Keeping youngsters safe online is one of the biggest child protection issues of the modern world, campaigners warned.

Children should be given lessons in how to use the internet safely from as young as five or six, amid concerns that rising numbers of youngsters are being exposed to online pornography, cyberbullying and forced into sending indecent images to others.

Young people are now experiencing new forms of abuse “on a scale never before seen”, according to the NSPCC. The charity said that its latest research had found that abuse through mobile phones and the internet is one of the major issues facing young people today.