Snap has become the latest major social media platform to settle a high-profile child safety lawsuit, joining TikTok and YouTube. The settlement leaves Meta as the only remaining defendant in a growing legal battle over the alleged impact of addictive platform features on children and teenagers. The lawsuit claims social media companies knowingly designed products that harmed young users' mental health. Legal experts believe these cases could force major tech companies to strengthen child safety protections, improve parental controls, and redesign key platform features.

Snap settles Child Safety Lawsuit | Meta left alone as legal pressure mounts

A disturbing new investigation has exposed how online predator networks allegedly exploit gaming platforms, encrypted chat rooms, and social media to manipulate and groom children. Experts warn that these digital ecosystems rely on psychological coercion, fear, and blackmail, making them one of the internet's most dangerous hidden threats. Here's what parents need to know about the growing global concern over online child exploitation.

The Internet’s Darkest Secret: Inside the global network exploiting children online

UK PM, Rishi Sunak is facing a major backbench rebellion over the government’s plans to prevent harmful material on the internet. Watch this report to know more.

UK PM Rishi Sunak facing major Tory rebellion over internet safety law

When using social media to nudge people toward safe and healthy behaviour, it`s critical to make sure the words match the pictures, according to a new study.After looking at social media posts, parents of young children were better able to recall safety messages such as how to put a baby safely to sleep when the images in the posts aligned with the messages in the text, the researchers found. 
 
The study appears in the Journal of Health Communication."Many times, scientists and safety experts aren`t involved in decisions about social media for health agencies and other organizations, and we end up seeing images that have nothing to do with the safety message or, worse, images that contradict the guidance," said lead author Liz Klein, an associate professor of public health at The Ohio State University.

Take the safe sleep example, for instance. The researchers found posts that advocated a bumper-free crib for baby but used an image of an infant in a crib with bumpers. They saw posts about preventing head injury with bike helmets illustrated by pictures of kids without bike helmets."In this study, we were trying to understand how much those mismatches matter -- do people understand the message even if the picture isn`t right?

Does the picture really matter?" Klein said. Their answers came from research using eye-tracking technology to gauge the attention young parents paid to various posts, and subsequent tests to see what they recalled about the safety messages. When the 150 parents in the study were shown a trio of posts with matched imagery and text and three other posts with mismatched visual and written messages, they spent far longer on the matched posts -- 5.3 seconds, compared to the 3.3 seconds their eyes lingered on the mismatched posts. Further, the matched messages appeared to make a difference in understanding and recall of safety messages.

After accounting for differences in health literacy and social media use among participants, the researchers found that each second of viewing time on matched posts was associated with a 2.8 percent increase in a safety knowledge score."With nearly 70 percent of adults reporting use of social media, and many parents using social media and other internet sources to keep current on injury prevention strategies, social media is a great opportunity to broadcast safety and injury prevention messages," said study co-author Lara McKenzie, a principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children`s Hospital in Columbus. 
&nbsp;

"As more health organizations and public health agencies use social media to share health information with the public, the findings of our study underscore the need to ensure that the imagery and text in social media posts are aligned," added McKenzie.Klein said she understands that those managing social media accounts may be drawn to images that are the most attention-grabbing. But when it comes to health and safety, this study suggests that making sure the image and the text are sending the same message is more important. 
&nbsp;

"If you want people to put their medicine up and out of reach of children, kids to wear their bike helmets or new parents to remember that babies should always go to sleep on their backs, alone and in a crib -- that`s where matching matters. Maybe save the eye-grabbing stuff and the humorous posts for different purposes," Klein said.Klein said the findings in this study likely extend beyond child safety messaging to any number of health and safety campaigns, but that there`s more work to be done to understand how best to harness the power of social media for different types of public health communication."We need to pay more attention to how we communicate with the people we`re trying to influence with health and safety guidance. All of us can do a better job of thinking about how we use our social media accounts to contribute to better public health," she said.&nbsp;

When using social media to nudge people toward safe and healthy behaviour, it`s critical to make sure the words match the pictures, according to a new study.After looking at social media posts, parents of young children were better able to recall safety messages such as how to put a baby safely to sleep when the images in the posts aligned with the messages in the text, the researchers found.

When using social media to nudge people toward safe and healthy behaviour, it`s critical to make sure the words match the pictures, according to a new study.After looking at social media posts, parents of young children were better able to recall safety messages such as how to put a baby safely to sleep when the images in the posts aligned with the messages in the text, the researchers found. The study appears in the Journal of Health Communication."Many times, scientists and safety experts aren`t involved in decisions about social media for health agencies and other organizations, and we end up seeing images that have nothing to do with the safety message or, worse, images that contradict the guidance," said lead author Liz Klein, an associate professor of public health at The Ohio State University. Take the safe sleep example, for instance. The researchers found posts that advocated a bumper-free crib for baby but used an image of an infant in a crib with bumpers. They saw posts about preventing head injury with bike helmets illustrated by pictures of kids without bike helmets."In this study, we were trying to understand how much those mismatches matter -- do people understand the message even if the picture isn`t right? Does the picture really matter?" Klein said. Their answers came from research using eye-tracking technology to gauge the attention young parents paid to various posts, and subsequent tests to see what they recalled about the safety messages. When the 150 parents in the study were shown a trio of posts with matched imagery and text and three other posts with mismatched visual and written messages, they spent far longer on the matched posts -- 5.3 seconds, compared to the 3.3 seconds their eyes lingered on the mismatched posts. Further, the matched messages appeared to make a difference in understanding and recall of safety messages. After accounting for differences in health literacy and social media use among participants, the researchers found that each second of viewing time on matched posts was associated with a 2.8 percent increase in a safety knowledge score."With nearly 70 percent of adults reporting use of social media, and many parents using social media and other internet sources to keep current on injury prevention strategies, social media is a great opportunity to broadcast safety and injury prevention messages," said study co-author Lara McKenzie, a principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children`s Hospital in Columbus. "As more health organizations and public health agencies use social media to share health information with the public, the findings of our study underscore the need to ensure that the imagery and text in social media posts are aligned," added McKenzie.Klein said she understands that those managing social media accounts may be drawn to images that are the most attention-grabbing. But when it comes to health and safety, this study suggests that making sure the image and the text are sending the same message is more important. "If you want people to put their medicine up and out of reach of children, kids to wear their bike helmets or new parents to remember that babies should always go to sleep on their backs, alone and in a crib -- that`s where matching matters. Maybe save the eye-grabbing stuff and the humorous posts for different purposes," Klein said.Klein said the findings in this study likely extend beyond child safety messaging to any number of health and safety campaigns, but that there`s more work to be done to understand how best to harness the power of social media for different types of public health communication."We need to pay more attention to how we communicate with the people we`re trying to influence with health and safety guidance. All of us can do a better job of thinking about how we use our social media accounts to contribute to better public health," she said.

In social media safety messages, the pictures should match the words, finds study

Melania Trump is hosting executives from major online and social media companies to discuss cyberbullying and internet safety, more than a year after saying that would be her issue as first lady.

The meeting today marks her first public event on the topic, a choice some observers have questioned given that her husband often berates people on Twitter.

Amazon, Snap, Facebook, Google and Twitter are among the companies that are expected to attend the meeting. The Internet Association said it will also be represented.

All the major technology companies have strict policies prohibiting harassment and other bullying behaviours on their services but primarily rely on users to report abuses and weed them out.

They try to clearly spell out the kinds of remarks and other posts that won&#39;t be tolerated in special sections such as one Facebook, the largest online social network, has set up. Instagram, a popular service among kids and young adults for sharing photos and videos, provides links to the US government&#39;s anti-bullying site and tips from a cyberbullying research centre on one of its help pages.

But the efforts so far have fallen short, leading to rampant abuses that even some of the companies acknowledge have driven away or tormented portions of their audience.

It got so bad on Twitter, which has 68 million US users, that the San Francisco company vowed last fall to crack down on hateful tweets. Among other things, Twitter adopted new policies aimed at protecting women who unknowingly or unwillingly had nude pictures of themselves distributed online a common bullying tactic.

Yik Yak, another messaging app once popular among high school and college students, shut down last year partly because schools banned it following complaints about bullying and harassment.

Online bullying takes many shapes, but some of the most common tactics include posting embarrassing or salacious photos, making demeaning or cruel remarks under a photo or in a general post about someone, and sharing screenshots of what at least one person thought was a private text.

Harassment is widespread and extends beyond teenagers. A Pew Research Center poll last year found 41 percent of US adults believed they had been harassed online.

The popularity of and volume of content on major social media sites present a huge challenge in policing what is being shared. Facebook, for instance, has 2.1 billion worldwide users who collectively share billions of posts on their pages daily. More than 300 hours of video is uploaded to Google&#39;s YouTube site every minute.

The companies are also constantly struggling to balance the desire to prevent harassment and other abuses and maintain a commitment to freedom of expression.

In some cases, they see harassment and still look the other way. For instance, some of President Trump&#39;s more vitriolic tweets have openly mocked and denigrated people, prompting calls for Twitter to shut down his account and ban him from its service. But Twitter has declined, maintaining the news value of the president&#39;s tweets eclipse complaints about him being a bully.

There is no federal law that applies to bullying. State laws vary, ranging from requiring public schools to have a bullying policy to requiring anonymous reporting systems, said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.

The federal government can best help by giving schools more tools and money to provide programs, Hinduja said.

Trump announced in a speech near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign that her priority as the first lady would be to fight cyberbullying. A native of Slovenia, she at the time lamented a US culture that she said had grown &quot;too mean and too rough.&quot; It was a curious speech for a woman whose husband uses Twitter to dismiss people as losers and taunt them with unflattering nicknames.

The mother of a 12-year-old son,&nbsp;first lady has made child well-being her focus in the White House, including an unexpected interest in how the opioid crisis is affecting youngsters.

She has visited hospitals and care centres to see the effects first hand and has embraced parents whose children died from drug overdoses. She accompanied the president to New Hampshire on Monday as he discussed a three-pronged effort to combat drug addiction, including applying the death penalty against those caught trafficking highly addictive substances.

Mrs Trump recently asked the spouses of US governors to help promote values such as encouragement, kindness, compassion and respect in children. She has also spoken about limiting the amount of time children spend online, and helping them understand the content they are exposed to.

Amazon, Snap, Facebook, Google and Twitter are among the companies that are expected to attend the meeting

Melania Trump is hosting executives from major online and social media companies to discuss cyberbullying and internet safety, more than a year after saying that would be her issue as first lady. The meeting today marks her first public event on the topic, a choice some observers have questioned given that her husband often berates people on Twitter. Amazon, Snap, Facebook, Google and Twitter are among the companies that are expected to attend the meeting. The Internet Association said it will also be represented. All the major technology companies have strict policies prohibiting harassment and other bullying behaviours on their services but primarily rely on users to report abuses and weed them out. They try to clearly spell out the kinds of remarks and other posts that won't be tolerated in special sections such as one Facebook, the largest online social network, has set up. Instagram, a popular service among kids and young adults for sharing photos and videos, provides links to the US government's anti-bullying site and tips from a cyberbullying research centre on one of its help pages. But the efforts so far have fallen short, leading to rampant abuses that even some of the companies acknowledge have driven away or tormented portions of their audience. It got so bad on Twitter, which has 68 million US users, that the San Francisco company vowed last fall to crack down on hateful tweets. Among other things, Twitter adopted new policies aimed at protecting women who unknowingly or unwillingly had nude pictures of themselves distributed online a common bullying tactic. Yik Yak, another messaging app once popular among high school and college students, shut down last year partly because schools banned it following complaints about bullying and harassment. Online bullying takes many shapes, but some of the most common tactics include posting embarrassing or salacious photos, making demeaning or cruel remarks under a photo or in a general post about someone, and sharing screenshots of what at least one person thought was a private text. Harassment is widespread and extends beyond teenagers. A Pew Research Center poll last year found 41 percent of US adults believed they had been harassed online. The popularity of and volume of content on major social media sites present a huge challenge in policing what is being shared. Facebook, for instance, has 2.1 billion worldwide users who collectively share billions of posts on their pages daily. More than 300 hours of video is uploaded to Google's YouTube site every minute. The companies are also constantly struggling to balance the desire to prevent harassment and other abuses and maintain a commitment to freedom of expression. In some cases, they see harassment and still look the other way. For instance, some of President Trump's more vitriolic tweets have openly mocked and denigrated people, prompting calls for Twitter to shut down his account and ban him from its service. But Twitter has declined, maintaining the news value of the president's tweets eclipse complaints about him being a bully. There is no federal law that applies to bullying. State laws vary, ranging from requiring public schools to have a bullying policy to requiring anonymous reporting systems, said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University. The federal government can best help by giving schools more tools and money to provide programs, Hinduja said. Trump announced in a speech near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign that her priority as the first lady would be to fight cyberbullying. A native of Slovenia, she at the time lamented a US culture that she said had grown "too mean and too rough." It was a curious speech for a woman whose husband uses Twitter to dismiss people as losers and taunt them with unflattering nicknames. The mother of a 12-year-old son, first lady has made child well-being her focus in the White House, including an unexpected interest in how the opioid crisis is affecting youngsters. She has visited hospitals and care centres to see the effects first hand and has embraced parents whose children died from drug overdoses. She accompanied the president to New Hampshire on Monday as he discussed a three-pronged effort to combat drug addiction, including applying the death penalty against those caught trafficking highly addictive substances. Mrs Trump recently asked the spouses of US governors to help promote values such as encouragement, kindness, compassion and respect in children. She has also spoken about limiting the amount of time children spend online, and helping them understand the content they are exposed to.

Melania Trump to hold first public event on cyberbullying

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