I Spent 27 Years In The Police. This Is My Biggest Concern For Tween And Teen Boys Right Now

“We know there’s underreporting of this crime. There’s shame attached to it...”

Parents editor at HuffPost UK

The next few years could see the online world transform dramatically for young people in the UK.

Changes are already trickling through. Smartphones have now been banned in schools in England, while the UK government is considering how it will implement next year’s social media ban for under-16s.

Meanwhile, the Crime and Policing Bill 2025 aims to ultimately make ‘nudification’ tools – which can digitally undress people using artificial intelligence (AI) – illegal.

‘Cyber cop’ Susan McLean is one of the experts who is watching the UK’s movements in this space with great interest.

A former Victoria police officer of 27 years, who now advises governments, schools and families on online child safety, she knows her stuff about modern technology and the impact it can have on kids today. (Through her work in schools alone, she speaks to roughly 250,000 children about the topic every year.)

In an interview with HuffPost UK to mark her new book, Growing Up Digital, which landed in UK bookstores this month, McLean shared one of her biggest areas of concern as far as children and tech are concerned: the rise in ‘sextortion’ (or sexual extortion) cases among boys.

Earlier this year, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) warned child sextortion cases in the UK have soared by 72% in the space of a year. Criminals are tricking young people into sending nude or sexual images of themselves which are then used to blackmail them. In 97% of cases, the victims are boys.

“Probably the biggest risk to an adolescent male is sextortion and sexual blackmail – that is hideous,” said McLean,........

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