Bedfordshire Police has launched a county-wide online safety campaign, which is aimed at teenagers and young people to educate them on how to stay safe online, how to report any concerns and where to access support.
Called #ENDGAME, the aim of the campaign is to encourage teenagers to think about the potential dangers of being active online.
This will be implemented as a phased campaign delivered over the course of several months and will cover five different topics, with targeted posts on Snapchat and Instagram aimed at teenagers and young people, encouraging them to BLOCK, REPORT, TELL if something doesn’t feel right.
There will also be accompanying posts on Facebook and Instagram for parents and carers and dedicated campaign pages for both audiences on the force website, containing information and signposting to support.
Statistics on the NSPCC website state that there has been an 82 percent rise in online grooming crimes against children in the last five years.
Over a 12-month period, Bedfordshire Police received 27 reports of online grooming relating to young people aged 17 and under.
There has also been an increase in children and young people creating photos and videos of themselves and sharing them online, or with other people via messaging or social media apps, which is often known as ‘sexting’.
Last year 234 reports were made to Bedfordshire Police where indecent images of a child were shared; in which the victim or suspect were under 18.
The force also received 326 reports of online blackmail, otherwise known as ‘sextortion’ and 96 reports of intimate image abuse, better known as revenge porn over 12 months.
The first phase of the campaign will focus on online grooming, and asking young people if they know who they are really talking to online, what to do if someone is making them uncomfortable and how to report any concerns.
This will be followed up with the following phases over the next few months:
- The consequences of sharing nude images
- The issue of consent
- Online blackmail /’Sextortion’
- Intimate image abuse/revenge porn
Detective Inspector Pete Ward from the force’s Cyber team said: “This campaign has been implemented as we want young people to be aware of some of the potential dangers of being active online, how to recognise if they are being groomed and encouraging them to tell someone they trust.
“We are receiving more and more reports of teenagers sharing explicit images with their peers, which presents the risk of being circulated far wider than they imagined, and this can cause a lot of anxiety and stress to the individual involved.
“We want to share our knowledge, and help inform young people and encourage them to think about the consequences, even if they completely trust the person they are sending the images to.
“With so called ‘sextortion’ and revenge porn also becoming increasingly common, we want to be able to give people information, so they know what to do if they are targeted and to know that they are not alone in dealing with it. There is support available.”
