One in 25 primary school children has been sent or shown a naked or semi-naked image by an adult.
And alarmingly, 82 children were victims of sexual predators last year, according to the PSNI.
At secondary school even more children reported being targeted by adults sending or showing them nude or semi-nude images, with one in 20 children aged 12-16 saying they had received such an image.
These startling figures are contained in the largest ever survey of children online.
NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless is now warning that social networks are ‘a gateway for child abuse.’
The survey compiled responses from nearly 40,000 children aged seven to 16 who were asked about online risks.
Now the NSPCC is launching a petition calling on the UK government to introduce tough regulation for social networks.
The #WildWestWeb campaign is calling on the government to create an independent regulator for social networks, to force platforms to proactively detect groomers using their sites.
The first snapshot of the survey findings, Children Sending and Receiving Images, is published today and highlights the dangers children are exposed to.
Children were asked whether an adult had ever sent or shown them a naked or semi-naked picture or video on an app, site or game.
One girl aged 9-10, said: “A complete stranger asked me to take my clothes off and send him a picture. When I deleted the game, I went on another site and the same person asked me to have sex with him, I told him to ‘back off’ and then deleted that game. I have seen this person on many sites that I play, and I decided to just block him.”
Children said the problem was not limited to strangers contacting them, and some said they had been sent images by adults that they know.
A boy aged 14-15, said: “My coach sent me a video of Santa stripping naked.”
Others reported that the exchange of sexual images, often known as sexting, is becoming normalised.
One pupil aged 12-13, said: “A girl from my primary was sending half naked pictures because it’s what everyone does.”
Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat was used in 70 per cent of these cases.
The PSNI recorded 82 offences of sexual communication with a child last year (2017/18), demonstrating the scale of potential grooming in today’s online world.
Peter Wanless, NSPCC chief executive said grooming can no longer be shrugged off as secondary to other online crimes.
“It is happening now, it is happening to very young children, it is happening so frequently that it’s becoming normalised, and it is not only coming from adult strangers, but also from known adults. Social networks have become a gateway for child abuse,” he said.
The NSPCC is calling on Digital Secretary Jeremy Wright and Home Secretary Sajid Javid to put an end to the Wild West Web.
“We need tough regulation of social networks to make sure there are fundamental protections for children in place whatever sites they’re using,” he added.
