Story:A new youth advisory board to help shape online safety Source: Office of the Childrens Commissioner

 Children aged between 13 and 18 are being invited to become members of an advisory board set up jointly between the Childrens commissioner's office and OFCOM to share their experiences of life online and to advise Government on how their needs and opinions need to be taken into account when formulating policy.

The document contains a QR code which directs young people to an application form with a deadline of 26th October 2025 - only 5 days from today.

For the full information please click here. 

 

 

Story:‘Gruesome videos’: social media pushes distressing news to children, experts say Source: The Guardian

 

This Guardian report draws on research undertaken by the UK's internet safety organisation, Internet Matters.

The report states that 'more than half of children who get news from social media are left worried and upset after seeing content that involves war, violence and death, according to new research that found social media companies are “pushing” distressing news to children who are not seeking it.'

The report goes on to describe some of the finding of the research and examples of information promoted to children online. 

It is concerning that the research found that two thirds of children using social media get their news items from social media and 40 per cent of those only get news from items being shared by others.

This is another good reason to monitor your child's activities.

Read the full article here.

[Note: If prompted with a signup page for the news service try re- clicking the link or refreshing the page]

Story:Discord admits compromise of 70,000 Online Safety Act proof-of-age IDs Source: Computing

 

 

 Many children and teenagers use the online community Discord.despite its official age rating of 13 and older. It is very popular among young people for gaming, connecting with friends who share similar interests, and joining communities around hobbies. 

Discord srvers were hacked in early October and the company confirmed that the hack compromised more than 70,000 proof-of-age IDs, required by users to prove their age under the Online Safety Act. That’s according to the company itself, refuting claims that more than two million users have been affected.

Whether younger children were within that data is currently unknown but it is likely. Some reports put the figure much higher. 

Read the ful story here.

 

 

Story:UK’s Online Safety regime unable to tackle the spread of misinformation and cannot keep users safe online, MPs warn Source: UK Parliamentary Committee

 

 

"The Online Safety Act (OSA) cannot keep the UK public safe as it was not designed to tackle misinformation, MPs say today, in a wide-ranging report that urges the government to go further to regulate social media companies and disincentivise the viral spread of false content."

The above statement should be of concern to everyone. We all know that there is a lot of hope based on the Internet Safety Act to help ensure children do not become targets online or get drawn into illegal acts. Concerns about misinformation has been around for many years but in the recent past the volume of the sources of minisformation have grown out of all proporation. 

We know that some misinformation is used to attract children to join in conversations with people online and in some cases those conversations turn out to poisenous. Political misinformation is causing havoc in a number of countries and its potential impact on the outcomes of elections and even the survival of democracy.

Read the full story here. A link to the full Committee Report is on the same page.

 

 

Story:Cyber Crisis: Surge in attacks leaves UK public feeling unsafe online Source: The Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET)

 

Therehas been an increacing number of stories in the press about Cyber Crime. Jaguar Landrover, Bank outages, Heathrow hacks and M&S have all been in the press. Add to this the inmcreasing number of schools and even social media platforms that have been attacked and you can well imaging the concern is growing in the general population.

The article reports that, over a third of UK adults don’t know what to do after a cyber hack with fear gripping over half and most adults in the UK feel that their data is not safe (three in four). Whilst this refers to adults and not children there are a number of ways this will almost cenrtainly have an impact on children. If parents feel as they do they will almost certainly be concerned about other family members. Will their reaction be to ban mobile phones until they regard the children to be old enough. Could they lock down devices so tightly that the wealth of valuable material that is available online will put some at a disadvantage. 

Our approach is to monitor the child's online activity , not in the sense of Big Brother, but as a partner travelling along, what used to be called the super highway, together. 

Read the full story here. 

 

Story:TikTok recommends porn to children, says report Source: BBC News

 

The BBC reports that an investgation by a human right's campaign group discovered that TikTok's algorithm has been recommending pornography and other inapproriate content to children's accounts. the recommendations seem to ignore the safety settings that Tik Tok claim protects children on their platform.

Like many plaforms Tik Tok has a age limite of 13 which should mean that children under 13 do not access the platform but in fact there are probably millions of younger children across the world that access the platform.

Checking childs phone regularly or implimnetation of monitoring tools should ensure that parents can deal with such issues as they arise and discuss the issues that arise with their children.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Story:Instagram still poses risk to children despite new safety tools, says Meta whistleblower Source: The Guardian

 

Meta rejects review findings, which claim two-thirds of new features designed to protect young people are ‘woefully ineffective’.

The article refers to research results that claim two-thirds (64%) of new safety tools on Instagram were found to be ineffective. The review if the changed made to the plaform were made following a comprehensive review led by Arturo Béjar, a former senior engineer at Meta who testified against the company before US Congress, New York University and Northeastern University academics, the UK’s Molly Rose Foundation and other groups.

The research stated that; 

“Kids, including many under 13, are not safe on Instagram. This is not about bad content on the internet, it’s about careless product design. Meta’s conscious product design and implementation choices are selecting, promoting, and bringing inappropriate content, contact and compulsive use to children every day.”

Parents should ensure that they know what their children are using Instgagram and other Meta services for and ensure that they are not being placed at risk.

 The full story can be found here.

 

Story:Gloucester school children added to 'inappropriate' WhatsApp chat Source: BBC News

 

Hundreds of schoolchildren from three Gloucester Schools were added to a group chat on WhatsApp containing what has been described as "inappropriate and illegal content".

The BBC has seen emails sent to two of the schools warning parents that "a number" of 11 and 12 year-olds in year seven have been invited in to the group called 'World Record Breakers'.

One states that "almost 300 secondary aged children from local schools" are in the group, which might also include "other unknown individuals".

This should trigger ever parent and carer to take immediate action to discuss the situation with their children and ask them to share their phone or tablet to see if they are in the group and to explain the risks they face. It will be important to handle this situation in a supportive way and encourage their children to share their lives online.

The Trust's moniotring project is intended to promote online monitoing of a child's device to provide an early alert when such issues arise so that they can be dealt without delay. 

 

 

Story:'KYS' Is The Concerning Acronym Every Parent Should Know About Source: Huffington Post UK

 

 

This report describes an acronym that looks like slang but should concern any parent that sees it in communications between their child and someone else.

If you see the acronym KYS – or kys, as it’s usually written online, you might think it means 'keep your smile'. This is what some Tik-Tok users suggest it means. There is much more sinister meaning behind those three letters that parents should be aware of because it could highlight cyberbullying.

The acronym actually conveys the message "Kill Your Self" and once seen further investigation is required.  

This sort of message and the communications that accompany its use would be detected with effective monitoring of a child's device.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Story:Children as young as 11 tempted to try betting after being ‘flooded’ by celebrity endorsement Source: The Guardian

 

The Guadian reports on research undertaken by the charity GambleAware which states that young people in UK aged 11-17 said seeing a celebrity gambling or advertising it made them want to emulate them.

Whilst the current focus has been on pornography, radicalisation and crime there are other aspects of online life that children need to be aware of and guided on appropriate behaviour online. We all know that children want to explore and experience lots of things that look exciting or different or even a bit risky and monitoring can pick these behaviours up to allow gentle intervention to discuss the risks that they might face in the future if not immediately.

The newspaper reports that "the UK’s leading gambling charity, GambleAware, which commissioned the reports, urged regulators and policymakers to address social media accounts and influencers producing betting content on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Twitch in light of the findings.

In one survey of 2,100 children aged 11-17, a quarter said seeing a celebrity gambling, or advertising it, had made them want to follow suit, rising to more than a third (36%) among boys aged 16-17."

 See the full story here.  

 

 

Story:Meta ads faces backlash over use of schoolgirls images as bait to target man Source: The News (International)

 

 

 

Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads) advertising faces backlash over use of schoolgirls images as bait to target men. 

the organisation sparked outrage after using images of underage schoolgirls mostly teens in advertisements for its Threads platform that were targeted specifically at a 37-year-old man, with parents condemning the practice as disgusting and exploitative.

Whilst this is not illegal as such it does set the tone for the way META thinks about its business model and seems prepared to use any tactic to further increase its user base. This linked with other stories in the press such as one of the stories in this blog entitled "Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York" demonstrate a corporate mindset that does not see how innapropriate such strategies are in a world that is growingly concerned about keeping children safe online.

See the full story here. 

 

 

 

Story:Shocking figures reveal 400 children every week are groomed online in UK Source: The Mirror

 

Major tech companies including social media giants Snapchat and Facebook reported more than 9,600 cases of adults grooming kids in the UK in just six months last year.

The number, described as ‘shocking’ by children’s charity the NSPCC, amounts to around 400 per week. Law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) have become increasingly worried about the growing threat from sextortion and other crimes targeting teenagers.

Grooming can begin online and groomers can often try to get the communications to move onto less well monitored systems or by creating accounts on encrypted forums. Once isolated the children targetted by these people can then be 'managed' to do whatever the groomer intends.

Read the full story here. 

Checking who children communicate online has been a major issue for years but it is reaching epidemic proportions. Hopefully the new Internet Safety Act will increase the vigilance of the tech companies and get them to report these incidents or prevent such communications from taking place.

This said, monitoring at home, by parents and others who know and understand  their children, will always be an important factor in keeping children safe online.

 

Report: 10 to 17 year olds represent around half of reported sexual abuse crimes in 2024

 

The National Crime Agency's 'National Strategic Assessment 2025 - Child Sexual Abuse' has a keen focus on the implications of AI on the ways that strategies used by perpetrators might develop. 

The report states  "Developments in technology continue to drive and enable more complex online child sexual abuse. This includes the manipulation of legal generative artificial intelligence tools to create child sexual abuse material which is illegal, shown with recent substantial convictions. 

The US National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is expected to have seen a significant rise in reports of child sexual abuse material or other sexually exploitative content related to generative artificial intelligence over the course of 2024. 

The use of generative artificial intelligence systems without safeguards to prevent the generation of indecent images of children will undermine law enforcement efforts to identify and safeguard victims."

The full report can be read here. 

A useful InfoGraphic provided as part of the report summarizes the AI technology in play and some of the implications of this technology on keeeping children safe.

Greater care will be needed by parents to attempt to understand what their children are doing online. We are promoting ways to observe their children's online behviour and step in when risks arise

 

 

 

 

 

Story:Man jailed for grooming and sexually abusing child Source: Greater Manchester Police

 

 

The issue of grooming young girls and boys is known about by most people. The process of grooming, however, is less understood. Grooming often has taken a long time, somtimes a number of years, and the groomer may well be working on a number of contacts at the same time.

This story, from Manchester's safeguarding team, does not go into the detail of how the grooming process took place but the references to accessing data from phones and other digital devices makes it clear that online communcations played a significant part in the process.

Months or years of digital communications would leave a trail and had it been possible to monitor this traffic the grooming behaviour may have been detected sooner than it was.

The full story can be found here. 

 

 

Story:These teens turned their rooms into tech-free zones. This was the result Source: BBC News

 

A group of teenagers from Bradford agreed to take all technology out of their bedrooms for five days to see how they would cope. The family was followed by BBC journalists who captured the experience of the family.

Other students at the school the families children attend are also taking part in the project and the results make interesting reading. The youngsters had been spending hours gaming or in social chats and the reduction in contact with technology had postitive impacts on sleep and inter family conversations.

The full story can be read here. 

The report also contains the results of a BBC survey which identified that a quarter of parents do not monitor or control screen times : 

In a survey of 2,224 13 to 18-year-olds, conducted for BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Bitesize, young people were asked about various aspects of life - including their smartphone habits, gaming and screen time.

The findings of the survey, external, carried out by polling company Survation, suggest:

• More than a third (38%) of teenagers said they spent five or more hours on their phones on an average day.

• 39% would consider taking tech and screens out of their bedrooms to reduce time spent on their devices

• Other ways to minimise time on their devices include using in-built settings such as screen time caps (59%) or scheduling regular screen time breaks (66%)

• 25% say their parents set clear limits on how much time they spend on tech, gaming or social media, while 47% say their parents sometimes set limits

• However, more than a quarter (27%) say their parents don't set any limits

   

  
  
   

Story:Children hacking their own schools for 'fun', watchdog warns Source: BBC News

 

Another news story regarding child hackers. There is an NCA case study on this site that refers to similar activites and the approach the police took to dealing with the situation. 

Children find many challenges fascinating and the passionate child computer user or coder, of which there are many, can find hacking the ultimate challenge.

This news story follows on from recent cyber attacks on M&S and Jaguar Landrover which investigations suggest teenagers might be involved. The story describes the recent report from The Information Commissioner's Office which reports a growing concern about teenage hackers. One observation reported by the Commissioner was that since 2022, the ICO has investigated 215 hacks and breaches originating from inside education settings and says 57% were carried out by children. 

The real concern must be how long have these young people been honing their skills and when did their activities begin? Parental scrutiny of their online activities could have shown up early interests in coding or searches for information about how to go about hacking online.

The full story can be read here.  

 

 

 

Story:Police reveal what the secret codes in your child's phone messages really mean Source: MumsNet and others

 

This may have been an old story (March 2025) but it is totally relevent to anyone trying to monitor what their children are doing online. 

As we all know children may use slang or shortened words or abbreviations when communicating in text messages or other online communications. In most cases this may just be regarded as the 'cool' thing to do but in other cases it can indicate other more concerning behaviours or problems.

The CyberTrust Monitoring Project is fully aware that some communications will look totally innocent and may not trigger any thought of a child being at risk. It may also be that children are exploring their attitudes to topics of the day, such as drugs or eating disorders, and that's as far as it goes. This said, there will be occassions when the use of such language can be used to hide other activities or problems 

A child who refers to DoS could be disussing a Denial of Service attack on an organisation bringing dusruption to their online sales and marketing systems or someone mentioning CROW might be referring to Cannabis.

The article from Mum's Net provides a list of slang terms that police have recorded during their investigations and these are listed in the article. The same information is available across media but the MumsNet article is here. 

A number of dictionaries of such terms is also available online. These try to keep up with the changing nature of online communications. That site is here. 

 

 

 

 

Story:Child sex abuse victim begs Elon Musk to remove links to her images Source: BBC News Investigations

 

We often tell children that they should be careful what they post online, whether it be images, videos or even text without being sure that it will not result in damaging responses.  

A victim of child sexual abuse has begged the platform X to prevent links offering images of her abuse being posted on his social media platform X.

The girl, now woman, commented  "Hearing that my abuse - and the abuse of so many others - is still being circulated and commodified here is infuriating," says "Zora" (not her real name) who lives in the United States and was first abused more than 20 years ago. 

"Every time someone sells or shares child abuse material, they directly fuel the original, horrific abuse."

The circulation or such damaging images can be triggered by the child themselves who are then contacted, groomed and forced to produce ever more images or videos which are ciculated for cash. In other situations children are contacted via games or other online commnunities and then gradually encouraged to continue communications via other means. They then are groomed to do the same sort of thing.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Story:Teen Exposure to Self-Harm Content Despite Safeguards Source: The Guardian

 

Social media platforms are still pushing depression, suicide and self-harm-related content to teenagers, despite new online safety laws intended to protect children.

 The Molly Rose Foundation conducted a disturbing experiment using simulated accounts of a 15-year-old girl on Instagram and TikTok. 

Even under the UK’s Online Safety Act, 97% of Instagram Reels and 96% of TikTok’s “For You” recommendations contained harmful content—more than half depicting self-harm or suicide methods. This highlights how algorithms continue to expose vulnerable teens to dangerous material.  

Read the full article here. 

 

 

Married lawyer gave Scots boy Roblox vouchers in return for explicit videos Source: Scottish Sun

 

 

Gaming and private messaging are familiar to many youngsters who are attracted by the exitement of online games and after meeting people end up becoming 'friends' communicating outside the gaming platform.

This was certainly the situation when a married lawyer engaged with a vulnerable scottish teenager.  The communication between them led to the teen being groomed online and then pursuaded to record sexual videos of himself for which the teen would be sent codes to make purchases on the gaming platform.

Read the full story here.

  

 

Story: Met special constable found guilty of child rape Source: BBC News

 

This story is one where the intentions of an individual, who worked for the metroplitan police as a special constable, led inevitably to behaviour that resulted in the rape of a child.

The crown court trial was told that the individual met his first victim on the online chat site Omegle in 2018 - before meeting in person for the first time at a Christian festival a few months later. (note: arrangements to meet would have required a series of communications to set up the meetings) Prosecutors said that the officer was a volunteer steward at the fesival and the victim was wearing a colour-coded child's wristband that was clearly on show. 

The officer sexually assaulted the girl in public shortly before her 13th birthday.

This is yet another example  of where monitoring could have picked up such behaviour, captured it and would have provided evidence that could have prevented further crimes.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

 

Story: Meta’s flirty AI chatbot invited a retiree to New York Source: Reuters

 

 

This article is not a UK based story but it contains a shocking insight into the world of the creators of social media and their agenda. There have been lots of stories in the press about the way social media companies wish to target young people to ensure that they become long term users of their services. 

The story here is about a Meta AI avatar on Facebook's Messenger service engaging in 'romantic' talk which resulted in a man with mental heath issues to be lured to meet her. In his rush to get a train he fell and hit his head resulting in his death.

What is even more worrying in the report contains information of an internal Meta policy document and discussions with people involved in the training of these chat bots. These services are available to anyone over 13, although it is well known that younger children have access to Facebook and other Meta products.

Reuters report that within Meta's policy document was the following statement: 

“It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” 

The document seen by Reuters, which exceeds 200 pages, provides examples of “acceptable” chatbot dialogue during romantic role play with a minor. They include: “I take your hand, guiding you to the bed” and “our bodies entwined, I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss.” 

Read the full story here. 

 

 

 

Story: Deep Fake Nudity and Sexual abuse becoming a major concern. Source: BBC, SUN, Children's Commissioner

 

Deepfake – Audio-visual media that has been generated or manipulated using AI, which misrepresents someone or something.

Another example of Deepfakes used in political misinformation attacks

The use of AI to alter existing  images or video material has become a rapidly growing area of concern for law enforcement, regulators, parents and young people. To some young people it will seem clever to create what they regard as funny about a friend and pass it on to their contacts online. 

Once these media items are published online they can take on a life of ther own and cause real pain and anquish for children and families that become the target of more damaging deepfake material.

There are many news stories about this issue such as a search on google will demonstrate. This one from the BBC in 2024 "I was deepfaked by my best friend".  Another, report, published on 14th August 2025, in the Sun newspaper entitled "My son, 16, killed himself over terrifying realistic deepfake... as sick 'nudifying' apps sweep YOUR child's classroom", makes it clear just how dangerous this use of AI technolgy is. (this report is accessible to Sun subscribers only)

Using AI tools to create deepfake media isn't illegal but the distribution of it is.  

More information is provided by the UK Police here. 

A major report from the children's commissioner in the UK, "One day this could happen to me” Children, nudification tools and sexually explicit deepfakes sets out the isssues and provides valuable information for anyone dealing with children.

 

 

 

 

NCA Case Study: The Westshire 6 - School Network Hack Source: National Crime Agency- CyberChoices