FOUR out of five children feel social media companies are not doing enough to protect them from pornography, self-harm, bullying, and hatred on their sites, NSPCC and O2 research has found.

Out of the 1,696 children and young people surveyed across the UK, 1,380 said social media sites needed to do more to protect them from inappropriate or harmful content.

The latest Net Aware guide is the UK’s only parents’ guide to 39 of the most popular social media sites, apps, and games used by young people, produced by the NSPCC in partnership with O2.

It follows figures from Childline for Wales which showed that in 2015/16 the free helpline carried out 493 counselling sessions with children from Wales because of bullying, which includes online bullying.

In the same year, 85 counselling sessions about online sexual abuse – including sexting, being made to perform sex acts on webcam and viewing distressing sexually explicit content – were carried out with children in Wales.When polled for the new Net Aware guide children rated ASKfm, Omegle, IMVU, and Facebook as some of the most risky sites.

The NSPCC consulted 1,696 children and young people and 674 parents and guardians.

Despite the risks that many children reported, 87 per cent of young people asked said they knew how to keep themselves safe online.

The NSPCC and O2 encouraged parents to visit Net Aware to safety issues and help their child protect themselves online.