Alarming Surge in Online Grooming Crimes Targets Children as Young as 4

According to recent data, online grooming crimes in the UK have reached a record high, with a deeply alarming surge over the past eight years. The NSPCC, a leading child protection charity, has revealed that in the year to March 2025, police forces across the country recorded 7,263 such offences - nearly double the 3,728 cases reported just seven years earlier.

Particularly disturbing is the fact that the youngest victim identified in the past year was a 4-year-old boy. While the charity declined to provide further details to protect the child's identity, the data shows that girls made up 80% of victims where gender was known. The majority of these crimes, around 40%, took place on the messaging app Snapchat, with 9% occurring on WhatsApp and 9% on Facebook and Instagram.

Experts have warned that the true scale of the problem is likely much higher, as online grooming often occurs in private spaces where the harm can be harder to detect. They are now urging technology companies to take greater responsibility for the safety of children on their platforms, calling for stronger safeguards and tools to identify suspicious patterns of behavior that could indicate predatory activity.