Latest posts

  • Charities decry UK plan to use AI to assess age of young asylum seekers

    Coalition of more than 100 organisations says move could lead to more children ending up in adult detention facilities A coalition of more than a hundred refugee children’s organisations has said controversial plans to use AI to assess the age of young asylum seekers could lead to more children wrongly ending up in adult prisons…

    Read more

  • Mother of boy who may have died in TikTok challenge urges No 10 to ban social media

    Ellen Roome, whose son, Jools Sweeney, was 14 when he died, wants a ban put in place for under-16s The mother of a teenager who believes he died in a TikTok challenge gone wrong has said Downing Street has been too slow to move towards a social media ban for under-16s, and accused the government…

    Read more

  • Online child safety campaigners call for US inquiry into Roblox

    Groups claim game platform’s design and business model conflict with children’s developmental needs Online child safety campaigners including Jonathan Haidt, the bestselling writer on the mental health impacts of social media, have called on the Trump administration to investigate Roblox, the booming gaming and chat platform used by 150 million people daily, including a large…

    Read more

  • Texas accuses Netflix of spying on children in new lawsuit

    Ken Paxton accuses streamer of designing addictive platform and falsely representing data collection practices Texas sued Netflix on Monday, accusing the streaming company of spying on children and designing its platform to be addictive. Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said Netflix has for years falsely represented to consumers that it did not collect or…

    Read more

  • UK schools should remove pupils’ online photos as AI blackmail threat grows, say experts

    Criminals are manipulating pictures found on school websites and social media to create sexually explicit images UK schools should remove pictures of pupils’ faces from their websites and social media accounts because blackmailers are using them to create sexually explicit images, experts have said. Child safety experts and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) warn…

    Read more

  • ‘Superhighways for child sexual abuse’: California lawmakers seek tougher rules for big tech

    Online exploitation ‘inflicting profound trauma on a staggering number of children’, Democrats say Frustrated with what they describe as a lack of accountability from social media companies, two California state lawmakers have introduced a bill that would clear a legal pathway for them to face lawsuits in the state for failing to detect or remove…

    Read more

  • Criminal gangs profiting as child sexual abuse websites double, experts say

    Analyst who worked on Internet Watch Foundation report says content exists ‘across all social media platforms’ and is ‘very easy’ to find The number of commercial child sexual abuse websites has doubled in a year as experts say that criminal gangs are making “huge profits” from online sexual exploitation. According to data collected by the…

    Read more

  • ‘An element of exploitation’: the world of TikTok child skincare influencers

    Experts say regulation of child influencers sits in a legal grey area as children promote products on social media #ToddlerSkincare: the ‘dark and exploitative’ world of children’s beauty videos on TikTok In a TikTok video a young girl – her age anywhere between 10 and 15 – sits unboxing package after package of products she…

    Read more

  • UK watchdog to investigate Telegram over alleged child sexual abuse material

    Inquiry launched after Ofcom received evidence that suggested illegal content was being shared on messaging platform Ofcom has launched an investigation into whether the Telegram messaging platform is failing to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) under the UK’s Online Safety Act. The communications regulator carried out an assessment and decided to…

    Read more

  • Child victims of online sexual abuse in UK inadequately protected, review finds

    Lack of funding leaving police forces failing to keep pace with two-thirds annual increase in referrals, says report Child victims of online sexual abuse are being inadequately protected from further harm because police forces are struggling to cope with an increase in this crime, his majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary has warned. Michelle Skeer said:…

    Read more