Internet safety groups have called attention on what they said was emerging and disturbing trend on popular social networking sites, in which teenage Australians post their racy images for the world to see.

Reports called the new phenomenon as the 'Sneaky Hat' trend, which according to cyber safety advocate Susan Mclean appears to have picked up on major Australian locations, including Brisbane and Victoria.

Most of the persons engage in the disturbing online practice, Mclean said, are youngsters still enrolled in secondary institutions, with some involving younger college students, all of whom seem fascinated by the fleeting liberty offered by the now powerful social media sites.

According to The Herald Sun, male and female teens believed to be from a high school located in Queensland have posted their near naked pictures on Facebook, with only a hat covering their private parts, thus the Sneaky Hat moniker.

The fad also emboldened teenagers from Brisbane to follow suit, Mclean said, with a group of teens in Colac Secondary College reportedly going a bit further by filming a sex act involving youngsters and posting the video online.

Police officers have started looking into the trend, the Herald Sun said, but apart from reports provided by concerned groups, they have yet to pinpoint any documented incidents on the matter.

What is clear, Mclean said, is the rising cases of child pornography and many of these cases, she added, involved young college students.

"Children under the age of 18 all over Australia are routinely being charged with child pornography offences," Mclean told the Herald Sun.

These acts, she stressed, not only encourage paedophile activities but also spawn scenarios where the future lives of participating teenagers would be impacted that in the future could destroy their prospective careers.

"What people don't understand is that a large proportion of pictures that are on Facebook actually get cached into Google Images," Mclean explained.

Much of these images stay online and can be accessed by anyone at any given time, a reality that Mclean pointed out is virtually irreversible.