Cyber safety expert Paul Litherland reveals WA children as young as eight are now regularly on social media

Thousands of WA students as young as eight are regularly using social media — many without their parents’ knowledge — exposing them to scamming, sextortion and addiction. Surf Online Safe founder Paul Litherland, a former police officer who now educates more than 250,000 students each year on cyber safety, has observed a growing cohort of younger children accessing social media. According to his surveys of WA school children, 48 per cent of Year 4 students are using social media, compared to 52 per cent of Year 5 students, 60 per cent in Year 6 and 72 per cent in Year 7. Of the Year 4 to 6 cohort, 32 per cent were doing so without their parental consent. “Sadly I’m seeing a rise in the number of kids at younger ages who are using one or more of the top 10 social media networks,” he said. “Because they don’t have that awareness, knowledge and real-risk assessment, they are being exposed to risk at much younger ages and we’re seeing that reflected in quite a number of schools.” Mr Litherland, who worked in online crime as a police officer for 20 years, said children were mainly on SnapChat, TikTok, gaming group chat platform Discord and to a lesser extent, Instagram. Mr Litherland will raise the issue with teachers during an upcoming event with the Association of Independent Public Schools WA. “I’ll be saying ‘let’s communicate with our parents about the risks of being on these networks.’ A lot of parents think, ‘It’s alright, I’m monitoring this’ but it’s not until something goes wrong that parents realise how how risky these networks and how they are not designed to protect kids.” Issues that were prevalent in Year 9 and Year 10 students five years ago, such as intimate image abuse, addiction, grooming and predatory behaviour, were now being seen in Years 7 and 8, Mr Litherland said. “Some schools are still dropping the ball sadly but the vast majority of WA and Australian schools have been addressing this quite readily. But it’s difficult because when devices go home that’s when rules tend to drop.” Sextortion scams targeting young boys had increased 2300 per cent and gaming scamming was also a huge problem. “Many of our scammers will jump onto gaming networks, pretend to be kids and trap children to share a parents’ credit card number or take their money from a prepaid card,” he said. “We’re seeing younger and younger kids who are being groomed into sharing sexually explicit material, in exchange for gaming currency.” Mr Litherland recently helped an 11-year-old WA boy who sent intimate images over the Discord server in return for gaming currency. “Everyone is working hard, educators, parents and even the kids themselves but it’s big tech and the network designers that aren’t working hard enough,” he said. “I say to the students, ‘you’re going to have to drive this change because the (social media platforms) don’t care about you’”. But Mr Litherland said he was encouraged by a shift in high school students who were now prioritising quality interactions on social media, rather than high numbers of followers.