CyberSafe Scotland

CyberSafe Scotland You've found us, welcome! Cybersafe Scotland is a social enterprise keeping children safe online.

15/06/2026

💡It’s been a conflicting day. Today's announcement that from spring 2027, children and young people under 16 will be "banned" from 10 "social media platforms" - Tiktok, Snapchat, IG, FB, Youtube, X, Reddit, Twitch, Threads and Kik - has made many online safety campaigning groups very happy.

However, as many of you may know, our driving purpose (while supporting as many children and families as possible with support and education) is to work with and protect vulnerable children and young people online.

While being very aware of the harms children are experiencing, we had to respond to last month's consultation with great care based on the experiences of the children we work with (and I'll link a summary of our response in the comments).

🚨 Understanding the reality of young people's digital lives demonstrates the immediate complexities of a ban narrative - more than half of ALL the serious harm CyberSafe Scotland supported 9-12 year olds with last year occurred on WhatsApp, Roblox and Telegram - all platforms which are excluded from the ban. We urgently need to change how all platforms are designed above everything else.

Further, the “ban” relies on the platforms bringing in effective “age assurance”. This officially came in in July last year. However since July last year, almost none of the children we work with have been prevented from accessing any of the platforms named. In Australia, it is estimated 70 per cent of children continue accessing multiple social media platforms despite the “ban”. So for today’s changes to have any impact at all there would need to be much stronger enforcement.

When the proposed changes occur - what is being offered in their place to support connection and engagement? However we feel about the ban, without a full plan for this children will inevitably move to spaces with equal or higher levels of risk which are arguably even harder to regulate. How are these spaces being going to be designed better and how will children feel if every new app that pops up either escapes the "ban" or is moved into it without a clear plan for something better?

Where is the clear acknowledgment of what is coming down the track with AI? Not just "romantic" chatbots, but how we design all AI to be safer for children and young people.

It's great to see more attention being given to protecting children from harm, and we do welcome the level of national conversation around the issues. That said, the issues are complex for the children we represent. Whatever happens, we will move forward to try to support all the children and families we work with, and all of you, as clearly as possible with the changes. Sorry not to have a more cheery post tonight but wanted to be real!

17/05/2026

Delighted to be in Geneva for the start of the World Health Assembly to talk about online abuse as a public health issue and how the Respected and Safe Model, developed in Scotland, can help children elsewhere in the world

14/05/2026

💡 A really interesting story to discuss as a family tonight!

A company called Emergence set up virtual worlds this month - leaving AI agents to run each world.

In Claude’s world the agents were very orderly and set up a constitution and governance system. In ChatGPT’s world they talked a lot but didn’t make any decisions so nothing got built. In Grok’s world - the chatbot developed by Elon Musk - “all 10 agents were dead within 4 days”

“This revealed a big problem. We don’t really know how these systems will behave once they are left to run on their own.

Even when given strict rules, the simulations showed they broke them.”

when all the agents were put together in the same world 2 started a seemingly romantic relationship and only 3 survived.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Cwsa1cyVp/?mibextid=wwXIfr

If you’d like to learn more about AI, how it is changing child protection, and how to support your child to be safe - Cybersafe have parent and carer sessions that you can book through your school or parent council - just drop us a DM.

In the meantime - keep talking - remember the most important thing of all right now is to close the gap between adults and children around digital spaces. We can do this with all conversations and sharing knowledge! ❤️

13/05/2026

PT 1: We spoke to the meta AI chatbot about the new incognito function meta are rolling out on WhatsApp over the next few weeks so you don’t have to.

It was an interesting chat to say the least! We’ll share it in chunks…

Incognito has been built to give adults the option of talking ‘privately’ with meta AI but parents need to understand the feature and the associated risks for their child: the product is built for 18+ users, with some safeguards for under 18s but even these ONLY work if the app knows your child’s correct age.

Please: Make sure you check your child’s date of birth on each app and get it as close to their biological d.o.b. as possible

AND think carefully about whether this feature is safe for your child at any age…

Speak with other parents at your child’s school about what this feature means

Contact us at any time if you don’t have anyone to talk to about it.

If your child has a TikTok account, even if their account is set to private they will be impacted by this change. Check ...
28/04/2026

If your child has a TikTok account, even if their account is set to private they will be impacted by this change. Check out the latest updates to the AI policy, how to opt out, and what you need to keep an eye on over the next few weeks👇

Link in comments 😁

08/03/2026

This International Women’s Day we look to highlight the ongoing need for justice for women and girls in online spaces.

Victims of non-consensual intimate images are women in 90% of cases.

98% of deepfake videos are pornographic, and 99% of targets are women or girls.

Sexually harmful content and non consensual bot content is heavily promoted towards male accounts.

Bait and switch content where popular influencers normalise violence against women and girls is commonplace and both algorithmically promoted to individual users, but also hidden from safeguarders amongst swathes of other content.

Sexual harassment in gaming causes girls to play with male or gender neutral avatars, leave voice chat off or leave gaming spaces entirely.

All of these harms harm boys and men too as well as women and girls.

We all deserve and will benefit from digital spaces that are designed and secured to prevent inequality and abuse.

This International Women’s Day we call for safer product design to ensure “Rights. Justice. And Action. For ALL Women and Girls”

With the events of the last two days in global news, we wanted to share some support from psychologist Michael Carr-Greg...
01/03/2026

With the events of the last two days in global news, we wanted to share some support from psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg.

“The emotional alarm system (of the adolescent brain) is highly active, while the part of the brain responsible for perspective and long-range reasoning is still under construction.

When young people see footage of bombings or hear talk of escalation, they are not calmly analysing foreign policy. They are asking a far more personal question: is the world becoming unsafe?”

When parents say nothing, teenagers often fill the silence themselves — and adolescents are remarkably good at imagining worst-case scenarios. Silence, in this context, is not neutral.
It can be frightening.

The instinct for many adults is either to lecture or to reassure too quickly. Neither works. A long explanation about who is right or wrong politically will lose them within seconds, while dismissing the situation with "this has nothing to do with us" feels unconvincing in a world where conflict arrives live on their screens.

Teenagers are highly sensitive to emotional authenticity; they know when adults are pretending certainty they do not actually feel.

A better starting point is simple: "You’re probably seeing/hearing about this online — how is it making you feel”?

That question shifts the conversation away from ideology and towards wellbeing, which is where parents actually have influence. It signals safety, invites reflection and reduces anxiety far more effectively than delivering answers.

Young people also need perspective.
Social media often compresses the world into an emergency, showing dramatic moments without context or resolution. Parents can gently remind them that news platforms highlight crisis because crisis captures attention, while billions of people - diplomats, communities and ordinary citizens — are constantly working to prevent conflicts from spreading. Adolescents need scale to counter the distorted intensity of the online environment.”

We hope this is helpful today. If you feel as though you are pouring out of an empty cup this weekend that’s totally understandable - we hope you get a moment to rest and check in with friends and can also recommend https://www.breathingspace.scot/

💡Today, the information commissioner announced it was fining Reddit £14.47 million for failures to protect children’s pr...
24/02/2026

💡Today, the information commissioner announced it was fining Reddit £14.47 million for failures to protect children’s privacy between May 2018 and July 2025 (link in comments). The ICO found that by not ensuring adequate age assurance during this period children may have been exposed to inappropriate and harmful content on the site.

As well as this being a positive action to hold platforms to account, it’s also a good moment for us to think and talk about the types of content children see on Reddit and how they see it. Did you know, for example, that one of the ways many children see Reddit content is through short form YouTube and Tiktok content (aka “Reddit stories”) that trend constantly?

These are screenshots of stories from Reddit looped over videos similar to ASMR content in the background to hold interest (shaving metal, cooking, fun textures etc)? They often end up on the children’s feeds because they are made to have two interest points - the text itself and the images or video behind it.

If Reddit are being fined we are keen to see whether YouTube and TikTok are going to be fined over much of this same content (differently packaged). Any questions about Reddit or that content, just let us know in the comments.

23/02/2026

🔔 Last week the UK government announced that they will rapidly introduce legislation (through an amendment to the UK’s Crime and Policing Bill) that:

1. If a platform fails to remove deep fake/non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours of being made aware of those images, they risk being blocked in the UK or fined up to 10% of their ‘qualifying worldwide revenue’.

2. Firms must also make sure that once an image is identified it is hash matched so that it can never be reuploaded to that site or any other site.

While introducing the move, Sir Keir Starmer called the current explosion of non-consensual AI generated images “a national emergency that the government must confront”.

Last year alone, the SWGfL (who run the ‘revenge porn’ hotline in Scotland supporting victims of deepfake abuse) identified more than 30,000 adult female victims of deep fake abuse in Scotland, describing this as the tip of the iceberg.

Welcoming the move, Annabel joined Amy Irons on the BBC News last night to discuss the announcement, the scale of some of the issues involved - including those relating to children and young people, and further supports that will be needed.

23/02/2026

🔔 Last week the UK government announced plans to rapidly introduce legislation (through an amendment to the UK’s Crime and Policing Bill) that:

1. If a platform fails to remove deep fake/non-consensual intimate images within 48 hours of being made aware of those images, they risk being blocked in the UK or fined up to 10% of their ‘qualifying worldwide revenue’.

2. Firms must also make sure that once an image is identified it is hash matched so that it can never be reuploaded to that site or any other site.

While introducing the move, Sir Keir Starmer called the current explosion of non-consensual AI generated images “a national emergency that the government must confront”.

Last year alone, the SWGfL (who run the ‘revenge porn’ hotline in Scotland supporting victims of deepfake abuse) identified more than 30,000 adult female victims of deep fake abuse in Scotland, describing this as the tip of the iceberg.

While making or threatening to make those images is already illegal in Scotland (Scotland were 8 years ahead of England and wales in making this illegal - Scotland did it in 2016) the sheer scale at which people are creating these images desperately needs this action against the platforms as well as wider education to create social change.

Welcoming the move, Annabel joined Amy Irons on the BBC News on Thursday to discuss the announcement, the scale of some of the issues involved - including those relating to children and young people, and further supports that will be needed.

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