Dangerous sharenting practices putting children and young people at risk 

  • Our online experts have been alerted to the fact that Sharenting has become a viral social media trend through the use of hashtags
  • Parents have been innocently sharing images of their children accompanied with certain hashtags, filled with identifiable information
  • Risks include – Inclusion of School Uniforms / indications of location, putting children on Child Protection Plans at risk, criminals collecting DOB data from hospital photos and more
  • For more information on sharing and advice on staying safe, read our recent article here, where our online safety experts unpack the issue

TikTok offers parents more control over children’s account

  • TikTok is expanding its parental control feature today to give parents more options over what their teen can see and how private their account is
  • Parents will now be able to restrict who can comment on their teen’s videos, who can view their account, and who can see what videos they’ve liked
  • This allows parents to limit an account so that only their child’s friends can see what they’ve been up to
  • Parents will now be able to stop their teenager from searching for videos, users, hashtags, or sounds, which could make it harder for them to find certain content on the app
  • The options are all part of TikTok’s Family Pairing feature, which lets parents connect to their kid’s account and then set limits on it, but TikTok makes it so that a teen can disable the feature at any time, although parents will get notified when that happens

Twitter release new disappearing messages

  • Twitter has launched a new feature worldwide called ‘fleets’: tweets that disappear after 24 hours, similar to the stories feature on Snapchat and Instagram
  • “Some of you tell us that tweeting is uncomfortable because it feels so public, so permanent, and like there’s so much pressure to rack up retweets and likes,” Twitter’s design director, Joshua Harris, and product manager, Sam Haveson, wrote in a blog post.
  • Some Twitter users experimenting with the tool said it had created worrying opportunities for online harassment, like allowing unwanted direct messages
  • The feature also allowed fleet authors to tag people who had blocked them
  • Twitter said it was listening to feedback and working on fixes for such safety concerns.
  • Fleets can include text, photos and videos and will be available at the top of users’ home timelines on Twitter and on the sender’s profile

Inquiry launched at North Wales school following principal’s flirtatious messages

          • A scandal that led to the sacking of Ruthin School principal, Toby Belfield will go under the microscope as part of a public hearing about safeguarding children in education
          • The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will consider the adequacy of current systems in place to protect youngsters in Wales, and look into the concerns, which arose over the independent boarding school last year
          • The disgraced former principal lost his job after sending flirty messages to schoolgirls as young as 15
          • The Welsh Government later warned it could shut down the school unless appropriate action was taken after a damning Care Inspectorate Wales report concluded that children were at risk of harm
          • The inspection was prompted by a series of inappropriate messages sent to a teenager from Mr. Belfield on Instagram, in which he told her she was cute, that she looked good in her blazer and spoke about breasts, virginity, and sexuality