Experts warn of rise in sadistic online exploitation of vulnerable children Source: The Guardian

 

 

This report from The Guardian newspaper cites evidence of predators coercing children into producing sexual photos and videos of themselves have surged globally in the past year. This phenomenon is referred to “sadistic online exploitation”.

This issue has been reported previously focussed on the creation of sexual material which is then used to exploit young people who share sexual images of themselves. This practice  extends this to promoting self harming or even suicide. Other disgusting demands include forcing children to cut themselves, eat their own vomit, drink urine, die by suicide, or harm other children and pets in their homes. Some groups also engage in mass casualty planning, doxing and cyber-harassment.

With the high level of scrutiny and changes to the Law will have an effect but these perpetrators will almost certainly be looking at more devious ways to reaach their vulnerable targets.

Read the full story here.

  

Beyond Borders: U.S. and Australian Families on Online Safety, Screen Use, and the Digital Lives of Kids Source: Family Safety Online Institute (FOSI)

 

Although not UK referenced data this report from FOSI does give an insight into how children and parents view different aspects of the online world on young people. 

Not surprisingly there are some differences about how each view their experiences online and the report picks out some of these differences in the data they collected.  The data provides an insight into  Australian children’s and parent’s perceptions of online life during a time when children’s digital well-being was at the forefront of Australian public discussion – before and after the Australian social media ban took effect.

FOSI writers identified what they considered a striking difference of children reported doing most online activities listed at a significantly higher rate than parents reported for their children.

Read the full report here. 

TikTok faces Ofcom investigation over child age checks Source: BBC News

 

 

TikTok has become an investigative target for the UK's Telecoms Regulator OFCOM.

Ofcom will examine how the video-sharing app assesses if a user is a child and whether it has adequate systems to prevent children from viewing harmful content. The focus of many concerns has become the means by which platforms confirm the age of those that gain access.

Ofcom's review of TikTok's age checks are part of a broader clampdown on sites failing to prevent children encountering adult content, such as pornography, and other harmful material.

OFCOM's Kate Davies, Ofcom's group director for strategy and research,  stated "This is where TikTok comes in. We found that some method of age checks being used by social media are not working well enough".

Read the full story here.

 

 

New evidence on online harms affecting children Source: Source: Youth Justice Board

 

The Youth Justice Board (YJB) has today published a comprehensive new 'Evidence and Insights Pack' on Online Harms Affecting Children. 

The Evidence and Insights Pack brings together the latest research, data, and practice examples from across England and Wales to improve our understanding of the risks children face online and how we safeguard them in an increasingly complex digital landscape.

The evidence pack highlights that while online platforms are central to children’s lives, they expose them to severe, overlapping risks:

• Children face a wide range of digital harms, including cyberbullying, sexual abuse, radicalisation, and exploitation.
• Exposure to harmful content and the non-consensual sharing of intimate images have become increasingly normalised among children, disproportionately affecting girls.
• Many children who engage in problematic online behaviours have complex needs or are themselves victims of abuse.
• Inadequate platform design features and a lack of digital literacy among adults significantly increases risk and hinder effective safeguarding.
• Online harms have long-lasting impacts on wellbeing and, for some children, are directly linked to involvement in offline violence.

 Access to Evidence and Insights pack here.

 

New guidance for parents and carers as AI-manipulated images of children become a growing concern Source: National Crime Agency

 

UK's National Crime Agency issued guidance for parents and carers to alert them to the growing threat of children's images shared online being manipulated into AI generated sexual abuse material. 

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and the National Crime Agency (NCA) have seen an increase in online offenders exploiting openly available images of children to create realistic sexualised content.

IWF analysts found 3,440 AI-generated videos of child sexual abuse in 2025, compared to just 13 in 2024, and the NCA have increasingly seen offenders exploiting AI technologies to target children in new ways.

 The use of AI to manipulate images posted online and turn these against the targets is not something that is easy to block or taken down, particularly when direct communications are used to make contact.

Chief Executive of the Internet watch Foundation stated that "The threat is disturbing. If someone's imagery is online, they could be easy pickings for criminals and anyone, especially children, could find themselves being targeted."

Read the guidance here. 

Porn site company fined £630,000 over failed age checks Source: BBC News

 

The UK regulator continues its challenges to Porn sites that remain open without any age verification in place. The rules regarding such material are governed by UK legislation design to prevent children and young people from accessing such content by requiring the service providers to implement effective age verification mechanisms.

 

 Failure to do this results in fines and other actions against the provider and to date a large number of such providers have obeyed the law and put controls in place. 

 

This latest story from July 2026 shows that such fines can be massive and grow should companies refuse to obey the UK legislation. If companies refuse to comply OFCOM have a range of actions they can take:

• Substantial Fines: Ofcom has the authority to fine non-compliant companies up to £18 million or 10% of their global annual turnover, whichever is higher. For example, the regulator has previously fined adult providers up to £1.35 million for failing to enforce proper age verification.  
• Daily Financial Penalties: Sites that fail to comply after being penalized or those that ignore legally binding information requests face ongoing daily financial penalties. 
• Site Blocking: In extreme cases of persistent non-cooperation or refusal to implement checks, Ofcom holds the power to block access to the website entirely within the UK.

The rules seem to be working with fines amounting to over £2.5million issued since the beginning of 2026.

 

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Outcry as Meta lets users make AI images from public Instagram profile pics Source: BBC News

 

 

BBC News report describes complaints aimed at Meta over its new AI tool Muse Image. There are a number of tools that can create images from simple sentences but Muse can generate pictures using other people's profile pictures without telling them.

While Meta says users can opt out of their image being used even with a public account, Donald Campbell, advocacy director at tech justice non-profit Foxglove told the BBC it was an "obvious recipe for disaster".

"We've already seen a catalogue of harms from non-consensual AI-altered images on social platforms just in the past year," he added.

Read the full story here. 

School smartphone bans seen as ‘punitive’ by young people, study says Source: The Guardian

 This report from The Guardian reports on a study undertaken by University College London. The report suggests that outright smartphone bans may have unintended negative consequences for young people.

The study questioned 732 secondary school students aged 11 to 18, as well as 27 teachers and 41 parents about their views on phone bans, using questionnaires, interviews and focus groups.

There was widespread agreement about the potentially disruptive influence of smartphones in the classroom, but the research uncovered a sharp generational divide. While 87% of teachers and 88% of parents were in favour of a blanket ban, 75% of pupils disagreed with the policy.

Students argued that banning smartphones restricted access to “essential” tools they relied on to navigate daily life and support their learning, such as bus timetables, weather forecasts and homework apps. They also valued the fact that smartphones offered direct access to helpful support networks, and girls in particular said their smartphones helped them feel safer when travelling alone.

Such arguments are to be expected from the young people that are the target of the school day ban. In fact the various ways schools are implementing the ban do allow students access at the end of the school day and most use one of the following strategies to manage the ban.

Lockable Pouches: Students place phones in specialised, sealed magnetic pouches. The pouches remain locked all day and are opened magnetically by staff at dismissal. 

Designated Lockers & Charging Stations: Students secure devices in assigned lockers upon arrival, often with charging ports available.

"Brick Phone" Mandates: Some institutions mandate that students swap smartphones for basic, non-internet-capable "brick phones" for safety while commuting. 

Hand-In Policies: Pupils hand their phones into lock-boxes or designated bins at the start of every school day or class period. 

Discretionary Exceptions: Schools adjust protocols to allow phones for students who need them for medical conditions, special needs, or specific safeguarding.  

Only time will tell how well these new rules work and how it impacts on young people, their school work and their safety. Pushing all traffic until after the school day is over does not remove the issue from their lives.

Read the full story here. 

Social Media Was Banned in Australia for Kids Under 16. Months Later, More Than 85% of Them Are Still Online Source: People.com

 

The UK's recent actions to manage social media access for children under 16 followed the similar actions taken by the Australian government. This report would suggest that legislation is not an easy option in controlling access to social media as it would appear.

The report suggests that after three months of the start of the ban a significant proportion of the target age group are still online engaging in social media activities. The report isn't anti legislation but it states that it could take a decade for the intention of the law take full effect.

The article also includes a statement from the UK's NSPCC  (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children) which states that “It's evident from this research that a ban alone will not keep all children safe from harm online,”

Parents must play a part in the protection of their children and monitoring such activity on a child;s device is still an effective way to add a further layer of protection which is closer to home.

Read the full article here.

Children aged 10 referred to UK’s anti-terror scheme with online gamers groomed by extremists including satanic cult Source: The Sun

 

A report in the UK newspaper The Sun under the Terrorism flag details how children as young as 10 have been referred to the UK’s anti-terror programme.

The particular concern raised by police warn that extremists are grooming youngsters through online gaming platforms. The assistant police commissioner reported that  police had arrested 40 children for terrorism related offences in the UK.  He said  “That is one in five of our arrests. Ten years ago that was one in 20." He also sated that nearly 3,000 people referred to Prevent (Prevent programme) said they had been radicalised while using online gaming platforms.

This worrying trend must be replicated world wide and un-controlled access to gaming platforms allows in game communication to take place without supervision. There are controls available for these games but it is a widely held view that these are not always implemented within families.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Under-16s to be banned from social media, Starmer announces Source: BBC News

 

 

The UK is to join Australia in banning access to Social Media children under 16 years of age. The ban is due to be in place by the spring on 2027.

The ban will cover all of the major social media platforms  e.g. Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and X. WhatsApp and Signal will not be covered by the ban.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

New plans to stop children taking, sharing or viewing nude images Source:UK Government News

 

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced plans to establish additional protections for children online at  the UK Tech Conference and Exhibition on Munday 8th June 2026. 

The plans would prevent children from taking, sharing or viewing naked images on their devices. New requirments would be placed on Apple and Google to activate their built-in features or implement technical solutions on smartphones and tablets to detect and block nude images for children.

The decision to take such action was, in part, a result of research undertaken by the Internet Watch Foundation. Their data indicated that 91% of online child sexual abuse reports recorded in 2024 contained self-generated content from children themselves and the average child now views pornography by age 13. 

Sexting can directly lead to sexploitation and evidence shows that this activity has reached very high levels of activity in recent years.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Social media on trial: Four important cases to watch Source: BBC news

 

 
This BBC report provides a useful insight into the four major court cases currently taking place within a landscape which include, companies like Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, Google, owner of Youtube, and Snapchat, along with relatively newer platforms like TikTok, Discord and social gaming platform Roblox, are facing thousands of lawsuits in the US over claims that they have instead harmed users, children in particular.

The cases include one in California which includes allegations from more than 1,000 school districts across the US. The schools accuse Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and TikTok of being intentionally designed to be addictive, which has allegedly harmed children mentally and emotionally through their excessive use of platforms. 

A second case also in California, is focussed on Meta and Instagram. The complainants demand that Meta better prevent users under 13 years old from using its platforms and remove data it has previously collected from underage users, along with a host of other changes.

The third, against Roblox and Discord, was brought by a 13 year old boy who claims that he had been groomed and solicited by an individual who was arrested for his crimes which affected more that 24 children.  

Finally not about children, is a case brought by an Australian billionaire who sued Meta over the company's alleged failure to combat scam advertisements tricking Australians into fake investments that allegedly proliferated on Facebook using his name and likeness.

 For as long time these companies , and others have considered children to their future subscribers and have tried every trick to draw them in and keep them as apart of their user-base. The reason is that these new users become adults whose data has value.

There will be more of these cases in the coming years as governments try to find ways to keep children, and others, safe online.

To read the full article here. 

 

 

 

Children report record numbers of online sextortion attempts Source: Care

 

Report Remove is a service run jointly by NSPCC and the Internet Watch Foundation has reported a 34% increase in reports of blackmail attempts on children in the past year.

The service encourages children and young people to report intimate images of themselves online and there has been a 34% rise in reports of blackmail attempts over the previous year.  

The service works by producing a ‘hash’ code that acts like a digital fingerprint, that can be shared shared with social media platforms to get the images taken down without directly sharing the images themselves. Of the 1,894 total reports by under-18s to the Report Remove service in 2025, 1,175 were so explicit as to qualify as child sexual abuse material.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Social media as bad for children as smoking, British doctors say Source: Brtish Medical Journal

 

British doctors have responded to the UK government consultation on the possible ban on Social Media for under 16 year olds by saying that  'Social media ranks alongside smoking as a danger to children'.

The report also refers to a statement made in the report that   "There can be few issues which have united clinicians so resoundingly ​in recent years as the impact that unfettered exposure to tech and devices is currently having ​on children and young people's health," 

More than half of 132 doctors surveyed saw at least one case of health harm that could ​be related to tech and devices every week, and over a third saw evidence of harm ​multiple times a week.\

 

The report will almost certainly have a significant impact on the outcome of the consultation and decisions about changes to UK law to deal with the issue are imminent.

 

Read the full story here. 

 

 

Nearly in one in five UK girls receive unwanted images online, poll finds Source: The Guardian

 

Research undertaken by the charity Barnardos, found that almost one in five girls in the UK receive persistent, unwanted images online. In its survey of 4000 young people a quarter of girls had been called degrading names and one in seven had been asked to send nude images of themselves folowing contacts online.

Barnardo’s frontline practitioners reported that they were seeing more children affected by misogynistic content online, and an increase in child-on-child sexual abuse or children displaying problematic sexual behaviour, compared with last year. 

Read the full report here. 

 

 

TikTok and YouTube 'not safe enough' for kids, says Ofcom Source: BBC News

 The UK telecom regulator OFCOM have stated that Tik Tok and Youtube are 'not safe enough for kids'. 

The statement sets out concerns of OFCOM researchers who suggest that, "TikTok and YouTube failed to commit to any significant changes to reduce harmful content being served to children, maintaining their feeds are already safe for children," it said.

"Our wealth of evidence, published today, suggests they are still not safe enough."

The companies both state that they have done a lot of work to protect children and their platforms are child safe. It also seems that the companies are still making changes, probably in response to such scrutiny. 

The reference to 'Shorts' on Youtube has been somewhat addressed as Youtube have changed a feature for managing shorts. You can now set the shorts setting to 0 mins whereas previously the minimum was 15 mins.  Whether this was done as a result of the report or not it shows that small changes can have a significant impact.

Read the full story here. 

 

 

NSPCC reports sharp rise in children being blackmailed over sexual images in UK Source: The Guardian

 

 

This report regarding evidence collected by the NSPCC should be of greate concern to any parent. The reports suggests that there has been a  rise in online blackmail attempts involving sexual images in the UK last year(2025). The charity also reported thay contacts with its Childline service relating to online sexual abuse and exploitation rose by 36% last year, driven by an increase in cases related to online blackmail.

Sextorsion occurs when somone pursuades a child to release sexualised images of themselves and then blackmails the child by saying they will publish the images online and demanding payment from the child or its parents to remove them. The 36% rise is alarming and there are groeing demands from some to bring in social media bans for children under 16. The charity warns that such a ban might result in children who are not well prepared to protect themselves when they reach 16.

Read the full article here. 

 

 

WhatsApp launches totally private 'incognito' conversations with its AI chatbot Source: BBC News

 One way of dealing with individuals and law enforcement asking for access to online communications as part of an investigation is to make access to that information impossible. This is what Meta have done regarding communications within Whatsapp. 

Incognito mode is set to off by default but when switched on all interactions with their AI chat bot vanish once the session is concluded and they cannot be reviewed or recovered. In incognito mode noone will be able to view or review the interactions.

Meta do offer a Parental Control option for Whatsapp so parents will need to switch that on in order help. monitor Whatsapp activity.

Configuring individual apps is time consuming but the monitoring tools we have reviewed do provide an efficient way to manage their child's screen time, app activity and location, some provide monitoring of communications. 

Read the fully story here. 

 

 

AI chatbots giving misleading voting advice in run-up to election Source: BBC News

 

Concern regarding AI are being raised almost every day.  Misinformation generated from some AI chatbots range from the creation of sexual images of children for distribution online to providing misleading or even dangerous information which may cause children to do things they normally would not do or believe. We have seen such things in news items across the world.

This story illustrates one way errors in AI algorithms can threaten democracy. We know that the use of personal data had major impacts on the outcomes of Brexit in the UK and US presidential elections. AI can deal with huge amounts of data and tailor messages and information to shape thinking. This is potentially very dangerous.

As AI becomes ever more powerful and pursuasive the level of threat increases and we need to do everything we can to encourage children to question what they hear and what they read. 

Read the full story here.