County lines adverts on Instagram and Snapchat designed to groom children and young people now resemble professional job adverts, a parliamentary committee heard on Tuesday. Experts from charities gave evidence to Tuesday’s cross-party education committee about the constantly evolving scene, with traffickers frequently changing their methods of ensnaring children and young people. Johnny Bolderson, manager at the organisation Catch 22, which helps to support and rescue children and young people groomed into county lines exploitation, told the committee that children as young as seven were now getting involved in drug running. He said: “Social media platforms need to take more responsibility. Adverts on Instagram and Snapchat for young people to get involved in county lines look professionally done – ‘recruitment opportunities available’. That has been growing in the last six months. Since Covid, families are struggling, and with really professional advertising young people think they are going to help out their families.” The committee heard that London, West Midlands, Manchester and Merseyside were four of the main areas for county lines activity, and that thousands of children and young people were getting pulled in every year. Rebecca Griffiths, head of the National Counter-Trafficking Service at Barnardo’s, said that the charity had received 300 referrals from various parts of England and Wales in the past three months. “Vulnerability is changing all the time. We are seeing much younger children and the modus operandi of traffickers is changing. They are targeting more affluent children. Every child can be exploited criminally,” she said. Some girls have been forced to take on “debts” for their boyfriends they are expected to repay. Children can be given free vapes along with bicycles, sweets, magazines or even free sandwiches to entice them to get involved with county lines groomers. Iryna Pona, policy and impact manager at the Children’s Society, said: “Vaping is a way of grooming.” According to Bolderson, children can also be reeled in through online gaming platforms where groomers befriend them in internet gaming chatrooms, give them coins to enable them to play more games. The children then owe a debt and find themselves in ‘debt bondage’ to the groomers. He said children could be groomed without leaving their bedrooms. Susannah Drury, director of policy and development at the charity Missing People, told the committee that it was partly a public health issue, with a cross-government approach required and children benefiting from early intervention. Of the county lines traffickers’ approach, she said: “This is a business model that’s very fluid, very reactive, very agile.” The National Crime Agency has called county lines exploitation “the most frequently identified form of coerced criminality, with children representing the vast majority of victims”. The Home Office’s 2020 Drugs Review by Dame Carol Black found strong associations between young people being drawn into county lines and increases in child poverty, the numbers of children in care and school exclusions.