Young adolescents are increasingly being sexually extorted with digitally altered images and being pressed to send more sexual photos or money to perpetrators.
Teenagers were most likely to face sexual extortion, commonly abbreviated to sextortion, for the first time aged 15 or 16, an Australian Institute of Criminology online harm conference was told.
About one in 10 adolescents had experienced sextortion and about 90 per cent of first-time victims were under 18.
"It could even lead to suicide," the institute's Dr Sarah Napier told the conference on Wednesday.
Men and women had similar rates of sextortion but males were more likely to have faced the form of extortion in the last 12 months, to receive the threat less than a day after first contact and for that to involve a financial request.
Of people threatened, 60 per cent were with nude or partially nude images, 14 per cent were of material of them engaged in a sexual activity and almost seven per cent were them in a private capacity such as a bathroom, research presented to the conference outlined.
Two in five minors said they had been threatened with a digitally-altered image, also known as a deepfake.
Threats also arrived relatively quickly, with 40 per cent being extorted in one to six hours and nine per cent between seven hours to one day.
Half of perpetrators asked for something of financial value, including money or gift cards, while more than 40 per cent asked for more intimate material.
Ten per cent asked for both.
Two-thirds met the perpetrator online and never in person, while more than 90 per cent said the perpetrator made first contact.
But most young people ignored the threats, with only 15.5 per cent sending intimate material and five per cent sending money, although most who did this sent less than $50.
This is because they didn't trust the person, didn't think paying up would end the threats or thought it was a scam.
Half of the threats were on Snapchat, while almost a quarter were on Instagram and 15 per cent on Facebook, according to the institute's research.
Dr Napier said more could be done by platforms that connected children and adults, such as tracking key phrases or words.
"There's a handbook for sexual extortion on the dark net, I've seen it and it's harrowing how well presented it is," she said.
"A lot of them use the same language, 'I will ruin your life', 'give me this money or else'.
"So having AI that can pick up and detect that language and warn a victim that they might be being sexually extorted at this moment and this is where you can go for help would be a really important mechanism to have on these platforms."
Pop-up warnings could also be used to deter offenders, she said.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant has written to apps that allow users to create sexually explicit deepfakes and platforms they can be downloaded from, warning them of up to $50 million in fines.
There had been a massive spike in complaints to eSafety's image-based abuse scheme since 2018, with the vast majority from boys and young men, she told a parliamentary hearing.
The agency was successful in removing the abuse material 98 per cent of the time in the 2023/24 reporting year, she said.
Lifeline 13 11 14
Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (for people aged 5 to 25)
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
