One in three young people have seen animal cruelty online

By developing young people's knowledge about the sentience of animals, we can inspire the next generation of animal lovers, creating a future that's kinder to animals.

In the past decade, we have seen a large-scale shift towards animal cruelty being shared on social media, with Snapchat increasing fivefold in the past two years as a leading platform for posting footage of animal cruelty.

In fact, research has shown that one in every three 10 to 15-year-olds has seen animal cruelty on social media at one point.

Reports included images of gratuitous violence such as animals being hit against walls, animals deliberately being run over, drugs being given to gerbils, alcohol being given to dogs, and animals being put into washing machines and microwaves.

Our mission to inspire kindness through education

Our research also found that there were many crossover characteristics between young people involved in animal abuse and those in other types of violence. We believe that encouraging empathy and compassion for living beings is important for a young person's personal development.

We also feel that an education system that teaches kindness would result in an improvement to many of the current welfare issues that impact the lives of animals today (such as neglect, litter and farming practices). We strongly believe that empathy and compassion are important life skills that will benefit society as a whole.