Everyone is arguing about whether Apple’s new child‑safety features are “good enough.” But are we missing the real story that, after 15 years of governmental failure to deliver interoperable, human‑rights‑respecting age assurance, Apple has quietly stepped into the space and started turning itself into part of the trust infrastructure of childhood online. For years, policymakers have warned about the dangers of fragmented regulation. If every government builds its own syste

After a digital safety session in Sydney last week, a Year 11 student wrote to me. He had approached me after the session with a question about my thoughts on AI use. One of those incredibly curious and deep thinking young minds. So much so that I said to the teacher near me “He will be the Prime Minister one day”. Yesterday he emailed me through our contact page on the website because something had been bothering him, and he had more questions for me. He said he had watched

For a long time, we worried about the wrong room. We pictured our children in a classroom, a schoolyard, a group chat, and assumed the pressure shaping them came from people close enough to touch. That room still exists. Every parent who has watched their child’s face collapse over a single message knows it exists. But it is no longer the only room, and it may no longer be the most powerful one. A growing part of childhood now unfolds somewhere less known and that is not amon

When a teacher is humiliated by students online, schools often reach for the same toolkit: A behaviour policy, an anti-bullying procedure, a quiet word in a digital citizenship lesson built for a world before algorithmic amplification. The harm was treated as something a student did and could be made to undo. For years these were filed under student conduct, and for years that filing made a certain kind of sense. It no longer does. The arrival of deepfakes, generative image t

By Kirra Pendergast Somewhere in the United Kingdom, late last year, an email arrived at a school. Inside it were images of children who attend that school. Real children, named and recognisable, their faces lifted from the school’s own website and social media accounts, then run through an AI tool and turned into sexual abuse material. The message attached to them was simple. Pay, or we publish. In my Professional Learning sessions I ask school leadership teams to sit with w

............and what it means before the August NCCD census. The Federal Budget 2026/27 did something almost no one in the school system has fully registered yet. It formally tightened compliance and integrity measures around school funding, and in doing so it changed the question every principal in Australia will be expected to answer about their NCCD data. The old question was whether the school submitted the collection. The new question is whether the school can demonstrat

Instructure, the American company behind Canvas and QLearn, has been breached, and the data sitting inside that breach belongs to children. The exposed information includes children’s names, school email addresses, school locations, student ID numbers, and, in some cases, the contents of user messages. What has been taken is enough to send a parent a believable email that appears to come from the school. It is enough to write a child a believable message that looks like it ca

The question came from a Year 6 student. He said it the way children sometimes say things they suspect they shouldn’t know, half curious and half watching my face. At first, I thought he had said Omegle, that older corner of the internet most of us hoped had been buried. But he repeated it slowly, with the patience children extend to adults who are not keeping up. Omoggle. Not Omegle. Something newer, and as I discovered over the following week, something altogether stranger.

I am in regional New South Wales, working onsite at school with young people and watching, in real time, how platform decisions actually impact their lives. This helps inform all of the policy work I do, which is increasing daily at the moment because there is so much change moving through this space at once. Yesterday I spoke with a group of delightful Year 11 and 12 students as one of six sessions I delivered at Scone Grammar. In my first session of the day, all of them exc

The conversation we are having about artificial intelligence in our schools is not where it needs to be yet, and I think most of us already sense it. We are talking about policies and platforms and what to ban, while our kids are already living it and quietly working it out for themselves. The truth is, AI is not coming to our classrooms. It is already there. I do not think the question is whether our young people should be using AI. That ship has well and truly sailed. The q

The Hidden Dangers of Educational Technology After years in staffrooms and leadership briefings, I’ve seen a troubling pattern emerge. Decisions about which technologies to use are often made by people who lack a clear understanding of what these tools do. This isn’t just a vague concern; it’s a specific issue. The adults responsible for our children—those who sign permission slips and approve software—often don’t know what data is being tracked. This isn’t due to a lack of c

What you are about to read is a condensed and updated version of my long-form essay, The Quiet Front Line. This version includes recent developments, among them the Polymarket scandal, which emerged after the original was published, and that felt too important, too revealing, to leave sitting on the sidelines. If this piece moves you, or makes you want to understand more, the full essay is waiting for you over on Substack. The conversation there goes further. So does the disc

The story being told is smaller than what is actually happening. When the chatter is all innovation and efficiency and extraordinary possibility we need to ask bigger questions because underneath it, something else is always taking shape. What I have learned over my years in the industry is that every major technological shift follows exactly the same pattern. 1. The technology arrives fast. 2. All of the excitement, innovation and positives hit the media cycles. 3.

Something happened in Brussels this week, and unless you live inside policy or technology, you would not have seen it. There was no headline that carried the weight of it. But the consequences are already moving. The European Parliament voted to let a set of temporary powers expire. Powers that had allowed internet platforms to scan for child sexual abuse material. That phrase can slide past you if you let it. Do not let it. This is the legal permission to detect images and v

Three months. That is all it has taken for The Asutralian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant and her team to do what most governments have spent years talking about and never had the courage to actually pursue, to place some of the most powerful companies on earth on notice for something measurable, provable, and for too long, deliberately ignored. The evidence is being gathered. The cases are being built. Penalties of up to $49.5 million are on the table, and the Commiss