It is an ambitious social experiment of our moment in history — one that experts say could accomplish something that parents, schools and other governments have attempted with varying degrees of success: keeping kids off social media until they turn 16. Australia’s new law, approved by its Parliament last week, is an attempt to swim […]

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Wayne Holdsworth became an advocate for banning Australian children younger than 16 from social media because his son took his own life after falling victim to an online sextortion scam. Mac Holdsworth died last year at his Melbourne family home at the age of 17 after a 47-year-old Sydney man who […]

ATIKOKAN — The Rainy River District School Board needs to review its campus-safety policies and investigate an Atikokan school’s response to last week’s report of a student with a weapon, a local parent says. The school board says it is looking into how school administration responded last week and how to better respond to reports […]

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s communications minister introduced a world-first law into Parliament on Thursday that would ban children under 16 from social media, saying online safety was one of parents’ toughest challenges. Michelle Rowland said TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram were among the platforms that would face fines of up to 50 […]

As the old adage “It takes a village to raise a child” suggests, it requires a community to provide a safe, healthy, secure environment for children to develop and flourish. In addition to friends and family, citizens count on their elected municipal, provincial, and federal governments to create laws and policies to keep children safe, […]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday. California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from […]

Sweden says children under the age of 2 should not be exposed to any digital screens. The recommendations, issued by the Scandinavian country’s public health agency earlier this month as a new school year begins, are the latest in a worldwide effort to limit screen time for young children. The coronavirus lockdowns exacerbated the problem […]

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to develop and become more accessible, law enforcement and other crime agencies, including those in Alberta, are warning about the rapid rise of deepfakes involving sexually explicit images and videos of children. Deepfakes are videos, images or audio recordings that can look and sound realistic but have been generated or […]