#child-safety

#child-safety

As far as I was concerned, Australia's world-first social media law aimed at preventing children under 16 from accessing social media apps was already a success. But this week, as the ban took effect, my son wasn't so sure. Access to his accounts remained largely unchanged. Many of his friends were in the same position. Across the country, the rollout has been uneven, as social media companies try to work out how to verify kids' ages.

AI preemption would not apply to local infrastructure. That's a separate issue," Sacks wrote. "In short, preemption would not force communities to host data centers they don't want.

They arrived at the location on the 8000 block of Alhambra Avenue, where they encountered a man with a gun in one hand and the toddler in the other. The department said deputies spent 25 minutes attempting to negotiate with the man to release the toddler and relinquish the firearm. The man refused to comply and pointed the handgun at deputies.

Russia's government has blocked access to popular gaming platform Roblox, citing concerns over child safety, terrorism and LGBTQ+ content. The country's media regulator Roskomnadzor claimed the US game, which has an estimate user base of 85.3 million daily active players, is inundated with "calls for violent crimes, and LGBT propaganda" and "inappropriate content that can negatively impact the spiritual and moral development of children".

letting users spoof IP addresses from other countries so that the checks never appear in the first place. The BBC reported a few days after the law came into effect that five of the top 10 free apps on the iOS App Store were VPNs. WindscribeVPN shared data showing a spike in its user figures, NordVPN claimed a 1,000 percent increase in purchases that weekend, and ProtonVPN reported an even higher 1,800 percent increase in UK signups over the same period.

Last week, OpenAI said it cut off the toymaker FoloToy's access to its AI models after the AI-powered teddy bear "Kumma," which ran GPT-4o, was found giving responses that were wildly inappropriate for children - including discussing sexual fetishes, and giving instructions on how to find knives and light matches. The move signaled that the ChatGPT-maker was clearly concerned about how its business customers, especially ones selling products for children, were using its tech, or at least how these efforts looked.

Following a spate of lawsuits and investigations over its child safety systems, Roblox is going to implement mandatory facial verification for all users who want to access communication features, starting in January. The platform is also introducing age-based chat, meaning users can only communicate with others in a similar age group. Starting Tuesday, users can voluntarily verify their age to secure their access to communication features.

Every two and a half minutes, a child is reported missing in the UK. The reasons are complex, but the risks can be grave. Myths about what to do when a child goes missing persist and can delay crucial action at the moment it's most needed. The Independent and the charity Missing People are aiming to raise 165,000 to launch SafeCall, a free new service to help the 70,000 children reported missing each year find support and safety, no matter what.

"It's like having a predator or a stranger in your home," Ms Garcia tells me in her first UK interview.

If you've got a restless child on your hands, getting to a playground can be a welcome relief. Your kid can run off some steam and find other kids to play with, and you may even get a moment to yourself to sit on a bench and relax. But the peace of playgrounds depends on a delicate ecosystem in which all the adults tacitly agree to the same codes of conduct, both for their children and themselves. One person's rude behaviour can sour the experience for everybody - and no one wants to be that parent.

Forcing children to accept unwanted affection can send a harmful message, according to Karen Days, the former president of the Center for Family Safety and Healing at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Days explained that this kind of forced affection can teach children the wrong lesson: that people they know are always allowed to touch them. She pointed out that while parents often emphasize "stranger danger," they don't always stress that familiar adults must also respect personal boundaries.