A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Sex offenders are increasingly using live online streaming platforms to exploit children, police have warned. Children need to be educated on the risks associated with streaming sites, the National Crime Agency said. It said offenders were learning how young people communicated online and "using this knowledge to abuse them". In one week, authorities identified 345 [...]
Nearly a third of teenage girls have been sexually harassed online by children their own age, a study from charity Childnet suggests. Some 31% of girls aged 13-17 have been targeted with unwanted sexual attention, compared with 11% of boys. One in 10 of the 1,559 teens interviewed reported receiving threats of sexual violence, including [...]
Online learning environments have been a game changer for Australian distance educators whose ‘classrooms’ cover thousands of square kilometres, but it’s more than just a case of being able to reach isolated areas. The technology is also allowing teachers to provide one-to-one support and immediate feedback to students who are struggling with issues such as [...]
Angela Reynolds's daughter Ashley was a high school freshman in 2009 when a stranger calling himself "Captain Obvious," with a profile that made it look like he was a teenager, messaged her through social media. He claimed to to have nude pictures of her. Ashley ignored him at first, but he became more insistent, threatening [...]
"A washing machine tummy”; “a volcano inside of me” – these are some of the ways young children can describe anxiety and other mental health issues, according to staff at YoungMinds, a mental health charity. In 2016, Childline reported a 15 per cent in suicidal calls, with children as young as 10. There has been a steep [...]
In past decades, teenagers struggling to deal with their emotions might have coped by taking a razor blade to their forearm or extinguishing cigarettes on their skin. Today’s teens, products of the internet era, have found an additional outlet. Approximately 6% of adolescents between 12 and 17 years old engage in a practice known as [...]
Gaming on a computer or device is a wildly popular pastime for kids in Australia. In fact, 94 per cent of children between 6 and 15 play games and, while girls are fast gaining on them, gaming still remains more popular with boys. It seems that although (almost) everybody’s doing it, a lot of parents feel [...]
Children as young as six are watching internet porn, with one group linking the behaviour to sexual assaults in schools. Centre Against Sexual Violence counsellor Kate McCormick said there appeared to be "a lot of sexual assault" occurring within the school environment. "This has been linked back to early exposure to pornography," she said. "From [...]
Mark Zuckerberg’s social network removes in excess of one million accounts every single day, that breach the user agreement, but is still struggling to stem the tide presented by so-called “threat actors”. This is according to Facebook’s security chief, Alex Stamos, who appeared at at conference on Wednesday evening, saying that he believes in the [...]
For many parents the world of cyberbullying is unchartered territory - something they’ve never dealt with firsthand and may find difficult to address with their child. To mark Stand Up To Bullying Day on Wednesday 21 June, The Diana Award, a charity set up in the memory of Diana, is calling for “cyber lessons” in [...]
