Almost half a million girls have uploaded videos onto YouTube, inviting internet trolls to validate their appearances.

Search for "Am I pretty or ugly?" on YouTube and you'll get 572,000 results.

That's almost half a million girls between the ages of 9 and 14 posting videos online asking strangers to assess whether they're pretty or ugly.

And if the idea of young women fretting over the way they look isn't unsettling enough, just look at the comments they attract.

Some of them are horrifically nasty.