Seventeen-year-old Jordan DeMay met a pretty girl on Instagram who convinced him to share an explicit photo. After he did, “she” demanded $1,000. Fifteen-year-old Bradyn Bohn connected with someone on Facebook who made him laugh. He too was persuaded to share a private image. The new friend demanded money, or the images would be shared far and wide. Seventeen-year-old Ryan Stuart received a message from someone claiming to be a 20-year-old woman. After an intimate exchange and a shared photo, “she” demanded $5,000 or the photo would be posted publicly. Fifteen-year-old Braden Markus received an Instagram message from “a teenage girl” saying he was cute. She shared intimate images with him and asked for the same in return. Once he did, “she” demanded $1,800 or the pictures would be posted on the Internet. “I am only 15. Why are you doing this to me? I am only 15, you will ruin my life,” Braden pleaded.
All of these teens were the target of sextortion. All died by suicide.
Sextortion Among Youth
These tragic stories are becoming all too common. We define sextortion as “the threatened dissemination of explicit, intimate, or embarrassing images of a sexual nature without consent, usually for the purpose of procuring additional images, sexual acts, money, or something else.” Sameer and I have been studying this behavior among adolescents since 2016. At that time, 5% of the approximately 5,000 middle and high schoolers in the U.S. we surveyed had experienced it. When we replicated the survey in 2019, 5.3% had been targeted. In May of 2025, we surveyed 3,500 13- to 17-year-olds and found that 15.4% had experienced sextortion. This dramatic increase has also been documented by others, including the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which noted a 300% increase in reports of child enticement between 2021 and 2023 to its CyberTipline. Similarly, Thorn found that about 21% of teens (aged 13 to 17) had personally experienced sexual extortion in 2024.
The Relationship Between Sextortion and Suicide
It is not surprising that experiencing sextortion can lead to an elevated risk of suicidal thoughts or behaviors. First, fear of legal consequences may play a role in stifling help-seeking by those who are targeted. Child pornography laws, while intended to protect youth, may be applied when a minor disseminates a self-produced image. This could create an environment where targets are less likely to report sextortion to authorities. Second, fear of parental discovery, judgment, or overreaction may discourage reporting. Third, sextortion can foster shame, guilt, self-blame, and self-conscious emotions, which are associated with suicidal risk. Finally, victims often feel a loss of control, and experiences a sense of helplessness, despair, and anxiety, often related to the fear that the images will appear in online and in public at any possible moment. Taken together, these psychological and social factors create a compounding effect that intensifies a victim’s level of distress and significantly elevates their risk of suicide.
Sameer and I wanted to explore more systematically the connection between sextortion and suicide. In our 2025 survey, we asked about experiences with sextortion as well as suicidality. In a newly published paper, we found that those targeted for sextortion were at a significantly greater risk for suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts. Specifically, sextortion victims were nine times more likely than those who had not been targeted to have seriously thought about suicide. They were also nearly twelve times more likely to have made a suicide plan and more than nineteen times more likely to have attempted suicide. In other words, our research confirmed that experience with sextortion is a potent risk factor for suicide.
Sextortion victims were nine times more likely than those who had not been targeted to have seriously thought about suicide. They were also nearly twelve times more likely to have made a suicide plan and more than nineteen times more likely to have attempted suicide.
Final Thoughts
Recent research has found that a notable proportion of youth have experienced sextortion, and our current study identified that those who have are at significantly greater risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. These findings underscore the critical need to prevent and effectively respond to youth sextortion through efforts that inform youth and their caregivers about the nature and extent of the problem, coupled with institutional support systems that allow youth to disclose threats without fear of legal consequences or school-based discipline. Only through coordinated efforts can we intervene effectively and prevent these incidents from contributing to life-threatening outcomes for teens. Action is also necessary to honor the lives of Jordan, Bradyn, Ryan, Braden, and the dozens of others who have lost their lives due to this heinous crime.
The full results of this new research appear in the May 2026 issue of Child Abuse & Neglect.
Our other papers on teen sextortion:
Sextortion among adolescents: Results from a national survey of U.S. youthThe nature and extent of youth sextortion: Legal implications and directions for future researchWhen sexting goes wrong: The extent of nonconsensual sharing and sextortion among U.S. teensIf you can’t access any of these papers and would like copies, just send us an email and we’d be happy to send them to you.
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