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.

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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.

 

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Midlands parents asked 'are your kids safe' as police warn of new risk online Source: Birmingham Live

 

 

Birmingham Live News reports that Police have issued a warning to parents over the online dangers facing their children every day, from cyber bullying to sexual exploitation.

And here in 2026, AI is only worsening the issues by introducing "content based on their searches," West Mercia Police said.

We are aware of the power of AI and that it can be used in very productive ways by professionals and children but it also has the power to carry out searches that would take hours if you were to undertake them on your own. As its learning algorithms improve this will become and even more  powerful tool.

The police report  advises that parents need to ensure that Safety settings are in place, including parental controls on all devices, browsers, and Apps to "filter out inappropriate material," the force advised.  It also advises that "Set strong privacy settings to make sure personal information is only visible to trusted individuals i.e. “Friends only”. The police also recommends introducing your child to smartphones and other devices gradually in a monitored way before giving them fuller access.

Our Cybertrust Internet Monitoring Project aims to support parents to put such controls in place and to make best use of them within the family.  

  

 

Children being 'failed by tech companies' amid rise in online sex abuse images Source: ITVX

 

Efforts to protect children from some of the worst aspects of online abuse and dangerous online content has made some progress through legislation passed by the UK government last year.  

Even so, reports continue to appear about the continued rise on child sex abuse image crimes logged by police forces in the UK. Such reports have risen by nearly 10% in the past year, the children's charity NSPCC has said.

The NSPCC said that of the 10,811 crimes where police forces recorded which social media platforms perpetrators used in relation to child sex abuse image crimes, 43%, or a total of 4,615, took place on Snapchat.

Meanwhile, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp accounted for almost a quarter of all offences (24%), the charity said. 

In other reports is is clear that the restrictions on access to video pornography, through such approaches as age verification  are still not totally effective. Many of the lesser known porography sites have not implimented age verification and these are not being blocked by  service providers.

Read the full story here.