Bethany Edgecombe, who goes by the online moniker Blondie Australia and sometimes Beth Boom Boom, was caught out exchanging texts with a Queensland teenager in July after his mother went through his mobile phone. In screenshots of the conversation seen by news. When the teen told her he was just 13, she wrote back: "I really must be a pedo because that's so hot. Later, when he did not send her what she wanted, she became pushy and told him she was "just sick of your lack of enthusiasm" and "you know what I want".

Almost two years ago, Lauren quit her office job to work full time on her OnlyFans profile — posting semi-nude and nude images on the subscriber-based social network. OnlyFans describes itself as a social network, where anyone who creates content can set a monthly subscription fee for their followers. It isn't aimed primarily at people who sell nudes or explicit content — but a large amount of users are doing exactly that. A new BBC Three documentary, Nudes4Sale , meets Lauren, 23, and others like her, who say their income from sharing adult content on the site far surpasses what they could earn in regular employment. But there's a dark side: the documentary found evidence of the age verification process being circumvented, meaning unders were able to illegally sell explicit content of themselves on the site. OnlyFans users often use other social networks, like Twitter and Snapchat, to advertise their OnlyFans profiles and direct followers to them.

This is becoming common. I imagine the next step will be charging a child with child molestation for masturbating. This is what happens when you let puritans run the legal system. We need to take a serious look at a huge range of laws like this, and try to get them back in line with rationality and the basic principles of a free society….

Please refresh the page and retry. Dr Natasha Bijlani, a consultant psychiatrist at the Priory Hospital, said online pressures — particularly over sex and nudity — could even drive an upturn in the number of young people who go on to self-harm. S he added that the full impact of internet abuse and sexting - when intimate photographs are swapped between users - may not be apparent for years because psychological damage suffered in childhood can sometimes only manifest itself in later life.