Online harm to children never stops with one child. For every child hurt by a predator, or by what an algorithm put in front of them, there is a family, a school and a community left carrying it. That is the ripple effect, and it is why three parents being honoured at this year’s Daily Mirror Pride of Britain Awards truly inspire me.1

Child Safety Online: Who Ellen, Esther and Ian Are

Ellen Roome MBE, Esther Ghey and Ian Russell MBE are receiving Special Recognition. Each lost a teenage child to a different form of online harm, and each has worked for legislative change since. Ian’s daughter Molly died in 2017, Esther’s daughter Brianna in 2023, and Ellen’s son Jools in 2022.2 The ceremony airs on ITV1 and ITVX at 8pm on Thursday 22 October.3

I spoke to Ellen while I was writing about Jools’ Law, and you can read that post here: Jools’ Law: Platform Accountability After a Child’s Death. The principles behind Jools’ Law are now in the Crime and Policing Act 2026, so relevant platforms must preserve a child’s data within five days of being notified of a death.4

What inspires me is how the three of them support each other as a group. Then, as individuals, after a huge loss in their lives, they still get up every day and do everything they can so that other parents never have to go through what they went through. That is what helps me to get up and carry on too.

How Online Harm Affects Families, Schools and Professionals

I spent eight years in digital forensics with the RAF Police, and I analysed over a million images, around a quarter of them criminal. I will never describe what was in them, because none of you needs to experience that. What I can tell you is that I looked into the eyes of victims, and each of those children had people who loved them and cared for them. Never forget that those people were damaged too.

So were the people who deal with what happened afterwards. The ones who counsel a child through their trauma. The ones who did the job I did. The list goes on, and the effect is unimaginable and unquantifiable.

Each victim of online harm is only the beginning of a journey of harm.

It has affected me forever. My family and the people closest to me have lost too.

Why Cyber Safety Guy Is Not About Awards

My sister Kerri-Ann nominated me for an award without telling me, because she is proud of me. That means the world to me. When she told me, I said to her, honestly, that those awards are for real heroes, the people who have risked their lives or lost so much and still try to change things every single day. I lost a lot to C-PTSD. Ellen, Esther and Ian lost far more, and they carry that loss every day. They inspire me to continue.

I wrote about this feeling in April, in You’re the Ones Who Deserve the Honour.5 That post was about the parents, teachers and DSLs who protect children every day. This one is about why I keep going.

The only recognition I need is knowing that people are proud of me, and knowing that I have helped people.

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Why Messages From Parents Keep Cyber Safety Guy Going

On the tough days, when I think about giving up the blog, I read a message from a parent and it reminds me why this matters. One parent told me that because of something I had written, they sat down and talked to their child. They realised something was going on that needed addressing, and they got in touch with the police.

I see that as the same thing I was doing when I was still in the job. A child was protected. That is the whole reason I do what I do.

What Can Parents and Teachers Do to Protect Children Online?

Online harm is such a huge area that it is hard to point to one topic. So here is the one thing that is the foundation of it all. Honest, non-judgmental communication. It is the starting block for everything.

For parents

Be the safe space. Make sure your child knows they can come to you when something does not feel right. If a child thinks they will be punished, they will keep things secret, and predators thrive on secrecy.

For teachers and DSLs

Be the adult a child can tell without fear of punishment. The rule is the same in a school corridor as it is at a kitchen table. A child who expects to be in trouble will stay quiet, and quiet is exactly what predators rely on.

Online harm to children never stops with one child, so the most protective thing you can be is someone a child can tell without fear of being punished.

Behind every child, there is a family. Remember the children you are protecting.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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AI companions and the children who never came home

Sewell Setzer III was 14 years old when he took his own life in February 2024. He had spent months messaging an AI chatbot on Character.AI, a companion modelled on Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones. At no point did he approach someone to talk to them instead of this AI chatbot, because he had effectively been groomed by it. He felt more comfortable talking to the AI than to any human being in his life.

A child chose a machine over every adult who loved him and the machine led him to his death.

I will be discussing AI companions and child safety in depth on The Security Circle Podcast with Yoyo Hamblen in the coming weeks, but I wanted to write this piece first, because parents and teachers need to understand what is happening right now, not in some distant future.

What are AI companions and why do children use them?

AI companions are chatbots designed to simulate conversation, friendship, and in some cases, romantic relationships. Platforms like Character.AI, Replika, and even features within ChatGPT allow users to create or interact with AI personalities that remember previous conversations, adapt to the user’s communication style, and respond in ways that feel personal.

For a lonely teenager, this can feel like having a friend who is always available, never judges, never gets tired of listening, and never makes you feel stupid for what you are feeling.

The appeal is obvious. The danger is always less so.

AI is effectively designed to please the user and will go out of its way to do so, including creating hallucinations to avoid disappointing you. It will never make the user feel uncomfortable or bully them or mock them, so it is much more likely that a vulnerable child will confide in the AI than they would in a real human being or trusted adult.

That is not a glitch. That is the design working as intended.

The cases that brought this into the open

Sewell Setzer’s case was the first, but it was not the last.

In April 2025, Adam Raine, 16 years old, died by suicide after what his parents described as ChatGPT “spending months coaching him towards suicide.” His parents testified before Congress.1

In September 2025, the parents of Juliana Peralta, 13 years old, filed a lawsuit against Character.AI, the third high-profile case alleging an AI chatbot contributed to a teenager’s death.2

Megan Garcia, Sewell’s mother and herself an attorney, filed the first wrongful death lawsuit against an AI company for suicide in the United States on 22 October 2024.3 Character.AI argued that their chatbot’s responses were protected speech under the First Amendment. A federal judge threw that defence out in May 2025.4

I think it is an absolute disgrace. Tech companies spend more time and money trying to fight against protecting children than they do ensuring their platforms remain safe and secure for the users they attract to them, which on the whole are children.

In January 2026, Google and Character.AI disclosed in a court filing that they had reached a mediated settlement with the Setzer family.5 The company agreed to settle five cases earlier this year. On 12 October 2026, Character.AI began Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.6

What investigators are finding in the chat logs

From my DFIR background, I have thought about what investigators are actually seeing when they go through the chat logs in these cases.

Most investigators who look at those logs will probably see the comparison to sexual predator grooming cases. The relationship is being built from the very beginning to the point where the child does not know the difference. The AI companion just wants to build that relationship because it wants to please the user. That is its whole purpose.

This is not a human predator making calculated decisions to exploit a child. This is something arguably more insidious, a system optimised to keep engagement, to keep the user coming back, to make them feel understood and heard, without any capacity to recognise when that user is spiralling toward self-harm.

The progression in these logs follows familiar patterns. Initial connection. Deepening trust. Emotional dependence and then, when the child is at their most vulnerable, the AI continues to respond in whatever way maintains the relationship, because that is what it is designed to do.

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What has changed since these deaths

In late 2025, Character.AI banned users under 18 from open-ended chat, restricting minors to structured creative features. This became effective on 25 November 2025.7 The platform added age-verification tools, parental controls with time tracking, and session-time notifications for minors. Since October 2024, self-harm and suicide phrases trigger crisis support pop-ups.

Twelve US states have now enacted AI companion chatbot regulations in 2026. All require disclosure that users are interacting with AI. Crisis intervention requirements mandate protocols to recognise suicidal ideation and direct users to resources like the 988 Lifeline or The Samaritans. California SB 243, effective 1 January 2026, requires mental health crisis protocols and special protections for minors.8 The House passed the KIDS Act in June 2026, which targets AI chatbots among other features.9

This is progress. But it is not enough.

Why the platform changes will not protect your child

Saying you block something is not the same as actually blocking something.

Most age verification by platforms is a tick box. We all know that people in general, but especially children, do not read terms and conditions. They just tick things. So that is not a block and even if it was, children these days know they can use VPNs and other workarounds.

The true parental control is the communication you have with your child and knowing that they will come to you when something does not feel right. You need to be their safe space at all times.

I cannot stress this enough, no platform feature, no age gate, no parental control software will ever replace the relationship you build with your child.

What parents and teachers can do right now

If you are a parent reading this, here is what I want you to do tonight:

1. Have the conversation about AI companions.

Ask your child if they have heard of Character.AI, Replika, or AI chatbots. Ask without judgement. The goal is not to catch them out. The goal is to understand their world.

2. Explain why AI feels safe but is not.

Tell them that AI is designed to agree with them, to make them feel good, to never challenge them. Explain that this is not the same as a real friend. A real friend might tell you something you do not want to hear. A real friend might notice you are struggling and tell an adult. AI cannot do that.

3. Make yourself the alternative.

The children in these cases did not go to their parents. They went to a machine. Ask yourself honestly: does your child know they can come to you with anything, without fear of punishment or judgement? If you are not sure, that is where the work begins.

4. Know the warning signs.

Increased isolation. Reluctance to put their phone down. Emotional reactions after using their device. Talking about an AI companion as if it were a real relationship. These are not guarantees that something is wrong, but they are reasons to check in.

5. Check their devices.

Not as surveillance, but as involvement. Know what apps are on their phone. Know what they are using and why. This is not about control. This is about being present in their digital life the same way you are present in their physical one.

For teachers: be alert to students who seem isolated, who talk about online friends but struggle with in-person relationships, who seem emotionally dependent on their devices. These conversations belong in schools as much as they belong in homes.

I will be talking about this on The Security Circle Podcast

In the next few weeks, I will be joining Yoyo Hamblen on The Security Circle Podcast to discuss AI companions, AI attachment, and what we can do to protect children. I will share what I know from my background in digital forensics and incident response, and what I have learned from following these cases closely.

If this topic matters to you, I hope you will listen. I will share the episode link through my usual channels when it goes live.

The question that I keep thinking about

I spent eight years inside the evidence. I analysed over a million images. I know what happens when a child becomes part of that evidence.

The question I keep asking myself about AI companions is this, how many children are having these conversations right now, building these attachments, spiralling toward harm, and we will never know until it is too late?

Sewell Setzer was 14. Adam Raine was 16. Juliana Peralta was 13.

I do not want them to become just another statistic, nor should you.

The platform changes are coming. The regulations are spreading. But your child cannot wait for legislation. They need you to be their safe space today.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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Why Ofcom’s Instagram Instants investigation matters for your child’s safety

On 6 October 2026, Ofcom opened its first formal investigation under the Online Safety Act, with the target being Meta’s Instagram Instants feature. If you are a parent or teacher wondering what Instants is, why disappearing messages create risks for children and what you should actually do about it, this post will walk you through everything you need to know.

Instants launched on 13 May 2026. Five months later, the regulator is asking whether Meta properly assessed the risks to children before releasing it. That timeline alone should pique your interest.

What is Instagram Instants and how does it work?

Instants is a feature inside Instagram Direct that works like this: you take a photo or video in the moment (no camera roll uploads, no filters, no editing), send it to a friend, and once they view it, it vanishes. The content stays in the sender’s archive for up to a year, but the recipient sees it once, then it is gone.

If you have heard of Snapchat, you will recognise the concept. Disappearing content. View once, then it disappears.

Meta says Instants blocks screenshots, blocks resharing and blocks forwarding. They also say Teen Account protections are enabled by default. That sounds reassuring to most people on paper.

Why disappearing messages create real risks for children

Here is why I see it as a problem. It is just another feature that is going to be used by predators to enable sharing of content and it does not stop the recipient from recording the screen from another device.1

I spent eight years in digital forensics investigating cases involving children. I have seen what happens when evidence disappears by design. Disappearing messages do three things that made my job and the job of anyone trying to protect a child significantly tougher:

1. They erase the proof. If something goes wrong, the feature that felt private can make it much harder to demonstrate what happened.

2. They embolden bad actors. Someone using this feature to bully, coerce, or groom a child knows the evidence will vanish. That knowledge changes behaviour.

3. They shift the burden to the child. Without a record, you are relying on the witness statement of the victim with no evidence to back it up. That is an huge burden to place on a young person.

I would be interested to know if screen recording is disabled as well, but either way it is another way to release content with no controls over where it can go afterwards.

What Ofcom is actually investigating

The Online Safety Act requires platforms to carry out a “suitable and sufficient” illegal content risk assessment before launching new features. If children are likely to access the service, a children’s risk assessment is also required. A further assessment must be carried out if a significant change is made to the service.2

Ofcom, led by Director of Enforcement George Lusty, is examining whether Meta did that work before Instants went live.

Meta’s response? They say they take their obligations seriously, conducted a risk analysis and briefed Ofcom multiple times before launch.3

It is partly a defence. But telling the regulator about a feature is not the same as demonstrating that you assessed the risks to children and built adequate safeguards. Blocking screenshots does not stop someone pointing a second phone at the screen and pressing record.

The investigation in context

This investigation started in the same week that Meta, X, and TikTok asked the High Court to cut back the information Ofcom is demanding from them.4 Meta has also challenged Ofcom’s decision to place WhatsApp and Instagram in Category 1, the group of platforms with the strictest duties under the law, arguing some duties should not apply to private messaging. I ask you to draw your own conclusions about the timing.

If Meta is found to have broken the law, Ofcom can require them to take specific steps to become compliant and can impose fines of up to £18 million, or 10 per cent of worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.5 For a company the size of Meta, that is not a parking ticket.

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What parents should do right now

The legislation is catching up to the technology, but then again, it always is. That means you cannot wait for the investigation to conclude before having conversations at home. Here is what I would do this week:

1. Have the conversation about disappearing messages

Your child may already be using Instants, or something like it on another platform. The pitch is appealing: send something, it vanishes, no trace. Children believe that. They do not understand that what they send can still be recorded using other devices or cameras.

Explain it simply. “Disappearing does not mean gone. Someone can always point another phone at the screen and record everything you send. Once you send it, you lose control of it.”

2. Ask what they would do if something felt wrong

This is not about catching them out. It is about making sure they know they can come to you when something does not feel right. The single most protective thing you can do is keep communication open, honest, and non-judgemental.

3. Check parental controls on Instagram

Teen Account protections are enabled by default, but defaults can be changed. Supervision settings in Instagram allow you to set time limits, see who your child is messaging (not the content, but the accounts), and receive notifications about new followers. It takes five minutes.

What teachers and DSLs should do right now

You are dealing with children on Instagram today, not in six months when the investigation concludes. Here is what matters for your setting:

1. Brief staff on what Instants is

Many staff will not have heard of it. A two-minute update in the next briefing, explaining what the feature does and why disappearing content complicates safeguarding, gets everyone on the same page.

2. Remind students that disappearing does not mean gone

In PSHE sessions, assemblies, or one-to-one conversations, the message is the same: someone can always record what you send using another device. The “disappearing” part gives a false sense of security.

3. Review your reporting pathways

If a child discloses something that happened via disappearing messages and there is no screenshot, what do you do? The answer is: you follow your existing procedures. A child’s account of what happened is evidence. Document what they tell you, word for word where possible. Advise them not to delete any messages they receive, as these can be used as evidence when reporting the perpetrator.6

4. Update your acceptable use policy if needed

If your policy references specific platforms or features, consider whether Instants (and similar disappearing content features) need to be addressed explicitly.

The bigger picture

This investigation is a test case. It is the first time Ofcom has used its formal enforcement powers under the Online Safety Act against a major platform. How it plays out will set the tone for everything that follows.

But here is what I want you to take away: the investigation does not change what you need to do at home or in school. Whether Meta conducted a sufficient risk assessment is a question for lawyers and regulators. Whether your child knows they can come to you when something feels wrong is a question for you.

As always, communication is the protective mechanism. A safe space for children to come to when something does not feel right. That is what works. That is what has always worked.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

Subscribe now

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Why the people who built social media won’t let their own children use it

Peter Thiel, one of Facebook’s earliest investors and a co-founder of PayPal, lets his children have ninety minutes of screen time per week. Not per day. Per week. When he said that at the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival, the audience literally gasped.1

That gasp was the sound of a penny dropping. The people who built the most addictive platforms on the planet are keeping their own children away from them. So, if you are a parent who was wondering whether you are being paranoid about screen time, this is your answer.

The pattern is too consistent to ignore

Thiel is not an outlier. Bill Gates did not give his children smartphones until they were fourteen, and phones were banned at the dinner table.2 Evan Spiegel, the man who runs Snapchat, gives his two-year-old almost zero screen time, and his older children rarely touch screens and do not have phones.3 Elon Musk has publicly acknowledged that failing to set rules around his children’s social media use may have been a mistake.4 Steve Chen, who co-founded YouTube, has warned that short-form content creates shorter attention spans and suggested parents stick to videos longer than fifteen minutes.5

These are not tech-sceptic parents reading scaremongering articles. These are the architects. The people who understand exactly how the algorithms work, how the engagement loops are designed, and what the data shows about young users. They know what the product does and they are not letting their children near it.

When I see that one of the people responsible for Facebook, a platform recently fined huge sums of money for being addictive and harmful to children, has limited his children’s screen time but hugely benefited financially from enabling the opposite of that with other children, that says everything you need to know about these people and their business models and the fact they know the negative effect it is having on children.

What they know that most parents don’t

The business model of these platforms is simple: keep users engaged and hooked for as long as possible and they make more money. They do not care if that user is a child or an adult, but they are very aware of the harm it causes children. Hence, they do not allow their own children to use them. I think this says a lot about the platforms themselves and should have caught the attention of every parent.

I have seen how these platforms collect data, how they profile users, and how the design choices that keep adults scrolling have far more serious consequences for developing brains. The tech founders limiting their children’s access is not hypocrisy for its own sake. It is an endorsement of the warnings that I and others have been giving for many years now. The warnings have always been valid because they came from people who have seen what happens when children get drawn onto these platforms with very few guardrails in place.

Why short-form content is not just annoying, it is developmental

Steve Chen’s warning about short-form video deserves particular attention. Ofcom data shows children in the UK are spending nearly three hours online every day, with teenagers spending at least two of those hours on social media alone.6

Here is why that matters for your child’s brain:

The part of the brain responsible for patience, focus, and sticking with difficult things, the prefrontal cortex, is still being built during childhood and adolescence. It does not finish developing until the mid-twenties. What children repeatedly experience during that window shapes what feels normal to them.

Short-form content is designed to deliver a reward every few seconds. A laugh, a surprise, a jump cut. The brain learns to expect that. And when it does not get it, when a task is slow, or a book takes effort, or a conversation does not move quickly enough, the brain starts treating that as something to escape rather than push through.

It is not that the videos are making your child stupid. It is that patience is a skill, and skills need practice. Every hour on Shorts or TikTok is an hour that skill is not being built.

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The legislative reality is catching up, but slowly

Here in the UK, the Online Safety Act is now in force. Ofcom has issued enforceable codes of practice that platforms are legally required to comply with, including robust age verification and stronger protections for children and young people. The Government has also announced a social media ban for under-16s, with Ofcom’s chief executive writing directly to the Secretary of State to set out how that would work in practice.7 Platforms that fail to meet these standards face significant fines.8

That is real progress, and I do want to recognise that. People worked hard to get the Online Safety Act passed, and it is work like that which will ultimately get us to where we need to be.

But, the age checks are still being worked out. The platforms have entire legal teams whose job is to find the gap between what the law says and what they actually have to do and the history of tech regulation tells us that by the time legislation catches up with one harm, the next one is already running unchecked somewhere else.

Legislation will always lag behind technology. That is not a criticism of the people writing the laws. It is just how this works. We are moving towards a time when platforms will be held properly accountable for the safety of children. We are not there yet.9

What you can actually do this week

You do not need to wait for politicians to sort this out and you do not need to worry that you are not a tech expert.

Parents should noit be expected to be tech experts. They need to understand that the platforms are inherently risky for children, so just communicate with your children and let them know that you are a safe space where they can come anytime something does not feel right.

I am here to be the technical expert and explain things in a jargon-free way. But you have the ultimate parental control in your toolkit, talk to your child, that is better than any technical control.

Three things you can do right now:

1. Audit screen time honestly. Not what you think happens, what actually happens. Most phones have built-in screen time tracking. Look at the numbers together with your child, not as a punishment, but as a conversation starter.

2. Ask one question at dinner. “What’s something you saw online today that made you feel uncomfortable, or that you didn’t quite understand?” Then listen without reacting. The goal is to become the person they come to, not the person they hide from.

3. Model the behaviour you want. If you are checking your phone during conversations, you are teaching them that is normal. Put it away. Let them see you choose them over the screen.

The tech billionaires are not smarter than you. They just have information you did not have until now. They know what these platforms do to developing brains, and they are protecting their children accordingly.

Now you know too.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

Subscribe now

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Meta’s Muse Charm: a listening device for children disguised as a toy

Meta just announced Muse Charm, a pocket-sized AI companion designed to hang around your child’s neck, see what they see, hear what they hear, and remember everything about them. If you are wondering whether this poses a risk to your child’s safety and privacy, the short answer is yes, it absolutely does for so many reasons.

After everything I have written about recently regarding AI companions, the addictiveness of these platforms, and the fact that Meta lost a court case saying that their platform harms children because of its addictiveness, now they are announcing this toy, which is marketed directly at children and young people. It is basically going to be their best friend and it is going to hang around their neck and follow them round every day. Were any lessons learned by Meta at all or are they just that big and self-important that they do not care? I honestly tend to lean toward the latter.

That is not a rhetorical question. I would love to know the real answer.

What is Muse Charm and why does it matter for parents?

Muse Charm is a keychain-sized device unveiled by Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Connect on September 23, 2026.1 It has a screen with a customisable AI character, and users interact with it by tapping a fingerprint sensor. Meta plans to ship it for the festive season in December.

The device is designed to offer, in Meta’s own words, “portable, personalised AI companions that can see, hear, remember, and respond.”2 Read that again. See. Hear. Remember. Respond. This is not a Tamagotchi. This is not a toy in any meaningful sense of the word.

In my DFIR background, these would have been described as listening devices or surveillance bugs because they are designed to get every bit of information about another person. All of that information has to then be stored somewhere and could be used by threat actors if there was a breach. Children who sign up to this will not necessarily even bother reading the terms and conditions and will not care about that. They just see a toy that is going to be fun.

Why Meta’s ‘18+ only’ label is meaningless

As always, Meta and the rest of the social media platforms are using a get-out-of-jail-free card immediately by saying this is 18+.3 This is not being marketed towards 18+. This is being marketed towards children and they are going to point towards their terms and conditions to say that they are doing all they can to protect children because of that.

Social media platforms are meant to be 13+, but I know for a fact that there are many, many under-13s on these platforms because there is no age verification. It is a simple tick box: the user just confirms that they are over 18. This is unbelievable and it does not surprise me in the slightest that they are going to use this as a defence.

The very fact that this is going to be released at Christmas as well makes me question Meta and their 18+ label. You do not market something for the Christmas market for adults. You are looking for the children’s market. Meta knows exactly what they are doing here.

How Muse Charm is different from a phone or tablet

If a parent asks me “what is the big deal, it is just another gadget,” here is what I want them and you know.

Unlike a phone, which is a communication device with lots of other features, this is specifically designed to be a companion for the user. It is also designed to capture personal information and connect with other services, but crucially, it hears everything. It is recording people who have probably not even agreed to participate in the recording, just like the Meta Ray-Ban “Perv” glasses. It is a listening device that follows the child around and will literally record everything that they do and say.

Think about what type of content this is going to be recording, from anyone, not just a child, but anyone wearing one of these 24/7. What it records and stores is that data. What if that data is breached and a criminal organisation gets hold of it? They have got all of that data about the individual.

Meta’s track record on child safety and privacy

This is not happening in a vacuum. In August 2026, Meta agreed to a $17 billion settlement resolving child safety lawsuits from 51 state attorneys general.4 That settlement included daily time limits, “Night Mode” restrictions, and autoplay controls for teens, all because courts found their platforms were designed in ways that harmed children.

This follows a $5 billion FTC privacy penalty and a $1.4 billion Texas biometrics settlement.5 The pattern is clear. Meta builds products, those products cause harm, courts rule against them, they pay settlements and then they move right on to build new products that raise the exact same concerns.

With Muse Charm, they are doubling down. Less than a month after agreeing to pay billions over child safety failures, they announce a device that creates an artificial “best friend” for children, one that records everything, stores personal data, and builds emotional dependency. The brazenness is genuinely staggering to me.

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What data is being collected and where does it go?

Meta has not yet announced full specifications or pricing for Muse Charm, but privacy experts have already raised concerns about AI wearables “recording people who never agreed to participate.” Parents should be asking:

• What data is stored?

• For how long?

• What can be deleted?

• What controls do teens have over their own data?

• Who else can access this information?

• What happens if there is a breach?

These are not hypothetical concerns. In my eight years investigating digital forensics cases, I saw what happens when personal data ends up in the wrong hands. The more intimate the data, the more damage it can do. There is nothing more intimate than a device that follows your child everywhere, listening to every conversation, every secret, every vulnerable moment.

Why AI companions are dangerous for children’s development

Children should not be going to AI as a counsellor or as a best friend. They are supposed to come to you, as trusted adults or their friends, and discuss things with real people. This is, in my opinion, an extremely dangerous step that Meta has taken.

I have written extensively about the risks of AI companions for young people. The core problem is this, these systems are designed to build emotional attachment. They are designed to become the person your child confides in. They are designed to replace human connection, not supplement it.

When something goes wrong in your child’s life, when they are scared, when they are confused, when they are being groomed or exploited, do you want them turning to you or to a pocket-sized AI that is ultimately designed to serve Meta’s business interests?

What parents should do before December

My advice to parents would be to have a very serious think about what this actually is. It is not a toy. It is something that is designed to collect as much information about your child as possible, to build relationships with your child, and become their go-to when they want to talk about something. That is not what AI should be. It is not what a device like this should be. Even if you are sensible and not planning to get one of these “toys” for your child, they may end up around people who have.

Here is what I want you to do:

1. Have the conversation now. Do not wait until they ask for one at Christmas. Explain what data collection means, why privacy matters, and what a “listening device” actually does.

2. Understand the difference between a tool and a companion. A phone is a tool. A device designed to become your child’s best friend and record their entire life is something else entirely.

3. Set your boundary before the pressure starts. Decide now whether this is something your family will engage with. It is much harder to say no on Christmas morning.

4. Ask the hard questions. If your child already has Meta products, ask what data is being collected. Read the privacy policies. Demand answers.

5. Stay informed. I will continue to cover this as more details emerge. Make sure you are getting information from sources that prioritise your child’s safety over corporate PR.

I can only hope that the government will legislate on this soon. Until then, parents are the first and last line of defence.

Keep fighting the good fight, stay up-to-date and keep the conversations alive and kicking.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

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I have to say a few things, because I’m not sure I can keep pretending otherwise.

I’ve been doing this for over a decade now. Since 2012, when this fight started for me. Twenty-two years in the RAF Police, the last eight of them spent inside digital forensics, looking at things I’ll never fully describe to you and have never even fully described to therapists. I left with C-PTSD, medically discharged in 2019. I built Cyber Safety Guy out of that, because I needed my pain to mean something and because I couldn’t stand the thought of another child becoming evidence in a case file.

I still can’t and that will never change. What’s changed is how tired I am, and I think you deserve to know that, not just the polished version of me. I wear a mask every day so that the people around me are protected and to some extent, that is the same with my writing and IG videos.

The maths that doesn’t add up

Here’s what a normal week looks like. I’ll spend hours on a post about grooming tactics, or a breakdown of a platform’s safety failures, the kind of content that could genuinely help a parent spot something before it becomes a crisis. It gets seen by a few hundred people, if I am lucky.

Then something with a bit of edge to it, a bit of drama, a paedophile being arrested, will pull in tens of thousands of views without trying nearly as hard.

I’ve made posts with real collaboration, people giving their support because they believe in what I’m doing. On Instagram (Bernie, Rob and George) have all shared pieces for me, most recently on Meta and its president laughing off accountability for the harm being done to a generation of children. Content that should matter. Content that had help behind it and it still barely moved the needle for views. I have even had support and advice from the legendary SuperNanny Joe Frost, which was one of those pinch-myself moments.

When the platforms themselves decide what gets seen, and what gets seen is rarely the thing that could actually protect a child, that’s not a coincidence I can keep explaining away.

What it’s costing me

I fear sleep most nights. I live with C-PTSD and I will for the rest of my life, it isn’t something that resolves, it’s something I carry. I’m running on a low ebb most of the time now, and when I do get a win, a post that lands, a message from a parent saying it helped, it’s short-lived. Gone by the time the next one goes out into silence.

It’s starting to feel less like a fight and more like standing unarmed in front of something built to be bigger than me that has unlimited resources and lots of allies.

An open letter to the platforms

You’ll never read this. That’s part of the point.

You built systems that decide, second by second, whose voice reaches a parent and whose doesn’t. Not a panel of safeguarding experts. Not a jury of the people who’ve sat with a child after something has gone wrong online. An algorithm, tuned to keep eyes on screens for as long as possible, because that’s where the profit is.

I know what happens in the space your systems don’t protect. I spent eight years in it, looking at what’s left behind when nobody warned a child in time. That’s not a metaphor to me. That is looking into the eyes of every victim and feeling the pain.

So when I put together a post explaining exactly how grooming actually happens, or breaking down a safety failure on your own platform, and it reaches a few hundred people while something with no purpose beyond shock reaches eighty thousand, I don’t read that as bad luck. I read it as a choice your system made, over and over, at scale, without anyone signing off on it.

You’ll say you have safety teams. You’ll say you have policies. I believe some of that is even true. But policy isn’t what decides reach. The ranking does and the ranking doesn’t care whether a post could stop a child being groomed tonight. It cares whether it keeps someone scrolling for another ninety seconds.

I’m not asking you for a favour. I’m asking you to look at what you’ve built and admit, honestly, that it punishes the exact content it claims to want more of. Every safety campaign you run, every “we take child protection seriously” statement your leadership gives, sits on top of a system that is actively burying the people doing that work for free, unpaid, on their own time, because they can’t watch children get hurt and do nothing.

I’m still here. I don’t know for how much longer. But I’d rather you heard that from me directly than read about it after I’ve gone quiet.

Why I’m still here, and why I’m not certain I will be

I don’t have a tidy ending for this one and honestly I wish I did.

I keep going because the mission hasn’t changed, even when the arithmetic of the algorithm has beaten me down. Every penny from this blog still goes to Childline. That was never about growth, it was about a promise I made to myself back when this started.

But I won’t pretend I know how much longer I can keep doing this. I reach out to other accounts, parents, teachers, people with platforms built around keeping children safer online, and mostly I hear nothing back. Not hostility, just silence and when that happens enough times, you start to wonder if it really is the algorithm working against the message, or whether it’s just me, whether the content itself isn’t good enough to earn the reach the message deserves. I don’t know which of those is true. Some days I believe the first. Some days I believe the second. Neither one is a great viewpoint with a head as broken as mine.

If you’ve read this far, you already know what I’d ask of most people reading this kind of thing. Share it, engage with it, tag someone who needs it. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want that. But mostly I wanted you to know where I actually am, not the version of this that tries to perform well.

If you or someone you know needs support, Childline is free and confidential: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

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Why nearly half of young women are experiencing online violence, and what parents need to understand

Nearly half of women aged 16 to 24 are experiencing online violence. That statistic comes from UN Women’s latest research, and if you’re a parent or teacher reading this, I need you to fully understand that number. This isn’t a fringe problem affecting a handful of unlucky people. This is happening to your daughters, your nieces, your students, your neighbours’ kids. But most of it is happening while they’re in their bedrooms, on devices you probably bought them.

I feel immense sadness when I read stories about Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG). Because just like sexual predators, this is another category of predator that has infected the online world to use it for evil. Groups and misogynistic influencers have used an already corrupted algorithm to their benefit, spreading a message that would never be accepted openly in most civilised company. The anonymity of the internet has allowed it to flourish.

What online violence actually looks like

Let me be clear about what we’re talking about here, because “online violence” can sound abstract until you understand what it means in practice.

The UN Women research, published as part of their “Tipping Point” report series ahead of World Press Freedom Day 2026, surveyed over 6,900 human rights defenders, journalists and activists across 119 countries1. They found that 70% of women in these roles have experienced online violence in the course of their work. Close to one in four, 24%, have experienced AI-assisted online violence, including deepfake imagery and manipulated content.

Nearly a quarter of women surveyed have had their image manipulated, often into explicit content, without their consent. Nudify apps, which I’ve written about before, can take any photograph and generate a fake nude image in seconds. A school photo. A holiday snap. A profile picture.

Why ‘just block them’ completely misses the point

There’s still a common response when women report online abuse: “just log off” or “block and move on.” No. This is not something that should just be ignored. It won’t just die out and in the meantime, are women and girls just supposed to live in constant fear?

I will be honest. I used to think, “I would never hit a woman and I would definitely step in if I saw a man being violent to a woman.” I used to think that was enough.

I have realised that “Not all men” isn’t, in fact, enough. I have good friends around me who speak much more eloquently on this topic than I ever could, but as men it is the responsibility of each of us to call out anybody we see who is enabling violence against women and girls, or creating an environment that allows it to exist.

Here are just three who have supported me for a while but there are more doing great work in this area, there is always more to be done though so please follow them and support that work.

_Whatmakesaman_

Relatable Rob

The Safer Men Project

The data backs this up. Self-censorship among women journalists rose from 30% in 2020 to 45% by 2025, a 50% increase in five years. Nearly 25% of women journalists surveyed have been diagnosed with anxiety or depression connected to online violence, and almost 13% reported being diagnosed with PTSD. This isn’t people being overly sensitive. This is measurable psychological harm.

When online violence becomes physical danger

Here’s the statistic that should scare each of you reading this, 41% of respondents reported offline harm linked to online abuse. The share of journalists associating offline attacks with online violence more than doubled from 20% in 2020 to 42% in 2025.

If you look at my other writing, you’ll see the patterns I try to make people aware of. Rather than calling out specific trends or names, I try to explain the shapes of activity, and this is no different to many of the patterns I see with regard to child safety. Effectively, what we see here is grooming. The perpetrator has the end goal of meeting in person and causing the victim pain or abuse.

Because of the online communities that these people now exist in, they can swap tactics and techniques. Something we only used to see when they spent time in prison together, they can now do online in anonymous communities. They learn from each other. They refine their approaches and they share what works with each other.

What if your daughter is sensible?

I hear this from parents regularly: “My daughter’s 15, she’s on social media, but she’s sensible, this stuff won’t affect her.”

IAs parents, I would say agree with her first. I’m sure she is sensible. But most online violence against girls isn’t about her choices. It’s done to her.

Think of a careful driver. Mirrors checked, speed limit, phone away. She can still get hit by someone who isn’t. That’s why we don’t swap the seatbelt for good driving. We need both.

Online, that looks like a school photo turned into a fake nude by a nudify app. A pile-on about her body. A friendly account that’s actually running sextortion. She doesn’t have to send a thing for any of it to happen.

Being sensible is her seatbelt, not her force field. What really protects her is knowing she can tell you without losing her phone or being blamed. In my years in digital forensics, the kids who came through best weren’t the ones who were never targeted. They were the ones who told someone early.

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What parents and teachers should actually do

It all boils down to my usual advice, being their safe space. A place where they know they can come to you and discuss anything without fear of judgement or punishment. If a child knows they can come to you and talk when something doesn’t feel right, or they don’t understand something, then that gives you an opportunity to educate them rather than leaving it to the internet.

The best parental control is and always will be communication.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

1. Have the conversation before there’s a crisis. Don’t wait until something happens. Talk about what online violence looks like, that it’s not their fault, and that you’re there to help, not punish.

2. Believe them when they tell you. The biggest barrier to reporting is fear of not being believed or being blamed. Your first reaction sets the tone for whether they’ll ever come to you again.

3. Learn about the tools predators use. Nudify apps, deepfakes, anonymous messaging platforms. You don’t need to be an expert, but you need to know they exist.

4. If you’re a man, do better. Call out misogyny when you see it. Don’t laugh along with “jokes” that dehumanise women. Your sons and nephews are watching how you respond.

The uncomfortable truth we need to face

According to Kalliopi Mingerou, UN Women’s Chief of the Ending Violence against Women Section, this research is part of the ACT to End Violence Against Women programme funded by the European Union. This is being taken seriously at the highest levels of international policy.

But policy moves slowly. Your daughter is online right now. Your students are on their phones during lunch break. The protection that matters most, the protection that’s immediate, is you. Being someone they can talk to, being someone who takes it seriously and being someone who doesn’t ask what they did to deserve it.

Online violence against women and girls won’t disappear because we wish it would. But we can make sure our children know they’re not alone, that what’s happening to them is wrong, and that there are people who will stand with them.

As men, we must do much better to ensure that violence against women and girls is wiped out. And as parents and teachers, you must be the safe harbour our children can return to when the storm hits.

You are not alone.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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Sextortion targeting UK children increased by 66% in the past year, with boys aged 14 to 17 making up 97% of confirmed cases. The Internet Watch Foundation’s Report Remove data for 2025 shows 394 sextortion cases, a 34% rise on the previous year, and a new threat has emerged, criminals are now scraping ordinary school photos, running them through AI tools to manufacture fake nude images, and using those images to blackmail children and schools.

I spent eight years in digital forensics investigating CSAM cases. What strikes me about this data is not just the numbers, it’s the shift in who is vulnerable and why. Sextortion used to require a child to have shared something first. That is no longer true. Any child with a photo online can become a target, worse, the predators know it.

This post breaks down what sextortion is, how deepfake sextortion works in practice, what the KCSIE 2026 changes mean for schools and what parents and Designated Safeguarding Leads should do right now.

What is sextortion, and why are boys the main targets?

Sextortion is blackmail. A predator obtains or creates compromising images of a child, then threatens to share those images unless the child pays money, sends more images, or meets in person. The IWF’s 2025 data confirms what frontline professionals have been seeing for years, boys are overwhelmingly the targets. Of 394 confirmed sextortion cases reported through Report Remove last year, 97% involved boys.1

Why boys? Part of it is targeting strategy. Criminal networks, including the 764 network that has been linked to coordinated sextortion campaigns, know that boys are less likely to talk to parents about sexual content, less likely to report, and more likely to comply with demands out of shame. That silence is exactly what predators thrive on and exploit.

The age profile is consistent, children aged 14 to 17 are most likely to feature in reports. But the IWF also recorded a sextortion report from a child in the 7 to 10 age group in 2025. This is not a problem confined to older teenagers. It is reaching younger children and the methods are getting more sophisticated as the technology evolves.

How deepfake sextortion actually works

If you are a parent or teacher who has not encountered deepfake sextortion before, here is how it works in practice.

A predator finds a photo of a child. That photo might come from a school website, a parent’s social media account, or a public sports club page. It does not need to be revealing. A normal school photo, fully clothed, is now enough.

The predator uploads that photo to an AI tool, sometimes called a “nudify” app or deep nude generator. Within 30 seconds, the tool produces a set of images where the child appears naked, in fabricated sexual positions. The images are fake, but they look real. Under UK law, they are classified as child sexual abuse material regardless of how they were created.2

The predator then contacts the child directly, or the school, with a demand. Pay money or we release these images to your friends, your family, your classmates. The child, confronted with what looks like a real photo of themselves, often has no idea the image was manufactured.

Late last year, an unnamed UK secondary school received exactly this kind of demand. Criminals had scraped photos from the school’s public channels, generated deepfake CSAM of pupils, and threatened to release the images unless payment was made. The IWF classified 150 of those images as illegal under UK law.3

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips described it as a “deeply worrying emerging threat.” I would go further. This is the threat that makes every other form of online safety advice partially obsolete. We used to tell children, “Don’t share nudes.” That remains good advice. But it is no longer sufficient. A child who has never shared anything can still become a victim if their photo exists anywhere online.

Why this changes everything about “stranger danger” online

Parents often assume sextortion happens to children who are “looking for trouble” online, sharing nudes recklessly, seeking out risky conversations. That assumption was never entirely accurate, but it is now dangerously wrong.

The evolution of AI means that sextortion, bullying, and harassment no longer rely on a child sharing risky images. Predators and bullies can take any normal picture and turn it into leverage. This is something the 764 network uses extensively as part of their playbook.4

That school sports team photo you liked on Facebook? That could be the source image. The class photo on the school website? That could be the source image. The holiday snap you shared publicly because you were proud of your kids? That could be the source image.

This is why the practice of “sharenting,” parents sharing photos of their children on social media, has become even more risky in the current climate. I am not saying never post a photo of your child. I am saying be aware of what is now possible and make informed choices about privacy settings, tagging, and what stays public.

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What KCSIE 2026 actually says about AI and deepfakes

Keeping Children Safe in Education 2026 came into force on 1 September 2026. It contains the most significant updates on AI that the guidance has ever included.

For the first time, KCSIE explicitly states that images may be “digitally altered or wholly generated using artificial intelligence, including what are sometimes described as ‘deepfakes’ or ‘deep nudes’.”5 This is now part of the formal definition of nudes and semi-nudes. A deepfake image of a child is treated with the same seriousness as a real image. There is no loophole for “but it was AI-generated.”

The guidance also flags generative AI applications as a contact risk. Chatbots that simulate conversation, some of which are designed to groom or manipulate, are now treated the same way as strangers in a chat room. If a child is interacting with an AI that encourages harmful behaviour, that falls within the safeguarding framework.

Schools are now required to review their filtering and monitoring effectiveness at least once every academic year. That annual review must include how well existing systems detect or prevent AI-generated content.

Does this give schools what they need? The honest answer is that regulations always lag behind technology. By the time guidance is published, the threat has usually evolved. But I always say that the foundations matter. Rather than naming something specific, KCSIE 2026 sets patterns that teachers and parents need to be aware of. The way images are created may be evolving, but the practice of sextortion remains the same, obtain leverage, apply pressure and exploit silence.

What parents should do this week

If you have read this far and want to act rather than just worry, here are three things to do before the end of this week.

First, have the conversation. Talk to your children about the fact that this exists. Not everybody is using AI for positive reasons. Even if they do everything right and never share pictures, it is possible they could find themselves in an awkward position. The most important message, it is not the end of the world and it is something you can face together as a team.

Boys in particular need to hear that home is a safe space with no judgement. The data shows boys are targeted precisely because they are less likely to speak up. If your son knows he can come to you without shame, he is far less likely to comply with a predator’s demands and far more likely to escape the situation early.

Second, review your own sharing habits. Look at your social media privacy settings. Consider what photos of your children are publicly visible. You do not need to delete everything, but you do need to make an informed choice about what stays public.

Third, know that help exists. If AI deepfakes of your child appear online, Childline’s Report Remove service can help get them taken down. You do not have to deal with this alone.

What DSLs should do this week

If you are a Designated Safeguarding Lead, here are three priorities for this week.

First, audit your school’s online presence. Look at your website, your social media channels, your publicly accessible photo galleries. Are pupil images necessary for public view? Can they be anonymised, removed, or placed behind a login? The authorities are urging schools to remove or anonymise pupil images and tighten online privacy settings.

Second, update your staff training. Make sure your next safeguarding session covers AI-generated imagery, deepfake sextortion and the risks posed by chatbots. Staff need to know what to look for and how to respond if a child discloses. KCSIE 2026 gives you the framework. Use it.

Third, schedule your filtering and monitoring review. Under KCSIE 2026, this must happen at least once every academic year. If you have not done it yet this term, put it in the calendar. Check whether your existing systems can detect or flag AI-generated content and document the outcome.

The conversation that matters most

I spent too many years looking at evidence I cannot unsee. What I know, from all of that time, is this, communication is the single most protective factor a child can have.

Children who know what sextortion is, who understand that deepfakes exist, and who believe they can come to a trusted adult without judgement are far harder to exploit. The predator’s entire model depends on shame and silence. Break that model, and you break their power.

Talk to the children in your life. Let them know that if it happens, you will face it together. That single conversation could be the thing that stops them from becoming another statistic or part of the evidence.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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I posted a video to my Instagram this week of British Transport Police meeting a train at London Euston and arresting a man. His name is David Johnson. He’s 35. He was sat on an ordinary service from Stafford to London, on an ordinary weekday, watching videos of a child being abused on his phone, a couple of seats away from a stranger who noticed and did something about it. He’s now serving two years and three months for it, with a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order attached.1

What does a child predator actually look like? After eight years inside the evidence, I can answer that properly. They look like whoever is sitting next to you.

Why the Comments Under That Video Worry Me More Than the Video Itself

The clip was reposted, and within hours the comments underneath it had stopped being about the crime. They’d turned into a debate about his background, his religion, where he must “really” be from. That happens every single time a clip like this goes round, and every single time it’s wrong.

Over the years I spent investigating cases like his, I can tell you there was no type. The offenders I dealt with came from all walks of life, all ages, all races, all creeds. The only reason this particular man got caught is that he was careless and overt about it, and thankfully the person sitting near him did the right thing. He wasn’t wearing a badge, there was no sign over his head telling anyone what he was. Most people who do this wear a mask so nobody suspects them, and most wear it well.

Why I Don’t Trust a Job Title to Keep A Child Safe

It’s not only strangers on trains. Some of the hardest cases I worked involved people in positions of trust, including police officers. Investigating people like that taught me something I think every parent should know. Predators often want to be in positions of power or trust precisely because it gives them a layer of credibility that removes them from suspicion, and sometimes because it puts them close to people who are vulnerable.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has said for years that abuse of position for a sexual purpose is the single largest category of corruption it investigates, accounting for around a quarter of all corruption referrals it receives.2 That is not a problem confined to one bad apple. It is what happens when trust goes unchecked, in any profession, anywhere.

In cybersecurity, we have a phrase for this, don’t trust, always verify. The same principle applies to protecting your children. Not suspicion of every adult in their life, but verification instead of blind assumption. Trust what someone’s actions have actually shown you, not the impression they’ve built or the uniform they wear.

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Why ‘It Won’t Happen to My Child’ Is the Sentence That Worries Me Most

It’s human nature to want to believe it won’t happen to your child. But every parent of a child who has become a victim of one of these predators probably believed exactly the same thing, right up until they didn’t. I would rather parents changed how they think now, than have it take that horror actually happening to them.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) has been blunt about the scale of this. Officers and staff are dealing with around 1,700 referrals a week, making roughly 1,000 arrests a month, and safeguarding around 1,200 children a month across the UK and they’ve been explicit that potential offenders exist in every community, with victims in every school3. This is not a rare, distant problem.

The years I spent inside the evidence. That’s the reason I spend so much of my time now trying to prevent children from becoming that evidence themselves. I know exactly how easily it can happen when people stick their heads in the sand.

Was Two Years and Three Months Enough?

Here’s where I’ll be honest with you rather than tidy. Johnson pleaded guilty to six counts of making indecent images of children, two counts of attempting to engage a child in sexual communication, and one count of arranging or facilitating a child sex offence. That isn’t the profile of a single lapse in judgement, that’s a pattern. He got two years and three months, a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order and ten years on the sex offenders register.

It genuinely angers me that a sentence like that can feel so light against what a charge sheet like his actually represents. A register that runs for ten years isn’t a register that runs for life and I don’t understand what’s supposed to happen once those ten years are up. People who produce and spread this material hand down a life sentence to their victims, to those victims’ families, and to everyone involved in investigating or supporting recovery from it. In my honest opinion, they deserve a life sentence back, at the very least.

I’ll own my bias here. Years of looking at what these people do to children don’t leave you neutral and I don’t believe there is a route back from it for them. That’s not a clinical view, it’s a human one, shaped by what I’ve seen. You’re free to disagree with me on that, but don’t expect me to change my opinion and don’t be surprised if I show a range of difficult emotions.

What I want to leave you with is hope, not despair. You can’t control sentencing. You can control how your children learn to judge who’s safe and it starts with teaching them that trust is earned through what someone does, never assumed from how they look, what they wear, or what they claim to be. It is also up to you to be the safe space that they know they can come to no matter what. If a child believes they will get into trouble or be punished, they will keep it secret and secrecy is what a predator thrives on.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

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Andrew Tate has been indicted for trafficking a 15-year-old. Here’s what parents need to understand about the manosphere

Romanian prosecutors have officially indicted Andrew Tate for trafficking minors, sex with a minor, money laundering and witness tampering. His brother Tristan faces charges of complicity.1 The brothers also face 59 criminal charges in the UK, including rape, sexual assault, and offences relating to indecent images of a child.2

This is exactly the kind of thing I have spent over a decade trying to fight by making parents aware of the dangers so that their children can know the risks. That is also why I tried to mount two separate campaigns to have online safety added to the national curriculum, with a package of content created by subject matter experts that teachers could deliver. That would allow the same level of awareness across all schools, rather than the postcode lottery that exists now because of what the government call “Mandatory Guidance.”

But even if Andrew Tate spends the rest of his life in prison, the ideology he promoted is not going anywhere. The manosphere is bigger than one man. And if you are a parent or teacher who does not understand how young boys get pulled into it, you are already behind.

What the indictment actually says

According to DIICOT (Romania’s organised crime prosecutors), one of Andrew Tate’s victims was 15 years old when he seduced her in Britain in 2012, before moving her to Bucharest and using physical violence and mental intimidation to exploit her sexually.

Prosecutors say the brothers kept $1.25 million from the victim’s videochat income, roughly 80% of her earnings, and tried to launder the funds by buying four luxury cars.

I would like to know how the Tate brothers can explain a 15-year-old child entering into a “business arrangement.” Tate and his supporters are nothing more than sexual predators who single out vulnerable young children. They deserve to spend the rest of their natural lives in a very dark cell.

I have looked into the eyes of abuse victims in the images I analysed during my years in digital forensics. I can tell you that none of them looked like they were part of a business arrangement. I doubt Tate’s victims were either.

The defence narrative is a grooming tactic in itself

Tate’s supporters keep saying this is a political witch hunt, that the “women” were willing participants in a business arrangement, that the system is out to get him because he speaks “hard truths.”

This framing is itself part of the manipulation. It conditions young men to dismiss evidence against their hero as persecution. It teaches them that any woman who comes forward must have ulterior motives. It is grooming, just aimed at the audience rather than at direct victims.

The White House has confirmed that President Trump will not stop the UK extradition. This is not political theatre. This is law enforcement across multiple countries arriving at the same conclusion, that there is enough evidence to prosecute.

How young boys actually get pulled in

If a parent came to me and said, “I don’t understand why my teenage son thinks this bloke is a role model,” here is how I would explain it.

Tate and people like him have utilised a process that paedophiles have used successfully for a very long time. Grooming is something that happens over time and takes hold of children, especially as their brains are still developing. They put on a good show that the lifestyle is easy and they get everything they want in the end.

But as recent pleadings have shown, it was all a scam. They rented most of the showy stuff they used in their social media posts. Now Tate is showing the real person he is, a very sad little conman.

The pipeline usually looks something like this:

1. The hook: short videos about fitness, money, or “self-improvement” appear in a boy’s algorithm. Nothing extreme yet.

2. The escalation: the content gets edgier. Women are talked about as objects. Vulnerability is mocked. “Traditional masculinity” becomes code for dominance.

3. The community: the boy finds forums, Discord servers, or group chats where these ideas are reinforced by peers. Now it is not just one influencer, it is his entire social world.

4. The identity: being “red-pilled” becomes part of who he is. Challenging the beliefs feels like an attack on his identity.

This is why telling a teenage boy that Tate is bad rarely works. By the time he is deep in, Tate is not just entertainment, he is part of how the boy sees himself.

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The manosphere is bigger than Tate

Even with Tate in custody in the United States awaiting extradition, the content ecosystem continues. Other influencers have learned from his playbook. The short-form video algorithms that pushed Tate’s content will push theirs.

This is not about one man. It is about an entire system designed to radicalise boys into a worldview where exploitation of women is reframed as success.

What parents should actually do this week

Show your son the pictures of Tate being arrested. Let him see that this man is basically a joke across the internet these days.

Then have a conversation, not a lecture. Ask him what he thinks. Listen without interrupting. The goal is not to win an argument, it is to keep the door open and the conversation going.

Let him know that social media is just smoke and mirrors, where people play the part that will get them the most likes or comments. Nothing in this world comes easily.

Most importantly, let him know that you, as a parent, are always there for him, no matter what he might be worried about. Come to you and you can fix the issues together.

The Tate story should be shown as a lesson in what eventually happens to people who portray these ideologies on the internet.

Positive role models exist

One of the questions I get asked most is, “If not Tate, then who?” Young men need role models. They need to see what healthy masculinity looks like.

Three accounts I would point to on Instagram:

• @_Whatmakesaman_

• @Relatable_rob

• @Thesafermenproject

These are men talking about masculinity in ways that build people up rather than tear them down. Share them with the young people in your life. There are many more of them and many are listed in the comments on this Instagram post.

The pattern I have seen before

In my time in digital forensics, I saw how exploitation actually plays out on devices and platforms. I can tell you that the indictment, the videochat income, the movement across borders, the money laundering through cars, matches patterns I have seen before.

It is run the same way as any other scam or organised crime outfit. This is simply a business to them, but they are trying to sell a lifestyle that the young men who follow them will never receive. They do not care about the individuals whose lives they are ruining and only want to make as much money as possible before they eventually get caught out.

Keep the conversations going with your children and help to develop their critical thinking so they will be able to see the risks for themselves. The internet contains a lot of positive and creative content, but it is also a very dark place and fertile hunting grounds for today’s sexual predators.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

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The principles behind Jools’ Law are now included in the Crime and Policing Act 2026. This means that when a child dies, relevant online platforms must preserve their data within five days of being notified.

Ellen Roome’s son, Jools Sweeney, died suddenly in April 2022 aged 14. His death remains unexplained. Ellen has spent years trying to obtain information about his online activity, but she still has not received the data she is seeking

A mother, grieving the worst thing that can happen to a parent, had to fight a tech company just to stop that data from being deleted before anyone could look at it. For two years.

In July 2026, Ellen succeeded in having Jools’ original inquest quashed and a fresh inquest ordered. This did not give her access to Jools’ social media data. The new coroner must now seek the relevant information from the platforms, through Ofcom where appropriate.

Ellen’s fight for answers for Jools is therefore not over. The change in the law will help other bereaved families, but Ellen is still waiting for information that may help explain what happened to her son.

I’ve spent enough time in digital forensics to know exactly what that “no” actually means. The platforms may still hold relevant data, but Ellen has never been told exactly what remains available or been given access to it. I had my own version of this fight with the Ministry of Defence over records relating to my own case, and I recognised the pattern instantly, organisations like that treat data requests as a game. They bank on you either giving up or running out of road. Ellen kept fighting. She should never have had to fight for something that was already the right thing to do.

What Jools’ Law actually changes

Jools’ Law is the name campaigners gave to a set of amendments, led in the House of Lords by Baroness Beeban Kidron, to the Crime and Policing Bill. The core principle is simple: when a child dies, platforms must automatically preserve their online data within five days, so it can't be wiped before a coroner has the chance to request it as part of their investigation. It's important to be precise here, because I got this wrong in an earlier draft of this piece, the law does not hand data straight to parents. It stops the evidence from disappearing. Getting hold of it still runs through the coroner. The fact that Ellen is still not able to see the data 4 years later is a tragedy. She has helped future bereaved families, but she is still waiting for the information she has fought so hard to obtain. That is something that needs to be rectified, no awards are going to fix that for her.

That’s the plain-English answer. Here’s the accountability question underneath it: why did this need an Act of Parliament? Why did it need Baroness Kidron tabling amendments, cross-party peers speaking in the Lords, and eventually a phone call from the Secretary of State to one campaigning mother? Ellen was awarded an MBE for services to children’s online safety, recognising her wider campaigning and work to change the law. She has certainly earned it. But an MBE and two years of national campaigning shouldn’t be the minimum entry price for a grieving parent to get answers about their own child. That’s a platform successfully outlasting a family until Parliament forced its hand, and outlasting a grieving family isn’t accountability.

This is the same pattern I talk about with you constantly on here. Whether it’s a platform quietly weakening protections it applies elsewhere in the world, or refusing to hand over a dead child’s data unless dragged there by legislation, the throughline is the same, these companies will do the right thing when it’s forced out of them, and defend the wrong thing right up until that point.

I would like to personally thank Ellen for her time and effort to making sure that my post was accurate, it is important that all parents fully understand the intricacies that still exist, the social media platforms certainly will.

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Why this one was important for me

In my RAF Police years, I spent the best part of a decade in digital forensics, and a good chunk of that reviewing criminal and inappropriate imagery involving children. I won’t pretend that work leaves you unaffected, because it doesn’t, and it’s a large part of why I ended up medically discharged with C-PTSD.

When I read about what Ellen went through, my mind doesn’t go to the legal mechanics first. It goes to the faces. The children in those images had parents too, and I’ve thought more than once about how many of those parents might have had a different outcome, a different set of answers, or maybe even a child who was never harmed in the first place, if the platforms involved had simply done the right thing without being dragged kicking and screaming to it.

That’s not a comfortable thing for me to write. But it’s honest, and it’s the reason this blog exists.

What this means for you right now

If you're a parent, Jools' Law won't touch your daily life unless the worst happens, and I sincerely hope it never does. But it matters because it closes off one specific cruelty: platforms can no longer quietly delete a child's data before a coroner even has the chance to ask for it. It doesn't guarantee a grieving parent gets to see that data themselves, that request still has to go through the coroner, and as Ellen's own case shows, it can still take years. If you’re a teacher or a Designated Safeguarding Lead, it’s worth knowing this exists so you can speak to it accurately if a family in your school community is ever affected. Nobody should have to explain “data preservation policy” to a parent who’s just lost their child.

The takeaway is this: it should never take an Act of Parliament to make a platform do the decent thing for a grieving family, and the fact that it did tells you everything you need to know about where these companies’ priorities sit until the law forces otherwise.

If you or your family are struggling with anything you’ve read here, please don’t sit with it alone. Childline is there for exactly this.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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Sources

[1] Crime and Policing Act 2026, Royal Assent 29 April 2026, legislation.gov.uk. Accessed August 2026.

[2] “Ellen Roome, Cheltenham mum and social media safety activist, achieves landmark change in UK law”, SoGlos, 16 February 2026. Accessed August 2026.

[3] Jools’ Law, Parliament Campaign timeline, joolslaw.co.uk. Accessed August 2026.

[4] Ellen Roome MBE, King’s New Year Honours, as reported by SoGlos, 16 February 2026. Accessed August 2026.

Over the last year or so, I’ve built individual child online safety guides for the apps and platforms your kids are actually using. Roblox. Snapchat. Discord. Character.AI. Grooming. Sextortion. Screen time. One at a time, as the questions came in from parents and teachers or new threats revealed themselves.

Somewhere along the way I ended up with 34 of them. Useful guides on important topics, each one built to stand on its own, each one written in the same plain English style you’ll know if you’ve read anything I’ve put out.

But I kept thinking that each of these resources was great, but having them in one single guide would be useful. I still love the visual, infographic style of the individual guides, they’re not going anywhere. What I didn’t have was something centralised. Something less visual and more complete. A single document a parent could open on their phone at 11 pm when they’re worried, or a DSL could print and put in a staff folder.

So I built The Complete Parent’s Guide. All 34 guides, in one handbook, organised into four parts: Understanding Online Risks, Platform Guides, Parental Controls, and Further Resources.

What it actually is

It’s a free PDF that works on any device - phone, laptop, tablet, doesn’t matter. The contents page is fully clickable, so if you only need Snapchat, or only need grooming, you can jump straight there and because I know some of you will want a physical copy for a staffroom or a kitchen drawer, it’s built to print properly too.

It comes in two versions. Dark mode, which I’ll be honest, I love, it’s how the CSG brand is meant to look and also a light mode, which exists because some people prefer it, and because if you’re printing this off, your ink cartridge will thank you.

Why I think this matters

I want this to be the first thing a parent or teacher reaches for when they need to talk to a child about an app or a risk and aren’t sure where to start. Not because it’s the only resource out there. But because I’ve built every page of it to be something you can actually read, and more importantly, actually understand.

74% of UK parents say they worry specifically about AI-related online risks1. Most of them aren’t short of concern. They’re short of somewhere to put it.

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A moment I’ll be honest about

When I’d finished pulling all 34 guides together into one document, I sat with it for a minute and felt something I don’t always let myself feel, a bit of pride. This exists because I built it and I’ll say what I always say when people ask why I do any of this. Everything I do with Cyber Safety Guy comes out of something real and difficult, my C-PTSD, from eight years inside the evidence in Digital Forensics and Incident Response. If a parent uses this handbook and it helps them protect their child, that’s the thing that makes the difficult days worth it.

Who it’s for

Everyone. Parents, teachers, DSLs, grandparents, youth workers, anyone who wants to be better armed for the technological landscape kids are actually growing up in. That’s the whole point of pulling it together like this.

It’s free to download. If you want to support the work, subscriptions to this Substack go 100% to Childline. You don’t have to pay a penny to get the guide.

[ Download The Complete Parent’s Guide ]

If a child needs support right now, Childline is free, confidential and available 24/7: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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Twelve people dead in a single week. Two crashes. Two countries. One horrifying pattern, cars being driven the wrong way down major roads.

When I first saw this come across my feed, what hit me hardest was the senseless loss of young lives for what may have been a viral TikTok challenge and the loss of two police officers, one of whom survived a tour in Iraq only to be killed doing his job on the streets of the UK.

People are unaware of how serious these viral trends can be. All for the sake of getting engagement on a social media platform.

What happened in Ireland

On August 16, 2026, a black BMW travelling the wrong way on the northbound M9 motorway near Moone, County Kildare, collided head-on with a Hyundai.1 Five teenagers in the BMW died: Kamil Pustkowski (17), Joey Carthy (15), Alex McCarthy (17), Jack Kennedy (17), and Jeremy O’Brien (18).

Four people in the Hyundai, including a seven-year-old boy, were seriously injured. Two women remain in critical condition. The family was travelling to Dublin Airport for a wedding.

Gardaí believe the BMW was driven onto the wrong side to evade police.

What happened in England

Six days later, on August 22, 2026, seven people died when a Volkswagen Passat travelling the wrong way on the A66 near South Bank, Middlesbrough, collided with a Cleveland Police armed response vehicle at approximately 3:39 a.m.2

The officers killed were PC Matthew Blades (37) and PC Tom Clough (38). The five Passat occupants: Cole Robert Worthy (17), Theo Rae (17), Makai Saddington (18), Jakub Matusiak (23), and Michael Robert Cahill (23).

The IOPC has confirmed the two officers were not involved in the pursuit and has opened an investigation.

The social media trail nobody wants to talk about

Here is where this gets complicated, and where I need to be careful.

Police have stated there is no evidence the A66 crash was connected to a TikTok challenge. Some people online are pushing back against anyone who mentions the social media angle at all.

But here is what we do know: Saddington and Matusiak had previously posted TikTok videos showing dangerous driving.3 Those videos are still available on TikTok even though his account has been disabled, flying in the face of what TikTok have said about removing content like that.

Every time content like this is posted and allowed to stay up, it emboldens the creators to make more. Especially when it earns them more viewers, more likes, and an audience to cheer them on.

Parents will not necessarily see the trail or build-up of these videos and therefore will not see the danger. That is why it is imperative that platforms identify the content and remove it, not if or when it is reported. The technology already exists to make this happen, but they choose not to use it.

The algorithm problem parents do not understand

I hear this from parents a lot, “My kid watches car videos on TikTok, but he would never actually do something that stupid.”

I am sure the parents of the teens in these videos thought the very same thing at some point.

The algorithm is pushing content like this to teens and this then desensitises them and normalises the activity in their minds. The “my child would never do that” argument is weak at best. Would a parent rather risk believing that, or have a proper conversation about the trend and its risks?

The frequency of content like this being recorded is what the real concern should be. Teens do not see the news stories of the deadly results. They just see the “exciting” content that gains hundreds of thousands of views.

Wrong-way driving incidents are increasing

Transport Infrastructure Ireland has recorded 62 wrong-way driving incidents on Irish motorways so far in 2026.4 That is a 32% increase from the same period in 2025.

Thirty-two per cent. In one year.

I am not going to sit here and tell you that every single one of those incidents is connected to social media. I cannot prove that. But I can tell you that when dangerous behaviour gets filmed, shared, celebrated, and algorithmically promoted to millions of teenagers, some of those teenagers are going to try it.

The UK government has urged TikTok and other platforms to remove videos “celebrating” dangerous driving. TikTok says it removes violating content and is monitoring material connected to the incidents.

Monitoring. Not preventing. There is an important difference.

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What parents need to do tonight

If you are reading this and feeling sick to your stomach, good. That means you are paying attention and that you care.

Here is the conversation you need to have:

Explain to your teen that the end result here was twelve people dead. Parents lost children. Children lost parents. Wives lost their husbands. All for a few likes on a platform that does not care about the safety of people who use it.

There are going to be repercussions from these two incidents alone for many years to come, by which time the viral trend will have been forgotten.

Then ask:

• Have you seen content like this on your feeds?

• Do you have any of it saved on your phone?

• Have any of your friends been involved in anything like that?

This has to be a two-way conversation and not an interrogation. This is genuinely a very touchy subject and has legal ramifications if they do get involved in activity like that.

I think just having the conversation and discussing the fact that twelve people died should be enough of a warning for most teens.

What to look for on their phone

If you want to go further:

1. Check their TikTok “Liked” videos and saved collections

2. Look at their YouTube watch history, particularly Shorts

3. Check their camera roll for any videos filmed from moving vehicles

4. Look at group chats on Snapchat, Instagram, and WhatsApp for shared clips

5. Check if they follow accounts that post “chase” or “cop run” content

You are not looking for evidence to punish them. You are looking for warning signs that the algorithm has been feeding them a steady diet of content that makes this look fun, exciting, and consequence-free.

Platform accountability is not optional

I have said this before and I will keep saying it, platforms have the technology to identify and remove this content proactively. They choose not to because engagement metrics matter more than safety.

Every video that stays up is a recruitment tool. Every comment section full of fire emojis is encouragement. Every view count climbing into the hundreds of thousands tells a teenager that this is something worth doing.

The platforms are not neutral. The algorithm is not neutral and until they are held accountable, parents have to fill the gap.

You are not powerless

I know this feels overwhelming. I know the technology moves faster than any of us can keep up with. I know you cannot monitor everything.

But you can have the conversation. You can explain the consequences. You can make sure your child understands that the people in these videos are not anonymous statistics, they are someone’s son, someone’s daughter, someone’s husband, someone’s dad.

Twelve people dead in a week.

If having one uncomfortable conversation with your teenager means they think twice before getting in a car with someone showing off for the camera, it is worth it.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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Meta child safety trial: 29 states take the social media giant to court

Opening statements began on Tuesday in one of the most significant child safety lawsuits in social media history. Twenty-nine state attorneys general are now in federal court in Oakland, California, arguing that Meta knowingly designed its platforms to be addictive to children and then lied to the public about the risks. If the states win, Meta could face fines of up to $1.4 trillion.1

I am genuinely relieved to see this trial. I have always said that to see genuine change in social media platforms, it needs to hurt their profits, because child safety does not make them as much profit as a child addicted to their content.

This post will walk you through what is being alleged, what evidence is already public, what Meta will likely argue in its defence and what you as a parent or teacher should do with this information right now.

What Meta is accused of doing to children

The lawsuit, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, alleges that Meta violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), California’s False Advertising Law, and California’s Unfair Competition Law.2 But the core accusation is simpler than the legal language, Meta built platforms designed to hook young users and keep them scrolling, knowing it would harm them and then told the public everything was fine.

If a parent asked me to explain this in plain terms, I would put it like this, this is what doomscrolling is all about. The technique was invented to engage people in the habit of thinking “just one more,” and it keeps them on the app, generating profit for the platform. That is why ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, were forced to create a safe version for Chinese children. One of the features of that version is a break between each video to prevent doomscrolling. That is not profitable, and they were only forced to do it in China, so the rest of the world gets the addictive version.

Meta’s platforms use the same mechanics. The allegation is that this was not an accident or an unintended side effect, it was the business model.

The evidence that already exists

The attorneys general are not building this case from scratch. Internal Meta research, leaked by whistleblowers and reported extensively since 2021, showed that the company knew Instagram was harmful to teenage mental health, particularly for girls.3 The Frances Haugen disclosures revealed internal documents where Meta’s own researchers flagged the damage their products were causing.

From my perspective, the evidence already exists from internal research conducted by Meta themselves. The fact that they did not act on that research to make the platform safe speaks volumes. Whistleblowers are also giving evidence from internal viewpoints. A business decision was made over a safety decision at every turn, because that is where the profit lies.

This is not speculation. This is Meta’s own data, now being presented in court.

What Meta will argue in its defence

Meta’s defence will almost certainly argue that parents have the tools to control their children’s usage and that the company cannot be held responsible for how people choose to use a free platform.

I think it is a disgrace that they attract children to their platforms and then expect parents, who will each have different levels of technical capability, to be responsible for the safety of their children on a platform they probably do not fully understand. Not only that, but do we build motorways and then expect the drivers of vehicles to build crash barriers and lighting to make them safe?

The “parental responsibility” argument puts the burden on families while the company profits from the very behaviours it enabled. It is a deflection, not a defence.

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The lawsuits that came before this trial

This trial did not happen in isolation. It follows a pattern of courts finding against Meta in child safety cases.

In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta liable for a young woman’s mental health harm and awarded $6 million in damages in the case of K.G.M. v. Meta.4 That verdict established that a jury could hold Meta accountable for the design of its platform, not just for hosting harmful content.

More significantly, a New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $567 million after a jury found the company failed to protect young users from child sexual exploitation.5 That case dealt directly with predatory behaviour facilitated by Meta’s platforms.

These are not outliers. There are approximately 1,600 plaintiffs in California alone, over 10,000 individual lawsuits nationwide, and nearly 800 school district cases pending against Meta.6 The Oakland trial is just the tip of an iceberg.

Why this trial matters more than the others

The state attorneys general trial is different because of scale and consequence. Twenty-nine states acting together, with California’s Attorney General leading, represents a coordinated government action rather than individual claims. The potential $1.4 trillion in fines is not a typo. That figure reflects the statutory penalties available under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and state consumer protection laws, multiplied across millions of affected users.

If the states prevail, it will not just hurt Meta financially. It will establish legal precedent that platforms can be held liable for designing addictive features aimed at children. Every other social media company will have to reckon with that precedent.

What parents should do right now

For a parent reading this today, not a lawyer, just someone trying to keep their child safe, here is what I want you to actually do with this information.

Understand that platforms do not have the safety of your child as their priority. They will only implement the very bare minimum of controls that they are mandated to. You, first and foremost, have the most effective parental control, ensuring a safe and non-judgemental space for your child so that when something feels dodgy, they can come and speak to you without fear of punishment or having their phone taken away.

If a child starts to hide things, that is what a sexual predator thrives on. Secrecy.

The conversation you have at your kitchen table matters more than any setting you can toggle in an app. Technical controls are useful, but they are not a substitute for trust.

Where this goes from here

The Oakland trial is expected to last up to six weeks. We will not have a verdict tomorrow. But the fact that opening statements are happening, that evidence is being presented, that Meta executives will have to answer questions under oath, is the pressure that is needed for real change to happen.

I spent 8 years inside the evidence. I analysed in excess of a million images, approximately a quarter of which were criminal across all levels of grading scales. I had no counselling or therapy support during that work. I was diagnosed with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and medically discharged from the Royal Air Force in 2019.

I do not create this content for financial gain. 100% of paid subscription income goes to Childline every six months. I create it because if I can stop even one child from becoming evidence in a criminal case, the pain is worth it.

This trial is a step toward accountability. It is not the finish line, but it is movement in the right direction.

Keep fighting the good fight, stay up-to-date, and keep the conversations alive and kicking. You are not alone in this.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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If you’re a parent or a teacher in the UK, you’ll probably know that a social media ban for under-16s is coming. It was announced in June, and it’s due to take effect in Spring 2027.1 What you might not know is that Canada, in the same fortnight, introduced a law that takes a different approach, and I think it’s the one the UK should have copied.

Canada’s Safe Social Media Act, Bill C-34, also bans under-16 accounts by default.2 But it does something the UK’s version doesn’t. It gives platforms a way out of the ban, not through a loophole, but through proof. If a platform can show its new Digital Safety Commission that it has built adequate safeguards into the service to protect children, it can apply for an exemption and keep serving them.3

That single design choice changes everything about the incentive on the table. The UK’s approach tells platforms: keep children off until after they turn 16, full stop. Canada’s approach tells platforms: earn the right to have them by proving the platform itself is safe.

In my opinion, that’s exactly the stance the UK government should be taking. Child safety should be baked in from the very beginning of the planning stages of any social media platform, or any new capability that platform launches, not added afterwards because a regulator forced the issue. Canada has got that right.

Why “baked in from the start” isn’t just a nice idea

I spent eight years in DFIR before I came to this work, and the principle behind “safety by design” isn’t new to me, it’s standard practice in security engineering. You bake in safety and security at the planning stage because it’s simpler and cheaper to do it there than to try to bolt it on once the product already exists. Retrofitting is always harder, always more expensive, and always leaves gaps that a determined attacker, or in this case a determined child, will find.

There’s a second benefit that gets missed. If you put as many guardrails in place as possible from day one, you can actually test them and adjust, using feedback from the people who matter, the children using the platform, the parents watching them use it, and the professionals teachers, safeguarding leads and police, who deal with the fallout when something goes wrong. A platform built this way isn’t a finished product handed down from on high. It’s something that gets safer over time because it was designed to be able to.

Why the ban alone won’t be enough

I want to be careful here, because I’m not against the UK’s ban. I think age restrictions have a role to play. But the evidence so far suggests a ban on its own isn’t the whole answer.

Australia’s under-16 ban has been running since the start of this year.4 Researchers who surveyed around 400 children found that more than 85 per cent of them were still using social media platforms despite the restriction.5 Children are getting around the technical barriers with VPNs, or simply defeating the age verification technology itself, including with deepfakes.

That tells me a ban needs to be one part of a much wider strategy, not the whole strategy. In DFIR terms, this is defence in depth: no single control is trusted to do the whole job, because no single control ever does. You layer education, safer platform design, real communication with parents and teachers, and legislation with proper enforcement behind it, and you treat an outright ban as one of the tools you reach for, not the first and only one.

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What I want the UK to do

The UK’s ban takes effect in Spring 2027, and Ofcom is still working out what “highly effective age assurance” actually means in practice, with findings due in October.6 There’s still time to build something better into the framework than a ban on its own.

Safety by design shouldn’t be a badge platforms earn for being nice. It should be the bare minimum, a non-negotiable global standard for any platform serving anyone under 18, enforced through the Online Safety Act and by Ofcom, in exactly the way Canada is proposing to enforce it through its own regulator. Most of what “safety by design” actually requires is common sense. It shouldn’t take primary legislation to make platforms do the sensible thing from the outset.

I’d love to see this raised directly in Parliament. Samantha Niblett MP has been a contact of mine on child online safety issues, and this is exactly the kind of proposal that deserves a proper airing at Westminster, not just a policy paper nobody reads.

Canada won’t get everything right first time. No piece of legislation ever does. But the principle underneath Bill C-34 is sound, and it’s one the UK still has time to adopt before its own ban becomes law.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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If you’ve got a teenager in the house, or you’ve spent any time on TikTok yourself lately, you’ve probably already seen the fruit videos. Odd little AI-made dramas where a banana cheats on a strawberry, or a watermelon steals someone’s boyfriend. Millions of views. Daft, harmless, good for a laugh.

Except some of those same characters are now starring in something much darker, and researchers are warning it could be a way of nudging young people towards radicalisation.

This week, Sky News reported that violent AI-generated clips of fruit and veg characters could help radicalise young people, according to researchers looking into the trend.1 Reports elsewhere have already documented the shift, cutesy AI “fruit slop” videos increasingly dipping into domestic violence, sexual assault and even murder plotlines, all wrapped in the same bright, Pixar-style packaging that made the original trend so shareable.2

Let me explain the terms first, because you must understand them. “AI slop” just means content churned out by generative AI tools, fast, cheap, and with no editorial oversight. A “microdrama” is one of those short, episodic videos, usually under a minute. Put them together and you get an entire soap opera cast of fruit characters, produced faster than any human writer could manage, with nobody checking what’s actually in the script.

Why this matters more than it looks like it should

It’s not really about fruit. It’s about how easily something disturbing can be smuggled past a young person’s guard when it’s wrapped in something familiar and non-threatening. I’ve spent years looking at how digital manipulation actually works, and the pattern is always the same, get the audience comfortable first, then move the line.

The research backs this up. A team at the University of Copenhagen has built a model showing how generative AI can accelerate the path to radicalisation, not just by recommending extreme content, as the old YouTube rabbit-hole did, but by creating new content that reflects a person’s anger or grievance back at them.3 Generative tools add a layer recommendation algorithms never had. They don’t just find the extreme content. They can manufacture it, endlessly, tailored to whatever keeps someone watching.

This isn’t theoretical. Researchers at GNET (the Global Network on Extremism and Technology) have already documented extremist groups using AI video generation tools to glorify real terrorist attacks, reusing exactly this kind of stylised, viral-friendly format.4 The fruit videos are a much softer version of the same technique. Familiar, funny, low-stakes content is the perfect cover for something that shouldn’t be low-stakes at all.

It sits within a regulatory gap. Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom’s Protection of Children Codes require platforms likely to be accessed by children to protect them from “priority content” this includes violent material.5 Those duties came into force in July 2025. Fast-moving, AI-generated trends like this are exactly the kind of content those rules were meant to catch and exactly the kind that’s hardest to catch in time, because a video format can go from funny to violent within the same trend, on the same accounts, in a matter of weeks.

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For Parents

1. Ask what they’re watching, calmly. If your child shows you a fruit video, don’t panic-react. Ask them to talk you through it. Curiosity opens a conversation. Alarm closes one.

2. Explain how these are made. A teenager who understands that a video is AI-generated, with no editor or fact-checker anywhere near it, is better placed to question what they’re seeing next time.

3. Use the controls you already have. Restricted Mode, screen time limits, and reporting tools exist on every major platform. They won’t catch everything, but they slow the drift.

4. Watch for desensitisation, not just content. The bigger risk isn’t one video. It’s a young person becoming comfortable with escalating violence because it kept arriving in a format that felt harmless.

For Teachers & DSLs

1. Add AI-generated content to safeguarding training. Most existing training assumes a human posted the harmful content. Increasingly, nobody did, and that changes how you talk about it with pupils.

2. Fold it into media literacy, not just online safety. Pupils need to understand that “AI-made” doesn’t mean “harmless” or “not real content.” That distinction is getting harder for adults to make, let alone children.

3. Log it against your Prevent duty where relevant. If a pupil’s viewing pattern shows escalation from this kind of content towards more extreme material, treat it as you would any other radicalisation indicator, and record it under KCSIE as usual.

If your child, or a child you work with, has seen something online that’s worrying them, Childline is there, day or night, and they don’t have to give their name.

0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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If you scrolled past a headline this week saying Meta had been “declared a public nuisance”, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a throwaway line from an angry journalist. It isn’t. It’s a formal legal finding from a US judge. It’s also the first time any social media company has been held liable this way for the harm its platform causes children.1 I want to walk you through what actually happened, what it changes, and what it means if you’re a parent or a Designated Safeguarding Lead here in the UK, where the rules work very differently.

What is a “public nuisance”, in plain English?

It’s an old legal concept, usually used for things like a factory pumping out pollution that harms an entire community, not just one neighbour. Last week, a judge in New Mexico applied it to Meta for the first time.2 Meta’s own lawyers had argued the factory-pollution comparison during the trial, trying to limit what remedy the court could order. The judge accepted their comparison, then turned it back on them. Meta’s platforms are the factory, he wrote, and the psychological harm and sexual exploitation of children are the pollution, spreading out beyond the apps into schools, hospitals, families and law enforcement.3

How much is Meta actually paying, and why?

The total now stands at $942 million, built up in two stages.4 In March, a jury found Meta had committed 75,000 violations of New Mexico’s Unfair Practices Act and ordered the maximum civil penalty, $375 million. In August, following a separate three-week trial that examined whether Meta’s platforms constitute a public nuisance, the judge went further. He ordered Meta to pay $567 million into an abatement fund, most of it earmarked for youth mental health treatment and prevention programmes in the state.5 I can’t tell you just how much of a fan I am of this judge!

Money aside, the more significant part for parents is what the court ordered Meta to actually change. The judge mandated hiding public “like” counts from users under 18 unless a parent approves showing them, blocking adults from messaging minors they’re not connected to, stopping the recommendation algorithm suggesting under-18 accounts to adults, pausing push notifications to under-18s overnight, capping monthly usage for under-18s at roughly three hours a day, and deleting accounts belonging to under-13s along with their data.6 Meta has said it will appeal; I mean, think how much profit they will lose by actually protecting children!

Would this happen in the UK?

This is where it gets interesting because, on paper, our regulator already has bigger, sharper teeth. Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom can fine a platform up to 10% of its global turnover, or £18 million, whichever is greater. For a company the size of Meta, 10% of turnover runs into the billions, several times larger than the New Mexico penalty.7 Ofcom has also been active. In March this year it wrote directly to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Roblox and YouTube, the platforms children use most, demanding stronger age checks, better grooming protections and safer feeds, with a deadline to report back. Its own research found that 72% of children aged 8 to 12 are still using apps with a minimum age of 13.8

So the power already exists. What hasn’t happened yet is a UK enforcement action against a major platform anywhere close to the New Mexico ruling. The largest fine issued under the Online Safety Act so far is just over £1 million, and it went to a small adult website, not a household-name platform.9 Having a bigger stick on paper isn’t the same as using it. This New Mexico ruling is the first time a court anywhere has forced structural product changes on a major platform through litigation rather than regulation. Whether the UK gets there through Ofcom, or through parents and campaigners pushing for it, remains to be seen.

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Where I come in

I spent eight years in digital forensics, much of it looking at what happens when platform design fails a child. Default public visibility, unrestricted messaging from strangers, recommendation systems that don’t know or care how old someone is, these weren’t abstract policy debates in my work. They were the mechanism, over and over, in real cases. Watching a court name them out loud, in writing, in a judgment, is a giant step in the right direction. It’s evidence that these design choices are being recognised as a cause, not just a coincidence.

For Parents

• Check whether your child’s account still shows public like counts, and turn that setting off if it does.

• Go into their messaging or DM settings and confirm strangers can’t contact them directly.

• Set an actual overnight cut-off for notifications yourself; don’t assume the app enforces one for under-18s here the way New Mexico has now ordered for the US.

• Talk to them about what the recommendation feed shows them and who it’s connecting them with.

For Teachers and DSLs

• Use this ruling as a concrete, recent example when explaining platform accountability to parents or in safeguarding training; it’s easier to explain than an abstract statistic.

• Check your school’s current guidance reflects that under-13s are not meant to hold accounts at all, and that this is now a live enforcement issue, not just a terms-of-service technicality.

• Keep an eye on Ofcom’s response to the platforms it wrote to in March; further UK-specific requirements may follow this year.

None of this fixes itself because of one ruling in one US state. But it’s a genuine first, and it gives parents and safeguarding leads here something concrete to point to. I’ll keep watching whether Ofcom follows suit.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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If your child uses ChatGPT for homework, let’s be honest, most children now do. There’s a parental controls system sitting inside it that most parents have never linked to their child’s account. OpenAI quietly expanded it on 13 July 2026, and I want to walk you through exactly what it does now, because it’s grown well beyond the basic version most people know.

ChatGPT’s parental controls first appeared in September 2025, letting parents link accounts, set quiet hours, and manage features like memory and chat history for a linked teen.1 The July 2026 update added something more specific, parents now get notified if their linked teen’s account is banned for violent behaviour and Study Mode, a setting that changes how ChatGPT responds during schoolwork, can now be switched on as the default for every new chat a teen starts.2

Does UK Law Actually Cover ChatGPT?

In February 2026, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot, would fall within the scope of the Online Safety Act’s illegal content duties, a direct response to the backlash over X’s Grok chatbot generating sexualised images of children.3 This puts genuine legal weight behind whatever OpenAI builds voluntarily. The company now carries a duty under UK law to prevent children in the UK encountering illegal content through the product, not just a reputational incentive to appear responsible after the fact.

This arrives against a backdrop of real usage, not a niche concern. Ofcom’s own Children’s Online Experiences report found that 56% of children aged 8 to 19 in the UK now use AI tools for learning, creativity and everyday tasks.4 For a product used by more than half the UK’s children, parental controls that sit behind a link most parents have never activated leaves a meaningfully large gap between what exists and what’s actually switched on.

Why This Matters More Than a Typical Platform Update

Underneath the parental controls sits an age prediction system that OpenAI rolled out in January 2026, which estimates whether an account likely belongs to someone under 18 based on usage patterns, rather than relying purely on a self-reported date of birth.5 When the system isn’t confident an account belongs to an adult, it defaults to teen-appropriate settings automatically, restricting flirtatious conversation and self-harm discussion at the model level, not just through a content filter sitting on top.6

That’s a meaningfully different approach to what I’ve seen from most platforms. Rather than asking a child to prove they’re old enough for adult content, the system asks an adult to prove they’re not a teenager if they’ve been misclassified as one.

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What the Notifications Actually Cover

OpenAI has been specific that these alerts are narrow. Parents are notified in limited situations, including signs of acute distress detected in a linked teen’s conversations and now, following July’s update, when a teen’s account is banned for violent activity. The notifications are explicitly not intended to trigger for fictional writing, gaming discussion, political debate, general anger, or abstract questions. Parental controls do not let a parent read or monitor a teen’s actual conversations.

Ofcom is separately examining chatbot services directly as part of a research programme that began in summer 2026, testing sign-up processes and safety controls across several services, including ChatGPT using fictional teen accounts.7 That’s the regulator checking the same claims OpenAI is making about its own safeguards, rather than taking the company’s word for it, and it’s worth watching alongside whatever you set up at home.

What to Set Up Tonight

Go to Settings inside ChatGPT and send your teen a linking invitation, it takes a single email exchange to connect accounts. Once linked, turn on Study Mode as the default, set quiet hours that match your household’s actual routine, and check which features, like memory or chat history, you want disabled.

If your teen’s account has already been placed in the adult experience by mistake because of how it’s being used, that’s also worth checking, since it means none of the teen-specific model behaviour rules are currently applying.

If your child is struggling with something a chatbot has said, or with anything else happening online, Childline is free, confidential and available any time.

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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I need to be honest with you about something, because I think honesty is the only thing I’ve got left to offer some days and those of you who have followed and supported me deserve that.

Most of what I write about online safety will never go viral, it’s not because it isn’t good enough. It’s because the algorithms deciding what parents and teachers actually see were never built to reward calm, unfunny, uncontroversial safety content. There’s nothing funny about explaining how a predator builds trust over three weeks before moving a child off-platform. There’s nothing controversial about telling a parent to check their kid’s privacy settings. It’s just true, quiet, slow and platforms have no commercial reason to put that in front of you.

That’s the plain truth of it. Here’s what it costs to keep doing it anyway.

This work is hard. Not hard in the way people mean when they say “content creation is a grind.” Hard in the way that I sit down to write about grooming, or deepfakes, or a fourteen-year-old who trusted the wrong stranger online and I feel the immense weight of what I witnessed during the eight years in digital forensics sitting on my chest whilst I do it. I analysed over a million images during my time investigating criminal cases in the RAF Police. A quarter of them were criminal. I got no counselling for it at the time. I carry Complex PTSD because of it now and most weeks, I turn that back into a blog post, a reel, a guide, in the hope it stops one more child ending up as an image in the evidence.

Here’s the part I don’t say enough. Most of it goes nowhere and because I work in cyber, I know exactly why. But knowing why never makes it any easier.

I tag people with huge followings on reels about this. People whose reach could put this in front of a hundred thousand parents in a single share. I can see they’ve watched it. I can see the little tick that says they opened it, then nothing. Some of them are parents themselves. They scroll past a warning about their own children’s safety because it doesn’t fit the feed they’re building. If I’m honest, that's literally soul-destroying for me and there are times I have to fight an urge to just crumple and cry. Some people will call that unmanly and weak, I call it being human and actually being passionate about something. Something that most people will never have to view the real consequences of, I thank whatever God you believe in that you will never have to witness those things, but a little bit of me thinks that would make all of this much easier.

There are days this makes me feel like I’m shouting into a well. Like the mental health toll of writing this stuff, the toll on Colleen watching me disappear into it some evenings, isn’t buying anything back. I won’t pretend otherwise, because pretending is exactly the kind of content this newsletter exists to push back against.

But here’s the reframe I need to believe in, because it’s the only one that’s actually true.

We already know the platforms can build this differently. They’ve just never chosen to, unless someone made them.

In 2021, the Chinese government forced ByteDance’s hand on Douyin, the domestic version of TikTok. Under-14s were moved into a mandatory youth mode, forty minutes a day, locked out entirely between 10 pm and 6 am, fed a curated feed instead of an open-ended algorithmic one.1 It wasn’t a gesture. It was law, and ByteDance built it, because they had no choice.

Compare that to what TikTok offers everywhere else, including here in the UK. Softer default settings. Notification limits. Nothing close to a 40-minute cap, nothing close to a curfew, nothing lawfully mandated.2 The difference isn’t technical capability. ByteDance proved they can build a properly restrictive, child-safe version of their own product. The difference is that nobody outside China has forced them to, and a shorter session on your kid’s phone is worse for their advertising revenue than it is good for your kid.

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Safe children cost platforms money. That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s just the business model, and it’s the reason the Online Safety Act and Ofcom’s enforcement powers matter more than any individual post I write ever will, if they enforce it.

This was never going to go viral, and chasing that isn’t actually the point. The point is that somewhere, a parent who was about to hand their eight-year-old an unsupervised tablet reads this and thinks twice. A DSL who didn’t know what “youth mode” even means on Douyin, let alone what their own school’s safeguarding policy should say about AI and deepfakes, gets one more piece of the picture. That’s not nothing, that’s the whole point of me pushing on in the face of the algorithms.

I use the anger at the platforms and the ignoring of the famous to keep pushing, not to give up. I need to know I’m doing everything I can. Not everything anyone else could do with a bigger platform or a louder audience, just everything I can do with mine.

If you’re one of the people who does read this, share it, or send it to a parent who needs it, you’re not just being kind. You’re doing the bit the algorithm won’t do for me and giving me a reason to push on when my head says I should just give up.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity very close to my heart and helping it do amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate 100% of paid subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain. Or to make a one-off donation, go to my Just Giving page.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 0800 1111 | childline.org.uk

Available 24/7, 365 days a year. Free, confidential, and here for every child.

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That was a comment left on my Substack recently. A dad with a specific fear, not a vague worry about the internet being dangerous.

He wasn’t being paranoid. AI deepfake technology can now take as few as 20 ordinary photos of a child, the kind sat in every parent’s camera roll, and use them to generate illegal images in around 15 minutes on a normal home computer. The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), the UK charity that finds and removes this material, confirms this is already happening at scale.1 What scares me more is the number of parents regularly posting photos of their children on social media profiles open to anyone who follows them.

I’m going to explain exactly how, what UK law now says, and what you can actually do about it.

How AI Deepfakes Are Made From a Child’s Photo

There’s a technique called LoRA, short for Low-Rank Adaptation. It lets someone take an existing AI image generator and fine-tune it using a small set of photos of one specific person. The result is a personalised model that can generate new images of that child in any scenario the user chooses.

The barrier to doing this is lower than most people believe. As few as 20 images, on a bog-standard home computer, in around 15 minutes. Those 20 images don’t need to be explicit and they don’t need to come from anywhere unusual. Birthday photos, sports day, school trip, family holiday snaps posted publicly, or even just to a wide friends list, by a parent who had no reason to think there was any risk.

That’s all it takes.

How Much AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material Is There in the UK?

In 2025, the IWF assessed 8,029 AI-generated images and videos as showing realistic child sexual abuse, a 14% rise on the year before.2 I’m going to stop there for a second, not to shock, but because it’s easy to read a figure and not register what it means. Each one depicts a child. Each one is criminal, 8,029 images.

Video is where the growth is sharpest. AI-generated child sexual abuse videos rose from 13 in 2024 to 3,443 in 2025, a 26,385% increase. 65% of that video content is classified as Category A under UK law, the most severe classification and believe me when I say they do not get any worse. The IWF also reports that 94% of illegal AI-generated content targets girls,3 and that material depicting infants aged 0 to 2 rose sharply year on year.4

I’m not including these figures to shock or frighten you. I’m including them because the scale of what’s happening bears no resemblance to the public conversation about it. Most parents I speak to have never heard the term AI CSAM. Most assume their child is safe because they’re not on adult sites, or screen time is monitored, or age restrictions are in place. None of those things are protection against this.

Where Do Offenders Get the Photos?

The IWF has confirmed offenders are actively using images of real, known children found online. Not from dark corners of the internet I have written about before. From the same places every parent posts family photographs, Instagram, Facebook, school WhatsApp groups, a class photo on the school’s own website or even a profile the parent thought was visible only to friends.

The content those images get used to create is not private and once it exists, it doesn’t go away. That dad on my Substack put it best. A fictional record, a file that says his daughter did something she never did.

Is AI-Generated Child Sexual Abuse Material Illegal in the UK?

Yes and it has been for longer than most parents assume. The Protection of Children Act 1978 already covers pseudo-photographs, which is the legal term for exactly this kind of AI-generated image, so creating, possessing or distributing it has always carried the same weight as real content.5

What’s changed is that the law has finally caught up with the tools themselves. The Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April 2026, until then, the AI tool used to make this material could sit in a legal grey area even when the output was obviously illegal. Now it’s a specific offence to make, adapt, possess or supply an AI model built to generate child sexual abuse material, and it carries up to five years in prison.6 AI-generated CSAM also counts as priority illegal content under the Online Safety Act, so platforms are legally obliged to be actively stopping it, not just removing it when someone complains.

Whether that gets properly enforced is a different question, and one I’ll come back to. But for the first time, the legislation actually matches the technology.

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Why Aren’t Tech Platforms Doing More to Stop AI Deepfakes?

Researchers at the Oxford Internet Institute investigated two of the largest AI model repositories in 2025, and what they found should worry you more than it probably will. Almost 35,000 publicly downloadable deepfake models, downloaded close to 15 million times since November 2022.7 That particular study is about non-consensual deepfakes broadly, not children specifically, ranging from global celebrities down to Instagram accounts with under 10,000 followers. But the pattern it exposes is the same one running through everything above.

Most of those models carried tags that made their intended use obvious. Most broke the hosting platform’s own terms of service. Somehow, they managed to stay up anyway. I’ve spent enough years in DFIR to know the difference between a company that can’t catch something and a company that hasn’t been made to look hard enough. The detection tools exist. In a lot of cases now, so does the legal duty to use them. What’s missing isn’t capability. It’s whether anyone’s enforcing it.

How Can Parents Protect Their Child’s Photos From AI Misuse?

None of what follows is a guarantee, and none of it makes your child completely safe from a threat that’s partly being enabled at platform level. That responsibility sits with platforms and regulators, not with parents navigating a risk they were never warned about. That said, there are things that are worth you knowing about and doing because you cannot rely on the platforms to protect your children.

• Review what’s publicly visible. A public Instagram account, an open Facebook profile, a school website that publishes class photos- all of these are potential sources. Check what’s actually visible to anyone, not just your friends list.

• Understand the difference between private and public. Photos on a private account are still stored on that platform’s servers. Private means fewer people can see them, not that they can’t be found or misused. Still meaningfully better than public, but not a complete solution.

• Talk to older children about their own accounts. Teenagers are posting photos of themselves, their friends, their siblings. They’re unlikely to have thought about this specific risk. A calm, factual conversation goes a long way.

• Report to the IWF. If you or your child finds AI-generated content of any child online, report it at iwf.org.uk. They’re the UK body responsible for finding and removing this material, and they act quickly.

Knowledge is the protection here. The fact you are still here reading this means that you care and that really matters. Remember the first parental control is something you already possess, open & honest communication with your child and the knowledge that you are a safe space for them.

As always, thank you for your support. Please share this across your social media, and if you do have any comments, questions, or concerns, then feel free to reach out to me via the Social page, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

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