Oklahoma's Own In Focus: How 'Take It Down' is protecting teens from exploitation and blackmail

Teenagers are often devastated when they send a sexually explicit picture to someone and that picture ends up being shared. They feel helpless and like it’s going to ruin their whole lives. 

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children created ‘Take It Down,’ which can help remove those images for free, so kids don’t have to live with their mistakes forever. We asked Jennifer Newman, the Executive Director of the Exploited Children Division, to explain how it works. 

What is Take It Down?

Take It Down is a free service that can help people remove or stop the online sharing of nude, partially nude, or sexually explicit images of videos taken of teenagers under the age of 18. 

Why did the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children create this tool?

The non-profit has seen an increase in sexually explicit photos of minors being shared online. 

"The reality is kids are just exchanging imagery online,” Newman said. “It's not always that the image itself was non-consensual. The child may have originally meant to send the picture, maybe she's flirting with her boyfriend, (but) what she doesn't expect is him putting it online. It's the loss of control of that imagery and just not knowing who has seen it, where it is online is what really paralyzes these kids."

These photos are not only being shared with friends, but Newman is also seeing an increase in kids mistakenly sharing these pictures with predators who then demand either money or even more explicit images.

"Once that child had been blackmailed or catfished into sending that first intimate image, really using it as leverage and weaponizing it and saying if you don't give me $500 if you don't send me a Venmo, a Zelle, a Cash App, or if you don't go down to the Safeway or CVS and get an iTunes card or Stream card, I am going to share this with your entire network,” Newman said.

How Does Take It Down Work?

The website allows teenagers to fill out an anonymous report to limit the spread of sexually explicit material. 

No identifying information is taken while filling out the report. The images and videos don't leave your phone and will not be uploaded to the site. Instead, they have a way to grab the data from the image, which is what they call a “hash value.”

They send that data to places like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram to make sure these images and videos don't pop up in the future. 

"The abuse is in the past, the picture has been taken,” Newman said. “That is a moment in time that is over, what is not over is the internet and just again the distribution of these images and that unknowing presence of it. Who has seen it, where is it, to your point, is it going to impact me getting into college, is it going to impact me getting a job. We try to offer the services that we can such as ‘Take it Down,’ but really it's also about helping these survivors move forward with the fact that this is going to be unknown.”

What Can Adults Do?

Newman encourages parents to have uncomfortable conversations with their kids about what they're doing and who they're talking to online.

"If they think they are going to get in trouble, they are not going to come to you and that's our worst-case scenario,” Newman said. “Our worst-case scenario is these kids dealing with something online and feel like they have no one to talk to and no one to get help from."

Since Take it Down started in 2022, teens have submitted more than 227,000 images

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children also provides a Cyber Tipline where people can report all types of online child sexual abuse.

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