🤡 More Than Robots #88 April 2025

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

There's still a lot going on, and it doesn't seem to be stopping anytime soon. So on we go...

🦋 More

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📖 Research

⁠Connected Play: Adolescent Gaming and Perceived Loneliness

Nearly 70% of teens engage in online gaming with strangers weekly, reflecting the extensive global nature of modern gaming.

Famous at five: risk assessing digital child labour

Children are working in the UK without any safeguarding provisions or practices, evidencing a gap in current policy and child performance practices

Detecting, Disrupting and Investigating Online Child Sexual Exploitation

Offenders are highly reliant on services that facilitate the movement of funds and access to their proceeds of crime. Also: Analyzing payments to stop child sexual abuse

Digital parenting in the 21st century: Development and validation of a new digital parenting scale

The digital parenting scale offers a reliable and valid measure of digital parenting practices for researchers interested in digital and general parenting strategies

"They're Scamming Me": How Children Experience and Conceptualize Harm in Game Monetization

The games children commonly play are rife with “dark design patterns” which can cause harm. Also: Clearly (not) identifiable – The recognisability of gambling content marketing

Youth Violence and Social Media - Youth Select Committee

A social media ban is neither practical nor effective. Instead, tech companies must be held accountable.

Deepfake Nudes & Young People

A majority (70%) of creators of deepfakes said they downloaded the app they used from their device’s app store (e.g., Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store).

Children’s Wellbeing in a Digital World 2025

Most children still feel safe online (77%), but this is a decrease from last year (81%). Also: Youth Safety and Digital Wellbeing Report and Life in Media Survey,

ASMR

“I just want to escape from the real world for a bit”

Sending nudes but no first kisses: teenagers’ relationships during the pandemic

For young people, the pandemic was not just about missing school or social events. It reshaped how they connect, love and negotiate intimacy. Also: How COVID Shaped a Resilient Generation of Kids

🧰 Resources

Financially Motivated Sexual Extortion

Advice on talking to your child about Financially Motivated Sexual Extortion and ways you can support them and access help if they need it.

Image Verification Assistant

Examine an image with a suite of tampering detection algorithms plus metadata analysis, GPS Geolocation, EXIF Thumbnail extraction and integration with reverse image search via Google. Also Online Harmful Content Detector

Safe and Connected online safety practice guide

Austrailian guide intended to strengthen the capacity of staff to support and promote the online safety of children and young people in care.

Website Carbon Calculator

Easily estimate your web page carbon footprint:

🗳️ Take part

Empathy Day Festival 2025

A ten-day event from June 2-12, encouraging children to learn about and practice empathy.

💡Inspiration and opinion

It’s Time to Pause Use of AI in Early Childhood Education: A Provocation

There is no need or benefit compelling enough to justify the costs of using generative AI with young children – and I don’t just mean financial costs

What's next for the Online Safety Act?

With geopolitics becoming more unstable we have to ask: is the Act too vulnerable to external changes, and can it actually regulate the online world?

Smartphone and social media harms: why we failed in our duty of care

Mental illness will continue to grow unless we face up to the complex societal factors that drive it and the equally complex, multipronged governmental and regulatory solutions that must be considered. These matters extend beyond smartphones and beyond adolescence.

…and finally

FFS stop with all the AI