Ms Caroline O'Sullivan:

We have a different approach. For those boys who might be listening, I do not mean to make a generalisation, but when they contact us because something is happening, they can sometimes be quite aggressive. The international way of dealing with that is by telling them that a service will not talk to them if they speak like that, but we tell them to take their time because we know that they are angry and ask them to tell us why they are angry. We accept a level of that behaviour in order to engage boys, but it has been successful and we have maintained the 75% figure. The online services see more girls. We believe that this is because girls are a bit more advanced in terms of using helping services. Boys are now at the phone level and will most likely move on to the online level, which is what we are seeing generally.

On complaints by children about other children in regard to cyberbulling, sextortion and those areas, it is their peers they are talking about, their school friends or friends of friends. However, in other areas, such as grooming, it is strangers and individuals they do not know but have been friends with, have been following or have been followed by for a long period of time. When we work with children, one of the things we ask them is to tell us about their friends. They will say they have 500 friends on Facebook or 300 likes on Snapchat. The numbers are enormous. However, if we ask children who they would actually talk to if they had a real worry, they find it very difficult to name one person. That is very significant in the context of where children can go in terms of help seeking behaviour and that is why they come to Childline and those types of services. The majority of complaints are about peers but there are occasions when it is the adult predator who is actually seeking out a child through social media.