Walk into any department store this Christmas and you’ll find shelves of smiling toys powered by AI. Teddy bears that “listen with love.” Dolls that promise to “grow with your child.” Robots that say they can help with maths, literacy and loneliness. These aren’t screens, and yet they’re wired just the same with microphones, sensors, data connections, companion apps, and, crucially, an invisible thread to corporate servers far beyond parental reach. Audio becomes text, text b

If you don’t want your emails, chats, and digital habits feeding into Google’s AI systems (yes, even when it doesn’t say “AI” outright) there’s something buried in your settings you need to switch off. Google isn’t going to wave a flag or drop you a notification about it. These so-called smart features ? That’s just AI hiding under another name. Predictive writing. Autocomplete. Auto-summarise. “Help me write.” They’re generative AI tools in everything but name. And they’re h

Meta Is Texting Teens Why Parents and Teachers Must Talk to Them Today They’ve begun sending messages via SMS, email and in-app notifications, warning young users they have just days left on Instagram, Facebook and Threads if they’re under 16. The law banning under-16s from these platforms officially starts on December 10, but Meta is moving early — accounts will begin disappearing from December 4. This is a big, complex shift. But it’s also the perfect opportunity for sca

Six years ago, I was invited to speak at a school where one of the students was already a well-known influencer who was having a profound effect on her peers. She was 11. Her platform? Skincare routines. Today, it’s not just worse. It’s everywhere. “Get Ready With Me” videos are now a daily ritual for primary school girls. Morning routine. After-school routine. Night routine. Cleanser, toner, serum, lip mask, ice roller. Ten steps, tapped out by tiny gel nails on 10-year-old

In less than a month on December 10th the Australian Social Media Minimum Age Law starts being enforced. From 10 December 2025, social media platforms must stop Australians under 16 from having accounts and remove or deactivate existing under‑16 accounts. The legal duty is on the platforms, not on children or parents. Platforms must offer clear information, let users download their data, and provide simple review/appeal options if a mistake is made. They cannot make governmen

“I’m 16 but I look 14, so how will I get past the facial recognition? It estimates your age, and it will say I’m too young. Is there another way to confirm it, like a driver’s licence? Because social media is how I talk to all my friends, and I don’t use numbers.” This was an email I received this week. And it hasn’t left me. I could feel the panic through the text and the need for support. I received another 6 messages from this young person in the following hour through our

It started, as these things often do, with good intentions. One of the many Online Safety Educators that are popping up all over LinkedIn had seen something concerning online. We need to keep front of mind that we live in an attention economy where concern is currency. Outrage fuels algorithms and even posts intended as red flags often guide users directly to the thing they were told to fear. And not just kids. Adults too. We’ve seen it again and again: a new AI companion app

This isn’t just about erotica it’s about escalation and it’s already begun as we predicted. This is not a feature drop it’s a whopping big signal. A signal that the architecture of intimacy is being handed over to systems that simulate emotion but are incapable of understanding it. OpenAI announced less than 24hrs ago that they are preparing to loosen content restrictions on ChatGPT, opening the door to adult themes including erotica, as part of what CEO Sam Altman calls a br

The quiet unravelling after deepfake abuse and what we can do better. Today I was sent an article from the ABC that you can read here . The story doesn’t end with police involvement. It doesn’t end with headlines. It barely even begins there. What happens next off-camera, off-record, and often off-script is what should worry us most.There is a stark asymmetry in the aftermath of digital sexual harm. If the perpetrator is over the age of 18yrs they will face serious charges. I

This week, three developments grabbed my attention, and they’re not disconnected. They expose a pattern: innovation outpacing responsibility, and harm waiting in the wings. Apple pivots from Vision Pro to AI glasses. Apple is halting its planned overhaul of the Vision Pro headset to reallocate talent toward smart glasses, devices meant to compete with Meta’s upcoming offerings. Reuters Apple is now reportedly developing at least two new glasses models: one that pairs with a

It used to be simple when a student won an award, made the team, spoke at assembly, and someone took a photo. That photo ended up in the newsletter, or maybe on the school’s Facebook page. It was a good thing, something to be proud of. Visibility, in the language of school communities, was shorthand for celebration. We no longer live in a world where visibility is a neutral good. What once functioned as acknowledgement now risks functioning as exposure. And in this era of amb

Two decades ago, a Harvard sophomore stitched together a cruel little website. It raided student directories without permission, ripped women’s faces out of context, and fed them to an audience hungry to rate and ridicule. It was called FaceMash. It wasn’t clever; it was humiliation as entertainment, and it announced to the world the worldview of its creator that people are raw material to be mined. That student was Mark Zuckerberg. Today, the company he built has rebranded i

The words free speech carry a seductive power. They’re waved in protest signs, muttered in pub arguments, thrown into comment threads on social media like grenades. In Australia, they’re often claimed as if they exist in the same way they do in the United States. But that belief is not just sloppy. It’s dangerous. Because in this country, there is no absolute right to free speech. And if we keep teaching children that there is, we set them up for a collision with reality tha

The Social Media Minimum Age (SMMA) legislation was passed in 2024. Until last week, the details of how it would work were unclear. With the release of the regulatory framework, the expectations are now visible and unambiguous. Here’s what it means in practice: If a child under 16 is using an “age-restricted” social media platform, that platform must remove their account. If a child tries to create an account, the platform must stop them before they get through the sign-up pr

Across Australia, more and more early childhood services are quietly shutting their lenses. No images sent home. In some centres, every photograph is deleted before the end of the day. A child may have built a bridge out of blocks or climbed something they never dared to climb before, but the moment is gone, undocumented, unshared, unseen by the people who love them most. One parent told me they now arrive at pick-up 15 minutes early to sit beside an educator and view images