The Protection of Children Act, 1978 (PCA) is widely considered the definitive piece of legislation with regards to youth sexual image sharing. It states that it is an offence to make, possess or distribute indecent images of anyone under 18 and was designed to respond to cases where adults sexually abused children and filmed or photographed that abuse. As youth sexual image sharing has become increasingly normalised, many have called for the legislation to be changed or updated to prevent the over-criminalisation of young people. Another issue with the PCA is its influence on education policy, promoting the prevention / prohibition approach. I will explore how this prohibition message does not in fact prevent young people being victimised by adults but instead serves to reinforce the threats and control tactics used by groomers who coerce young people to take and share sexual images, therefore the PCA is no longer compatible with children’s rights. I will discuss how the Online Safety Act’s (2023) development of non-consensual image sharing offences may offer an alternative approach. This approach could be used to foreground young people’s consent, whilst also providing opportunities to share details of support services and how to remove images that have been shared to social media and pornography sites (such as takeitdown.ncmec.org), which a straightforward prevention message cannot easily achieve. I will conclude by showing how this approach is more compatible with children’s rights and can challenge rather than reinforce the tactics used by groomers.