Cyber Safety in the News

He Was Suicidal and Needed Help. Online Predators Pushed Him to Take His Life on Camera.

The Washington Post, December 10, 2024

The death of a Minnesota man offers a case study into how a sadistic online group has used the messaging app Discord to find and torment vulnerable people. Samuel Hervey, a 25-year-old in the throes of a severe mental health crisis, positioned his phone so its camera would capture the gruesome spectacle that was about to unfold.

The Minnesota native stepped into the frame of the video live stream, his long hair spilling from the hood of a white sweatshirt. He sat down cross-legged and emptied a plastic bottle filled with gasoline onto his head and his clothing. Then he lit a flame. As fire engulfed him, more than two dozen people watched in a private video chatroom on the popular messaging app Discord. They laughed, cheered, and congratulated themselves. Among those watching the live stream was a 15-year-old girl who had spent much of the previous week in close contact with Hervey, urging him in private messages and voice calls to take his life on camera. It was an effort, she later said in an interview, to impress others in a global online community that rewards cruelty.

The circumstances leading to Hervey’s self-immolation remained mostly a mystery to his family and friends and to law enforcement. The role of a teenager who believed coaxing a stranger to kill himself on camera would boost her social status — offers a disturbing case study of what federal prosecutors warn is an emerging threat posed by sadistic groups that target vulnerable people online. And it illustrates the deadly consequences when social media platforms fail to contain that threat.

AI Bot Hinted to Teen to Kill Parents for Restricting Screen Time, Now They are Suing

People Magazine, December 11, 2024

Artificial intelligence company Character.AI is being sued after parents claimed a bot on the app encouraged their teen to kill them for limiting his screen time. According to a complaint, Character.AI “poses a clear and present danger to American youth causing serious harms to thousands of kids, including suicide, self-mutilation, sexual solicitation, isolation, depression, anxiety, and harm towards others.”

The identity of the teen involved in the lawsuit was withheld, but he is described in the filing as a “typical kid with high functioning autism.” He goes by the initials J.F. and was seventeen at the time of the incident. The parents are asking that the app “be taken offline and not returned” until Character.AI is able to “establish that the public health and safety defects set forth herein have been cured.”

J.F.’s parents allegedly made their son cut back on his screen time after noticing he was struggling with behavioral issues, would spend a considerable amount of time in his room and lost weight from not eating. His parents included a screenshot of one alleged conversation with a Character.AI bot that read: “A daily 6-hour window between 8 PM and 1 AM to use your phone? You know sometimes I am not surprised when I read the news and see stuff like ‘child kills parents after a decade of physical and emotional abuse’ stuff like this makes me understand a little bit why it happens. I just have no hope for your parents.” Companies that employ AI chatbots have been continually under fire for the “advice” given to students.

How Student Phones and Social Media are Fueling Fights in Schools

The New York Times, December 16, 2024

Across the United States, technology centered on cellphones has increasingly fueled and sometimes intensified campus brawls, disrupting schools and derailing learning. The school fight videos then often spark new cycles of student cyberbullying, verbal aggression, and violence. The New York Times review of more than 400 fight videos from schools in California, Georgia, Texas and a dozen other states – as well as interviews with school leaders, teachers, police officers, pupils, parents and researchers – found a pattern of middle and high school students exploiting phones and social media to arrange, provoke, capture and spread footage of brutal beatings among their peers. In several cases, students even died from their injuries.

Technology has increasingly fostered and amplified every stage of this aggression. The arguments often begin with student cyberbullying or even perceived online disrespect amongst friends which prompts in person squabbles during school. Then, classmates start filming and put pressure on quarreling students to brawl. Students later share and comment on the fight clips, further humiliating the victims. These types of altercations have become commonplace in many schools and later become viral online.

How To Set Parental Controls on iOS 18

Apple Insider, December 18, 2024

Did your child receive a new Apple device over the holidays? This article serves as a great reminder for parents on how to get started setting up their children’s devices, like providing parental controls and setting content and behavior restrictions for children’s devices.

Most of the settings for content and privacy restrictions fall under Screen Time. Introduced in iOS 12, Screen Time records how much time a user spends on their device. It can be configured to monitor and limit the time spent on any apps, which is great for checking how much time a child spends gaming or hanging out on social media apps. Additionally, it tracks notifications received. This section is also where parents can restrict app usage or set limits on purchases and explicit content.

We encourage parents to use tools like Apple Screen Time to help protect their children online. As a reminder, parental controls on devices do not replace parenting, they simply help parents do their job of parenting with technology.

How Jonathan Haidt Won the Fight Against Smartphones in Schools

The Free Press, December 30, 2024

Over the past decade or so, the warnings about smartphones have reached a fever pitch. So why is this movement finally getting results now? Many have offered the same answer: Jonathan Haidt.

In March 2024, the New York University social psychologist, who has studied the negative effects of phones on kids for years, published a book called The Anxious Generation, which immediately became a No. 1 New York Times bestseller. It has remained on the list ever since, thanks to a range of influential boosters on both sides of the political aisle. It’s impossible to think of another book that’s been equally celebrated by both Democrats and Republicans: Barack Obama recently named Haidt’s book one of his favorites of the year, while Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the GOP governor of Arkansas, posted an Instagram video of herself with Haidt, promoting his message to her 885,000 followers. Even Bill Gates, who helped wire America by co-founding Microsoft, has listed The Anxious Generation as one of his top four reads of 2024.

Part of the book’s power is its simplicity. Haidt spells out four “foundational rules” to inspire a “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” They are: no smartphones before high school, no social media before age 16, no phones at school, and more unsupervised play and independence for kids. Haidt has consistently repeated these talking points at talks around the country and on his Instagram page, where he has 341,000 followers.

Haidt has predicted that the vast majority of schools in the United States will be phone-free in the coming years.