Schoolchildren need to be taught about online dangers in same way as crossing the road, the head of UK's child abuse watchdog has warned.

       Susie Hargreaves, the chief executive of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), said children as young as seven were increasingly being “tricked” into creating indecent images of themselves.

       In an interview with the PA news agency, Ms Hargreaves said: "I think people would be absolutely horrified if they knew their seven-year-old was upstairs in their bedroom being tricked and encouraged into sharing this content.

       "I think that there are some basic safety messages that can be shared with children that are not about 'how to open an account'.

       "But in exactly the same ways (of warning about) talking to strangers or crossing the road, there are basic safety messages that we need to get across with children."

       ‘Shocking’ amount of self-generated abuse

       Current government guidance suggests pupils should be taught about online safety as part of Relationships and Sex Education lessons, with sections on recognising risks, harmful content and how to report issues.

       The foundation, which hunts down and removes child abuse material from the internet, found 16,900 self-generated child sexual abuse images involving children aged between seven and 10 in the nine months to the end of September this year. That is up from 5,900 in the first nine months of 2020.

       Previous IWF reports found it is largely young girls who are targets for such abuse. Those aged around 11 to 13 are particularly vulnerable, as it is around the time they first get their own internet-connected devices.

       Ms Hargreaves described the self-generated abuse figures as "shocking" and said young children using the internet while unsupervised were "easy prey".

       She added: “We have to be working in educating children at a much, much younger age.

       “The majority of the children we see are 11 to 13 that are not physically or mentally and emotionally mature enough to understand what's happening to them when they are coerced and groomed and tricked into self-generated images and videos.

       "Well, if that's true for 11 to 13-year-olds, it's certainly true for seven to 10-year-olds."