, or even attempting suicide in extreme cases.

“We often see that the offenders will communicate with that child and, through that initial communication, ask them for nude or explicit imagery of themselves,” The Guardian quoted Kathryn Rifenbark, a director at the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), as saying “Then they’re using that as a leverage to cause the child to harm themselves or harm other children or other people in their home or create more explicit imagery of them or other children in their home,” she added.

In 2025, the NCMEC received over 3,000 reports of sadistic online exploitation across the world — a 125% surge with respect to the previous year. However, this count represents only a small percentage of the total number of incidents, since the NCMEC is notified only if the child sexual abuse material is detected and reported, experts say.

The perpetrators recruit their victims generally through video games popular with children, such as Roblox and Minecraft. A spokesperson for Microsoft, the company that owns Minecraft, said: “Our goal is to make Minecraft one of the hardest places for bad actors to operate, and we have a variety of tools we use to help foster a safe online experience, such as parental controls, chat filtering, in-game reporting, and dedicated moderation teams.”

The predators may also look for social media groups that focus on mental health issues to specifically target vulnerable children. Such groups often have members with eating disorders or suicide ideation, and are perfect fodder for the criminal minds, the child safety experts told Guardian.

According to the reports, the coerced abuses may include forcing children to cut themselves, drink urine, eat their own vomit, die by suicide, or harm other children and pets at home. Some groups are also involved in mass casualty planning, doxing and cyber-harassment, reported The Guardian.

Among the recent cases was a 21-year-old Maryland man getting 30 years in jail in June for sexually exploiting 10 female minors and cyberstalking.

In April, a 16-year-old boy was sentenced after targeting other internet users — mostly teenage girls, encouraging them to harm themselves. He, who was 14 at the time, used an online username to conceal his identity while connecting with the victims and asking them to harm themselves, the BBC reported. He instructed them to send him images of what they had done and saved those.