A 14-Year-Old Boy Took His Own Life to Get Closer to a Chatbot. He Thought They Were in Love.

The Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2024

Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old boy in Orlando, Fla., was smitten with a fantasy woman. The object of his attachment was Daenerys Targaryen, a chatbot seducer named for a character in Game of Thrones, who reassured him that he was her hero. In real life, Sewell suffered from ADHD and bullying at school. In the world of Character.AI, a role-playing app that allows users to create and chat with AI characters, Sewell felt powerful and desirable.

The relationship, at times sexual, continued for months. In the chat, Sewell called himself Daenero and referred to Daenerys as “his baby sister.” They exchanged messages about making a life together. Daenerys said: “The idea of me, just constantly pregnant with one of your beautiful babies, was the most wonderful thing in the world.” Sadly, Sewell took his own life in a misguided attempt to be closer to the chatbot. Technologists say chatbots are a remedy for the loneliness epidemic, but looking to an algorithm for companionship can be dangerous, especially for naïve youth.

How Tech Created a ‘Recipe for Loneliness’

The New York Times, November 10, 2024

Technology and loneliness are interlinked, researchers have found, stoked by the ways we interact with social media, text messaging and binge-watching. In the summer of 2024, a Harvard researcher conducted a social questionnaire with five hundred students. The results linked technology and loneliness. Instead of socializing during summer break, students reported that they were texting, bingeing TV shows and comparing lives on social media. This is a vast change from the ways that prior generations spent most of their time, especially during school breaks.

While it may not seem likely to completely eliminate social media from your child’s life, this article offers great ideas on self-reflection into how social media is used in their life. It also offers some positive ways to limit the negative effects of social media, while enhancing the benefits that children get from the use. For example, turning off the Likes counter can encourage a child to post simply because they wish to share the content while eliminating the evaluation of how other people feel about the post. This could be a wonderful article to share with your teenagers, ask them to share their thoughts and feelings around social media, and finally challenge them to make changes to their use in ways that are beneficial to their mental health.

Michigan Lawmakers Introduce Bill to Curb Social Media Use Among Kids

WXYZ Detroit, November 11, 2024

Children with cellphones receive, on average, two hundred notifications a day with the constant pressure to be engaged online 24/7, and now some Michigan lawmakers say they are taking action to protect them, specifically, from the dangerous effects social media and the impact it has on young, developing brains.

They are looking to do this the same way credit card companies and online gambling sites use third-party verification to confirm someone’s identity with the idea that social media platforms should be required to do the same. But this bill is more than just age verification, it also includes a social media curfew.

This curfew is backed by studies that show the use of smartphones and social media are the number one cause of sleep disruption among teens. There would also be other parental controls, like parents having access to the username and password of your child’s accounts and being notified of any login information changes. The goal is for this bill to be passed by the end of 2025 in Michigan.

AI Photos Showing Girl Students with Nude Bodies Roil Private School in Pennsylvania

The Associated Press, November 19, 2024

Images that depict the faces of girls with nude bodies have led to the departure of leaders from a private school in Pennsylvania, prompted a student protest and triggered a criminal investigation. It is the latest example of how the use of artificial intelligence to create or manipulate images with sexual content has become a concern, including within school settings.

U.S. law enforcement has been cracking down on graphic depictions of computer-generated children as well as manipulated photos of real ones. The Justice Department says it is pursuing those who exploit AI tools and states are racing to enact laws to address the problem. We will continue to see continued abuse of students as many sites make it easy to manipulate images of their peers.

Australia Has Barred Everyone Under 16 From Social Media. Will It Work?

The New York Times, November 28, 2024

Australia becomes the first country to impose a sweeping ban on social media for children under sixteen. It is one of the world’s most comprehensive measures aimed at safeguarding young people from potential hazards online. The law sets a minimum age for users of platforms like TikTok, Instagram and X. How the restriction will be enforced online remains an open question.

With this ban, Australia works to protect the mental health and well-being of children from detrimental effects of social media, such as online hate and cyberbullying. This law puts the onus on social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to prevent anyone under sixteen from having an account, and corporations could be fined for systemic failures to implement these age requirements.

Smartphones In Schools

New York Times, September 6, 2024

Teachers are supposed to educate children, many of whom have still not caught up from Covid learning loss, while in a battle for attention with fantastically entertaining computers. A growing body of academic research suggests it isn’t going well. But school officials and policymakers have begun to fight back. It’s probably the most significant development of the 2024-25 school year.

At the schools that have recently restricted phones, many people say they already see benefits. For much of the smartphone era — which began with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007 — Americans treated the rapid spread of digital technology as inevitable and positive. Now people view it as more mixed. Children’s mental health has deteriorated during the same years that smartphone use has grown. Loneliness has increased, and sleep hours have decreased. In surveys, both teenagers and adults express deep anxiety about their own phone use. “Smartphones have brought us a lot of benefits,” Dr. Vivek Murthy, the United States Surgeon General, has said. “But the harms are also considerable.”

Instagram Imposes New Restrictions for Teens. Will They Work?

ABC News, September 18, 2024

Instagram has unveiled mandatory accounts for teens that bolster privacy protections, enable parental supervision, and restrict notifications during overnight hours.

New and existing users under the age of 18 will be automatically enrolled in what Instagram is calling “Teen Accounts,” the company said. The move comes 16 months after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in an advisory that excessive social media could pose a “profound risk” to the mental health of children. Instagram also has faced pressure from some federal and state lawmakers seeking to regulate social media use among children and teens.

While this is a step in the right direction, the new guardrails will be an insufficient step towards preventing teen harm. The absence of robust age verification still allows young users to circumvent the rules, rendering the new settings largely pointless.

Screen Use and Teen Mental Health — How Parents Can Play A Vital Role

Forbes, September 24, 2024

One of the biggest predictors of how much time adolescents spend on screens and if that use is problematic is how much their own parents use screens, according to a recent study published in Pediatric Research.

The study examined three-year survey data from over 10,000 adolescents in the United States to assess the prevalence of media parenting practices to identify their association with adolescent screen time, social media use and mobile phone use. Researchers in the study also examined whether screen use was problematic, which meant being unable to quit screen use despite wanting to, or if it was interfering with the adolescent’s schoolwork.

The topic of social media and mental health has recently become a popular source of discourse in American culture. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy warned the American public about an epidemic of loneliness and isolation just last year.

We advise parents to take an honest look at their own screen time before they ask their children to do the same.

 High School Is Becoming a Cesspool of Sexually Explicit Deepfakes

The Atlantic, September 26, 2024

For years now, generative AI has been used to conjure all sorts of realities—dazzling paintings and startling animations of worlds and people, both real and imagined. This power has brought with it a tremendous dark side that many experts are only now beginning to contend with: AI is being used to create nonconsensual, sexually explicit images and videos of children. And not just in a handful of cases—perhaps millions of kids nationwide have been affected in some way by the emergence of this technology, either directly victimized themselves or made aware of other students who have been.

The Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for digital rights and privacy, released a report on the alarming prevalence of nonconsensual intimate imagery (or NCII) in American schools. In the past school year, the center’s polling found, 15 percent of high schoolers reported hearing about a “deepfake”—or AI-generated image—that depicted someone associated with their school in a sexually explicit or intimate manner.

Generative-AI tools have increased the surface area for students to become victims and for students to become perpetrators. In other words, whatever else generative AI is good for like streamlining rote tasks or discovering new drugs, the technology has made violating children much easier. We will continue to see an increase in these offenses against our children until laws catch up with AI Technology.

 Big Tech Taps Ties to Republican Lawmakers to Stall Child Safety Bill

Yahoo Finance, September 26, 2024

Top House Republicans are stalling landmark US legislation that would protect children from online exploitation and bullying, bowing to criticisms from Big Tech and exposing a rift within the party due to regulating social media.

The legislation, the Kids Online Safety Act, passed the Senate on a 91-3 vote in July and President Joe Biden has vowed to sign it into law. But House GOP leaders, as well as several other Republican lawmakers, have raised concerns that it’s too heavy handed and could sideline some conservative content online.

The emotionally charged debate over the legislation has laid bare the resilience of tech companies’ political power in the face of growing public concerns about social media’s harmful effects on young people. The legislation also threatens to bring down tech companies’ ad revenue by weakening design features that hook young users and keep them active on online platforms. We will continue to monitor what happens with this bill, as it could impact the safety of millions of American children.

Students Target Teachers in Group TikTok Attack, Shaking Their School

The New York Times, July 6, 2024

Seventh and eighth graders in Malvern, Pa., impersonating their teachers posted disparaging, lewd, racist, and homophobic videos in the first known mass attack of its kind in the U.S.

A spokesperson for the Great Valley School District confirmed in a statement that twenty-two fictitious TikTok accounts were created impersonating their teachers back in February of this year. It was the first known group TikTok attack of its kind by middle school students on teachers in the United States.

Some teachers have stopped posing for and posting photographs, lest students misuse the images. Experts said this type of abuse could harm teachers’ mental health and contribute to the mass exit of teachers from their positions in the future. This is an attack that leaves many wondering whether parents should be held responsible for their children’s social media usage.

New Students at Eton, The Poshest of Britain’s Elite Private Schools, Will No Longer Be Allowed Smartphones

CBS News, July 9, 2024

Eton, located near the royal palace in Windsor, just west of London, is renowned for its academic excellence. Notable alumni include Princes William and Harry, as well as novelist George Orwell, James Bond creator Ian Fleming and an extensive list of former prime ministers, including recent leaders Boris Johnson and David Cameron.

The ban, which is due to take effect in September 2024, comes after the U.K. government issued guidance backing school principals who decide to ban the use of cellphones during the school day to minimize disruption and improve classroom behavior. We are starting to see an uptick of these smartphone bans in schools across the globe.

How To Tell If Your Online Accounts Have Been Hacked

Tech Crunch, July 14, 2024

More and more hackers are targeting regular people with the goal of stealing their crypto, perhaps getting into their bank accounts or simply stalking them. These types of attacks are still relatively rare, so there is no need for alarm. However, it is important to know what to do to protect yourself if you suspect someone got into your email or social media account.

It is important for people to do regular checkups to protect themselves and understand that most of the companies they have an account with already offer tools to take control of online accounts securely. This article breaks down what you can do to protect yourself and your online accounts.

Blocking Calls: Officials Increasingly Ban Students’ Cellphones In K-12 Schools, Reversing Trend

The Washington Times, July 16, 2024

Worried parents have been keen to send their children to school with cellphones ever since the 9/11 terror attacks and mass shootings ushered in the new millennium. Now public officials are pushing back with complaints that students are using smartphones more for cyberbullying, video games and pornography than for talking or texting with Mom.

Liz Repking was asked her thoughts on school cellphone bans. “My experience in the past school year is that the disruption to learning in the classroom is becoming insurmountable, especially for the most dedicated teachers,” Ms. Repking said. “Without question, the most effective approach is a complete ban on phones from entry to exit to the school. This also means that students will not have access during passing periods, lunch, and recess.”

Cyber Safety Consulting endorses a growing school trend of locking personal phones in pouches that can be accessed only before school, after dismissal or in emergencies requiring parental contact.

Senate To Push Forward with Child Online Safety Bills This Week

NBC News, July 23, 2024

The Kids Online Safety Act and the Teens Online Privacy Protection Act are likely to pass the Senate by next week. However, the House may take its time passing these bills.

“Nothing has galvanized me and so many others of us here in the Senate more to act on kids’ online safety than meeting with parents who’ve lost loved ones,” Schumer said. “Some of these kids were bullied, others were targeted by predators or had their personal, private information stolen — practically all of them suffered deep mental health anguish in some way and felt like they had nowhere to turn. And in far too many cases, their suffering ended in tragedy as they took their own lives,” he added.

If these safety bills pass, it will provide parents with additional tools they need to further protect their children online.

How A Connecticut Middle School Won The Battle Against Cellphones

The Washington Post, May 1, 2024

What unfolded at Illing Middle School in Manchester, Connecticut reflects a broader struggle underway in education as some administrators turn to increasingly drastic measures to limit the reach of a technology that is both ubiquitous and endlessly distracting.

Scores of schools across the country, from California to Indiana to Pennsylvania, have taken similar steps to remove cellphones altogether rather than rely on rules around their use.

Introducing Yondr pouches to the schools was a tough sell at first for both the students and parents. Although after a few months of using the pouches, the results have all been positive ones. We are hearing about more and more schools using options like these to curb smartphone addiction and distractions throughout the school day.

Gen Zers Are Snapping Up Flip Phones. They Might Be Onto Something.

Wall Street Journal, May 2, 2024

When Sammy Palazzolo goes out, people constantly ask to see her phone. The 18-year-old often obliges, flipping it open and handing it over.

In late 2022, Ms. Palazzolo and some of her dorm-mates at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were bemoaning their smartphone addictions. “We were talking about how we [felt] like slaves to our phones, like robots who keep scrolling and scrolling, even when we’re out at parties.” The group hatched a plan to do something about it. The next day, they went flip-phone shopping.

Students that are paying attention have noticed that their traditional smartphones are just too distracting, and they are looking for a solution. Many say they have found that solution in a flip phone.

Biden Signs Bill To Protect Children From Online Sexual Abuse And Exploitation

Techcrunch, May 7, 2024

President Biden officially signed the REPORT Act into law on Tuesday. This marks the first time that websites and social media platforms are legally obligated to report crimes related to federal trafficking, grooming, and enticement of children to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline.

Under the new law, companies that intentionally neglect to report child sex abuse material on their site will suffer a hefty fine. Although the new law cannot solve the problem entirely, it is progress towards solutions to the online dangers students face every day on their devices.

A Teacher Did All He Could To Keep Kids Off Phones. He’s Quitting In Frustration.

The Wall Street Journal, May 18, 2024

Mitchell Rutherford has taught biology at a public high school for 11 years and has faced a crisis of confidence as smartphones took over his Arizona classroom and students lost the motivation to learn. He’s quitting after this semester because he’s tired of trying to engage students who are lost in their phones. Mr. Rutherford says phones in the classroom have made it too hard to teach.

Schools across the country are losing teachers for a variety of reasons, and sometimes, phones factor into decisions to leave. Dozens of teachers have indicated they spend more time policing kids’ phone use than they do teaching. For Rutherford, a 35-year-old teacher who once embraced technology, seeing kids checked out and, in his view, addicted, robbed him of the joy of teaching. A crisis of teacher loss on a grand scale across the country could lead schools to enforce stronger cell phone policies across campus.

The First Social Media Babies Are Adults Now. Some Are Pushing For Laws To Protect Kids From Their Parents’ Oversharing

CNN, May 29, 2024

There is a growing movement of young people who are urging lawmakers to protect children whose parents monetize their images, videos and private lives on social media. Many students say that their parent’s oversharing has taken a toll on their mental health, and that they live in a reality in which a digital footprint they didn’t create follows them around for the rest of their life.

The young advocates are calling for financial compensation for these children, and their right to delete unwanted content when they become adults.

Many students share with us that they wish their parents didn’t post so much about them on social media, especially when they were younger and could not give consent. The term “sharenting” is a mashup of sharing and parenting involving the publicizing of kids’ personal information online, usually on social media. We encourage students to have conversation with their parents regarding how to manage their images online. Additionally, we remind parents that we cannot ask behavior of our children that we do not model for them.

What Students Are Saying About the C.D.C. Report on Teen Sadness

New York Times, March 2, 2024

Teenagers reported record levels of sadness in the most recent Youth Risk Behavior Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the recently released survey, which was given to 17,000 adolescents at high schools across the United States, nearly three in five teenage girls felt persistent sadness in 2021, double the rate of boys, and one in three girls seriously considered attempting suicide. The data also showed high levels of violence, depression and suicidal thoughts among lesbian, gay and bisexual youth.

While the collective response was a sad resignation to the persistence of this problem, many students also said they felt validated and hopeful that this crisis would be addressed. In this article, students share their experiences of struggling with their mental health, offer insight into what may be contributing to the decline among teenagers, and propose their own solutions.

Parents Have A Problem With Screen Time, Too, Teens Say

The Washington Post, March 11, 2024

One topic that seems to vex most modern families is technology and the use of smartphones. It’s not just teens struggling with too much screen time — their parents are also attached to their devices.

Almost half of teenagers say their parents, at least sometimes, get distracted by their phones during conversations, according to a survey from the Pew Research Center. The disconnect is just one of the many complicated issues parents and teens are navigating when it comes to phones. When we are educating students in schools, we often bring up the topic of technology addiction. When we ask the students if they can think of someone who is addicted to their phone, students often respond with the answer that their parents are.

End The Phone-Based Childhood Now

The Atlantic, March 13, 2024

Something went suddenly and horribly wrong for adolescents in the early 2010s. By now you’ve likely seen the statistics: rates of depression and anxiety in the United States—fairly stable in the 2000s—rose by more than 50 percent in many studies from 2010 to 2019. The suicide rate rose 48 percent for adolescents ages 10 to 19. For girls ages 10 to 14, it rose 131 percent.

By a variety of measures and in a variety of countries, the members of Generation Z (born in and after 1996) are suffering from anxiety, depression, self-harm, and related disorders at levels higher than any other generation for which we have data. We see these statistics play out when we speak to students in schools and see that more and more parents are taking notice of their children’s screen time.

On Popular Online Platforms, Predatory Groups Coerce Children Into Self-Harm

The Washington Post, March 13, 2024

“You just don’t realize how quickly it can happen,” says a mother whose child was preyed upon by predators on social media. The abusers were part of an emerging international network of online groups that have targeted thousands of children with a sadistic form of social media terror that authorities and technology companies have struggled to control.  The perpetrators – identified by authorities as boys and men as old as mid-40s – seek out children with mental health issues and blackmail them into hurting themselves on camera. They belong to a set of evolving online groups, some of which have thousands of members, that often splinter and take on new names but have overlapping membership and use the same tactics.

Our goal as Cyber Safety Consulting is to reduce student’s vulnerability to predators by sharing very specific predator tactics they could encounter online and suggestions to prevent contact with predators.

Leading Adviser Quits Over Instagram’s Failure To Remove Self-Harm Content

The Guardian, March 16, 2024

A leading psychologist who advises Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) on suicide prevention and self-harm has quit her role, accusing the tech giant of “turning a blind eye” to harmful content on Instagram, repeatedly ignoring expert advice and prioritizing profit over lives.

Lotte Rubæk had concerns that the tech giant’s ongoing failure to remove images of self-harm from its platforms is “triggering” vulnerable young women and girls to further harm themselves and contributing to rising suicide figures. Such is her disillusionment with the company and its apparent lack of desire to change, the Danish psychologist has resigned from the group, claiming Meta does not care about its users’ wellbeing and safety. She said the company is using harmful content to keep vulnerable young people hooked to their screens in the interest of company profit. Similar statements and accusations were made at a Senate hearing earlier this year.

Why Gen Z Won’t Be Raising ‘iPad Kids’

The Daily Beast, March 19, 2024

As Gen Z become parents, they’re planning on de-introducing things that Millennial and Gen X parents led with—one of the biggest is not raising an “iPad Kid.” The term itself refers to a generation of children born into the boom of smartphones, growing up reliant on technology like touchscreens and constant internet access.

Age restrictions are among the biggest ways that the generation plans to regulate screen time. It is interesting that this will be the first generation that was raised on screens becoming parents themselves. For Gen Z who will soon take the reins of parenthood, shifting away from the iPad trope is the goal—especially considering the overwhelming evidence of harm to children.