Nearly half of all Queenslanders dealt with by the criminal justice system for child exploitation material offences in the past decade are children, leading experts to call for better awareness of "sexting" laws.

Key points: Between 2006 and 2016, 1,470 children aged 10 to 16 years old were dealt with for child exploitation material offences

Between 2006 and 2016, 1,470 children aged 10 to 16 years old were dealt with for child exploitation material offences Most offences related to underage sexting

Most offences related to underage sexting Cyber safety consultant says parents and educators struggle to stop image-based abuse

A new Queensland Sentencing Advisory Council (QSAC) study revealed 3,035 people were dealt with between 2006 and 2016 for such offences, including possessing child pornography, distributing the material or making the content.

Of those, 1,470 were aged between 10 and 16 and their offences mostly related to underage sexting — filming or distributing explicit material of people under 17.

Cyber safety consultant Leonie Smith said the QSAC figures were not surprising, and parents and educators were struggling stop image-based abuse.

"The awareness of what's going on and how prevalent this image sharing is has caught a lot of people by surprise," she said.

"Trying to actually educate parents is always very difficult because they don't show up or they don't want to know or they think they're OK.

"You can see that there are kids getting caught up in this in primary school and the parents are absolutely horrified because they didn't think they had to address any of those issues until their child was a teenager."

Ms Smith said some popular messaging apps required no form of identification verification, making them a haven for illegal image sharing.

In 93 per cent of cases, police issued a formal caution to minors instead of forcing the children through the court system.

The figures also showed a close gender split among young people, with females making up 45 per cent of the offenders.

However, when it came to more serious offences committed by adults, 98.5 per cent were male.

Many unaware underage sexting is an offence

QSAC member Helen Watkins said police had improved their approach to educating young people, but many remained unaware that underage sexting was an offence.

It comes a day after RMIT released research revealing one in five Australians had been the victims of "revenge porn" - with the most common form of abuse occurring when pictures were taken without permission.

Ms Smith also warned parents to monitor who their children were talking to while playing online games, saying predators often hid behind virtual characters.

"Where kids are is where paedophiles hang out, because it's easy pickings," Ms Smith said.