A New Book Has Amplified Fierce Debate Around Teens, Mental Health And Smartphones

NBC News, April 3, 2024

“We have overprotected children in the real world and under protected them in the virtual world. “Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation,” argues that the smartphone-driven “great rewiring of childhood” is causing an “epidemic of mental illness.” Phones and social media have become a ubiquitous part of everyday life. But as much as researchers study their impact, there remains no easy answer to how exactly these technologies affect the mental health of kids and teens.

Jonathan suggests four ways to combat this problem: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones in schools; and prioritizing real-world play and independence. This has sparked a conversation and debate amongst parents and educators about the online dangers for children as well as their online/offline digital balance.

Teen Girls Confront An Epidemic Of Deepfake Nudes In Schools

The New York Times, April 8, 2024

Blindsided last year by the sudden popularity of A.I.-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, schools across the United States scurried to contain the text-generating bots to forestall student cheating. Now a more alarming A.I. image-generating phenomenon is shaking schools.

Boys in several states have used widely available “nudification” apps to pervert real, identifiable photos of their clothed female classmates, shown attending events like school proms, into graphic, convincing-looking images of the girls with exposed A.I.-generated breasts and genitalia. In some cases, boys shared the faked images in the school lunchroom, on the school bus or through group chats on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, according to school and police reports. We speak with administrators everyday across the county who are grappling with the challenges and impact of artificial intelligence and other technology available to students at anytime and anywhere.

The Real-Time Deepfake Romance Scams Have Arrived

Wired, April18, 2024

Digital con artists started using deepfakes as part of their romance scams around May 2022, says David Maimon, a professor at Georgia State. “What folks were doing was just posting videos of themselves, changing their appearance, and then sending them to the victim—trying to lure them to talk to them,” he says. Since then, they’ve moved on. To create their videos, digital con artists use a handful of different software and apps, using tools often advertised for entertainment purposes, such as allowing people to swap their faces with celebrities or influencers.

These deepfake calls can run in two different ways. Most often, the scammers use a setup of two phones and a face-swapping app. The scammer holds the phone they are calling their victim with—they’re mostly seen using Zoom, Maimon says, but it can work on any platform—and uses its rear camera to record the screen of a second phone. This second phone has its camera pointing at the scammer’s face and is running a face-swapping app. They often place the two phones on stands to ensure they don’t move and use ring lights to improve conditions for a real-time face-swap. Parents need to be aware of how absolutely realistic these scams can seem, and work to educate their students about the way these scams work in order to protect them.

TikTok Ban Signed Into Law By President Biden: How We Got Here And What Comes Next

Tech Crunch, April 24, 2024

The TikTok ban has cleared Congress and received White House approval, putting new pressure on Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, to divest. TikTok faces an uncertain fate in the United States and many people wonder why. A bill including a deadline for Bytedance to divest within nine months or face a ban on app stores to distribute the app in the U.S., was signed by President Joe Biden this month.

The White House’s approval comes swiftly after strong bipartisan approval in the House and a 79-18 Senate vote in favor of moving the bill forward. TikTok is one of the most popular apps for students and this article does a great job of explaining the possible upcoming ban in the United States due to the privacy concerns of app data.

What You Need To Know Now To Keep Your Kids Safe Online

She Knows, April 24, 2024

Reports of sextortion amongst students rose 82% from 2021 to 2022.  In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received on average 100,000 cyber tips of child sexual abuse material every day- almost an 8,000% increase from 2013. Financial sextortion, where perpetrators ask for money, is the fastest growing crime against children in the United States. Tragically, children and teenagers have died by suicide in recent years after being targeted in a sextortion scheme.

We often reassure parents that we are the first generation raising kids with smartphones, and that it can be difficult to know what is best for your child. This article gives great advice for any parent navigating the digital world. It touches on not only sextortion, but the emergence of artificial intelligence online and social media overexposure.  As a reminder for our kids, the adage still stands: If you don’t want your grandma to see it, don’t send it, text it, or post it.