Boko Haram is using more children as suicide bombers, with explosives hidden under their clothes or in baskets, according to a Unicef report.
The document, Beyond Chibok, claims 44 children were used in attacks last year, compared with four in 2014, and three-quarters of them have been girls.
The youngest is believed to have been eight years old.
Unicef says the bombings mainly happen in Nigeria and Cameroon, with schools and markets the main targets.
Its spokesman, Laurent Duvillier, said: "It's basically turning the children against their own communities by strapping bombs around their bodies.
"Some young children probably do not know they are carrying explosives, which are often detonated remotely."
It's not clear how the terrorists manipulate children to carry out such attacks, but the UN's child agency claims girls are often used because they do not attract as much suspicion, and boys are forced to attack their own families to demonstrate their loyalty.
Amnesty International estimates that the Islamist group has kidnapped about 2,000 women and girls over the last two years to use as cooks, sex slaves, fighters and suicide bombers.
Although many are being rescued when the Nigerian military reclaims territory from Boko Haram, they often face stigma and rejection.
Seventeen-year-old Khadija and her baby, born of rape, now live in a camp for displaced people in Nigeria.
She said: "Some women would beat me. They said: 'You are a Boko Haram wife, don't come near us'."
Boko Haram has killed more than 15,000 people during its six-year insurgency campaign in northeastern Nigeria, according to the US military.
Unicef says children are the main victims, making up the majority of the 2.3 million people forced from their homes in Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger since mid-2013.
Boko Haram has also carried out mass abductions and it was two years ago this week that hundreds of schoolgirls in Chibok were kidnapped, many of whom were forced to convert to Islam and marry their captors.
The action sparked the global campaign Bring Back Our Girls.
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