Fact check: What are the most common types of online harassment reported to UK authorities in 2024?

1. Why cyberstalking emerges as a top complaint — numbers and trends that matter

Police and academic sources highlight cyberstalking as a rapidly growing form of harassment, with University College London finding it increasing faster than traditional stalking and disproportionately affecting young people, women, and LGBT+ individuals; this frames cyberstalking as a leading category of reports to authorities in the period around 2024 ^[1]. A BBC investigation further underscores the phenomenon among minors, noting children as young as 10 and 11 being reported for suspected cyberstalking offences to English police forces, indicating both rising incidence and earlier ages of involvement. These studies together point to cyberstalking’s volume and persistence—with longer durations reported for many victims—which helps explain why it features prominently in law‑enforcement caseloads and policy responses ^{[4] [5] [1]}.

2. Intimate image abuse and cyberflashing: newly criminalised and frequently reported

The Online Safety Act 2023 explicitly targets intimate image‑based harms—revenge porn and cyberflashing—and created new offences to facilitate prosecution, signaling that authorities expect and are receiving substantial reports of these crimes ^{[2] [6]}. Government announcements and campaign reporting describe cyberflashing as a priority offence, and research cited that roughly one in three girls aged 12–18 have received unwanted explicit images, which aligns with a high reporting profile for these offences and justifies enforcement focus and platform regulation ^[3]. The combination of legislative change and documented victimisation rates makes intimate image abuse a central category of 2024 reports.

3. Victim profiles reveal gender and age patterns shaping complaint types

Multiple analyses converge on women and young people as the primary victims of online harassment reported to UK authorities: Statista data notes 75 percent of cyberstalking victims were women and long durations of victimisation for many, while campaign reports estimate 1.5 million young women have faced harassment as enforcement lags ^{[5] [7]}. UCL research further finds disproportionate impact on lesbian, gay, and bisexual communities, indicating that reported case types reflect underlying demographic vulnerabilities rather than random distribution. These patterns explain why authorities see concentrated complaint types—cyberstalking and sexual image offences—because they disproportionately harm identifiable groups more likely to report or be flagged for protection ^{[1] [7]}.

4. Law reform reshapes what is reported and prosecuted

The Online Safety Act 2023 redefined which online behaviours are criminal or regulatorily actionable, introducing offences such as cyberflashing and expanding enforcement tools like victim anonymity for image‑based abuse; this legal shift both responds to and channels reporting behaviour, making certain complaint types more visible to authorities ^{[2] [6]}. The first conviction under the Act for cyberflashing—resulting in a custodial sentence and restraining order—demonstrates that reports are translating into prosecutions, which may encourage further reporting of similar offences while also shaping police recording practices and public perceptions of which behaviours are priorities ^[8].

5. Tension between advocacy claims and formal statistics creates reporting gaps

Campaigners report very high prevalence—1.5 million young women harassed—and stress delayed enforcement, suggesting a mismatch between victim experiences and official action; this can cause underreporting or channel complaints to non‑police bodies ^[7]. Conversely, academic and policing accounts document prosecutions and recorded offences but may lag in capturing the full scale of everyday harassment on platforms. The result is a dual narrative: advocates frame a widespread social problem with urgent need for enforcement, while formal legal records are beginning to reflect it through new offences and selective high‑profile convictions ^{[7] [8]}.

6. Policy responses and platform responsibilities are changing how reports are handled

Government plans to treat cyberflashing as a priority offence and to impose fines on platforms that fail to curb it signal that regulatory pressure will alter reporting flows, pushing more complaints toward criminal justice or regulator channels and increasing tech firms’ compliance obligations ^[3]. The Online Safety Act’s creation of new offences and penalties highlights a deliberate shift from voluntary moderation to statutory duties, which should increase recorded reports of intimate image offences and anti‑trolling measures as platforms change reporting tools and evidence‑preservation practices ^{[2] [6]}.

7. What the evidence omits and why it matters for interpreting 2024 reporting

Available analyses emphasize cyberstalking and image‑based abuse but leave gaps: we lack comprehensive national police statistics in these materials quantifying all complaint types for 2024, and the sources focus on particular demographics and high‑profile policy changes rather than a full distribution of reported offences. This omission matters because other harassment forms—hate speech, doxxing, impersonation—may also contribute to authority caseloads but are less visible in these excerpts. Understanding 2024 reporting requires integrating these targeted studies with comprehensive crime data and platform transparency reports to avoid overstating a single category’s dominance ^{[5] [1] [2]}.