Celebrities are the cause of a sharp rise in the number of children sending sexually explicit text messages, a child protection expert has warned. Dr Zoe Hilton told MPs that schoolchildren are copying the ‘sexting’ trend which is endorsed by adult celebrities. Speaking to the Commons Education Committee, she warned that children may be unaware of the dangerous repercussions of sharing explicit pictures. Hilton, who is the Head of Safeguarding and Child Protection at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command (CEOP), said, ‘children and particularly older children are looking at celebrities and are looking at what the adult population are doing. I think we’ve got to the point with older teenagers where sexting is actually a normative behaviour’, she added. Last year, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children warned that sexting is now common amongst teenagers.