"My Daughter's Phone Addiction Led Groomers to Manipulate Her with Disturbing Requests"

SHUT away in her bedroom chatting to “friends” online, 11-year-old Sophia was acting like countless other kids her age.

But as the schoolgirl became increasingly secretive, alarm bells rang for her mum Karen, who could sense this was more than normal pre-teen behaviour.

Worried Karen and her family fled their home to protect daughter Sophia from web predators Credit: Andrew Styczynski Karen is backing the social media ban for under 16s set to be announced by Prime Minister Keir Starmer Credit: Reuters

In fact, her vulnerable daughter was hiding a crippling 65-hours-a week and internet abuse that saw her bullied, exploited by sexual predators and groomed by “county lines” gangs.

It escalated into four years of hell as loved ones battled to protect Sophia from faceless web fiends she had “met” on the app — as well as strangers hammering at her door.

The youngster even once leapt from a window to meet the lads, who cops say were involved with drug-running.

Finally, for their own safety, Sophia’s family had to flee their home in and move to the “middle of nowhere”.

Now Karen — who did not want to reveal her surname for safety reasons — is backing the social media ban for under 16s set to be announced by Prime Minister , insisting a dependency on devices turned her daughter into “a different person”.

“She was like a crackhead,” Karen, 53, reveals.

“If I took the phone from her, she’d lash out, punch doors. She even punched a hole in the wardrobe.

“It’s been a nightmare. I knew those things were bad, but because of what I have witnessed myself, and what I’ve heard, I believe there should be a ban. These phones are not for children.”

Research shows that 47 per cent of girls and a third of all 13 to 17-year-olds saw harmful suicide, self-harm and eating disorder content over the course of one week in April.

In Australia, from using ten platforms: TikTok, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch and Kick.

The UK is now likely to raise the minimum age to 16, from the average of 13, for the same sites.

However, some have been able to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to access banned platforms.

The technology lets users hide their location and pretend they are based in another country, effectively bypassing local laws.

Now Karen warns that seemingly harmless sites such as Snapchat and can lead to irreparable harm for kids. “What they see on YouTube and other sites is bad, but when you go into TikTok and Snapchat, that opens up a whole new ball game,” she says.

“If you put things on your story, certain people will respond and the kids think they are becoming friends.

“But if you’re vulnerable, they will take advantage of that.”

Karen says her daughter’s phone addiction was so bad that ‘she was like a crackhead’ Credit: Getty Karen was going through family turmoil which she feels made Sophia, who is now 15, vulnerable Credit: Andrew Styczynski

Sophia, now 15, was just eight when her dad gave her an old phone.

But it was three years later that a girl she connected with on introduced her to some “boys” in .

“That’s when she started being secretive and she’d go mad if I came into her room,” says Karen. “She’d go in the bathroom to get changed. Alarm bells started in my head.

“Then one day I heard one of these people telling her to ‘arch her back’.

“I went in like a bull in a china shop and he instantly cut the call off, but she was embarrassed.

“I asked her what else he’d said to her and she wouldn’t tell me.”

Karen was going through family turmoil which she feels made Sophia vulnerable.

She explained: “What I understand now is that phone was her ‘lifeline’, because he was being nice to her. She stayed around the girl’s house and they were obviously talking to the same people, so she thought it was all right.

“About a week after that, she barricaded herself in her bedroom to talk to someone and I don’t know what was said, but I later read messages which were clearly grooming. They were clever. He wouldn’t put down anything that could get him in trouble but, as an adult, you can read between the lines. It was things like, ‘What pretty dress are you going to wear today?’. My daughter was naive.

“At one point, she asked me what ‘body count’ meant, because she had been asked what hers was. I had to ask my older daughter.

“When she told me it was how many people you had had sex with, I flipped. Who asks an 11-year-old that?”

She added of the predators: “Over a few months they went from being nice to wanting stuff from the two little girls, asking them to ‘play with each other’. They were so innocent, they didn’t know what that meant.”

Frantically worried, Karen banned Sophia from devices for six months before relenting and giving her an iPad, believing she had learned her lesson.

The youngster was being ­bullied at school and her mum thought having the tablet might help her feel less isolated. But the move brought fresh trouble to their door.

“She met some local kids on Snapchat and within two days she stopped doing gymnastics, even though she had always loved it, and started running away,

“I took her iPad away, so she nicked my phone out my pocket, barricaded herself in her room and downloaded her Snapchat account.

Karen said: ‘At one point, she asked me what ‘body count’ meant, because she had been asked what hers was. I had to ask my older daughter’ Credit: Andrew Styczynski Karen added: ‘When she told me it was how many people you had had sex with, I flipped. Who asks an 11-year-old that?’ Credit: Andrew Styczynski

“At midnight, a group of kids began knocking on my door and trying to kick it in. To get their attention she’d told them I was ­hitting her, and they were shouting at me to let her out. We were terrified.

“The police ended up circling my house because every time they went away, these boys came back. Then she started running away to be with these kids, who were about 15 or 16. The police who brought her back told me they were linked to county lines.

“One night, I was sitting at my dining room table and I heard a bang. She had jumped out of her bedroom window.

“She said that they gave her ‘Skittles’, but whatever was in them, she was like a lunatic.”

Before Sophia could get dragged in any deeper, the family fled to Essex from their home in Suffolk.

Karen said: “I had to take my other daughter out of school and leave my ­business.”

For six months, there were no devices available to Sophia but, when she was 14, Karen decided it was time for a fresh start and let her have an iPad again.

Before long, Sophia was back on Snapchat and was receiving inappropriate messages from an older boy, who deleted his account when Karen asked his age.

She also messaged another girl, who she invited for a sleepover.

At 3am, the pair tried to sneak out to meet some 16-year-old lads who had turned up in a field behind the house, having taken a taxi from Peterborough 80 miles away. But Karen stopped them.

“The other girl was being coerced by one of the lads and had given them my address,” she says.

“They were drinking and had come down on the promise that these girls were going to give them something, and spent a fortune on a cab. But when they thought my daughter and this other girl were wasting their time, they got shirty and started fighting. The police were called and arrested one boy who had a knife.

Before Sophia could get dragged in any deeper, the family fled to Essex from their home in Suffolk Credit: Andrew Styczynski

“God knows what would have ­happened otherwise.”

Karen says she repeatedly asked for help from social services but claimed they did nothing. She also paid £1,000 for private therapy for her daughter, but it did not help.

The concerned mum revealed she even contacted Snapchat on numerous occasions to flag the safeguarding issues around her daughter, but says they were “not interested.”

Snapchat did not comment on the allegations.

While Sophia is calmer now and in a healthy relationship with a boy a year older, she has been removed from mainstream school.

But the whole family has been traumatised by the events of the past four years and Karen says she and her other daughter have had to become “watchers” over Sophia’s every move.

“Things have calmed down, but Sophia still has to be monitored very closely when it comes to social media because it sucks her in,” she says.

“It’s like living with a drug addict. She’ll be 16 this year, I’m dreading it.

“I have to watch her like a hawk. She has also lost her cognitive ­memory and I blame technology.

“I support the under-16 ban to the hilt, but parents need to be on board because some are using these tools as babysitters to keep kids quiet.

“If I wasn’t as on it as I am, God knows what would have ­happened to Sophia.”