If your child is in immediate danger, call 999. Hotlines are for reporting, not for emergencies. If someone is at risk right now, call first and report afterwards.
Something has happened
If something has already gone wrong, this page is the fastest route to the right help. Take a breath first. You have more time than it feels like, and the things that matter most take about five minutes.
Showing help for United Kingdom. United States · Canada · Ireland
Do these first
1
Stay calm, and say out loud that they are not in trouble
Your reaction in the first minute decides how much they tell you in the next hour. Say it plainly: you are not in trouble, and I am going to help. Whatever choice they made, what has been done to them is the crime.
2
Do not delete anything
Block the person, but leave the messages, the images and the account exactly where they are. Deleting destroys what investigators need to identify them. If you want the account gone, deactivate it rather than deleting it, because deactivated data can still be recovered.
3
Screenshot before you block
Capture the conversation, the profile and anything they sent. Then block. Doing it in that order costs two extra minutes and is the difference between a report that goes somewhere and one that doesn't.
The advice on this page is the same in every country. It is what child protection agencies in the US, UK, Canada and Ireland all tell parents, and where they differ we say so. Only the reporting routes change depending on where you are, and those are set by the country you picked above.
Where to report it
Reports go to a Child Protection Advisor at CEOP, part of the National Crime Agency. For online sexual abuse or concerning contact from an adult. Not for bullying.
For under-18s in the UK to get a nude image of themselves taken down. Run by Childline with the Internet Watch Foundation.
Anonymous reporting of child sexual abuse imagery, including AI-generated and drawn material, for removal.
For adults worried about a child. Free, and you do not have to give your name.
0808 800 5000 — phone 10am to 4pm Mon to Fri, email help@nspcc.org.uk 11am to 4pm daily
Not a 24-hour service. Childline, for your child rather than for you, is 24 hours on 0800 1111.
Call 101 for a non-emergency report to your local police.
Reporting to a hotline does not replace reporting to the police. If your child is in immediate danger, call the emergency number first.
What has happened?
Someone is threatening to share nude images
Sometimes called sextortion. Someone has an intimate image of your child, or claims to, and is demanding money or more images.
Do not pay
Paying almost never stops it. Offenders frequently share the material anyway, and once you have shown you can pay, they come back for more.
If you have already paid, stop there
Don't panic, and don't pay anything more. Paying once has not made things worse. Paying again will.
Block, but keep everything
Block them, and do not delete the profile or the messages. Those are what let investigators find the person behind the account.
Tell your child this is not their fault
Say it directly: the blackmailer is to blame, not you. Even if you made a choice you regret, what they are doing is a crime. And make clear your first move is to help, always.
Financial sextortion targets teenage boys disproportionately. Where the victim's gender was recorded, around 83% were male, and boys aged roughly 14 to 17 are the most commonly targeted group. Victims as young as 8 have been reported, of both genders, so if you have a daughter this still applies to her.
Sources: Canadian Centre for Child Protection, UK National Crime Agency, FBI
An adult has been contacting my child
Someone older has been messaging your child, and it has moved somewhere private, or turned sexual, or they have asked to meet.
Report to the national body, not just the platform
A platform report gets the account removed. A report to your country's child protection body is what gets the person investigated. Do both, and do the national one first. The reporting section above has the right one for where you are.
Keep the account open for now
Your instinct will be to delete the app. Preserve it until you have reported, then decide. A deleted account takes the evidence with it.
Ask gently, and ask once
You need to know roughly what happened and how long it has been going on. You do not need every detail, and pressing for detail is what makes children stop talking. The people who take your report are trained for that conversation.
A common pattern is that contact starts inside a game or a public server and moves quickly to a private app. If your child has been asked to move a conversation somewhere more private, that on its own is worth reporting.
An image of my child is being shared
A nude or sexual image of your child, taken when they were under 18, is circulating or has been posted.
Use Take It Down, and know that StopNCII will turn you away
Take It Down is a free removal service for images taken of someone under 18, and it works anywhere in the world. StopNCII is the adult equivalent and requires the person to have been 18 or over both when the image was taken and now, so it will reject a case involving a child. Parents land on the wrong one all the time.
The image never leaves your device
Take It Down turns the image into a digital fingerprint on your own device. The image itself is never uploaded anywhere. Participating platforms match that fingerprint and remove the content. This is worth explaining to a teenager who is terrified of handing the picture to anyone.
Report Remove is built for this
In the UK, under-18s can use Report Remove, run jointly by Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation. The young person reports it themselves, verifies their age, and gets updates and counsellor support through their Childline account.
Removal is rarely instant and rarely total. It is still worth doing, because every copy taken down is one fewer, and the services above are the only ones with direct removal channels into the major platforms.
My child is being bullied or harassed
Sustained cruelty, exclusion, threats or humiliation, usually from people your child actually knows.
Screenshot the pattern, not just the worst message
A single message rarely gets acted on. A run of them over days does. Capture dates wherever you can.
Save it before you block
Blocking can put the whole conversation out of reach, and some of it deletes itself anyway. Snapchat messages go on their own, and WhatsApp blocks screenshots of View Once messages entirely. Photographing the screen with a second phone is the one method no app can block or notify about, and it works on a console too.
Report inside the platform first
For bullying the platform genuinely is the right first stop, and most have a specific bullying or harassment category that routes faster than a general report.
Involve the school if the people involved are from school
Most online bullying between classmates is a school matter with an online surface. Schools have a duty here and are usually better placed to stop it than any platform is.
Bullying is generally outside the remit of the child exploitation hotlines, which handle abuse and grooming. That is a routing decision rather than a brush-off, and the school plus the platform is the faster route. Once it has calmed down, the guides mark the settings that decide who can reach your child, which is the part worth revisiting.
CEOP does not take bullying reports and will point you to Childline, which is the better service for it.
They have seen something disturbing
Violent, sexual or otherwise upsetting content that has stayed with them.
Deal with the child before the settings
The instinct is to go and fix the controls. Do that later today. Right now the useful thing is letting them describe it, telling them it was not their fault for seeing it, and not reacting with alarm they then have to manage.
If it was child sexual abuse material, do not screenshot it
This is the one situation where screenshotting is the wrong move. Do not download, forward or save it. Report the address to your national body instead, using the reporting section above.
Then tighten the setting that let it through
Once they are settled, the relevant SafeStart guide has the specific control. It is usually a content maturity setting, a restricted mode, or an autoplay behaviour.
Do not go looking for the content yourself to see how bad it was. If it is illegal material, viewing and saving it creates problems for you and for any investigation.
What to save before you block
The first four are what an investigator will ask you for. The last two are SafeStart's own advice, and they make a report much easier to act on.
- The messages themselves, including anything already deleted from view
- Any images or videos that were sent or received
- Phone numbers, and bank or payment details if money was asked for
- The web addresses of any page where images have been shared
- The exact username, display name and profile link, which change often (SafeStart guidance)
- Dates and times, or a screenshot that shows them (SafeStart guidance)
Save screenshots somewhere outside the app itself, so a deleted account doesn't take them with it. Your own photo library or an email to yourself is fine.
Reporting on the platform itself
Platform reporting routes move often, and several of these companies have deliberately pushed reporting inside the app and behind a login. Where we could not confirm a working web form we say so rather than guessing. If a link here fails, the in-app route described alongside it still works.
What to say
You are not in trouble. I am glad you told me.
Reassurance comes before every practical step, and it is the part most parents skip.
This is not your fault, even if you made a choice you regret. What they are doing is a crime.
Worth saying almost word for word.
My first move is to help. Always.
Children weigh up whether telling you will make things worse. This answers that before they ask.
We are going to sort this out together, and I am not taking your phone away as a punishment for telling me.
SafeStart's own addition. Fear of losing the device is one of the most common reasons children tell nobody.
SafeStart is not an emergency service and cannot take reports. This page points you to the organizations that can. Every link and phone number here was checked against the organization's own website on the date shown. Last checked 2 September 2026.
