The number of children accessing the Childline text service increased by over 350 per cent in the past year.
Visits to its website rose by 141 per cent and the number of calls to the Childline phone service jumped by over a quarter, new figures from the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children show.
The Childline telephone service received about 17,000 calls every week, an increase of 28 per cent on 2008, when 13,248 calls were received on average per week.