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“I still describe them as the best friend I’ve had.”

Thomas* knows how it sounds, but it’s his honest description of what he initially thought was an online friendship with another teenager who, just as he did, felt lonely and like he didn’t quite fit in at school.

It was only after Thomas had come to trust and rely on this online friend that the interaction shifted to a protracted extortion, with nightly demands for intimate images under threat of exposure. It’s an experience that brought him to the brink of suicide and, seven years later, still prompts a wash of fear when an unexpected notification flashes up on his phone.

Now 21, Thomas had just started secondary school when his family moved to a rural village in the east of England. With no school friends nearby and both parents focused on demanding jobs, his newly acquired phone offered easy connection, and he was soon chatting on Instagram and Snapchat as well as a now defunct friendship site aimed at kids his age.

It was there that Thomas, aged 14, met the perpetrator who groomed him over a number of months, manipulating him into sharing intimate images, then terrorising him into sending more explicit material with the threat of sending the embarrassing photos to his online contacts – a common method of sextortion.

“They said they were my age and we just got on really well. After school we would talk about our days. He was always really supportive.”

But gradually the conversation moved on to sexual territory. His online friend confessed romantic feelings and shared an intimate image with Thomas, who by now was feeling confused about his own sexuality. As the coercion intensified, he was persuaded to reciprocate. “Immediately I felt ashamed and scared about what he might do with it, but I was so isolated I didn’t want to lose the friendship.”

It dawned on Thomas that he wasn’t chatting to another teenager, and when he refused to send further images, the perpetrator threatened to share the initial intimate photo with his Instagram contacts. Despite Thomas blocking him repeatedly, the person kept creating new accounts to harass him.

“Things got really awful,” Thomas says, as the sextortion demands progressed to video calls. “I hated being in my bedroom because it wasn’t a safe space any more. I hated pretending to my parents that everything was fine. I started to think there might not be a future.”

A turning point came when Thomas contacted Childline. He remembers weeping as he messaged a counsellor on the website. “It felt like a massive wave of relief, just to be talking to someone about it.” Most significantly, the adviser helped Thomas to recognise the targeted manipulation he was subjected to: “I had no idea what grooming was until I spoke to them.”

Despite Childline’s assurances of confidentiality, he still worried his parents could find out, and didn’t want to report the sextortion to the police in case it fed back to his family. But those anonymous conversations broke the cycle of shame and silence and slowly enabled Thomas to disentangle himself from his abuser.

“There’s not been one day over the past nine years where it’s not been in my head,” he says. Dating is a challenge. “It took away the opportunity to learn my sexuality in a natural way.” He has only been able to tell his family what happened in recent years.

His advice to any other young person who finds themselves blackmailed over intimate images is simple enough: “Just talk, and keep talking, whether it’s to Childline or another adult you can trust.” He’s seen so many stories of lads like him “who don’t make it” – the Guardian has reported on a number of teenage suicides in the UK and elsewhere related to sextortion. “I’d say: remember, there is a future. Just because you’re in a bad situation now, it doesn’t mean there’s no way out.”

A social media ban for under-16s “isn’t a solution”, he says. “Better education is the way forward, otherwise they’re going push them into other, even less regulated spaces.” You don’t stop your kids going to the park, he argues, you teach them how to cross the road safely to get there.

As for parents: he advises them to talk openly to their children about relationships and sexuality, so nothing is too difficult to broach. “Whether you’re for or against certain things, put that aside, but just have the conversations, learn about your child.

“Simply tell your child that whatever the problem is, however busy you are, there is always, always space to talk, no matter what.”

* Thomas is a pseudonym

• In the UK, the youth suicide charity Papyrus can be contacted on 0800 068 4141 or email pat@papyrus-uk.org, and in the UK and Ireland Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org