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Sick paedophiles are pretending to be chicken nuggets online to lure young children.

Fake social media accounts set up by sex offenders are being used to entice primary school children and convince them to accept friend requests.

One pervert even pretended to be a road outside a girls’ secondary school to entice the teen student.

The Irish Mirror has reported that once accepted, offenders have tried to persuade a child in primary school to lip sync in her underwear.

Despite being told the dangers of talking to strangers online, social media safety expert and forensic psychologist, Dr Maureen Griffin, said offenders have “come up with new and novel ways of gaining access to children’s information”.

She said: “At primary school level, I have dealt with accounts set up pretending to be chicken nuggets and ice-cream in order to friend children.”

“Another filthy pervert set up a fake social media account and posed as a road outside a girls’ secondary school.

“Over 400 girls at the school accepted the road as a friend. The owner of the account was a known convicted sex offender who made no effort to contact the girls, he didn’t follow them or meet them in real life or wait outside their school.

“He simply collected their photos, pictures from teenage discos, girls’ sleepovers and a range of selfies.”

(Image: Birmingham Mail)

Dr Griffin said that one of the best ways of protecting children online is to make sure you know and trust their followers and friends.

The expert gave the example of the site of musical.ly aimed at children .

She said: “I dealt with a case during the Summer of a girl on musicall.ly, who had 20 followers - she did not know four of them.”

She said: “One of her followers told her that he would get her more likes for her songs if she sang her song again - this time in her underwear.”

Dr Griffin said: “She was at primary school. She saw nothing wrong with dancing around her bedroom singing her favourite song but broadcasting that to people you do not know is where the difficulty lies.”

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However, Dr Griffin said: “I am now being told by students from 3rd and 4th class that they are too old for sites like Moshi Monsters and Club Penguin, that these sites are for babies and these students are telling me that they are now on Facebook and Instagram where that same level of monitoring isn’t in place.”

Dr Griffin said that she believes that “online, children are subjecting themselves to mental health stresses they would never subject themselves to in real life”.

The expert said that on a daily basis, children and teens are looking for approval and validation seeking ‘likes’ and it is worrying when it is left unchecked.

Dr Griffin said that sites such as Facebook have addressed the issue of fake accounts “by requiring businesses/organisations/causes etc. to set up pages instead of accounts. This way they cannot access all of our data”.

She said: “Offenders setting up fake accounts is only one aspect of online risk that our children face. I believe it is crucial that children know and trust their online friends and followers, as quite a lot of the online challenges our children face come from someone in their friends/followers network, be it online bullying, their account being hacked or images being taken and re-purposed.”