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Simfin

online safety and digital citizenship specialist

Parents/Carers News

29 April 2024

On April 17, 2024, an account named StorieSpot posted images of a purported "cat's eye dazzle" flower in the Facebook group National Geographic Wild Planet. (The group, which has more than 1.4 million members, does not appear to have any official affiliation with National Geographic.) According to the pictures, the flower closely resembles a kitten's face.

The post read, "Amazing plants! Cat's eye dazzle." It received more than 80,000 likes and 36,000 shares, at the time of this writing.

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23 April 2024

Sexual predators are grooming children under six into performing “disturbing” acts of sexual abuse via phones or webcams a charity has warned.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) said it had discovered more than two thousand remotely filmed child abuse images of three to six-year-olds online in 2023.

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19 April 2024

Nearly a quarter of UK five-to-seven-year-olds now have their own smartphone, Ofcom research suggests.

Social media use also rose in the age group over last year with nearly two in five using messaging service WhatsApp, despite its minimum age of 13.

The communications regulator warned parental enforcement of rules "appeared to be diminishing."

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15 April 2024

For 14 hours over the weekend, Sydney university student Ben Cohen was one of the most reviled men on the internet after he was falsely accused of being the knifeman who went on a stabbing rampage in a Sydney shopping centre, killing six people.

The ABC has pieced together how anti-semitic and pro-Kremlin accounts turned Mr Cohen into an internet villain.

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05 April 2024

Sexism is on the rise in schools because of harmful content on children's phones, according to the National Education Union's (NEU) general secretary.

Daniel Kebede said boys watched "aggressive and violent pornography" and influencer content that "completely distorts their view of women".

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