Girls aged six sending sexts in lockdown

Girls as young as six are sending sexually explicit texts during the coronavirus pandemic, research suggests.

The disturbing figure emerged as parents were offered a million free downloads of a phone safety app via the Government’s website.

so-called ‘sexts’ typed out by children in the UK have risen 183 per cent during lockdown.

There has been a 55 per cent rise in sexts drafted during normal school hours, safeToNet said. The company’s app stops harmful messages being sent and offers guidance as a message is being composed.

The British technology start-up has analysed around 70million such messages sent by children and found girls are sending the majority.

Eleven-year- old girls and 13-yearold boys attempted to send the highest proportion of sexts and messages identified as cyber-bullying, but the app also stopped messages being sent from girls as young as six and boys aged nine. Detected cyber-bullying messages fell steeply in the UK as lockdown was imposed, but as some schools have started admitting pupils again, rates on sunday evenings have started to rise.

Founder richard Pursey believes safeToNet is the only app of its kind to track threats to children in real time and said software like it should be on every child’s phone.

The company is offering parents a million free licences which can be downloaded via a link on the Government’s online safety advice page from Thursday.

Mr Pursey, a 58-year-old father of four from Kensington, west london, said children are killing themselves because of online activity and he has been left ‘scarred’ by viewing some of the material.

He said he has seen a video of an girl of 11 killing herself and one of a man blowing his head off with an automatic rifle circulated by British children.

The app stores no data on cloud platforms, so parents never see what the child is typing or what they are viewing.

‘Scarred by what he has seen’