Meta rolls out new privacy updates for young people on Instagram and Facebook

  • Meta has announced they are introducing new privacy updates for young people on Facebook and Instagram.
  • The most notable change includes that everyone under the age of 16, or under the age of 18 in some countries, will be defaulted into private settings when they join Facebook.
  • Meta will also start testing ways to protect young people from messaging suspicious adults who they are not connected to.
  • They said an example of a suspicious account could be one that was recently blocked or reported by a young user.
  • Meta will also be working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to build a global platform for young people who are worried their intimate images have been shared online.
  • To find out more, go to the Tech Crunch website.

Pinterest reports increase in child exploitation and self-injury content removals

  • Pinterest’s latest Transparency Report has been published and it outlines content removals and other enforcement actions taken in the first half of 2022.
  • It highlighted that child sexual exploitation removals were raised in Q2, with Pinterest saying this was due to an update in their detection systems.
  • Self-injury and harmful behaviour, medical misinformation, graphic violence and threat removals were all raised in Q2 of 2022.
  • All of these removals are as part of Pinterest’s ongoing work to improve detection and reporting processes, however, they do say that the majority of violative material is removed before anyone sees it.
  • For more, go to the Social Media Today’s website.

Over 100,000 school children missing day of lessons every two weeks

  • Research from the Commission on School Reform and local authorities across the country has found more than 100,000 Scottish school children missed at least a day of lessons every fortnight.
  • 138,312 pupils had attendance drop less than 90%.
  • 45,443 pupils missed at least one day every week making their attendance drop below 80%.
  • The statistics showed that the problem worsened as children got older, with more high school pupils missing at least one day per week than primary children.
  • For more on this, go to the STV’s website.

Schools using non-specialist teachers amid recruitment struggle

  • In the struggle for teacher recruitment, schools are having to use non-specialists for maths, physics and language lessons, a report by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) has found.
  • A survey of senior leaders with responsibilities for staffing in England’s schools found that in secondary schools where teachers recruitment was more difficult, 62% reported some maths being taught by non-specialists – for physics this was 55% and for modern foreign languages, 26%.
  • Jack Worth, the NFER’s schools work force lead and co-author of the report has said that the government must “place a renewed focus on improving teacher recruitment and retention”.
  • For more on this, please visit the Evening Standard’s website.