Meta is introducing Instagram Teen Accounts, a new experience for teens, guided by parents. Teen Accounts have built-in protections which limit who can contact them and the content they see, and also provide new ways for teens to explore their interests. Meta will automatically place teens into Teen Accounts, and teens under 16 will need a parent’s permission to change any of these settings to be less strict.
Statutory guidance for schools and colleges
2 September 2024
When Andrew Kaung, an analyst on user safety at TikTok, looked at the TikTok content, he was alarmed to find how some teenage boys were being shown posts featuring violence and pornography, and promoting misogynistic views, he tells BBC Panorama. He says, in general, teenage girls were recommended very different content based on their interests.
Sexual predators are grooming children under six into performing “disturbing” acts of sexual abuse via phones or webcams a charity has warned.
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said it had discovered more than two thousand remotely filmed child abuse images of three to six-year-olds online in 2023.
When Ofcom first commissioned this longitudinal study 10 years ago, several of the children in this year’s research weren’t yet born. It was 2014, later dubbed the “year of the selfie”1 in the wake of that year’s icebucket challenge2, the #nomakeupselfie3 and the “selfie that broke Twitter”. A year of laughs, cold-water gasps, attempts at authenticity and a group of famous people who took their own picture at the Oscars.
Nearly a quarter of UK five-to-seven-year-olds now have their own smartphone, Ofcom research suggests.
Social media use also rose in the age group over last year with nearly two in five using messaging service WhatsApp, despite its minimum age of 13.
The communications regulator warned parental enforcement of rules "appeared to be diminishing."
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