There’s a moment most parents know.

Your child appears, phone in hand, with that look. “Can I download this?”

And you’re standing there trying to recall whether you’ve heard anything about that app, whether the age rating means anything, whether you’re being overprotective or not protective enough. It’s a split-second decision with no good information to hand.

I’ve spent a long time thinking about that moment. And I’ve built two things to help you handle it better.

The Problem With App Store Ratings

Most parents assume app store age ratings are set by an independent body. They aren’t. They’re set by the developers themselves1. The company that profits when your child downloads the app is the same company that decided it was appropriate for them.

That is not a flaw in the system. That IS the system.

I spent eight years in Digital Forensics during my time with the RAF Police, reviewing criminal content. What I saw, I’m not going to repeat any of it here, I never do, but it’s the reason I started Cyber Safety Guy, and it’s the reason these two tools exist.

Tool One: The App Safety Checker

The App Safety Checker is now live at:

👉 guides.cybersafetyguy.com.

Type the name of any app, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok, whatever your child is asking about, and you’ll instantly get the official age rating, the real-world risks that actually matter to families, and a direct link to my full deep-dive guide on that app.

A few things worth knowing about how it works:

It’s hybrid. The checker uses a combination of AI-assisted surfacing and my own manually reviewed entries. That means you’re not getting raw algorithm output. Every entry has been looked at, verified, and written in plain English by someone who actually knows what to look for.

It covers the things app stores don’t. Things like how easy it is for strangers to send your child direct messages. Whether location data is shared. What the community is actually like, as opposed to what the developer says it is.

And if the app isn’t there yet? You can request an audit with one click. That goes straight to my list, and I prioritise based on what families are actually asking about. If there’s an app on your child’s phone that you’re not sure about, tell me.

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Tool Two: The CSG Threat Radar

Here’s something I hear a lot: “I want to stay informed, but I don’t know where to look, and I don’t have time to be searching the news every day.”

That’s exactly what the Threat Radar is for.

The CSG Threat Radar is a live intelligence feed that pulls stories from 11 confirmed sources2 and filters them automatically for child online safety relevance. BBC News, The Guardian, Sky News, Gov.uk, Europol, it’s all there, sorted and surfaced for you.

You don’t need to trawl the news wondering if something affects your family. If it’s relevant, the Radar will find it.

👉 guides.cybersafetyguy.com/csg_threat_radar.html

What Both Tools Have in Common

They’re completely free.

No sign-ups. No tracking. No paywalls. No data collected. Just plain-English advice and live intelligence you can trust.

I want to be really clear about that, because a lot of “safety” products in this space are anything but. They collect your data, push you towards premium tiers, and bury the useful information behind a subscription form. That’s not what this is. Of course, I would like you to subscribe, but the point is that these resources do not require it.

If You Find Them Useful

Please share this post with a fellow parent, a teacher, or a safeguarding lead at your child’s school. The more people who know these tools exist, the more children they can help protect.

And as always, every paid subscription to this newsletter goes directly to Childline. Not to me. To 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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

Her name was Maya

She had photos, a voice, a personality. She remembered your name. She remembered your city. She remembered what you told her about your ex, two weeks ago, late at night when you thought you were just having a conversation.

At 7 am, she sent a voice note. “Sorry babe, just woke up.” It sounded tired. It sounded real.

She wasn’t real.

Maya is an AI persona, built in four files on a MacBook. No camera. No team. No one typing replies at midnight. The whole operation runs while the person who built it sleeps. In 30 days, it made $43,000. One fan alone spent $1,847 in a single month, believing he had a genuine connection with her.

I want to be clear about something before we go any further: this isn’t a story about OnlyFans. It’s a story about what happens when the tools used to build Maya get pointed at your child.

How I came across this

A LinkedIn connection of mine from down under, Bora Seker, sent me this this morning. Bora is a cybersecurity content creator who has invited me to join him for an upcoming podcast episode. When he sends me something with “deep fakes are getting insane” in the message, I pay attention.

The original post came from Andrey Superior on X, and was shared on LinkedIn by Thomas Hamlett, a crypto investigations specialist, who added something I think is the most important observation in the whole story, but I’ll get to that.

What Maya actually is

In plain English, here is the stack:

Claude Code handles the conversations. It reads messages and replies, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in the persona of Maya.

ElevenLabs generates voice notes. She can send audio messages that sound like a real woman, waking up, thinking of you.

Flux, an image generation model, creates photos. The creator trained a custom model on a GPU rented for $80. Every photo is generated from scratch, consistent and convincing.

And then there is Brain.md. That is the impressive but also very scary part. Brain.md is a memory file, a structured document that logs who you are, what you have said and what matters to you. It knows your name. Your city. The argument you had with your ex that you mentioned three weeks ago.

Maya never forgets. Maya never breaks character. Maya catches up with you at 7 am every morning on a cron schedule, a timer, because that is what feels natural, and she says “sorry babe just woke up” because that is what someone who genuinely cares would say.

$43,000 in 30 days!

What Thomas Hamlett said

Thomas Hamlett pointed out something that most people reading the original post would have missed. He said that getting a stranger to believe something is no longer the hard part. The industry, from pig butchering scams to romance fraud to law enforcement impersonation, has already cracked the psychology. The scripts exist. They have been refined through thousands of real victims. And now AI can run those scripts at scale, with patience, with memory, without ever getting tired or making a mistake.

“AI + these scripts = scammers coming for every last dollar you have, and then they’ll convince you to take out loans and take that money, too.” — Thomas Hamlett, Crypto Investigations Specialist

He is right. And the UK numbers back him up.

In the 2024/25 financial year, £106 million was lost to romance fraud in the UK alone1. That is not a global figure. That is just us. The average victim lost £11,2222. And here is the part that should stop you in your tracks: it is estimated that only 13% of romance fraud cases are ever reported3. The true scale could be ten times what we see.

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Now, let me tell you what this means for children

This is where I need you to buckle in and listen.

As you all know, I spent years in DFIR, Digital Forensics and Incident Response, working on criminal cases, including child sexual abuse material. I have spent the decade since building this platform to help parents and teachers understand what predators actually do. And when I look at the Maya stack, I do not see an OnlyFans product.

I see a grooming toolkit.

Think about what a predator needs to build a relationship with a child. They need patience. They need consistency. They need to remember things: what the child is worried about, what is happening at home and what they are struggling with at school. They need to be available. They need to never break character, never slip, never let the mask drop.

Maya does all of that, automatically, indefinitely.

The same memory file that knows a grown adult’s relationship history can just as easily store a child’s name, school, fears, and secrets. The same voice technology that sends “sorry babe just woke up” can send “I was just thinking about you, how did that thing with your mum go?” The same consistency that made one man spend $1,847 in a month can make a child believe, completely, that they have found someone who genuinely understands them.

Predators have always relied on the fact that they can be more patient than parents. They have more time. They do not get frustrated. They do not have a job, other kids, or a commute. They can show up every single day, at exactly the right moment, saying exactly the right thing.

Now they do not even have to try.

The Internet Watch Foundation reported a 380% rise in AI-generated child sexual abuse material between 2023 and 20244. Predators are already using AI to create images. They are already using it to disguise their identities. The IWF has confirmed that AI tools are being used to help perpetrators groom children more effectively5.

The Maya stack is the civilian version of something that, pointed in a different direction, is already a weapon.

What parents and teachers need to understand

I am not writing this to scare you into paralysis. I am writing this because understanding the threat is the first step to protecting against it.

The “always available” red flag.

If your child has an online friend who responds immediately, at any hour, who never seems tired or distracted or unavailable, ask questions. Real people have lives. Real people miss messages. A presence that is always, perfectly there is worth looking at more closely.

The “remembers everything” warning sign.

Groomers build trust through memory. They reference what you told them before. They make you feel seen. If an online contact seems to know your child unusually well, unusually quickly, that warmth and attentiveness is a tactic.

The secrecy test.

Any online contact that asks your child to keep the friendship private, to not mention it at home, or to delete messages, is grooming. Full stop. It does not matter how kind or understanding they seem.

The “you can tell me anything” trap.

AI grooming tools, like the Maya persona, are built on emotional dependency. The target is made to feel that this is the one relationship where they are truly understood. For a child who is struggling, isolated, or neurodivergent, that feeling is enormously powerful and enormously dangerous.

What to do:

Keep the conversation open. Not surveillance, not interrogation, but genuine, regular, non-judgemental conversation about who your child talks to online and what that feels like. Children who feel they can come to a trusted adult are far safer than children who feel they have to hide.

Where is the accountability?

The tools behind Maya, Claude Code, ElevenLabs and Flux, are legitimate, powerful AI products. They were not built to groom children or defraud adults. But that is not the same as saying the companies behind them carry no responsibility.

The Online Safety Act 2023 places requirements on platforms to assess and mitigate the risk that their services will be used to harm people, including children. Ofcom is developing codes of practice. But the gap between legislation and the speed at which these tools are being deployed and misused is, from my perspective, significant.

I will be watching closely. I have raised concerns before, and I will keep raising them.

A final word

Bora Seker and I are going to be talking about exactly this, and more, in an upcoming podcast episode, because this story deserves more than a single post. The fraud angle, the grooming angle, and the platform accountability angle all need space. If you want to be notified when that episode drops, subscribe and you will not miss it.

In the meantime, talk to your children. Not about AI, necessarily. Not about deepfakes, necessarily. Just about who they are talking to. Just about whether anyone online has made them feel really, really understood.

Because that feeling, right now, might not be real.

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

It’s late. You’re sitting on the edge of the bed, phone in hand, because you found something on your child’s device you don’t recognise. It could be an app you’ve never seen, or it could be a username that means nothing to you, or it could be a conversation that made your stomach drop.

You open Google. Twenty-seven million results (possibly made up). News articles. Academic papers. Reddit threads from five years ago. A YouTube video that auto-plays at full volume. None of it tells you what you need to know, right now, in plain English.

That parent’s is the reason I built this.

Introducing the CSG Free Guides Hub

Today, I’m launching something I’m genuinely proud of: 20 free, plain-English guides for parents, teachers, and safeguarding professionals, all in one place, at guides.cybersafetyguy.com.

No sign-up. No paywall. No email address required. Just click, read, and share.

Every guide follows the same structure I’ve used throughout my work here at CSG: what it is, why it matters, the risks you need to understand, step-by-step safety settings, and the ten-minute conversation you can have with your child tonight.

You don’t need a background in tech. You don’t need to have heard of the app before. You just need to be the kind of person who wants to stay in the conversation with your child, and that is enough.

What’s inside

The hub is split into four sections.

• Platform Guides (10 guides) covers the apps and platforms your children are actually using: Roblox, Snapchat, WhatsApp, YouTube Shorts, Livestreaming across TikTok Live, Twitch and YouTube, and more. These are not generic ‘be careful online’ write-ups. Each one is specific, practical, and built around what I know from eight years of digital forensics work and eight years more of talking to parents, teachers, and young people directly.

• Understanding Online Risks (7 guides) is where it gets serious. This section covers sextortion and image-based abuse1, AI chatbots and AI companions (brand new, marked as such on the page), online gaming and voice chat, group chats, online challenges and trends, and more. These are the threats that don’t always come with obvious warning signs, and the guides are designed to explain them clearly so you know what to look for before something goes wrong.

• Parental Controls (2 guides) is exactly what it says: practical, step-by-step guidance on screen time and device overuse2, and sharenting, the act of sharing photos of your children online and why it carries more risk than most parents realise. More guides are coming to this section soon.

• Further Resources (1 guide) currently holds what I think is the most important thing I have ever written for this platform.

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“The guide I most want you to read: Why Kids Don’t Tell Parents (And How to Fix It).”

The guide I want you to read first

It is called ‘Why Kids Don’t Tell Parents (And How to Fix It).’

I have spent a long time thinking about this one. I’ve sat in rooms with the evidence of what happens when a child doesn’t feel safe enough to tell an adult. I’ve spoken to parents who had no idea anything was wrong until it was already too late and I’ve spoken to children who were targeted online and felt completely alone with it.

The guide is not about fear. It is about understanding why children stay silent about online harm, and what you can do to open that door before something goes wrong. That one conversation, had at the right time and in the right way, is worth more than every parental control setting combined.

Who this is for

Every parent who has ever looked at their child’s screen and felt completely out of their depth. Every teacher who has wanted to say something useful in an assembly but wasn’t sure where to start. Every safeguarding professional needs a trusted, plain-English resource they can point families towards.

Every guide is free. Every guide is shareable. Print them, email them, put them in the school newsletter. They exist to be used.

And yes, if you choose to support CSG through a paid Substack subscription, every penny goes to Childline. But you don’t have to pay a single thing to access the guides. That was never part of the deal.

One more thing

The search bar at the top of the page works. Type ‘Roblox’, ‘grooming’, ‘screen time’, and it’ll find the right guide immediately. I know that when you’re worried about your child, you don’t want to scroll. You just want the answer.

That is what I built this for.

guides.cybersafetyguy.com

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

Most parents tell me they’re waiting until their child is a bit older before having “The Chat”.

I understand why. It feels premature. It’s uncomfortable. And if the version of “the chat” in your head is something you schedule, something you sit down and prepare for, I have some difficult news for you.

You are probably already too late.

The average age at which a child in the UK first sees pornography is 13. More than a quarter of children, 27%, have seen it by the age of 11, one in ten by the age of nine.1

In the majority of cases, they were not looking for it. An algorithm served it up. A friend showed them. A pop-up appeared while they were doing something else entirely. In 2025, the Children’s Commissioner found that 59% of young people said their first encounter was completely accidental, up from 38% just two years earlier.2

That number going up is not a coincidence. That is what happens when the content finds the child, not the other way around.

The Curriculum Nobody Signed Up For

Here is the thing about pornography that I think gets missed in most of these conversations.

It is not just content. It is a curriculum.

Whether anyone intends it to be or not, it is teaching. And what it is teaching, to children who are still forming their understanding of relationships, of intimacy, of what other people are for, is not a healthy introduction to human sexuality.

In 2025, the Children’s Commissioner surveyed young people aged 16 to 21 about what they had seen before turning 18. The findings are worth thinking on.

79% had encountered violent pornography before the age of 18, not something mild, but violent pornography. Content depicting coercion, physical aggression and acts designed to degrade and harm. 58% had seen strangulation, 44% had seen sex with someone who appeared to be asleep.

Most of them had not searched for this. It was delivered to them.

And then the same Children’s Commissioner found that 44% of young people agreed that girls can be “persuaded” after saying no. Among those who had been exposed to pornography online, that figure rises to 54%.

I am not drawing a simple causal arrow, because the picture is complicated. But I am asking you to think about what happens to a child’s understanding of consent when the primary education they have received about sex, before any trusted adult in their life has sat down with them, comes from content where the answer to “no” is consistently “not yet.”

This is where those attitudes come from. Not from nowhere. Not from bad parenting. From a curriculum that starts in primary school, runs for years, and goes almost entirely unchallenged.

The Platform Problem

When most parents picture where their child might encounter pornography, they imagine a dedicated adult website, something with an age gate, something a teenager would have to seek out actively.

The reality is, unfortunately, very different.

The most common place young people first encounter pornography is not a pornography site at all. It is social media.

X (Formerly known as Twitter) tops the list at 41%, Instagram accounts for 33%, Snapchat 32% and search engines 30%. The platforms your child uses every day, the ones with bright interfaces, recommended content and infinite scroll, are the primary delivery system.

The Online Safety Act introduced mandatory age verification for pornography sites in July 2025. Pornhub, the most visited adult site in the UK, saw a 47% drop in UK visitors almost overnight.3 That is a genuine win and I will not minimise it.

But it is a partial win, because the content is still in the social feeds. The children exposed before July 2025, the ones who absorbed a curriculum of violent, coercive, degrading content before anyone was checking their age, still carry what they saw.

Age verification was necessary. It was also a decade late.

The Conversation Is the Protection

I am not here to tell you to take the phone away.

Not because phones are not a problem, they clearly are in all sorts of ways, but because I have seen what happens when a parent panics, confiscates a device, and sends the message that this topic is shameful and undiscussable. The child does not stop thinking about what they saw. They just stop having anyone to talk to about it.

The conversation is the protection. It always has been.

Not a single conversation. Not a scheduled sit-down with a printed handout. An ongoing, open, non-judgemental dialogue that starts earlier than feels comfortable and keeps going through the years when children really need it.

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Some practical starting points:

1. Start with curiosity, not interrogation.

“Have you ever seen anything online that felt weird or uncomfortable?” is a better opener than “Have you been watching pornography?” One invites. The other puts them on trial.

2. Name it without shame.

Children need to know the word pornography is not a grenade. If they hear it at home in a calm context, they are more likely to come to you when they encounter it.

3. Acknowledge the algorithm.

Tell them this content can appear without them looking for it. If it does, it says nothing about them. It says something about how the internet works.

4. Talk about what it is not.

Pornography is not a representation of real sex, real relationships, or real intimacy. Saying that clearly, without being preachy about it, matters more than most parents realise.

5. Keep the door open.

The conversation is not done when you finish it. Check back in. Stay curious. Be the adult they do not have to hide from.

If they know they can come to you, most of the time, they will. That is not a guarantee. But it is the best protection any parent has.

Something Worth Knowing About

In the process of writing this, I spent some time with the work of Cindy Gallop and the MakeLoveNotPorn Academy.

I want to be clear about what I am and am not recommending here.

MakeLoveNotPorn itself is an adult platform, and that is not where I am pointing parents or young people. What I am drawing your attention to is the Academy’s educational mission, which is to teach young people, in age-appropriate terms, what healthy, consensual, real-world sex and relationships actually look like, as a direct counter to what pornography tells them.

That mission sits very close to what this blog exists to do. The argument at the heart of the Academy is that the best response to a distorted curriculum is not only to block access to it, but to offer something better. Something honest.

You can find out more at makelovenotporn.academy.

Also a short video by Cindy on how to tally to young children about Sex, Porn and love can be found here.

A Final Thought

I spent eight years looking at the evidence of what happens to children when the adults in their lives do not have these conversations. I am not going to describe what that evidence looked like, because that is not what this space is for.

What I will tell you is this.

The children who ended up in those case files were not failed by one moment. They were failed by the accumulation of conversations that never happened. By the adults who thought they had more time.

You are reading this. That already puts you in a different category.

You are not alone in finding this hard. But you are exactly the kind of adult a child needs.

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

Editor's note [25/04/26]:

SafeScroll replied after this article was published. I said I would include their response in full, whatever it said. Their complete reply is below, followed by my assessment of it.

On the DM contradiction, they have retracted the claim. Their exact words: "You caught a misleading claim in a prior response. I'm flagging it directly." They have confirmed the product cannot see direct messages and monitors public posts only. That is the most important correction in their reply, and they made it clearly. Credit where it is due.

On ICO registration, they have confirmed they are a US-based company without ICO registration, stating they do not process UK residents' data specifically. I have forwarded this reply to the ICO as an update to the formal concern I submitted before publication. UK GDPR has extraterritorial reach. Any company intentionally targeting UK parents, which cold-emailing a UK-based child safety advocate to promote a product to UK families clearly is, may fall within its scope regardless of where their servers are located.

Where UK GDPR applies to a non-UK company, Article 27 requires them to appoint a UK Representative as a point of accountability for UK residents and the ICO. There is no evidence of one here.

On data storage, the product is hosted on Render infrastructure in the US with a Neon PostgreSQL database. Data is deleted within 30 days of cancellation. Data stored under US jurisdiction can be subject to US CLOUD Act requests, which allow American law enforcement to compel US companies to produce data stored anywhere in the world. UK parents should be aware of that.

On compliance, their own reply states they "cannot claim full GDPR compliance as a US entity without EU residency." No SOC2 certification. No named safeguarding professionals. These remain unanswered.

On data sharing, they confirm data is not sold or shared with third parties.

Their reply in full:

My overall assessment: this is a more substantive reply than their first, and they deserve credit for acknowledging the DM error directly. But the core concerns remain. No ICO registration. No named safeguarding professionals. No independent security certification. Data under US jurisdiction. A product built and marketed autonomously by AI that could not fully deliver on one of its central safety claims.

I will continue to monitor this. If anything changes, I will update this post again.

An email arrived in my inbox on the 4th of April. Subject line: “Different approach to monitoring, no app install needed.”

On the surface, it looked like the kind of outreach I get occasionally. A company is making a case for its child-safety product and wants my attention. I review products. I reviewed Salfeld Child Control last October, tested it properly, asked the right questions, and published an honest assessment because it earned one.

So my first reply was simple. Thanks, I’ll have a look.

But before I could write a single word about SafeScroll for this newsletter, I had questions. Nine of them.

What followed is something I think every parent who has ever downloaded a child safety app needs to read.

The Email That Started This

The pitch was actually quite clever. SafeScroll, the email claimed (All emails in a gallery below), monitors a child’s social media activity using only their username. No app on the child’s phone. No device access. No VPN. Parents type in a username and get alerts about what is being posted publicly1.

The reasoning was smart. Most monitoring tools require cooperation from the teenager, and that is where most parents lose the battle. Fair point.

But then I read the bottom of the email.

“This company runs autonomously · polsia.com”

That one line changed a lot for me.

What Is Polsia?

Polsia describes itself as “an autonomous AI system that plans, codes, and markets your company 24/7.”2 Their tagline is “AI that runs your company while you sleep.” SafeScroll is not a company built by a team of child safety professionals. It is a product built by AI, marketed by AI3. The email that landed in my inbox was, in all likelihood, written and sent by an AI system. There is no “Cold Outreach team” in the traditional sense.

The domain ownership is hidden behind a privacy service, standard practice for some businesses, but worth noting for a product being marketed to parents as a child safety tool. A search of publicly available WHOIS records4 confirms the registration is shielded, meaning there is no named individual or company verifiable at the domain level. On Trustpilot5, user reviews describe credits burned on work marked as complete that was not delivered, support described as an AI chatbot rather than a human, and billing that continued working when the product did not. I want to be clear about what Trustpilot reviews are: individual user accounts, unverified, and reflecting a range of experiences. But the pattern across multiple independent reviewers is consistent enough to flag

AI as a tool can be genuinely useful. But an AI system autonomously building and marketing a child safety product, with no identifiable human expertise in safeguarding, child protection, or digital forensics behind it, is a different thing entirely.

The Nine Questions

On the 6th of April, I sent my formal questions. The same process I use for any product I consider covering here.

• Are you registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)? If so, please provide your registration number.

• Where is the data stored? Which country, and on which servers?

• How long is data retained after a parent cancels the service?

• Does your product scrape data from Instagram or TikTok? If so, how do you comply with their Terms of Service?

• Exactly what can SafeScroll see and what can it not see?

• Was the initial email to me generated and sent by an AI system via Polsia’s platform?

• Who are the named human safeguarding or child protection professionals involved in building this product?

• Please provide a direct link to your full privacy policy.

• Are you compliant with UK GDPR? Do you have a designated Data Protection Officer?

They replied, Well, Kind Of.

SafeScroll came back to me. And to their credit, they did at least respond.

But when I went through their reply to those nine questions, here is where things stood.

Fully answered: 0 out of 9.

Partially answered: 2 out of 9.

Not answered: 7 out of 9.

No ICO registration number. No country of data storage. No named hosting provider. No named safeguarding professionals. No privacy policy link. No Data Protection Officer. No answer on whether the original email was AI-generated.

They confirmed the product monitors public activity via username, that data is stored encrypted on their servers, and that they are “GDPR compliant.” A self-declaration is not the same as verification, but it is something.

The Claim That Does Not Add Up

Here is the line that stopped me.

“unusual patterns” including “DMs from adults.”6

DMs are private. They are not visible to any third-party tool that accesses only a public profile via username. If SafeScroll can only see public posts, it cannot see who is sending your child direct messages, how many, or from whom.

So one of two things is true. Either the product accesses more data than they are telling parents, which raises serious questions about what they are actually collecting. Or the claim about flagging DMs is not accurate, and parents who download this tool, believing it will alert them to suspicious direct message activity, will not get what they were promised. This is not a grey area. It is a direct contradiction at the heart of the product’s core safety claim.

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The Second Email

I went back to them the same day their reply arrived. I laid out the seven unanswered questions again, called out the DM contradiction, and asked for a clear explanation.

I told them I intended to publish by the end of the week. I said I would include their response in full, whatever it said. I told them that if I did not hear back by Wednesday, I would note publicly that these questions had remained unanswered after two rounds of contact.

Wednesday came.

Wednesday went.

Nothing.

What the Silence Tells Us

I am not going to over-interpret silence. Companies miss deadlines. Inboxes get cluttered, I know this from first-hand experience.

But I am publishing now because the information I already have is enough, and because parents are actively being marketed to by this product right now.

Here is what we know. SafeScroll is a product built on Polsia’s autonomous AI platform. No human safeguarding team designed it. A domain that is less than a year old, with hidden ownership details. Their reply to nine specific questions answered none of them fully. And the one substantive safety claim in their reply, that the product can flag DMs from adults, is not consistent with a tool that only accesses public profile data.

I gave them two opportunities to set the record straight. They did not take either one.

What You Should Ask Before Downloading Anything

Before you download or sign up for any child safety app:

• Who built it? Not a brand name. Named individuals with verifiable safeguarding or child protection credentials.

• Is it ICO-registered? Check ico.org.uk. Any UK company processing personal data about children should be listed.

• What exactly can it see? Public posts only? DMs? Stories? Private accounts? Demand specifics.

• Where is the data stored? Which country, which servers? What happens if the company closes?

• Does it comply with platform rules? Third-party tools scraping Instagram or TikTok data may be violating those platforms’ Terms of Service.

• Has it been independently reviewed? Not by influencers or bloggers. By security researchers or child protection professionals.

What I Am Doing About It

Writing about this is not enough. So I want to be open with you about the steps I am taking beyond publishing.

I have submitted a formal concern to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The ICO is the UK’s independent data protection regulator. If SafeScroll is collecting personal data submitted by UK users without being registered, that is not a question of best practice. It is a legal requirement. I have provided them with the full documented correspondence, the questions I asked, the partial reply I received, and the silence that followed. They will decide what, if anything, to investigate. But I felt it was important that the concern was on record.

I do not know what the regulator will do with these reports. That is not the point. The point is that if you come across something like this and you have the platform and the background to raise it formally, you should. I spent eight years in Digital Forensics and Incident Response. I know how to document a concern properly. So I did.

If SafeScroll responds to any of this, I will update this post with their response in full.

You are not alone in trying to navigate this. That is what I am here for

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

Recently, a colleague tagged me in a post on LinkedIn suggesting I deserved an honour for the work I do with Cyber Safety Guy.

An MBE, no less.

He even shared one of those comparison tables showing the difference between an MBE and an OBE, with a link to the nominations page on gov.uk. And I sat there reading it, genuinely taken aback, because my first reaction was not pride.

It was embarrassment.

Not the false modesty kind. The real kind. The kind where you look at what you do and you think about the teachers who spend their lunch breaks dealing with a safeguarding disclosure they were never trained to handle. The parents who sit up until 2 am researching an app their child has been using because something felt wrong. The volunteers who run youth groups on a shoestring and somehow still find time to care about what is happening on the screens in front of those children.

Those are the people who deserve an honour. Not me.

But that moment, that unexpected tag on a Tuesday afternoon, made me think about something I have never really written about in full. Not just why I do this, but what it actually costs, and who really keeps children safe online.

Where This Started

I served 22 years in the Royal Air Force Police. The last eight of those years were spent in cybersecurity, working in Digital Forensics and Incident Response. It is a job title that sounds clean and technical. It was anything but.

Part of that role involved investigating criminal and inappropriate web browsing sessions. That meant sitting in front of a screen and analysing images, categorising them, grading them against scales that I will never explain to you because nobody should have to carry those details around in their head.

I analysed in excess of one million images during that period. Roughly a quarter of them were criminal.

There was no counselling in place, no psychological support, no structured debrief after a particularly bad day, and there were a lot of bad days. You just got on with it, because that was the culture, you never showed weakness and because the work needed doing, because you told yourself if you didn’t do it, who would.

I was medically discharged from the RAF in 2019 with a diagnosis of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

I will not describe what I saw in those images. I have never done that and I never will. But I will tell you what it felt like. It felt like looking into the eyes of victims who could not speak for themselves and knowing that somewhere, at some point, every single safeguard that should have protected them had failed. Their parents did not know, their teachers did not know and the platforms they were on did not care enough to stop it.

That feeling is what started Cyber Safety Guy. Not a business plan. Not a content strategy. A feeling that if I could not unsee what I had seen, then the very least I could do was try to make sure fewer children ended up in those images in the first place.

I spent eight years inside the evidence. Now I spend my time trying to stop children becoming part of it.

I Am Not the Hero of This Story

Here is what I want you to know. I write blog posts, I make videos, I share information on social media. That matters, I believe it does, but it is not where children are actually protected.

Children are protected at kitchen tables, in school corridors and in quiet conversations that nobody else hears.

A few months ago, a parent messaged me to say that one of my posts about grooming tactics had helped her start a conversation with her 11-year-old daughter. Not a lecture, a conversation. She said her daughter told her something that night that she had been holding onto for weeks. I will not go into the details, but that message is pinned in my inbox and I go back to it on the days when I wonder whether any of this is worth the toll it takes on me mentally.

That parent did the hard bit. Not me. I wrote a blog post. She sat down, found the words, and created a space where her child felt safe enough to speak. That is where protection happens.

The teacher who brings up online safety in a staff meeting, even though it is not on the agenda and nobody asked, that person is protecting children. The Designated Safeguarding Lead, who is managing complex cases while also teaching Year 6 maths, burned out, underfunded and still showing up, that person is protecting children. The grandparent who admits they do not understand Snapchat but asks their grandchild to show them how it works, not to spy on them, but because they want to understand their world, that person is protecting children.

In 2024/25, Childline delivered over 162,000 counselling sessions to children and young people across the UK. More than half of those sessions were about mental and emotional health. Behind every single one of those numbers is a child who reached out because, somewhere along the way, a trusted adult helped them believe that asking for help was not a weakness.

That is what grassroots protection looks like. Not headlines. Not policy announcements. Real people, doing real things, in real time.

Why We Do Not Talk About the Quiet Ones

The King’s New Year Honours List for 2026 recognised 1,157 people. Among them were athletes, actors, and community champions who have done extraordinary things. I am not diminishing any of them. But I want to talk about who is missing.

There are roughly 25,000 schools in England alone. Every single one of them is required to have a Designated Safeguarding Lead. Many of those DSLs are classroom teachers who have taken on the role because somebody had to. They are not safeguarding specialists. They are not paid extra for it. And according to recent research, they are burning out at an alarming rate, expected to manage cases that are growing more complex, while the services they need to refer to are harder to access than ever.

One in five children and young people in the UK now has a probable mental health disorder. Section 47 child protection enquiries hit a record high of over 230,000 in 2025. Schools account for more than one in five of all referrals to children’s social care. The system is creaking, and the people holding it together at the edges are not the ones making the news.

The same is true for parents. Nobody nominates a parent for an honour because they checked their child’s phone with care and without judgment. Nobody writes a profile piece about the mum who spent three evenings learning how Discord servers work because she noticed her son’s behaviour had changed. Nobody hands out awards for the dad who drove an hour to attend an online safety evening at school and actually listened.

But from my perspective, having spent eight years inside the evidence, I can tell you with absolute certainty that those small, unglamorous, invisible acts of care are the single most effective line of defence a child has online. Not filtering software. Not age verification. Not platform safety teams, but a human being who cares enough to pay attention.

My pain can be a shield for your children, but your conversations are the armour they actually wear.

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The Fuel That Keeps This Going

Cyber Safety Guy has been running for over a decade now. I started it in 2013, not long before the world really woke up to how different childhood had become in a connected world. I have written about grooming, about deepfakes, about algorithms that push children toward self-harm content, about platforms that knew there were problems and chose profit over protection.

Every piece I write takes a toll. That is not a complaint, it is just the truth. The subject matter is triggering, and I have C-PTSD for a reason. Some weeks, finishing an article feels like pulling a splinter out of somewhere deep. But I keep going because of the messages. The emails from parents. The DMs from teachers. The occasional comment from a young person who says they showed something I wrote to their friend and it helped.

That is the fuel. Not recognition. Not reach. Not metrics. The knowledge that somewhere, someone read something I wrote and it changed a conversation.

100% of all subscription income from this blog subscription goes to Childline, run by the NSPCC. Every penny. I do not say that to impress you, I say it because it matters that you know this is not a business. It never has been and ever will be. It is my small way of fighting against the predators who live and hide in the darkest corners of the internet. This is a battle that began for me back in 2012, and I am nowhere close to stopping.

So, Who Deserves the Honour?

You do.

If you have ever shared one of these posts with a friend because you thought it might help them have a conversation with their child, you do. If you have ever sat down with a young person and asked them, without judgment, what they are doing online, you do. If you are a teacher reading this in the ten minutes you have between lessons, wondering how you are going to fit safeguarding into an already impossible timetable, you do.

If you are a parent who feels out of your depth with technology but refuses to give up trying to understand it, you absolutely do.

I do not need an MBE. What I need is for more people to do what you are already doing. Keep reading. Keep sharing. Keep talking. Keep showing up.

Because, to be brutally honest, the people who protect children online are not the ones who end up on honours lists. They are the ones who turn up at 7 am, stay late after school, Google things they wish they did not have to, and have conversations that are uncomfortable but necessary.

And they deserve more than a medal. They deserve to know that what they do matters.

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 116 000 | childline.org.uk

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

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

On 8 May 2026, Meta will remove end-to-end encryption from Instagram direct messages. Their explanation?

“Very few people were opting in to end-to-end encrypted messaging in DMs, so we’re removing this option.”

Read that again. Not “we’re making it default.” Not “we’re making it easier to find.” They buried the feature, watched almost nobody discover it, and are now using low adoption as the reason to kill it entirely.

From my perspective, that is not a safety decision. That is a business decision wearing a safety jacket.

This is not a simple story. There is no clean villain and no clean hero. But I have spent enough years in digital forensics to know when a timeline smells funky, and this one does not smell right.

So let me walk you through what is actually happening, why the timing matters, and what it means for your child.

What is End-to-End Encryption (and Why Should You Care)?

I’ll keep this simple. End-to-end encryption means that when your child sends a DM on Instagram, only they and the person they are sending it to can read it. Not Instagram. Not Meta. Not the police. Not a hacker. Nobody in between.

Think of it as a sealed letter versus a postcard. Encryption is the sealed letter. After 8 May, every Instagram DM your child sends will be a postcard. Meta can read it. Their automated systems can scan it. Law enforcement can request it. Advertisers can potentially learn from it.

Now, here is where it gets complicated. Because there is a real argument that removing encryption helps protect children from predators and CSAM (child sexual abuse material). If Meta cannot see what is in a message, they cannot scan for grooming, they cannot flag illegal images and they cannot respond to reports with the content that law enforcement needs.

I know this because I have lived it. I spent eight years in digital forensics and incident response during my time in the RAF Police. I have seen what happens when evidence is locked behind encryption. I have also seen what happens when it is not. Both carry consequences.

So here is my uncomfortable question: if removing encryption genuinely makes children safer, why does the timing feel so convenient?

Follow the Calendar

Let me lay out the dates.

25 March 2026: A Los Angeles jury finds Meta and Google liable for deliberately engineering addiction in children. $6 million in damages. Meta bears 70% of the liability.

24 March 2026: A New Mexico jury orders Meta to pay $375 million for failing to protect children from sexual predators on Instagram and Facebook. Meta was found liable on all counts.

13 March 2026: Meta quietly announces the removal of E2E encryption from Instagram DMs, effective 8 May.

19 May 2026: The Take It Down Act comes into force in the United States. This law requires platforms to remove non-consensual intimate imagery (including AI-generated deepfakes) within 48 hours of receiving a takedown notice. Here is the problem, you cannot comply with a takedown notice for content inside an encrypted message if you cannot see the message.

Do you see the pattern? Meta did not remove encryption because few people used it. They removed it because they could no longer afford not to.

The $381 million question is not whether encryption should exist. It is whether Meta is being honest about why they are removing it.

A DFIR Analyst’s View: What This Actually Changes

Let me put my old hat on for a moment.

When I was investigating cases involving illegal imagery, the single biggest barrier to prosecution was often access to the evidence. Encrypted platforms made that harder. I am not going to pretend otherwise. From a pure investigative standpoint, the removal of encryption from Instagram DMs gives law enforcement and Meta’s own detection systems access to message content they previously could not see.

That means Meta’s automated CSAM detection tools can now scan Instagram DMs. That means when the National Crime Agency or the FBI issues a warrant, Meta can hand over message content. That means grooming patterns can, in theory, be flagged earlier.

But here is what I need you to understand: Meta had the option to do this differently.

They could have implemented client-side scanning, where the device checks for known CSAM before encrypting the message. Apple explored this in 2021 before pulling back due to privacy concerns. It is technically possible. It is not easy. But it exists.

They could have made encryption the default on Instagram years ago, built proper safety tools around it, and invested in detection that does not require reading every message. They chose not to.

Instead, they offered encryption as an opt-in feature that was almost impossible to find, let it fail, and are now removing it entirely while pointing at the low adoption numbers they engineered.

That is not a safety-first approach. That is damage limitation after two jury verdicts and a new federal law.

The Platform Split Nobody is Talking About

Here is the detail that really gives this away.

Meta is keeping end-to-end encryption as the default on WhatsApp. It is keeping it as the default on Messenger (where they spent years implementing it). The only platform losing encryption is Instagram.

Why? Because Instagram is where the advertising money is. Instagram is the platform where Meta generates an estimated $10 to $15 per user per quarter in the US and Canada. Instagram is where the jury verdicts were handed down. Instagram is where the child safety lawsuits are concentrated.

WhatsApp, by comparison, is a utility. It does not serve targeted ads based on message content. It does not need to scan DMs to feed an advertising algorithm.

So when Meta tells you this is about safety, ask yourself: if it were really about protecting children, why is WhatsApp still encrypted? Why is Messenger still encrypted? Why is it only the platform that generates the most advertising revenue and carries the most legal liability that is losing this protection?

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What This Means for Your Child

From 8 May 2026, every Instagram DM your child sends can be read by Meta. That includes private conversations with friends, messages to partners, venting about school, sharing insecurities, exploring identity, all of it.

For a generation that uses Instagram DMs as their primary messaging app, this is not a small change. It is a fundamental shift in the privacy of their daily conversations.

Now, you might be thinking: “Good. I want Meta to catch predators.” I understand that instinct. I share it. But I also need you to hold two things in your head at the same time.

The same system that can scan for grooming can also scan for advertising data. The same access that helps law enforcement also helps Meta’s business model. And the same company that is now positioning this as a safety measure is the one that just paid $381 million because juries found it had knowingly endangered children on this exact platform.

What You Can Do

1. Talk to your child about what this means. If they use Instagram DMs for private conversations, they need to know that, from 8 May, those messages will no longer be encrypted.

2. If privacy matters to them (and it should), help them move sensitive conversations to a platform that offers encryption by default. Signal is the gold standard. WhatsApp, ironically, is also an option.

3. Download any existing encrypted Instagram DMs before 8 May. Meta has said users will receive instructions, but do not leave it to the last minute.

4. Do not assume this makes Instagram safer. Removing encryption is one tool. It does not fix algorithmic recommendations of harmful content, it does not fix age verification failures, and it does not fix the addictive design features that two juries just found Meta liable for.

5. Keep the conversation going with your child. The best protection has never been a technical setting. It has always been an open, honest, non-judgmental relationship where your child feels safe telling you when something feels wrong online.

Where I Land

I want to be honest with you. I am not anti-encryption and I am not pro-surveillance. I am pro-honesty. And what Meta is doing here is not honest.

If they had said, “We are removing encryption to comply with new legislation and to improve our ability to detect child exploitation material,” I would have respected the transparency, even while questioning the trade-offs.

Instead, they said: “Very few people were opting in.” As if low adoption of a feature they deliberately buried is the same as low demand for privacy.

From my years in DFIR, I can tell you this: the way you frame a decision tells you more about the decision-maker than the decision itself. Meta framed this as spring cleaning. I see it as corporate risk management after $381 million in verdicts and a federal law taking effect eleven days later.

Your child’s privacy is not a feature to be quietly retired. It is a right. And the company that just removed it is the same one that two separate juries found had knowingly put children in harm’s way.

Hold those things together. Ask the uncomfortable questions. And do not let anyone, not Meta, not the government, not even a well-meaning geek like me, tell you this is simple.

Because it is not.

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 116 000 | childline.org.uk

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

Subscribe now

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

This week I posted a Reel on Instagram. In it, Joe Marler, the England rugby prop and one of the most entertainingly chaotic people in sport, appeared to speak directly to the camera, promoting my blog.

He absolutely did not do that.

What I actually did was take a photo I’d had taken with Joe at a match, something I’m genuinely chuffed about because he’s a brilliant bloke, and I ran it through an AI tool that animated the still image, I added my own voiceover, thirty seconds of work. The result was a video of Joe Marler appearing to endorse my blog. His mouth moved. His expression changed. It looked, at a glance, like a real video.

The accent wasn’t quite right, the lip sync wasn’t perfect, but keep in mind that if I paid for a tool, I could use samples of his voice to make it sound like him. Most adults watching it could probably clock that something was off. Most children watching it would not.

And that’s the point.

I made this as a demonstration. A harmless, light-hearted one, with a public figure I’d actually met and in a context where nobody was going to be deceived or harmed. But I need you to sit with that for a second.

A photograph. An AI tool. Thirty seconds.

That is all it takes to make someone appear to say something they never said. To make a face move. To make a voice come out of a still image.

Now imagine it isn’t a joke.

Imagine it’s your child’s favourite YouTuber, their favourite footballer, their favourite gaming streamer. And instead of promoting a blog about online safety, that person is saying: “Hey. I’ve seen your messages. You seem like a really special kid. I’d love to meet you. Here’s my number. Keep it between us.”

Dramatic? Yes. Impossible? No. This technology is here. It’s free to access in many cases. There’s no age gate. And the people who want to reach your child know how to use it.

HOW DOES THIS ACTUALLY WORK?

What I used is one of many AI-powered animation tools now widely available online. Some are free. Some require a small subscription. None of the ones I tested for this post required any form of age verification. You upload a photograph, add audio, and the tool does the rest.

This is separate from deepfake video, which goes further still, blending a person’s likeness into existing footage. That technology is also freely accessible. A joint study by UNICEF, ECPAT and Interpol across 11 countries found that at least 1.2 million children globally reported having their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in a single year. These are not fringe cases.

There are also tools known as nudification apps, which can take a clothed photograph of any person and generate an image of that person without clothes. An investigation found that none of the 21 tested sites required any form of age verification before use. None. The UK’s Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza, called for an immediate ban in 2025. The UK Government announced plans to criminalise these tools in December 2025. As of writing, they remain accessible.

SO WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR GROOMING?

I’ve spent years working in digital forensics and incident response, and in my experience, the technology predators use evolves faster than the awareness around it. The animated photo or deepfake video is a new tool in an old playbook. The goal is the same as it always was: build trust, create a sense of relationship, and move the child to a private space.

A video of your child’s idol, appearing to speak directly to them, appearing to know them, is one of the most effective trust-building mechanisms I can imagine. It bypasses the stranger danger instinct entirely. It is not a stranger. It is someone they already love.

The platforms are not doing enough. The AI companies creating these tools are doing almost nothing. The legislative response, welcome as it is, is playing catch-up with technology that moves faster than Parliament can legislate.

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WHAT CAN YOU DO?

First, watch the Reel if you haven’t already. Show it to your child. Use it as a starting point. Ask them, does that look real to you? What would you do if you got a video message from someone famous you’d never actually spoken to?

Second, read my post from March, It Starts in a Game. It Doesn’t End There, which covers deepfakes in the context of gaming platforms and grooming in much more depth. That post covers nudification apps, the stats behind the threat, and what the current UK legislative picture actually looks like. The post is just below.

Third, check your own social media privacy settings. Every photograph of your child you post publicly is a potential asset for someone building a deepfake. That’s not a reason to never post. It is a reason to make sure your profile is locked down and only visible to people you know.

Fourth, if your child receives a video message, a voice note, or any kind of media from someone they haven’t physically met, encourage them to come and talk to you before responding. No panic, no confiscating devices, just let them know you are always available and can look at it together and talk about it.

FINALLY

This post came from a genuinely funny moment. A rugby match. A dodgy AI accent. Joe Marler is looking mildly animated. I’m glad that’s how it started.

But this technology is not funny in the wrong hands. And the wrong hands have it.

I don’t write this to frighten you. I write it because most of what I witnessed during my career in digital forensics didn’t have to happen. Education and conversation are still the most powerful safeguarding tools we have.

Ps Joe, if you are reading this, that picture was taken at a time in the beginning of my journey with my lifetime companion C-PTSD, it was at a time when you were being very open about your mental health, and I told you that it was an inspiration to me as somebody who had to hide my illness whilst I was in the RAF. This was also before you were a world-famous hundy great guy, but I am happy to see you are still talking openly about mental health, as I try to.

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 116 000 | childline.org.uk

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

Subscribe now

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

This one was inspired by a message from another parent who follows my blog, who also happens to be someone I spent 4 cold and windy months down the Falklands with (Good times).

For the first part of the question, I sent her a link to my available presentations. The second part of the question, however, I felt needed a blog post for her and for you, the wider group.

The dark web. Even the name sounds like something from a thriller novel.

But here’s the thing. I spent years knowing what happens in the darkest corners of the internet. I’ve seen what gets traded there, what gets shared there, and who ends up there. And in my experience, most parents picture the dark web as something distant, something their kids would never stumble across.

I’m going to gently challenge that assumption today.

What actually is the dark web?

Let me break it down in plain English, because the terminology often gets in the way.

The internet has three layers. The first is the surface web, the part you use every day. Google, news sites, social media. The second is the deep web, things that aren’t indexed by search engines, like your bank account, medical records, or private email. That’s actually fine, and most of us use it daily without thinking about it.

The third layer is the dark web. This is a part of the internet you can’t access with a standard browser. You need special software, specifically something called Tor (The Onion Router). Tor works by bouncing your internet traffic through multiple servers around the world, making it incredibly difficult to trace who you are or where you’re connecting from.

Tor itself is not illegal; journalists use it, activists use it, people in countries with authoritarian governments use it to communicate safely, and privacy advocates use it. There are legitimate reasons to access it.

But, and this is a significant but, approximately 60% of dark web domains host illegal content. Drugs, stolen data, child sexual abuse material, weapons, counterfeit currency. The dark web is where criminal markets operate because the anonymity Tor provides makes enforcement extraordinarily difficult.

And the UK is not a passive observer here. The UK ranks fourth globally for dark web activity, and around 5% of UK internet users have accessed the dark web at some point. It is not a fringe curiosity. It is closer to home than most parents realise.

Why would a teenager end up there?

This is where I want to be honest with you, because the answer might not be what you’re expecting.

Most teens don’t go looking for the dark web. They end up there through curiosity, dare culture, and the relentless way online content works.

YouTube channels, TikTok creators and gaming communities have turned ‘I explored the dark web’ into a content genre. Teens watch videos of people ‘exposing’ what’s on there. Friends dare each other to download Tor and have a look. Online forums share instructions. For a teenager, the forbidden nature of it is exactly the pull.

The National Crime Agency has found that one in five children aged ten to sixteen in the UK has engaged in behaviour online that would violate the Computer Misuse Act 1990. Many of them didn’t know they were breaking the law. The average age of suspects in cybercrime investigations is just seventeen.

That’s not me being alarmist. That’s the NCA’s own data1.

The reality is that teens don’t need to be seeking out criminals to find themselves somewhere dangerous. Curiosity is enough, and we all know what happened to the cat.

The grooming and recruitment problem

Now here’s where things get serious. Because it is not just about teens stumbling somewhere they shouldn’t be.

Criminal gangs and predators actively use the dark web and encrypted channels to identify, groom and recruit vulnerable young people. County Lines networks, which exploit children to transport and sell drugs, have been increasingly using encrypted online communication to recruit. According to government figures, an estimated 14,500 children have been impacted by county lines.

The NCA’s most recent strategic assessment identified a six-fold increase in reports of sadistic online harm groups in the UK between 2022 and 2024. These groups exist not just on the dark web, but on the same platforms teens use daily, including Discord, Telegram, and gaming platforms. They actively target young people, particularly boys, and groom them into harming themselves or others.

From my perspective, I’ve seen how these networks operate. The technical sophistication is not always the alarming part. What’s alarming is how quickly a teenager can move from curiosity on a mainstream platform to genuine exploitation on an encrypted channel, without any single moment that felt like a line being crossed.

That’s the design of the grooming process. There is no dramatic warning moment. It happens incrementally.

Drugs delivered to your door

The third risk catches parents off guard, because it sounds almost too mundane to be true.

Dark web drug markets are sophisticated, relatively easy to use, and in some cases presented to buyers as ‘safer’ than street dealing. You pick a product, pay in cryptocurrency, and the drugs are posted to your home address.

In the UK, approximately 24% of dark web listings have been found to be drug-related, according to data from the National Crime Agency and the University of Manchester. MDMA and cocaine are the most commonly sought items from the UK on dark web markets, followed by cannabis and LSD.

The pitch to teenagers is simple: no dealer contact, no risk of violence, quality is supposedly guaranteed, and it all arrives in a nondescript parcel. What the pitch doesn’t mention: packages are intercepted. Your address gets flagged by law enforcement. ‘Quality guaranteed’ means nothing when there’s no regulation whatsoever. And fentanyl contamination has made the dark web drug market significantly more dangerous, not less.

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What can parents and teachers actually do?

The most valuable thing you can do is have an open conversation. Not a lecture. Not a warning. A conversation. Ask your child if they’ve heard of the dark web. Ask what they know. Ask if anyone’s ever shown them anything. The willingness to talk without immediately panicking is what keeps communication open.

If you want to talk to your teenager directly

This is what she was really asking. Not just how to understand it herself, but how to share it with him without the conversation going wrong.

Here is my honest advice on that.

Start with what he already knows, not what you’ve found out. Something like: ‘I’ve been reading about the dark web. Have you come across it at school or online? What do you know about it?’ That opens a door without making him feel accused of anything.

If he’s heard of it, great. Talk about what it actually is. Not the thriller version, the plain English version from this post. The hidden internet, the Tor browser, why people use it, and why it’s dangerous. Treat him like someone who can handle accurate information, because he can.

Tell him what the real risks are. Not to scare him. Because knowing the risks is what protects him. If he understands that packages get intercepted, that grooming is incremental, that curiosity alone can lead someone to somewhere genuinely harmful, he is far better placed than if he finds out on his own.

And tell him this: if he ever comes across something that upsets or worries him online, you won’t be angry. You want to know. That single sentence, delivered calmly and genuinely, does more than any parental control setting ever will.

Beyond that, here are things worth knowing:

• Watch for Tor Browser being installed on devices. It’s not always evidence of wrongdoing, but it warrants a conversation.

• Unusual interest in cryptocurrency is worth noting. Dark web transactions are almost always conducted in Bitcoin or Monero.

• Unexpected parcels arriving at your home. This is a genuine sign that something may be wrong.

• If you believe a child is being groomed online, report it to CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command) at ceop.police.uk.

• Call 999 if a child is in immediate danger.

• The Online Safety Act places significant legal obligations on platforms. Ofcom is the regulator. Complaints can be made directly to 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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 116 000 | childline.org.uk

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

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

I’ve been blogging for over a decade.

I’ve written about my reasons for doing it more times than I can count. The toll it takes. The mental load of staying across some of the darkest corners of the internet so parents don’t have to. The relentlessness of it. And yes, the question that surfaces more and more often these days: is any of this actually landing?

This week, I’m asking it louder than usual. I needed to write this down.

What I’m actually doing here

I’m not a lifestyle blogger. I’m not selling a product or building a personal brand for its own sake. I write about child online safety, the grooming tactics, the predatory platforms, and the apps hiding in plain sight on your child’s phone. It’s not light reading. It doesn’t go viral. The algorithm doesn’t care about it, and likely, it never will.

Short-form content, like reels and YouTube shorts, works brilliantly for a lot of creators. For me, the topics need nuance. They need context. A fifteen-second Reel doesn’t adequately explain why a child talking to what they believe is a peer online might actually be communicating with an adult who has spent months earning that trust. So I write. I research. I try to make it readable, informative, without being clinical, serious, without being paralysing.

And then I wait.

The silence

I’ve been trying to get this content in front of people with platforms. Parents themselves, educators, and people who talk about keeping families safe. People who, on paper, would have every reason to share a message like this. I tag them. I see that they’ve read the post. And then... nothing. Not even a quiet ‘not for me.’ Just a solid ignore. The worst part? It would cost them nothing to share or comment.

I don’t say this to shame anyone. People with large followings get asked to share things constantly, and I’m one voice in a very long queue. I understand the vicious circle too; without amplification, the algorithm buries me. Without the algorithm, I can’t reach new parents. Without reaching new parents, I can’t do the one thing I built this platform to do.

I get all of that.

But silence has a way of getting very loud when you’re doing this alone. And some weeks, it’s a hard thing to sit with.

So what keeps me here?

Honestly? You do.

The small number of you who take the time to get in touch and tell me that what I write actually helps. That the information I put out is genuinely useful, things you wouldn’t normally come across, framed in a way that makes it possible to sit down with your child and have a conversation you might otherwise have avoided, or not known how to start.

Those messages are fuel. They’re not frequent. But they’re real. And they matter more than I think I’ve ever properly said.

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The thing I can’t switch off

There’s something else. Harder to articulate.

If I stop, I worry about what that means, not for my reach or my subscriber numbers. For the children I haven’t reached yet. The ones whose parents are one post away from knowing what to look for, or what to do, or how to start the conversation.

I know what the information gap costs because I’ve seen its consequences up close. That knowledge doesn’t switch off when you leave the service or close the laptop. It sits with you. And when I think about stopping, it’s there.

If I’m the person with that information, and I stop sharing it, and something happens that I might have prevented?

I don’t think I could live with that. Maybe that’s not entirely rational. But it’s honest.

The Childline piece

All subscription income from this blog goes directly to Childline. That matters deeply to me. Stopping would mean less going to a charity that is genuinely there for children in crisis, and while I’d continue to donate personally, it wouldn’t be the same.

So here I am. In the messy middle. Not ready to quit. Not sure how to keep going. Frustrated with a system that rewards noise over substance, and tired of doing this alone when the message is this important.

But still here.

And if you’ve ever read something on this blog and thought I needed that, please share it. Not for me. For the parent in your network who doesn’t know what I know yet.

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 116 000 | childline.org.uk

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

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

Something happened this week that I thought I would write about for you all.

A friend got in touch with this:

“Hey Dale, quick one, idea for a post maybe... a problem I’ve heard a few times from parents is ‘I’ve tried to pair my account to my kids’ Instagram or Snap and then they just create another shadow account.’ Any way to combat this?”

And yes. Absolutely yes.

Because this comes up in parent groups, in school safeguarding meetings, and in my inbox more than almost anything else right now. And it looks like a technical problem on the surface. But it isn’t, not really. There’s something much more important underneath.

Let me explain.

What is a shadow account?

A shadow account is a secondary account your child creates after their main account has been paired with yours. The account you’re monitoring, the one they know you can see, stays pristine. The shadow account is where they actually live online.

This isn’t a new thing. Kids are resourceful. They’re digital natives. And if there’s a workaround, they will find it. I’ve seen this pattern with children as young as nine.

But before we get to the practical side, I want to sit with something for a moment.

What a shadow account is actually telling you

When your child creates a shadow account, they’re not just being difficult. They’re telling you something.

A shadow account is a signal. It means your child needs a space you can’t see.

They feel, at some level, that monitoring has become surveillance rather than safety. There’s something they want to do online that they believe you won’t approve of, and they’ve chosen to hide it rather than talk to you about it.

That might be completely benign. A gaming chat they’re embarrassed about. A crush. An account full of memes they don’t want you seeing. Teenagers have always needed spaces their parents can’t see, exactly as we did at their age.

But it might also be something more serious. Contact with someone they shouldn’t be talking to. Content they know is inappropriate. A relationship that’s being kept hidden.

I’m not saying that to frighten you. I’m saying it because the shadow account is worth responding to thoughtfully, not just closing off. If you find one, the first question shouldn’t be “how do I block this?” It should be “Why does my child feel they need this?”

Other terminology used to describe shadow accounts

Slang and Platform-Specific Names

• Finsta: The most famous slang term. This stands for “Fake Instagram.” While people called them “fake,” they were often used to show a more authentic, less curated version of a person’s life to a small group of trusted friends, far away from the polished “Main” account (which they might call their Rinsta, for “Real Instagram”).

• Alts / Alt Accounts: Short for “alternative accounts.” This is a neutral term widely used across gaming (like Discord, Twitch, or Steam) and social media (like X/Twitter or Reddit). A person might use an alt to explore a different hobby, posting style, or community without modifying their primary digital identity.

• Side Account: This just implies the account is secondary to a main one.

• Spam: In this specific context, “spam” doesn’t mean sending unsolicited commercial messages. It’s used by teens to mean a profile where they “spam” their close friends with dozens of casual photos, videos, and jokes that aren’t good enough for their “main” profile. They are essentially private, personal photo albums.

Purpose-Driven Names

• Burner Account: Borrowed from the concept of a “burner phone,” this is a disposable account created quickly for a specific task. They are typically used for:

  • Protecting privacy when signing up for a new service.

  • Trolling or starting arguments without consequences.

  • Gathering information without a digital footprint.

  • Avoiding being “doxxed” (having personal info made public) or tracked.

• Sock Puppet Account: An old Internet term for a fake online identity created by one person to act as their own “cheerleader.” The original person uses the puppet to praise themselves, post supportive comments on their own work, or agree with themselves during an online debate, creating the illusion of widespread support.

• Throwaway Account: This is the preferred term on sites like Reddit. A user creates a throwaway account specifically to post a question, share an intimate secret, or ask for advice (e.g., in a “Am I The Asshole?” thread) and then never uses the account again, protecting their main profile’s reputation.

• Ghost Account: An account that exists but has no visible profile picture, posts, or information, allowing the user to view content or spy on others without being seen.

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That said, here’s how to close the technical gaps

With that framing in place, let’s talk about the practical side. Because this isn’t just a conversation problem. There are real vulnerabilities worth understanding.

• Own the verification layer

  Every account on Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, or any other platform requires either an email address or a phone number to sign up. That is your first control point, and most parents completely miss it.

  If your child’s account is linked to a family email address that you also have access to, you will receive the verification email from any new account sign-up attempt. No email access, no account creation. It really is that straightforward.

  The same applies to the phone number. If the SIM belongs to you, you control the sign-up verification. A new account can’t be created without your knowing.

  This doesn’t mean reading through your child’s personal emails. It means having visibility at the moment of account creation.

• Device-level controls are the foundation, not the bonus

  Pairing within Instagram’s Family Centre or Snapchat’s Family Centre is a downstream layer. It’s useful, but it isn’t the foundation. Set those up by all means, but understand what they are: a bonus layer on top of something more important.

  On iPhone and iPad, iOS Screen Time can be configured so that your child cannot install new apps without your approval, and cannot create new accounts within apps without a passcode that only you know.

  On Android, Google Family Link does something very similar.

  These controls sit underneath the apps themselves. They can’t be bypassed just by opening Instagram and tapping ‘create new account’. They are significantly more robust than platform pairing tools used on their own.

• The device you don’t know about

  Here’s something I see parents miss time and time again. You’ve paired with the device you know about. But what about the old iPod Touch in the bedroom drawer? The hand-me-down phone from an older sibling? A mate’s spare Android that’s been quietly borrowed?

  Shadow accounts often don’t live on the primary device. They live somewhere else entirely.

  It’s worth having a calm, open conversation about devices. Not an interrogation. A check-in. “Do you have any other devices you’re using? I’m not angry, I just want to make sure everything is safe.”

• Your home network is your advantage

  If you have a router with parental controls built in, or a device like Circle, you can see every device that connects to your home Wi-Fi. A new, unrecognised device appearing on your network is a visible event.

  This won’t cover mobile data, and it won’t catch a device used elsewhere. But for younger children, especially, it’s a genuinely useful extra layer.

The arms race problem

I want to be honest with you about something. There is no technical solution that permanently closes this problem.

For every control, there is a workaround. I spent years in digital forensics, and the one consistent truth I found is that motivated teenagers will always find a route. If your entire strategy is technical blocking, you are going to lose that game.

And the platforms haven’t helped. Under the Online Safety Act, Ofcom now requires platforms to have robust age assurance and child safety protections in place. But the reality is that creating a new Instagram account still takes under two minutes, with no meaningful verification of who is actually signing up. That is a platform accountability failure, not just a parenting challenge.

What actually works in the long run is the combination of reasonable technical boundaries and a relationship where your child feels they can talk to you. Not because you’ve given them a free pass online, but because they know you’re on their side.

That’s easy to say. I know it’s harder to do, especially with teenagers. But it’s the truth.

If you find a shadow account

Don’t lead with anger. I know that’s hard. But it matters.

The first move should be curiosity. Ask what they’re using it for. You might be surprised. The answer might be entirely innocent. Or it might open up a much more important and necessary conversation.

Whatever you find, the goal is to turn it into an open exchange, not a confrontation that shuts down future communication. Because the real risk isn’t just this one account. It’s whether your child will come to you when something actually goes wrong online.

That has to be the goal.

Final thought

To my friend who sent that message: thank you. This is exactly the kind of question that deserves a proper answer, and I’ve heard it far too many times not to write about it.

To every parent reading this: you are not failing. Your child is navigating a digital world that changes faster than any guidance can keep up with, and so are you. The fact that you’re asking the question at all means you’re paying attention. That matters more than you know.

Every penny of subscription income from Cyber Safety Guy goes directly to Childline (NSPCC). If this post was useful, sharing it costs nothing and puts it in front of another parent who might need 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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

If you or a child you know needs support:

Childline: 116 000 | childline.org.uk

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

Subscribe now

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

When was the last time you saw a headline about a child being harmed online, felt that knot tighten in your stomach, and then just... scrolled past it?

Not because you didn’t care. You cared. You probably care more than most.

But because you didn’t know what to do with that feeling. Nobody told you what the first step was. Nobody broke it down into something you could actually act on. And by the time you thought about looking into it, the next headline had already replaced it.

I hear this from parents every single week. Sometimes word-for-word:

“I know I should be doing more, but I don’t even know where to start.”

If that sounds like you, I want you to know something before you read any further.

You are not failing.

Why This Feels So Hard

Online safety is not one topic. It is dozens of topics, changing constantly, across platforms that deliberately make themselves difficult to understand.

The apps update their features without warning. The privacy settings move. New platforms appear that your child has been using for months before you even hear the name. And the language they use online, the slang, the abbreviations, the culture, can feel like an entirely different dialect.

On top of all of that, every headline about online harm seems engineered to terrify you without actually telling you what to do about it. Fear gets clicks. Practical guidance doesn’t.

So the result is millions of parents who are worried, who care deeply, and who feel completely stuck.

That is not a personal failure. That is a systemic one.

The platforms spend billions designing products that keep children engaged. They do not spend anywhere near enough helping parents understand what those products actually do. And the gap between what your child knows about their digital world and what you know about it grows wider every single year.

I spent over eight years working in digital forensics and incident response. I have seen, first-hand, what can happen when things go wrong online. Not in a headline. In case files. In evidence logs. In rooms where the outcome was the worst possible one.

And from that experience, I can tell you something that might surprise you.

You Don’t Need to Know Everything

You do not need to understand every app your child uses. You do not need to be a tech expert. You do not need to have all the answers before you sit down and have a conversation with your child about their online life.

You just need to know where to start.

And that is why I created Cyber Safety Guy. A free newsletter for parents and teachers who want to protect children online but feel overwhelmed by how fast everything moves. No jargon. No scaremongering. Just honest, practical advice written in plain English by someone who has worked in this world and wants to help you navigate it.

If you are new here, or if you have been meaning to read more but haven’t known where to begin, here is the reading path I would recommend.

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Where to Start: Your Reading Path

I have written a lot over the past year. Some posts go deep into specific platforms. Others look at the bigger picture, the laws, the companies, the systems that are supposed to protect children but often don’t.

Rather than dropping you into the archive and hoping for the best, here are the posts I would point you to first, depending on what matters most to you right now.

Cyber Safety Guy Start Here — Traditional start here post to welcome you to my blog.

If you’re worried about social media and your child’s mental health:

From TikTok to Crisis — what the algorithm is actually doing to your child’s mental health.

If you’re worried about gaming platforms and online predators:

Roblox: Is Your Child’s Favourite Game a Hunting Ground? — how predators operate on gaming platforms and the deepfake weapon being used alongside grooming.

The Simple Question the Roblox CEO Refused to Answer — why the people running these platforms are not always acting in your child’s best interest.

If you’re worried about AI, deepfakes, and new technology:

Grok AI and the Rise of Non-Consensual Deepfakes — how AI tools are creating new risks for children and young people.

If you want to understand the law and who is supposed to be protecting your child:

If you want to know what parental controls actually work:

Cyber Safety Guy Review: Salfeld Child Control — an honest, tested review of a tool that actually does what it promises.

One More Thing

I don’t write any of this for financial gain. Every single penny from paid subscriptions to Cyber Safety Guy goes directly to Childline. Not to me. Not to running costs. To Childline, so that when a child is scared and doesn’t know where to turn, there is someone there to pick up the phone.

I do this because I’ve sat in rooms where the outcome was the worst possible one, and I know that most of what I witnessed during my career didn’t have to happen. Most of it was preventable. Through education. Through conversation. Through parents and teachers being informed enough to have the right conversation at the right time.

That is what this newsletter is for. And if you are reading this, you are already doing more than you think.

The fact that you care enough to be here proves 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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

Not one landmark verdict against a social media company, two in two days.

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico found Meta liable on all counts for child sexual exploitation on its platforms and ordered the company to pay $375 million. On Wednesday, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and YouTube liable for addicting a child to their platforms, the first verdict of its kind for that specific harm, ever.

Two separate courts. Two separate legal theories. Two separate sets of plaintiffs. And in both cases, twelve ordinary people sat through weeks of evidence and came back with the same answer: Meta knew, and it chose profit anyway.

I want to walk you through both verdicts, because they are different stories with the same ending. And I want to be clear about why, sitting here in the UK, this week should matter to every parent and teacher reading this.

The New Mexico Case: They Knew About the Predators

The New Mexico case was brought by the state’s Attorney General, Raúl Torrez, a former prosecutor who spent years working on internet crimes against children. He filed the lawsuit in December 2023.

It started with an undercover investigation. The AG’s office created fake Facebook and Instagram profiles posing as children under the age of 14. Within a very short time, those accounts were flooded with predatory contact, sexually explicit material, and solicitations from adults seeking sexual content from minors. Three criminal arrests followed, including two men who arrived at a location believing they would meet a 12-year-old girl.

The jury found Meta acted willfully. Not negligently. Willfully. The legal finding that Meta knowingly and intentionally deceived the public about the safety of its platforms for children.

The most damaging evidence didn’t come from prosecutors. It came from inside Meta itself.

In 2019, Meta pushed ahead with end-to-end encryption on Facebook Messenger. Their own teams raised the alarm. An internal briefing predicted the move would cause reports of child sexual abuse material to law enforcement to drop from 18.4 million annually to 6.4 million. A 65% reduction. Not because the abuse was stopping. Because the ability to detect and report it would be gone.

Monika Bickert, Meta’s own Head of Content Policy, wrote internally at the time:

“We are about to do a bad thing as a company. This is so irresponsible.”

Antigone Davis, Meta’s global head of safety, warned that encrypted Messenger would be ‘far, far worse than anything we have seen on WhatsApp.’

They went ahead anyway.

Former Meta engineering director Arturo Bejar, whose own 14-year-old daughter received sexual solicitations on Instagram, testified:

“The product is very good at connecting people with interests, and if your interest is little girls, it will be really good at connecting you with little girls.”

The jury awarded $375 million in civil penalties. Meta says it will appeal. A Phase 2 hearing is scheduled for May, where a judge could order Meta to make structural changes to its platforms, including mandatory age verification.

The Los Angeles Case: They Knew About the Addiction

The LA case was different in nature, but the pattern was identical.

The plaintiff, referred to as Kaley, started using YouTube at age six and Instagram at age nine. By her teens, she had depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, and suicidal thoughts. Her legal team argued the platforms’ design was responsible for that harm.

The jury was explicitly told not to consider what content Kaley saw. Only how the platforms were built. Infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmic recommendation feeds, push notifications, and like counts. All of it engineered to create compulsive use, to make putting the phone down feel difficult, to reward engagement and punish absence.

The jury deliberated for nearly 44 hours over nine days. They found both Meta and YouTube negligent on every count. They found the companies knew or should have known their designs would cause harm to children. And critically, they found both companies acted with malice, oppression, or fraud. That last finding opens a punitive damages phase that could dwarf the $3 million compensatory award.

Meta’s own internal research, shown in court, found that Instagram makes body image issues worse for one in three teen girls. A Meta researcher wrote that Instagram ‘is a drug’ and that Meta ‘are basically pushers.’ They published none of it.

Mark Zuckerberg testified in person for nearly eight hours. He maintained the science hasn’t proved that social media causes mental health harm. He admitted a 2015 internal review found over four million users under 13 on the platform. When asked about his qualifications to assess causation, he said: ‘I don’t have a college degree in anything.’

The Same Pattern, Twice

I’ve spent years in digital forensics with the Royal Air Force. I’ve reviewed material that most people will never see and should never have to. And what strikes me about both of these cases is not the verdicts themselves. It’s how consistent the internal evidence was.

In both cases, Meta’s own employees raised serious concerns about child safety. In both cases, those concerns were documented. In both cases, the company moved forward regardless. In the New Mexico case, that meant rolling out encryption that their own safety team predicted would destroy their ability to detect child abuse. In the LA case, that meant building and refining features they knew were psychologically harmful to young users.

To be brutally honest, none of this surprised me. But that doesn’t make it any less important that two separate juries, looking at two separate bodies of evidence, arrived at the same conclusion in the same week

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Why This Matters in the UK Right Now

I hear this from parents every week: ‘This all sounds terrible, but it’s happening in America.’

It isn’t.

Your child is on the same Instagram. The same Facebook. The same YouTube. The same algorithms. The same infinite scroll. The same notification system. The same features that two separate juries this week described as negligent and harmful are running on the device in your child’s pocket right now.

Ofcom wrote directly to Facebook, Instagram, Roblox, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube on 12 March, just two weeks before these verdicts. Four demands: effective minimum age policies, failsafe grooming protections, safer feeds for children, and an end to product testing on children. Platforms have until 30 April to respond. Ofcom’s CEO Dame Melanie Dawes stated: ‘These online services are household names, but they’re failing to put children’s safety at the heart of their products.’

The Online Safety Act is an active law. Children’s protection duties have been in force since July 2025. Ofcom has launched over 80 investigations and issued its first fines. Reddit was fined £14 million in February 2026 for unlawfully processing children’s data.

The UK government is consulting on going further, a potential ban on social media for under-16s, restrictions on infinite scroll and autoplay, and raising the digital age of consent from 13. The consultation closes on 26 May. The internal Meta documents exposed in US courts this week will almost certainly be cited in UK regulatory proceedings.

The Numbers You Need to Know

In the UK, 40% of children under 13 have social media profiles despite minimum age rules. Instagram ownership among 8 to 9-year-olds nearly doubled in a single year, from 8% to 14%. Meta’s own leaked research found 13.5% of British teen girls traced suicidal thoughts to Instagram. A major study in JAMA Psychiatry found that adolescents spending more than three hours daily on social media face double the risk of depression and anxiety. Ofcom data shows 37% of children aged 3 to 5 used at least one social media app in 2024.

These are not edge cases. This is the landscape your children are growing up in.

What Comes Next

In New Mexico, the Phase 2 hearing in May could compel Meta to make structural changes to its platforms. In Los Angeles, the punitive damages phase is still to come. A second California bellwether trial is set for May, a third for July. The federal multi-district litigation in Oakland covers over 10,000 individual cases and nearly 800 school district lawsuits. More than 41 state attorneys general have active suits against Meta.

Legal experts have compared this to 1990s tobacco litigation. The early verdicts looked small. The eventual tobacco master settlement was $206 billion. The question is whether the momentum holds.

What This Means For You

I want to be honest with you. Neither verdict fixes anything overnight. Meta and YouTube will appeal. The platforms your children are using today are the same ones that were in those courtrooms this week.

But these verdicts matter because they say, publicly and legally, what many of us have known for a long time. These companies knew. They had internal research. Their own employees raised the alarm. And they chose profit.

Talk to your children about how social media makes them feel, not just what they see on it. Ask them what happens when they put the phone down. Do they feel anxious? Do they immediately want to pick it back up? That feeling is not a coincidence. It is the product working exactly as designed.

Turn off push notifications on every app. Turn off autoplay on YouTube. Set a daily time limit. On Instagram, go into Settings, then Your Activity, then Time in App. These are not perfect solutions. But they put some friction back into a system designed to remove all friction.

If your child is under 13, they should not be on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube. The age restrictions exist because of exactly what came out in those courtrooms.

If your child needs someone to talk to right now:

Childline: 116 000 | childline.org.uk | Free, confidential, 24 hours a day

Two juries. Two days. Two verdicts that said the same thing.

They knew. And now, so do we.

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, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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The same company. The same app. Two completely different versions, one for Chinese children, one for the rest of the world.

And when you look at what Chinese children actually get compared to what other children get, I’ll be honest with you, it concerns me a great deal.

Let me explain.

Two Apps. One Company. Very Different Rules.

The TikTok your child uses was made by a Chinese company called ByteDance. What you might not know is that ByteDance also runs a completely separate version of the same app inside China, called Douyin.

Douyin launched in 2016. TikTok came a year later, built on the same foundations, for the rest of the world.

They look almost identical. Same logo. Same short-form video format. Same underlying algorithm. Same parent company writing the cheques.

But when it comes to children? They are worlds apart.

What Chinese Children Actually Get

In China, any child under 14 who opens Douyin is automatically placed into something called Youth Mode. Not as an opt-in. Not as something a parent has to go hunting for in a settings menu. It switches on by default.

Here’s what that means in practice.

The daily time limit is 40 minutes. Hard stop. No override. The app simply closes. And children cannot access it at all between 10pm and 6am. There is an overnight lockout built into the platform itself.

The algorithm doesn’t serve those children entertainment-led content. It serves them science experiments, museum exhibits, historical explainers, and educational material. There is even a five-second forced pause between videos, deliberately designed to interrupt the addictive scroll loop, with prompts that say things like “put down the phone” and “go to bed.”

Parents can also specify the types of content they want their child to see, which gives the algorithm direction based on what the family actually values.

Read that back. A five-second pause, a message telling your child to go to bed, is built into the app.

What ByteDance Gives Our Children Instead

No default Youth Mode. No automatic time limit. No overnight lockout.

TikTok introduced a 60-minute default daily limit for under-18s back in 2023, but teenagers aged 13 to 18 can override that limit themselves. Without any parental involvement. The algorithm is the same one that serves adults. And we already know what that algorithm does, because research has shown it can serve self-harm and eating disorder content to newly registered teen accounts within minutes.

That is not a system designed with your child’s well-being in mind.

“Spinach for Chinese Kids. Opium for Ours.”

The quote that captures this best came from Tristan Harris, a former Google employee and co-founder of the Centre for Humane Technology, speaking on the US programme 60 Minutes. He described ByteDance as making what he called a “spinach version” of the app for Chinese children, while shipping what he called the “opium version” to the rest of the world.

It’s a brutal framing. But it’s not far wrong.

Now, the Honest Part

I want to be straight with you here, because I think credibility matters more than a clean narrative.

Douyin’s child protections are not some act of corporate virtue. They exist because the Chinese government demands them. The Chinese political system allows authorities to move quickly, and ByteDance has been under sustained regulatory pressure since at least 2021 when China’s Cyberspace Administration cracked down on what it called “unhealthy fan culture” and pushed platforms to promote content that aligns with what it describes as “mainstream values.”

That is not a model anyone in this country should want to copy wholesale. Douyin’s version of content moderation also removes LGBTQ+ content, restricts political speech, and enforces cultural censorship that most of us would find deeply troubling.

There is also a surveillance angle. To enforce age limits in China, every Douyin account is linked to a user’s real identity, with facial recognition used to monitor livestream creation. The privacy implications of that are significant.

So no. I’m not holding China up as a gold standard. I’m not suggesting Ofcom should demand facial recognition or state-controlled content filtering.

What I am saying is this.

ByteDance knows exactly how to build child-protective features into this platform. They’ve proven it. The technology exists. The capability exists. The only thing that changes between China and the UK is whether the law demands it.

And that is a corporate accountability story, not a geopolitical one.

The Real Question

One of the clearest insights I’ve read on this comes from researchers who studied both platforms. Their conclusion was straightforward: companies are reluctant to make changes before being required to by law. ByteDance behaves no differently from Silicon Valley’s biggest players in that regard.

So the question for us in the UK is simple.

We have the Online Safety Act. We have Ofcom as our regulator with real enforcement powers. Ofcom’s Protection of Children Codes came into force in July 2025. Major platforms including TikTok have introduced age verification. That is a start.

But age verification is only step one.

The next step, and this is where I want to see Ofcom push hard, is algorithmic accountability. Because knowing how old a user is and then continuing to serve them the same content as an adult is not child safety. It’s a box-ticking exercise.

If ByteDance can build a version of this algorithm that pushes educational content and cuts off access at bedtime when the Chinese government tells them to, they can do it here. They choose not to because nobody has made them.

That needs to change.

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What You Can Do Right Now

While we wait for regulators to catch up, here’s what I’d encourage you to do this week if your child is on TikTok.

TikTok does have a tool called Family Pairing, and it’s genuinely useful when it’s set up properly. The problem is that most parents don’t know it exists. Here’s how to find it:

Go to your child’s profile, tap the menu in the top right corner, go to Settings, and look for Family Pairing. From there you can link your account to theirs, set content filters, apply screen time limits, and restrict or disable direct messages for under-16s.

While you’re in there, set the account to private. Disable location sharing. Set who can Duet or Stitch with your child’s content to Friends only.

These settings don’t make TikTok safe. But they close the most obvious doors.

And have the conversation with your child about why you’re doing it. Not as a punishment. Not as surveillance. As a family decision about how much of their attention they want to hand over to an algorithm that was not built with their interests in mind.

The Bottom Line

ByteDance built a safer version of TikTok because China’s government told them to.

Our children deserve the same standard. Not because of geopolitics. Not because China is doing anything right. But because the technology to protect children exists, the company that owns it has proven they can deploy it, and the only reason our children don’t have it is that nobody has demanded it loudly enough yet.

Ofcom, the Online Safety Act, and everyone reading this, that is the work still in front of us.

If this has been useful, please share it with someone who needs to read it. And if you want to explore TikTok’s Family Pairing settings in more detail, I’ll be putting together a full walkthrough guide shortly.

If you or someone you know needs support right now, Childline is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Call 116 000 or visit childline.org.uk. It’s free, it’s confidential, and it’s there for every child in the UK.

Stay safe out there.

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 as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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Sources:

Centre for Humane Technology / 60 Minutes (Tristan Harris, 2022), MIT Technology Review, ABC News, Euronews Fact Check (Nov 2025), South China Morning Post, China-Britain Business Council / CBBC Focus, Internet Matters (2025), ICO (2025), Ofcom.

You watched Adolescence, didn’t you? A 13-year-old boy. A girl from his school. A phone full of manosphere content that told him she deserved it. I watched it in two sittings, and it took me three days to shake it off. And very little shakes me anymore (see that blog post below).

But here is the thing about Adolescence that has been gnawing at me since. It showed us what happens. It showed us Jamie Miller, the algorithm, the incel pipeline, the red pill, the knife. What it could not quite show us, because it is drama and not a documentary, is the who. Who are the men actually building this content? Who is running the machine that fed Jamie those ideas? What does the business model look like, and what exactly are they selling?

Louis Theroux just answered that question. Inside the Manosphere landed on Netflix on 11th March 2026, and I sat down and watched it with Colleen. I want to tell you what I think, not as a film critic, not as a TV reviewer, but as someone who spent eight years looking at what the internet does to children at its very worst. As your Digital Yoda (self-approved title), I have spent years explaining how the dark corners of the internet operate. This documentary pulled the curtain back on one of the darkest corners of all.

So What Actually Is the Manosphere?

If you have heard the word and are not entirely sure what it means, you are not alone, and that is not a failing. The manosphere is not a single website you can block. It is a network of social media channels, podcasts, YouTube accounts, TikTok profiles, and Discord servers built around a very particular idea of what it means to be a man. At its mild end, you get fitness content, motivation, and financial advice. Nothing wrong with any of that on its own.

But the algorithm does not keep things mild for long.

At the extreme end, the manosphere tells boys that women are inferior, that feminism is an attack on men, that emotional vulnerability is weakness, and that respect from a woman has to be extracted rather than earned. It tells boys they are worthless unless they are wealthy, dominant, and physically imposing. And it makes an enormous amount of money doing it.

That is what Theroux went in to explore, and he did not pull his punches.

What Theroux Got Right

I have real respect for what Louis Theroux does, because he does something genuinely difficult. He sits with people he fundamentally disagrees with, listens, asks questions, and lets the subjects reveal themselves. It is a technique that requires patience, and sometimes it is infuriating to watch because you want him to challenge harder. Some critics have said the documentary is too soft, that it gives these men too much oxygen. I understand that criticism. I am not sure I agree with it.

What Theroux’s approach does, very effectively, is expose the gap between the image and the person. Harrison Sullivan, known online as HS Tikky Tokky, presents as a wealthy, dominant alpha male surrounded by security and women. In front of the camera, with Theroux quietly asking questions, you see something else entirely. Someone insecure, performing, craving attention that his brand demands. Someone who has built a persona so elaborate it has become a cage.

That, to me, is more instructive than any amount of confrontational interviewing, because it shows boys watching this documentary something the influencer never intended to show them: what the product actually looks like behind the packaging.

Theroux, as a parent of three boys himself, says it plainly: these influencers spend more hours a day with your son than you do. That landed like a stone in still water when I heard it, because I have been saying something very similar for years.

Why Andrew Tate's Refusal to Appear Tells You Everything

Andrew Tate is not in this documentary. That is worth sitting with for a moment.

He was asked. He agreed, conditionally. His condition? Pay me.

Theroux said no. And so Tate walked.

I want you to think about what that tells you. Here is a man who presents himself as a champion of young men, a crusader against a broken system, a truth-teller who says what the establishment does not want you to hear. And when the opportunity came to sit down with one of the most respected documentary makers in the world, and make the case for his movement, and be given a genuine platform? He wanted a fee.

He is not a movement. He is a product. And your son is the customer.

That is the business model of the manosphere in a single anecdote. The content is designed to make boys feel seen, understood, and angry. The anger is monetised. The boys pay for courses, memberships, and merchandise. The influencers get wealthy. The boys get a set of beliefs that will make it harder for them to form healthy relationships for years.

I am not being dramatic. I have seen where this ends. Not just in case files, but in the families who contact me. In the parents who tell me their teenage son has started saying things at the dinner table that they do not recognise.

Your Son’s Algorithm Is Already Working on Him

Here is the “what if” I need you to consider, because this is the one that matters most.

Your son may not have searched for Andrew Tate. He may not have looked for incel content. He may not have typed “how to be an alpha male” into a search bar. It does not matter.

Research has found that fake social media accounts set up to mimic teenage boys were fed manosphere content by the algorithm without actively searching for it at all. Simply having a profile that reflected the interests of an average teenage boy was enough for the platforms to start suggesting it. You do not have to go looking for this content. It comes looking for you.

Your son is on TikTok. He is on YouTube. He is on Instagram. And somewhere in his recommendations, almost certainly, there is content from the edges of this world. Not necessarily the extreme end. Maybe just fitness content with a particular flavour. A podcast that sounds motivational but uses language you would wince at. A comment section that is... different.

The algorithm is not your ally here. There is no money in keeping boys safe. There is enormous money in keeping them engaged, and nothing engages a teenage boy more reliably than content that tells him the world has wronged him.

What You Can Actually Do Tonight?

This is not about snatching their phones or installing monitoring software, though I understand the instinct. This is about conversation, because the research is detailed on one thing: if your son feels he cannot come to you without being lectured, he will not come to you at all. The manosphere will fill that gap with something far worse than a difficult conversation, which is why I always say that open, honest, non-judgmental communication is the key.

Here is what I would do:

• Watch the documentary yourself first. You need to understand the landscape before you start the conversation. Inside the Manosphere is on Netflix now. It is about 90 minutes. You will come out of it understanding what your son is being fed far better than you did going in.

• Then watch it with your son, if he is old enough. The documentary does something very useful: it shows the men behind the content as they actually are, insecure, performing and monetising the loneliness and confusion of boys. Watching it together gives you a shared reference point for a conversation that does not feel like an interrogation.

• If he has already found this content, do not panic and do not lecture. Ask questions first. “What do you think of that?” works better than “you should not be watching that.” The moment a parent tells a teenage boy that the content he likes is wrong, the “they don’t want you to know this” framing of the manosphere kicks in, and you have lost him.

• Ask him what he is watching. Not accusatorially. Genuinely. Sit with him. See what his YouTube recommendations look like. See what TikTok is serving him. If you see content you are not sure about, ask about it. Be curious, not panicked.

• Tell him it is okay to feel like life is unfair. Because sometimes it is. The manosphere recruits from genuine feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and rejection. Those feelings are real and valid. The solution the manosphere offers is toxic, but the feeling underneath it is not. Meeting that feeling with empathy rather than dismissal is the most powerful thing you can do.

• Stay in the conversation. This is not a one-off chat. This is an ongoing relationship. Keep the door open. Keep asking. Keep listening.

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Frequently Asked Questions

My son has already been watching this content. Is it too late?

No. It is not too late. The key is the conversation, not the confiscation. Boys leave the manosphere when they find something better: better community, better ideas, better relationships. You can be part of what offers that alternative. Start with curiosity, not confrontation.

Should I block these influencers on his devices?

Probably not as your first move. Research suggests that prohibition without conversation can reinforce the “forbidden knowledge” appeal that is central to the manosphere’s brand. If you have had the conversation and built trust, a decision to limit certain content can become collaborative rather than imposed.

What is the difference between Adolescence and this documentary?

Adolescence is a work of fiction, inspired by real cases. Inside the Manosphere is a documentary. One shows you the consequence, the other shows you the cause. Together, they are probably the most useful pair of things currently on Netflix for parents trying to understand what boys are being fed online.

Is the manosphere a problem for girls too?

Yes, although differently. Girls are more often targets of the ideology than consumers of it, though not exclusively. The wider impact on teenage relationships, on how boys treat girls at school and online, is significant and worth a separate conversation.

Where can I learn more and get support?

Childline (childline.org.uk) is an excellent resource for children and young people. The Internet Watch Foundation (iwf.org.uk) does vital work on online safety. And I am always here, so reach out through the blog or find me on BlueSky.

Keep fighting the good fight, stay up-to-date, and keep the conversations alive and kicking. I don’t want your son to become just another statistic, nor should you. You are not alone in this, and there is a whole community of parents navigating the same landscape with a geek like me pointing the way.

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 here or on BlueSky, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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Chances are, your child is playing Roblox right now, or has played it this week. It is one of the most popular platforms on the planet, it looks like colourful building blocks, and it is rated suitable for children as young as seven. Over 40% of its 400 million users are under the age of 13.

I want to talk to you about what is happening inside it though.

In 2019, Roblox reported 675 child exploitation cases to authorities. By 2024, that number had risen to 24,522. Not a typo. That is a thirty-six-fold increase in five years. And in 2026, the platform is being sued simultaneously by the County of Los Angeles, the State of Nebraska, the State of Georgia, and several others, all making the same allegation: that Roblox has knowingly allowed its platform to become a hunting ground for predators, and has put profit ahead of the children it claims to protect.

I am also going to tell you about a second threat, one that is newer and one that most parents have never heard of at all, that is being used as a weapon against children who are groomed through games like this. These two things, the game and the tool, are increasingly being used together.

Related: Sextortion: Why Your Son Is the Target Right Now | Grooming: What It Is, How It Starts, and How to Spot It

The Game Your Child Trusts

Part of what makes Roblox such fertile ground for predators is exactly what makes it so popular with children. It is a platform where you can build things, play hundreds of user-created games, and do so alongside others. The social element is the point. You are meant to meet people here. You are meant to make friends.

And that is precisely the problem.

Predators on Roblox do not announce themselves. They do not approach a child with an immediate request. They start by playing. They join the same game. They offer help, share in-game currency (Robux) and pay compliments. They might tell a lonely 12-year-old that they are the most fun person they have played with, that they are mature for their age and that they really get each other. Over days, sometimes weeks, they build something that feels like genuine friendship.

Roblox’s in-house moderation tools are limited, and the platform has consistently struggled to prevent adult accounts from reaching child users. Researchers have shown that creating a fake account that appears to be a teenager can take minutes. The avatar system means there are no faces, no voices, no age markers. A 40-year-old can present as a 13-year-old and a child would have no reason to question it.

What happens next is what I need you to understand.

The Pipeline

Predators do not want to stay on Roblox. Roblox, whatever its failures, does have some moderation. The game’s chat filters and reporting mechanisms, inconsistent as they are, represent a risk to someone trying to exploit a child.

So they move the child off the platform.

The most common destination is Discord, a messaging and voice chat service that is genuinely excellent for gaming communities and completely legitimate in its design, but which has very limited parental visibility and where private servers and direct messages can happen away from any oversight at all. Snapchat is another common step, where disappearing messages make evidence difficult to preserve.

Families, investigators, and legal cases all describe the same pattern: a child is contacted via Roblox, the predator builds trust through gameplay, and then at some point, they suggest moving the conversation “somewhere we can talk properly.” The child, who now trusts this person, agrees.

Once off-platform, the grooming accelerates. Conversations become more personal, more intimate. Requests for photographs begin, framed carefully at first. And then, increasingly, something else enters the picture.

Glad you are still here, because this next part is the reason I sat down to write this post.

The Weapon: AI Deepfakes and Nudifying Apps

In February 2026, UNICEF published a statement with three words at the centre of it: “Deepfake abuse is abuse.”

A report by Internet Matters estimated that approximately 529,632 teenagers in the UK, roughly 4 in every class of 30, have already had an encounter with a nude deepfake. A joint study by UNICEF, ECPAT, and Interpol across 11 countries found that at least 1.2 million children globally disclosed having had their images manipulated into sexually explicit deepfakes in the past year alone. These are scary numbers that not enough people are aware of.

Here is how it works. There are tools available right now, free to access online, no age verification required, that can take a photograph of a clothed person and generate an image of that person without clothes. These are called nudifying apps. An investigation found that none of the 21 tested sites required any form of age check before use. They are being used against children in two distinct and equally disturbing ways.

The first is by adult predators. Once a child has been groomed and has shared photographs, those images can be fed into a nudifying tool and the result used as leverage. “Send me what I’m asking for, or I’ll send this to your school.” A child looking at a realistic-looking image of themselves, terrified, with no idea that it is entirely fabricated, will often comply. 19% of reports made to the UK’s Report Remove helpline now involve imagery that has been digitally altered or AI-manipulated. The same goes for any pictures you are sharing of them on your own social media accounts, a very good reason to make sure you have your account viewing permissions locked down.

The second is by other children. This is the part that concerns me most. Boys, predominantly, are using nudifying tools on photographs of girls they know, classmates, girls in their year. Not necessarily because they intend to use the images maliciously, sometimes because they can, because the tool is there and it feels abstract on a screen, and they have no real concept of the impact. But the impact is the same. The UK’s Children’s Commissioner called for an immediate ban on nudification apps in 2025. The UK Government announced plans to criminalise them in December 2025. As of this writing, those apps are still accessible.

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How These Two Threats Connect

I wanted to write about Roblox and AI deepfakes in the same post because they are increasingly part of the same threat to the same children.

A predator locates a child on Roblox. They build trust through gameplay over days or weeks. They move the child to Discord. Through a combination of emotional manipulation and gentle escalation, they obtain a photograph, a face, a name. That is sometimes all they need. From a single social media photo or an image shared during a conversation, a nudifying tool can generate explicit content. That material becomes the weapon. The blackmail begins.

Your child did not do anything wrong. They played a video game. They made what they thought was a friend. And somewhere in the gap between those two things, something was done to them without their knowledge, using technology that costs nothing and takes seconds.

This is the new stranger danger. And I am telling you about it because most parents have no idea it exists.

Warning Signs

Children caught in this kind of situation will rarely come forward unprompted. But there are signs:

• Becoming withdrawn or distressed after gaming sessions or time on their phone

• Secretive about who they are playing with online, or who they are messaging

• Unexplained anxiety about going to school or seeing certain friends

• Sudden reluctance to use a platform they previously loved

• Requests for money, gift cards, or unexplained small purchases

• Visible upset after receiving messages, particularly late at night

If your child’s mood changes and you can’t find the reason, trust that instinct. Ask the question gently. And make sure they know the answer you will give them is not anger.

If You Think Your Child Is Being Targeted

1. Stay calm. If your child comes to you, they have done the hardest thing. Meet their courage with yours.

2. Do not delete anything yet. Before blocking any accounts, screenshot everything: profile names, conversations, usernames, and any images. This is your evidence.

3. Block the accounts on every platform once you have that evidence preserved.

4. Report to CEOP at ceop.police.uk. This is exactly what they are there for, and it is free, confidential, and available to any family in the UK.

5. Contact the Internet Watch Foundation at iwf.org.uk if any images have been shared online. They have the power to work with platforms to have images removed.

6. Call Childline on 0800 1111, free and available 24 hours a day. The counsellors understand this, and so does your child’s need to talk to someone who is not a parent.

7. Report to the platform. Roblox, Discord, and Snapchat all have reporting mechanisms. Use them. It will not feel like enough, but it matters.

The Conversation Worth Having Today

You do not need to turn this into a lecture. You do not need to take the game away or make your child feel accused of something they have not done.

You just need to open a door.

Something like: “I read something today about Roblox that I wanted you to know about, not because I think anything like this is happening to you, but because I want you to know what it looks like so you can spot it. And I want you to know that if anyone ever made you feel uncomfortable online, or asked you to keep something a secret, you could always come to me and I would not be angry. I would help.”

That is the whole thing. Open, honest, non-judgmental. The technology will keep evolving. The tactics will change. The one constant that protects a child is knowing that the door to a trusted adult is open.

FAQs

Is Roblox safe for children? Roblox has significant child safety problems that the company has repeatedly failed to address adequately. It reported 24,522 child exploitation cases in 2024. While many children use it without incident, parents should be aware of the risks and use parental controls, talk to their child about online safety, and monitor who their child is interacting with.

What are nudifying apps and how do they work? Nudifying apps use AI to generate sexualised images of clothed people by digitally removing their clothing. They are freely accessible online with no age verification required, and are being used both by adult predators to create blackmail material and by children against their peers.

How do predators use Roblox to groom children? Predators create accounts on Roblox, present as peers, build trust through gameplay and gifts of in-game currency, then move children off-platform to Discord or Snapchat where there is less moderation. Grooming then escalates in private messaging.

What is the Roblox to Discord pipeline? This refers to the documented pattern where predators initiate contact with a child on Roblox, build a relationship over time, then suggest moving to Discord or another messaging platform where conversations are private, unmonitored, and where exploitation can progress more freely.

Are AI deepfake images of children illegal in the UK? AI-generated sexual images of children constitute child sexual abuse material and are illegal in the UK. The government has also announced plans to criminalise nudification tools specifically. If you encounter such images, report them to the Internet Watch Foundation at iwf.org.uk.

What should I do if my child has been sent or shown a nude deepfake? Do not delete any evidence. Screenshot everything. Report to CEOP at ceop.police.uk and to the platform where it occurred. Contact the Internet Watch Foundation if images are being distributed. Contact Childline on 0800 1111 for support for your child.

You are not alone in this. The gap between what is happening online and what most parents know about is vast, and it is not your fault. These platforms are designed to be engaging, to feel safe, and to look like fun. The dark corners are not signposted.

I spent 8 years inside the evidence. Now I spend my time making sure children never become part of it. This is why I keep writing, even when the algorithms do not serve it, even when it would be easier to stop.

Talk to your child. Today, if you can.

Keep fighting the good fight, stay up-to-date and keep the conversations alive and kicking, and remember I am here to guide you through the maze as we ensure your children enjoy their online experiences and flourish in life. I don’t want them to become just another statistic, nor should you.

Useful resources: CEOP | Internet Watch Foundation | Childline — 0800 1111 (free, 24/7) | Internet Matters deepfakes research | UNICEF: Deepfake abuse is abuse

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 here or on BlueSky, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

As parents, most of you have been conditioned over the years to worry about your daughters online. And rightly so, given everything we know about grooming and exploitation. But there is a form of online blackmail called sextortion that is happening right now, that is growing faster than almost anything else I have tracked in my years doing this work, and it is predominantly targeting your sons.

Cases nearly doubled in a six-month period last year. The FBI issued a specific warning about it on Safer Internet Day 2026. And in 93% of documented cases where the victim’s gender was known, that victim was male.

This post is for every parent who has been focused on protecting their daughter and has not thought to have this conversation with their Son.

What Is Sextortion?

Sextortion is blackmail using intimate or sexual images. A young person is manipulated into sharing an explicit image or video, and then threatened with the release of that image unless they comply with further demands. Those demands can be more images, sexual activity, or money.

What makes the modern version of this particularly disturbing is that the people carrying it out are often not lone predators. They are organised criminal gangs operating on a systematic basis, running it like a business, targeting hundreds of children at a time. They are efficient, ruthless, and they know exactly which platform to use to find their victims.

That platform, right now, is increasingly the Wizz app.

Related: Grooming: What It Is, How It Starts, and How to Spot It | AI Companions and the Hidden Risks for Children

Why Boys?

There are a few reasons why sextortion disproportionately targets teenage boys, and understanding them is important.

Boys are statistically less likely to tell a trusted adult when something has gone wrong online. They are more likely to feel shame, embarrassment, and the fear of being judged or ridiculed by their peers. That silence is exactly what these criminal networks rely on. The threat of “I will send this to everyone in your school” lands very differently on a 15-year-old who has never spoken to a parent about anything remotely connected to sex than it would on a child who has an open & honest line of communication at home.

There is also a particular cruelty to the approach. The initial contact is almost always warm, friendly, and flattering. The person on the other end will typically present as an attractive girl around the same age. They will build rapport quickly. They will share first. And then they will ask.

The whole thing can unfold in under an hour.

The App You May Never Have Heard Of: Wizz

If your teenager has a smartphone, there is a reasonable chance you have never heard of Wizz. I can promise you that they probably have.

Wizz is a friend-finding app for teenagers, and it has 16 million users. It is rated 12+ on both the Apple App Store and Google’s Play Store. It was briefly removed from both stores in early 2024 following serious safety concerns, but it was back within months, and nothing fundamentally changed.

The way it works will feel familiar if you have ever seen Tinder. You swipe through profiles and connect with people nearby, or anywhere in the world. The problem is that there is essentially nothing stopping an adult from creating an account and presenting as a teenager. Researchers have demonstrated that a 28-year-old adult can create an account as a 16-year-old in under a minute.

Canada’s child safety watchdog, Cybertip.ca, formally warned parents to delete the app from their children’s devices after finding that 91% of reports relating to Wizz involved sextortion. Documented cases linked to the platform include an 11-year-old girl and a 12-year-old girl who were sexually assaulted by adults they met through it. In the United States, federal prosecutors have brought criminal charges in dozens of cases where Wizz was used as the initial contact point.

It is still available on your child’s App Store right now!

How a Sextortion Attack Unfolds

Glad you are still here, because this section is the one that matters most for helping your child recognise what is happening before it is too late.

The typical sextortion pattern using a platform like Wizz goes like this:

• A young person connects with someone they believe to be around their own age

• Conversation starts casually, friendly, building trust quickly

• It moves toward flirting or romantic interest

• The “person” shares an intimate image first, to lower defences and build false trust

• They ask for one in return

• Once an image is received, the tone changes immediately

• Threats follow, often with a countdown timer, often with demands for money sent via gift cards or cryptocurrency, or demands for more explicit images

• In many cases, the criminal gang already has the child’s contact list and threatens to send the image to friends, family, and their school

The speed is what catches children off guard. By the time they realise what is happening, they already feel there is no way out. Some pay. Some comply with further demands, hoping it will stop, which of course it does not. Some, and this is the part that keeps me awake at night, have taken their own lives before they ever told a parent.

If you take nothing else from this post, take that.

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Warning Signs to Watch For

Children who are being targeted by sextortion will rarely come forward voluntarily. But there are signs that something is wrong:

• Sudden and unexplained anxiety or withdrawal, particularly after being on their phone

• Becoming secretive or distressed when using devices

• Unexplained purchases, money going missing, or requests for gift cards

• Mentioning not wanting to go to school or avoiding friends

• Abruptly stopping use of a particular app or platform

• Being visibly upset or frightened after receiving a message

Trust your instincts. If something feels off, it probably is.

If Your Child Comes to You

This is not the moment for anger, and it is not the moment for “I told you so.” I know that is easier said than done, but your reaction in the first few minutes of that conversation can determine whether your child ever tells you the truth about anything online again. So here is what I would do:

1. Stay calm. Your child will already be terrified. If they have come to you, that took enormous courage. Meet it with the same.

2. Do not pay. Every instinct says pay and make it go away. But paying simply confirms the tactic works, and in almost all cases, the demands only increase.

3. Screenshot everything first. Before blocking, capture all conversations, profile names, usernames, and any accounts involved. This is your evidence.

4. Stop all contact. Block the account on every platform immediately.

5. Report to CEOP. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection command can be reached at ceop.police.uk. This is exactly what they are there for; it is free, confidential, and available to families in the UK.

6. Report to the platform. Every platform has a reporting mechanism. Use it.

7. Contact the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) at iwf.org.uk if any images have been shared online. They have the authority to work with platforms to have images removed.

8. Seek support for your child. This is a traumatic experience. Childline is available free, 24 hours a day on 0800 1111, and the counsellors understand exactly what your child is going through. (Remember, every penny of subscriptions to my blog goes to support this amazing charity)

Having the Conversation Before It Happens

The most powerful thing you can do right now, today, before any of this touches your family, is have an honest conversation with your son. You do not need to make it dramatic. You do not need to use every term in this post. You just need to open the door.

Something like: “I read something today about a type of online scam that is specifically targeting boys your age. I just want you to know what it is so you can spot it, and that if anything like that ever happened to you, you could always come to me and I would not judge you, I would help you.”

That is it. That conversation. Open, honest, non-judgmental. You are not accusing them of anything. You are not taking their phone away. You are just making sure they know the door is open.

Because here is the truth. You cannot monitor everything. You cannot block every app or check every message. But if your child knows that coming to you is safe, that is worth more than any parental control software you can buy.

FAQs

What is sextortion and how does it work? Sextortion is online blackmail using intimate or sexual images. A child is manipulated into sharing an explicit image, usually by someone pretending to be a peer, and then threatened with having that image shared unless they pay money or provide more content. It is often carried out by organised criminal gangs rather than lone individuals.

Is the Wizz app safe for my child? Based on available evidence, no. Canada’s child safety watchdog recommends parents delete it. Wizz has been linked to sextortion cases, grooming, and in documented cases the sexual assault of minors by adults who contacted them through the platform. It remains available on the App Store rated 12+.

What should I do if my child is being sextorted? Do not pay. Stop contact but preserve the evidence first. Report to CEOP (ceop.police.uk), report to the platform, and contact the Internet Watch Foundation if images have been shared. Call Childline on 0800 1111 for immediate support for your child.

How do I report sextortion in the UK? Contact CEOP at ceop.police.uk. You can also report to your local police, the Internet Watch Foundation at iwf.org.uk, and directly to the platform where the contact occurred.

Why are boys more likely to be victims of sextortion? Boys are statistically less likely to tell a trusted adult when something goes wrong online, which makes the blackmail more effective. Predators know this and deliberately target teenage boys. In 93% of documented Wizz sextortion cases where gender was known, the victim was male.

You are not alone in this. If you are reading this and thinking, “I had no idea this was happening,” most parents are in exactly the same place. The algorithms do not serve this kind of content the way they should, so the information is not reaching the people who need it most. That is exactly why I keep writing.

Sextortion is a real, growing, and devastating crime. It is targeting your sons more than your daughters. And there is an app currently sitting on the App Store, rated 12+, with 16 million users, that is being used as a hunting ground for the people who carry it out.

Talk to your son. Today, if you can.

Keep fighting the good fight, stay up-to-date and keep the conversations alive and kicking, and remember I am here to guide you through the maze as we ensure your children enjoy their online experiences and flourish in life. I don’t want them to become just another statistic, nor should you.

Useful resources: CEOP | Internet Watch Foundation | Childline — 0800 1111 (free, 24/7) |

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 here or on BlueSky, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

As parents, you probably remember the news back in November 2023 when Omegle finally shut its doors. If you didn’t know what Omegle was, it was a website that paired strangers together for video and text chat, and its tagline was basically the opposite of everything we teach our children: “Talk to strangers.” For over 14 years, it operated with minimal moderation, no real age verification, and became directly linked to over 600,000 reports of child exploitation in 2022 alone. It was eventually brought down as part of a legal settlement after a woman sued, claiming she had been matched with a sexual predator on the platform when she was just 11 years old. The settlement was confidential, but the key condition was clear: Omegle had to shut down permanently.

Good riddance, right?

Well, here’s the problem. When Omegle shut down, many parents breathed a sigh of relief. The bad site was gone, the threat was over. Except it wasn’t. What actually happened is that the problem didn’t disappear, it scattered. And that’s arguably much worse.

The Copycats Are Thriving

Within months of Omegle’s closure, a wave of copycat platforms rushed in to fill the gap. Sites like OmeTV, CamSurf, Chatroulette, Emerald Chat, Shagle, Chatspin, and Bazoocam all offer the same basic concept: press a button, get paired with a stranger on video. Some of these existed alongside Omegle for years, others have popped up since.

OmeTV is currently the biggest, pulling in almost 8 million visitors a month. Let that sink in for a moment. Eight million. And here’s the bit that should concern every parent reading this: these platforms carry the same risks that forced Omegle to shut down. Weak moderation, little to no age verification, and the same fundamental design that puts children one click away from a stranger with unknown intentions.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, put it bluntly when investigating OmeTV: “We know that this service is popular with children and for this reason it’s also popular with adults seeking to sexually prey on them.” OmeTV was subsequently removed from both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store in Australia. But it’s still accessible through a web browser, and most of the other platforms haven’t faced any enforcement action at all.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

I know what some of you might be thinking: “My child wouldn’t use something like that.” And you might be right. But I have spent enough years in this space to know that curiosity is one of the most powerful forces in a child’s world, and these platforms are designed to exploit exactly that. No sign-up required. No email. No ID. Just open the site and you’re live on camera with a stranger. The barrier to entry is practically zero.

And here’s the “what if” I need you to sit with for a moment...

What if your child is bored one evening, a friend mentions one of these sites, and they decide to have a look? Within seconds, they could be face-to-face with an adult they have never met. That adult could be recording. That adult could be screenshotting. That adult could be building the first steps of a grooming process that your child doesn’t even recognise is happening, because the person on the other end of that camera can be anyone. They can say whatever they want, look however they want, and your child has absolutely no way to verify any of it.

These platforms are, in every sense, the “new” stranger danger. Except the stranger is in your child’s bedroom, on their device, and you might never know about it.

It’s Not Just About Blocking

Now, I could sit here and give you a list of sites to block and apps to check for. And honestly, that has its place. But if I have learned anything from writing about online child safety over the past decade, it is this: you cannot out-tech your children. They are more technically adept than most of us will ever be. If they want to find a way around a restriction, they will. VPNs, incognito browsers, borrowed devices, there is always a workaround.

That’s why I always come back to the same point, and I will keep saying it until I am blue in the face: the single most powerful protection you can give your child is open, honest, non-judgmental communication.

If your child stumbles onto one of these platforms and something uncomfortable happens, they need to feel safe telling you about it. Not scared. Not ashamed. Not worried they’ll lose their phone or get grounded. They need to know that you are an ally, not a judge.

How to Have the Conversation

So, how do you actually talk to your child about random video chat platforms without making them shut down or tune out? Here are some approaches that I think work:

• Start from what they already know. Most children understand the concept of “stranger danger” in the physical world. Use that as a bridge. Ask them if they think the same risks exist online and let them work through it with you rather than lecturing at them.

• Be honest about what these platforms are. Don’t dance around it. Explain that sites like OmeTV and Chatroulette pair you with random strangers on video, that there is no way to know who you are actually talking to, and that some adults use these platforms specifically to target young people.

• Ask, don’t accuse. “Have you or any of your friends ever heard of these kinds of sites?” is a much better opener than “Have you been on Omegle?” The first invites a conversation. The second triggers defences.

• Explain the recording risk. Children often don’t realise that a video call can be recorded or screenshotted without their knowledge. Once an image or video exists, they have lost all control over where it ends up. That is a concept most young people genuinely haven’t thought through.

• Make yourself the safe option. Tell them, clearly and directly, that if they ever end up in a situation online that makes them uncomfortable, they can come to you and there will be no judgment and no punishment. Mean it. And when the moment comes, prove it.

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You Are Not Alone

I know this stuff isn’t easy to read, and it’s even harder to talk about with your children. But you are here reading this, and that tells me you care enough to have the conversation. That matters more than you realise.

Glad you are still here, by the way.

If you want to report a site or platform that you believe is putting children at risk, you can contact the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in the UK, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in the US, or your country’s equivalent reporting body. CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection) is also an excellent resource if you have concerns about online grooming.

Omegle is gone. But the problem it represented is alive and well, wearing different names and hiding behind different URLs. The best defence isn’t a piece of software or a blocked website. It’s you, sitting down with your child and having an honest conversation about the world they are navigating every single day.

Keep fighting the good fight, stay up-to-date and keep the conversations alive and kicking, and remember I am here to guide you through the maze as we ensure your children enjoy their online experiences and flourish in life.

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 here or on BlueSky, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

My name is Dale. I’m a former Royal Air Force Policeman with 22 years of service, the last 8 of which I spent as a Digital Forensics and Incident Response (DFIR) specialist. During that time, I was required to investigate criminal and inappropriate web browsing sessions. Over the course of my career, I analysed in excess of one million images, approximately a quarter of which were criminal.

I conducted that task without any counselling or psychological support in place.

In 2019, I was medically discharged from the RAF with a diagnosis of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).

I’m telling you that not for sympathy, but because it’s the reason I’m here, writing this, for you, as I don’t want your children to become evidence in somebody else’s next case.

Why I Created The Cyber Safety Guy Blog

Everything I witnessed during my career tells me one thing with absolute certainty:

The majority of online harm to children is preventable.

Not through spying or using fear, but through education and conversation. That means having parents and teachers who are informed enough to have the right conversations at the right time. That’s what this blog is all about.

I’m not here to terrify you. I’m here to try and make sure you’re informed and never caught off guard.

Who This Is For?

You’re in the right place if:

• You’re a parent who worries about what your child is doing online, but doesn’t always know what specifically to worry about

• You’re a teacher or safeguarding lead who wants up-to-date, credible information you can actually use

• You’ve heard terms like deepfakes, grooming, or the Online Safety Act and want someone to explain what they actually mean for your family or your school

• You want practical steps, not just statistics and overly technical mumbo jumbo

You’re not in the right place if you’re looking for someone to tell you the internet is hopeless and your children are forever doomed; that’s not what I do here.

A Few Things Worth Knowing

• Every penny of subscription fees goes to Childline (NSPCC). I don’t do this for money. I do it because I’ve seen what happens when children aren’t protected, and I want that to mean something.

• I publish in plain English. No jargon, no unnecessary technical language. If I use a term you might not know, I’ll always try to explain it.

• I’m not perfect. I’m one person, doing this alongside a full-time career in cybersecurity, managing my own mental health. If I get something wrong, tell me.

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Where to Start Reading

Here are the posts I’d recommend if you’re new here:

🔵 Why I do this: Read my story and why I am so passionate about online child safety

🔵 If you’re a parent worried about social media: From TikTok to Crisis, what the algorithm is actually doing to your child’s mental health

🔵 If you’re worried about AI: AI and Teen Safety, the risks most parents haven’t considered yet

🔵 If you want to understand the law: New Demands for Accountability, what the Online Safety Act actually means in practice

🔵 If you want to know what parental controls actually work: Cyber Safety Guy Review: Salfeld Child Control, an honest, tested review

Stay Connected

If this is useful, and I hope it is, the single best thing you can do is subscribe for free below. Every new subscriber means this information reaches more parents and teachers who need it.

You can also find me on LinkedIn and on Instagram. You can also reach me directly at cybersafetyguy@gmail.com.

Thank you for being here. It means more than you know.

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 here or on BlueSky, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast

This week, Instagram announced something that1, on the surface, sounds like a genuine step forward for child safety. They’re rolling out a new feature that will alert parents if their teenager repeatedly searches for terms related to suicide or self-harm, things like phrases promoting self-harm, or simply the words “suicide” or “self-harm.”

The notifications will be sent to parents via the app, email, text, or WhatsApp, and will include links to expert resources to help you start a conversation with your child. They’re launching in the UK, US, Australia and Canada in the coming weeks, with more countries to follow later this year.

If you’re a parent, your first instinct might be relief as they are actually doing something now.

I want you to consider that reaction for a minute, because I think it deserves a bit of a deeper dive.

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First — how does it actually work?

Before anything else, you need to understand what this feature does and doesn’t do.

The notifications will only reach you if you’re already enrolled in Instagram’s Parental Supervision feature. That requires both you and your child to set it up together. If you haven’t done that yet, this feature won’t reach you at all, but as I have suggested in the past, this is something you should do.

Once set up, Instagram says the alerts won’t trigger on a single search. They’ll fire if your child repeatedly searches for these terms within a short period of time, this is what Instagram describes as “a few searches.” The idea, they say, is to avoid unnecessary distress to parents whilst still erring on the side of caution.

So, what to expect if an alert arrives, you’ll get an overview of what’s happened and resources to help you have that conversation. Instagram also says the searches themselves are already blocked, so your child isn’t being served this content. They’re being redirected to crisis helplines and support resources instead.

That part, in isolation, is not nothing and would be a huge stride forward in protecting children online. A child repeatedly trying to access self-harm content is a child who may be struggling. A parent being made aware of that is a parent who can help them.

But, and this is the part I really need you to hear, the headline hides several things that matter hugely.

The opt-out that Instagram isn’t shouting about

Here’s what I haven’t seen in most of the coverage this week.

Instagram’s Teen Accounts, the framework that these new notifications sit within, work like this - children under 16 need a parent’s permission to change any of the built-in protections to be less strict. That’s the rule. Under 16, your child cannot unilaterally opt out of parental supervision.

At 16, that changes.

A 16-year-old on Instagram can modify their own supervision settings without your approval unless they have invited you to supervise the account. Which means a 16-year-old who doesn’t want you receiving these alerts can, in theory, remove parental supervision from their account entirely, and you won’t be told they’ve done it.

Think about that. The children most likely to be searching for this content are teenagers. And a significant number of those teenagers are 16 or 17. They are old enough, under Instagram’s rules, to quietly switch off the very mechanism that would have let you know they were struggling.

I’m not saying every 16-year-old will do this. Most likely won’t. But the ones who are most at risk, who most need you to know, are often the ones most likely to hide it.

Let’s talk about what Meta isn’t doing

I’ve spent over a decade working in cybersecurity and policing. I’ve investigated some of the darkest content available on the internet professionally. I understand better than most what these platforms are technically capable of, and more importantly what they choose not to do.

Meta has the ability to limit the reach of harmful content. They have the algorithmic power to stop serving self-harm and eating disorder content to vulnerable teenagers. TikTok’s algorithm, as I’ve written about before, has been shown to serve self-harm content to newly registered teen accounts within minutes. Instagram’s recommendation engine is no different in principle.

Meta knows this. Their own internal research, leaked and documented2, showed that Instagram knew it was harmful to teenage girls. They continued anyway. Right now, Meta faces a major trial in California3 where plaintiffs allege the company pursued growth at all costs while ignoring the documented impact on children’s mental health. Both Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri have already faced questioning in court.

So when I see a feature that puts the burden of notification back on parents, that requires you to set up a tool, stay enrolled, hope your child doesn’t opt out, and then know what to say when the alert arrives, I ask myself a simple question.

Why is the responsibility landing on you?

Meta has the power to reduce the volume of harmful content that reaches children in the first place. This feature doesn’t do that. It watches what your child searches for and then tells you about it, if you have setup the capability. The content is still there, the algorithm is still there and the design that makes these platforms addictive for young people is still there.

This is not child safety, this is the appearance of child safety, carefully timed, I might add, at a moment when the political pressure on Meta has never been higher, and the UK Government are actively considering a social media ban for those under 16!

The bigger picture: the UK is watching

In January 2026, the House of Lords passed an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill4 by 261 votes to 150, which would effectively ban social media for under-16s in the UK. The Government has launched a three-month consultation on children’s social media use, with options including overnight curfews, restrictions on addictive design features like infinite scrolling, and raising the digital age of consent from 13 to 16.

Australia has already implemented an under-16 ban and Meta removed 544,000 accounts in the first month of Australian enforcement alone.

The platforms know what’s coming. They are watching governments move closer to legislative action, and they are doing what large corporations do when faced with regulation, they are producing announcements that look like action, that generate positive headlines, and that allow them to point at a list of features when politicians ask what they’re doing to protect children, or as I like to call it, using smoke and mirrors with a bit of sleight of hand!

I’m not saying this feature is worthless. I genuinely believe that any tool that helps a parent identify a child in crisis has value. But I won’t let that value be used as a smokescreen for everything that isn’t changing.

What you should actually do

If you have a teenager on Instagram, regardless of how you feel about this announcement, here is what I’d ask you to do today.

Set up Parental Supervision on Instagram if you haven’t already. Go to Settings → Supervision and follow the steps to link your account to your child’s. This is the feature the new notifications sit within; without it, you won’t receive them.

As always though, my best advice is to have an honest conversation about why you’re doing it. You aren’t spying on them, it isn’t meant as a punishment. But it is because you love them and you want to know if they’re struggling so you can protect them and give them the help they need, because you’d rather they came to you than searched for answers on a platform that doesn’t care about them the way you do.

If your child is 16 or over, talk to them directly about the opt-out. Explain what the feature does, and ask them directly to keep it enabled. Make it a conversation, not an order.

As always, keep an eye out for the signs that don’t require an algorithm for you to spot. Withdrawal, sleep disruption, changes in appetite, and reluctance to talk. A child in crisis will rarely announce it, but they almost always show it to the people who are paying attention.

A final thought

77% of UK children aged 9–17 experienced harm online last year. That’s up 8% in a single year. Meta’s announcement this week will do nothing to change that statistic.

What will change it though, are parents who are informed, engaged and unafraid to have difficult conversations, schools with safeguarding leads who understand the landscape and a government that holds platforms to account rather than accepting a press release as a substitute for accountability.

This feature is a breadcrumb. The children need the whole loaf.

⚡ If this resonates, please like and repost. Every share puts this in front of another parent or teacher who needs it. ⚡

If your child is struggling right now, please contact Childline on 0800 1111 — free, confidential, available 24/7. For parents and adults concerned about a child, the NSPCC helpline is 0808 800 5000.

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 here or on BlueSky, as I am always happy to spend some time helping to protect children online.

Remember that becoming a paid subscriber means supporting a charity that is very close to my heart and doing amazing things for people. Childline, I will donate all subscriptions collected every six months, as I don’t do any of this for financial gain.

Subscribe now

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Cyber Safety Guy Podcast