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. 

 

 

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. 

 

 

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. 

 

 

Why fake AI videos of UK urban decline are taking over social media Source: BBC News

 

This news story is the latest example of how AI can be used to undermine democracy. If you can convince the casual news reader that things are really really bad in your country or location you can inject dissatisfaction into that community.  This is an insidious attempt to manipulate people and build up a negative view of things around them. When you are feeling that way you are easy prey to manipulation and that is the angenda here.

The BBC story refers to an AI-generated video shows a crowd of young - mostly black - men, wearing balaclavas and padded jackets, slipping down a water slide into a dirty swimming pool with litter bobbing on the surface. The caption describes the scene as a taxpayer-funded water park in Croydon. This implies that the area is in steep decline and is totally fake.

Our young people need to be able to test such stories by checking other news sources to see if the information can be confirmed as being true. Checking takes time and effort and this is what the publishers of such material bank on knowing that it might trigger rumours that will spread.

As adults we need to engage with what children are reading online and challenge the narrative that is being promoted.  This is one of the important strands of our Family Monitoring Project.

Read the full story here. 

 

Tech companies have treated children as data to be mined for far too long - our plan ensures this will never happen again Source: LBC News

 This article by Munira Wilson, Spokesperson for Education, Children and Families sets out the political views of the LD party but it also describes their approach to issues surrounding social media, online content and age appropriateness of online material.

We may or may not agree with their approach but clearly the issue of online safety of children is unlikely to fade away. 

The headline does raise and major issue. The data mining undertaken by social media companies is potentially, if not more, dangerous then the content itself. If these companies have their own policical agenda (we know they do), and they recognise the importance to them of capturing users while they are young we could see the emergence of the Utopian Ministry of Truth. They become influencers rather than supporters and it is their agenda they are pushing, whatever that might be.

Manipulating young minds, through the use of responsive algorithms, is a crime worth of the name. How we deal with such threats is important. We need our young people to grow and become fully functional in their technhogically rich communities. Banning access or preventing them access to the technology may well make them more vulnerable in the long run.

Open non-partisan political debate about these issues is vital if we are to stear our children to understand the world aound them.

Read he full article here. 

 

 

Story:Life Tech - Chatbots changing minds Source: BBC World Service Sounds

 

 

A study found AI chatbots can persuade us with fake facts. The BBC podcast team explore what this means for politics. 

This is part of a three item podcast but raises some vey important issues. Chat bots are of growing interest with the young. They are often none judgmental and therefore appeal to vulnerable children and adults.

In other stories we in this blog we have presented other stories about the potential power of chatbots for human interaction but it is obviously inportant to hold onto the reality that these chatbots are AI generated responses.

This podcast raises the potential impact of fake information on election outcomes.

Listen to the podcast here.

 

 

Story:Racist and antisemitic false information spreads online following Bondi Beach terrorism attack Source: ABC Newsh2>

 

This story appeared across the world's news media and describes another danger that children face online. Artificial Intelligence is certainly a powerful tool for good, such as medical imaging improvments, analysis of complex scientific data and more. As with many advanced technologies it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. 

Children are vulnerable to false information, as are many adults, because it is often difficult to determine what is real and what is false.

This story is an example of AI generated images used to promote racism and hate.

Similar images are appearing in online forums and posts to promote fake news stories to support radical agendas. Young people and vulerable adults can be targetted by race hate groups, anarchists and anti democracy individuals and organisations.

An important role of parents will be to ensure their chilren undestand the risks of AI and how to check to see if what they are seeing and reading is real. 

Monitoring what children are encountering online is an effective way of checking what sort of material they come across.

Read the full story here.