Daily Safeguarding Update

Twitter and Snapchat see user numbers increase

Social media firms Twitter and Snapchat are continuing to add users even as pandemic restrictions ease
Snapchat’s number of daily users topped 293 million in the three months to the end of June, beating analysts’ expectations
Twitter reported it passed the 200 million mark for daily active users who view adverts on its platform in the same period, up 11% year-on-year
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Hundreds of World of Warcraft players are participating in an in-game protest against Activision Blizzard after a lawsuit was filed Tuesday by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing
The court documents include allegations of a “frat boy culture” that subjected female employees to “constant sexual harassment”
The protest was organized by Fence Macabre, a role-play guild that runs faction neutral stories on the Wyrmrest Accord and Moon Guard servers
In addition, the group is running a fundraising campaign for the charity Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching girls aged 7-17 about computer programming and digital technology
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A man who shared images of child sex abuse online because he felt ‘lonely and isolated’ has been handed a suspended sentence
The offender, aged 40, was found with over 1,000 of the child sex abuse images on several items seized during a search of his house in Manchester
Following further analysis, it was found he had distributed six of the pictures, Manchester Crown Court heard
The majority of the children featured in the images were said to be aged between 7 and 11
The offender pleaded guilty at the lower court to three offences of making indecent images, two offences of distributing indecent images and possession of an extreme pornographic image
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Parents are being urged to look out for signs of severe respiratory infection in their children over the summer amid a rise in cases
Hospitals are treating a growing number of children with illnesses usually only seen in winter after the levels of such cases fell during the pandemic, health officials in England have said
More young people with high temperatures and difficulty breathing are seeking help amid a surge in colds and the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) which usually hits at a different time of year, an official warning from Public Health England said
Positive RSV samples among suspected cases have increased over the past five weeks from 1.2% to 8.9%
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