Introducing our inaugural gaming festival to help tackle child abuse
- NSPCC’s ‘Game Safe’ festival takes place from the 5th to the 11th February 2024.
- The festival aims to raise awareness and educate parents, carers and professionals on how to keep children safe while playing online games.
- It comes following their recent report, which found an 82% rise in online grooming crimes against children in the last 5 years.
- For more, please visit the NSPCC website.
‘Appalling decline’ in child health in the UK
- Experts have warned of the “appalling decline” of under 5’s in the UK, with increasing rates of obesity and tooth decay.
- A new report by the Academy for Medical Science claims that in recent years, progress on children’s health has “stalled.”
- Dr Mike McKean, vice president for health policy at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, stated: “This report provides alarming evidence that the UK is failing too many of its children.”
- For more, please visit the Belfast Telegraph website.
Deepfake porn: ‘They manipulated my photo with AI to make me naked… It looked so realistic’
- Erica Corcoran, from Waterford, had deepfake pictures of her distributed on X-rated websites last spring.
- Despite reporting the images and having them removed, she remains concerned that the images are circulating elsewhere.
- It comes after Taylor Swift had deepfake images circulated on social media last week, however, Erica states it should not have required a celebrity to raise awareness in the public consciousness.
- For more, please visit the Belfast Telegraph website.
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Free school meals ‘cut obesity and help reading skills’ in England, study finds
- A study has shown that free school meals are associated with a reduction in obesity and an improvement in reading skills among children in England.
- The study also found that making free school meals universal, increased their take-up by 8%, and appeared to lead one in three children eating a school lunch for the first time.
- Additionally, there was an associated increase in reading, highlighting by the age of 11, the impact was equivalent to “approximately two weeks’ additional progress in school.”
- For more, please visit The Guardian website.
