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Dangers for children online

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Ajustcopingparent

Member since
August 2024

183 posts

Saw this online from the counter terrorism unit and online safety of children during school holidays. Its mentions not just terrorism but also iioc and highlights high numbers of children arrested each year.

Its okay highlighting this and parents do need to be more aware of what kids are doing. But there also needs to be more done by the internet to protect kids, more done to stop kids life's being ruined due to length of time devices take. The waiting is more of an impact on a child than it is for an adult in my opinion.



https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/counter-terrorism-policing-mi5-and-the-national-crime-agency-deliver-summer-holiday-warning-to-parents/?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwMJkv9jbGNrAwmSoGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAAEek9X0aMe3HOdXBm3JAIvso2_JYbLBlwKm-zjoqIYB6jv2eEaO-r21T7ehmCc_aem_K1BmGUCJi3u3ZsplUHXG1g

Posted Wed August 13, 2025 4:54pmReport post

edel2020

Member since
March 2022

576 posts

From what I can see so far, the online safety act has made a big impact. A lot of the most popular forums where young people share things, such as Reddit and Discord have introduced age checks. X has blocked a load of things too. According to the news, use of porn sites has dropped massively as well.

If a child is still determined to access this stuff then they can get around it, but its no longer possible for them to simply stumble across a lot of these things by accident.

Posted Thu August 14, 2025 10:54amReport post

BewilderedMum

Member since
May 2025

5 posts

I hope for future generations of young men that the Online Safety Act achieves the objective of reducing access to damaging content. It makes me upset that nothing was in place when my son was exposed to so much pornography in the 'wild west' that is the internet with no restrictions. One of the other things to hit the news last week was the genre of porn known as 'barely legal' that involves over 18s that look younger. This was publicised due to a Channel 4 documentary about Bonnie Blue who has made fame and fortune having sex with over 1000 men in less than a day. I wonder at the world our kids have grown up in when this sort of stuff is effectively 'mainstream'. The news story said someone is now looking into changing the law around 'barely legal' porn.

Below is a link to a research article published last year. It seems accessing 'barely legal' porn as well as stumbling across CSAM on sites for adult porn are common pathways.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213424003260?via%3Dihub

Posted Thu August 14, 2025 7:05pmReport post

26a20

Member since
December 2024

175 posts

To be honest I doubt the Online Safety Act will make a blind bit of difference, anyone who wants to access adult content without age varification already knows how to bypass this and I would bet this includes a large number of teenagers who are much more tech savy than most adults. Whilst the number of UK based visits to porn sites has undoubtably dropped it not because people arnt accessing them its just they are now using a VPN so are showing up as being in some other part of the world.

Posted Thu August 14, 2025 11:16pmReport post

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