The government announced today that it would add an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill requiring platforms to "remove this content no more than 48 hours after it is flagged to them." Platforms that do not do so would potentially face fines of 10 percent of "qualifying worldwide income" or have their services blocked in the UK. The amendment follows outrage over the Elon Musk-owned chatbot Grok's willingness to generate nude or sexualized images of people, mainly women and girls, which forced a climbdown
Starmer has announced a consultation into setting a minimum age for social media. Before that consultation takes place, however, ministers will write a clause into the existing children's wellbeing and schools bill that will enable them to enforce a ban quickly, if that's what the consultation recommends. These so-called Henry VIII powers allow the government to use secondary legislation to enforce an age limit, rather than writing an entirely new bill.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
Here's something that might surprise you: older women often get bombarded with messages on dating apps. But before you think "that sounds great," let me explain why it's actually exhausting. According to the Pew Research Center, "Women are five times as likely as men to think they were sent too many messages." For women over 55, this often translates into dozens of generic "hey beautiful" messages from men who clearly haven't read their profiles, mixed with inappropriate comments about their appearance or worse, explicit photos nobody asked for.
X will not attend despite calls for it to face questioning about its AI tool Grok, which has been accused of generating images of sexual abuse, including that of children The Taoiseach has labelled the decision by X not to attend a communications committee hearing as as "concerning" and "disrespectful". Representatives from Meta, TikTok and Google are to appear in front of the Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and Sport today.
Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Parents of Ireland Survey 2026 gathered responses from 1,878 parents of school-going children nationwide, offering a detailed snapshot of Irish family life
The guidance from Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, to combat misogynist abuse, coercive control and the sharing of intimate images without consent comes into force on Tuesday and includes recommendations to prevent women being harried online. The measures suggest tech companies enforce limits on the number of responses to posts on platforms such as X, in a move that Ofcom hopes will reduce pile-ons, where individual users are deluged with abusive replies to their posts.
Children and teens are surrounded by technology, and it is imperative to set them up for success. Developing digital literacy among youth is a critical part of child-rearing today. Digital literacy, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO; 2018) is "the ability to access, manage, understand, integrate, communicate, evaluate and create information safely and appropriately through digital technologies." There are many areas of competence within digital literacy, one of which is safety (UNESCO, 2018).
Since the early days of the internet, with AOL chatrooms and online bulletin boards, there have been unhealthy, dangerous, and predatory individuals who used these electronic environments to act inappropriately towards minors. Children and adolescents have received disturbing sexual comments and solicitations from online creeps. Sometimes, these individuals would attempt to meet up with the children, even sometimes traveling across the country to meet the child in person.
"There's evidence between social media use and harms to the mental health and wellbeing of young people. While there can be benefits in social media use, the risk of harms may be increased for young people as they do not yet have the skills, experience or understanding to navigate complex social media environments."
