One click too many? 75% of parents fear their kids aren't making safe choices online:Source: Information Commissioners

 

The UK's Information Commissioners office have launched a campaign they call 'Switched on to privacy campaign' aimed at  helping parents of kids aged four to 11 start simple conversations about protecting their personal information online.  

Backed by stakeholders, the campaign urges parents to treat online privacy as an essential life skill - as natural as teaching a child to cross the road.  

The project follows a period of research and reflection which concluded that 
 

•  24% have shared their real name or address online, with eight and nine-year-olds most at risk.   
• 22% have shared personal information such as health details with AI tools
• 35% of parents believe their child would share personal information in exchange for game tokens or rewards. 
   

Getting children to keep their identity secure, not share passwords or devices with friends and to use passwords that are difficult to guess (pets names etc) can be difficult. They trust those that they regard as friends almost without question and childhood friendships can often be short lived.

Read the full report here. 

 

Children in UK report online sextortion attempts in record numbers Source: The Guardian

 

Children are reporting online sextortion attempts in record numbers in the UK, as campaigners urge tech companies to do more to stamp out the crime.

The Report Remove service, which allows children to flag intimate images or videos of themselves that have appeared, or could appear, online, said it received 394 reports from under-18s last year of blackmail attempts after sending sexual images to predators. The figure is 34% higher than in 2024.

The report goes on to describe the nature of sextorsion and  how increasing numbers of children are being targetted. The report also states that 98% of targetted young people are boys which might surprise some parents as girls are felt to be more vulerable to some form of online abuse.

Read the full story here.

 

Screen time for under-fives should be limited to one hour a day, parents told Source: BBC News

 

Children under the age of five should be limited to one hour of screen time a day, while under-twos should not be watching screens alone, new government guidance says.

This is the  headline on the BBC Family news section published on 26th March 2026.

It advises parents to steer clear of fast-paced videos and use screens together where possible. The guidance also suggests "screen swaps" - taking screens away to read stories together or playing simple games at mealtimes.

We all know how 'useful' it may be to have a screen handy to occupy a young child when we have other things to do but there are clearly downsides to unlimited screen time. The use of digital entertainment is a wholly passive process. Kids colouring, drawing, making things playing games with each other and many other activities that create the rounded personality are missing if the diet is limited to screen time of gaming.

Parents need to create a digital plan for their families. We know that young children live in a hi-tech world and they need to become familiar with it. This doesnt mean total uncontolled access to devices. There are screen time controls for all devices which remove the need to direct intervetion but create a timetable of access which children soon become familier with. Make the restrictions the norm and it will become part of their daily activities.

Read the ful story here. 

Meta and YouTube designed addictive products that harmed young people, jury finds Source: The Guardian

 

 

A significant outcome of the US trial of Meta brought by an unnamed plaintiff using the nom de plume of KGM. KGM's claim was that she had became addicted to YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine, which she said had deleterious effects on her wellbeing. By age 10, she said, she had become depressed and was engaging in self-harm as a result. Her social media use allegedly caused her to have strained relationships with her family and in school. When she was 13, KGM’s therapist diagnosed her with body dysmorphic disorder and social phobia, which KGM attributes to her use of Instagram and YouTube.

Meta and YouTube have been found liable for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked the young user and led to her being harmed, a jury ruled on Wednesday. Jurors found the tech companies to be both negligent and having failed to provide adequate warnings about the potential dangers of their products.

The jury awarded the plaintiff in the case compensatory damages of $3m, with Meta to pay 70% and YouTube the remainder. Deliberations over punitive damages, also awarded, will begin later on Wednesday.

 Read the full story here. 

Six families sue TikTok after their kids die trying viral ‘choking challenge’ Source: The Independant

  

 

 

This story is incredibly sad. Young people given a challenge that to some might sound the sort of thing any kid might try. 'Choke yourself for as long as you can'. Six families have lost their children in this way as they blacked out and never recovered.
 
Six families have sued TikTok who hosted the 'Blackout Challenge on their platform. One family from the USA and five others from the UK are leading the legal action. The mother of one UK teenager has led a campaign to force social media platforms to release data of a child's social media activity in the event of a child’s death but the access to that data has been denied by the companies citing privacy laws that prevent them releasing the information. They also have stated that the data is deleted after a short period and is no longer available to clarify just what the children we actually watching. 
 
Ellen Roome has led the campaign in the UK for 'Joules Law' , named after he son, which would require social media companies to retain data for set period which can be accessed by parents and law enforcement.
 
This is one more reason why monitoring what your child is accessing with their agreement is so important. Adults can make judgements about such challenges which might elude young people and by building a digital trust relationship through monitoring could have saved some of these families from such awful consequences.

 

Read the full story here