Cyber Safety in the News

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Utah Becomes First State to Pass Bill Making App Stores Verify Ages

CBS News, March 6, 2025

Utah recently became the first state to pass legislation requiring app stores to verify users’ ages and get parental consent for minors to download apps to their devices. Similar bills have been introduced in at least eight other states in the latest fight over children’s online safety. The proposals targeting app stores follow legal fights over laws requiring social media platforms to verify the ages of users.

“Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child’s age and grant permission for them to download apps in a privacy-preserving way. The app store is the best place for it,” Meta, X, and Snap Inc. said in a joint statement Wednesday. “We applaud Utah for putting parents in charge with its landmark legislation and urge Congress to follow suit.”

The app stores say app developers are better equipped to manage age verification and other safety measures. Requiring app stores to confirm ages will make it so all users must hand over sensitive identifying information, such as a driver’s license, passport, credit card or Social Security number, even if they do not want to use an age-restricted app, Apple said. History shows that both the app stores and social media companies like to shift responsibility to each other when it comes to protecting children online.

 

New App Will Block Users From ‘Mindless Scrolling’ Until They ‘Literally’ Touch Grass

People, March 7, 2025

A new app called Touch Grass will force users to actually touch grass to reduce their most addictive phone habits. It will offer users the opportunity to combat “mindless scrolling” by “blocking your most distracting apps until you connect with nature,” according to its description on the Apple app store. Users will get to choose which apps to block and simply “take a photo of grass” when they want to access them.

Touch Grass is aimed at “breaking phone addiction” and “building healthier habits” while “finding balance with technology” and “reconnecting with nature,” according to its app store description. Rhys Kentish, the British developer behind the app, said that he got the idea for the app after realizing he was spending too much time on his own phone. “My reflex in the morning was to reach over, grab my phone and start scrolling. I knew this wasn’t healthy and on top of that, I needed an incentive to get outside more especially in the winter months.”

We have noticed more parents and students contemplating their screen time habits, and CSC is always happy to share ways to combat mindless scrolling and screen addiction. In addition to apps like this, there are products like Brick, which allow users to block the time wasting apps on their devices for a specific time frame. There is also the idea of device-free dinners and simply tracking your screen time hours with the intent to minimize them in the future.

 

Will TikTok’s New Parental Control Features Really Work?

Fortune, March 13, 2025

If you’re the parent of a teen, you might have noticed that TikTok just announced new parental-control safety measures—including a meditative shut-down prompt that teens will face if they’re scrolling past 10 p.m., as well as a way for the adult in charge to block their kid from the app during set times. The new parental-control features are designed to work within an existing Family Pairing safety framework, through which parents link their account with their child’s to better monitor and control their use of the app.

However, several safety experts agree that these monitoring controls are too easy for students to negate. A student can simply unpair their newly set up safe account from their attached parent’s account. It is also worth noting that other platforms, not just TikTok, also allow children to unpair their accounts from their parents, including Google, Snapchat, and Instagram. It is a great reminder that parental controls cannot completely protect your child online. Open and frequent parent-child conversations about online safety continue to be the best way to keep your child safe on the Internet.

 

Ex-Teacher Accused of Creating AI-Generated Porn of Students in Mississippi

March 14, USA Today

A former teacher in Mississippi has been federally indicted for using artificial intelligence to create videos of teenage students engaging in sexual behaviors. Wilson Jones, 30, is being charged with producing and possessing a morphed image of child pornography according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.

The teacher admitted to using an AI tool to create the videos, but he “claimed it was not sexual,” according to the complaint. The teacher also claimed the images he used to create the videos came from social media and acknowledged that one of the images was of a local student, the court filing continued. Keystrokes made by Wilson indicate that he typed several explicit prompts into the AI system. Upon reviewing the material in the videos, FBI agents identified eight teenage victims who are known children from his school district. Nudify apps, which make it easy to create AI generated online pornography, are often free and readily available for download in the App store.

 

The Snapchat Move That Leaves Teen Girls Heartbroken

The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2025

It is called the Snapchat half-swipe, and it is making a lot of teenagers miserable. When users swipe open a message without lifting their finger off the screen, they can see the message in full without marking it as read. If they swipe it closed again before removing their finger, the message’s sender sees no evidence of the sneak peek. The point of this design was to alleviate the pressure teens feel to respond immediately, a Snap spokesperson says. But when teen girls see that a crush is active on the app while their message remains unanswered, it can set off a spiral of self-doubt: Did I say the wrong thing? Does he not like me? WHY ISN’T HE WRITING BACK?!?!

Snap acknowledged that the half-swipe gave some people—generally the boys—an upper hand, and in late 2023 it released a countermeasure: Snapchat+ subscribers, who pay $4 a month, can catch someone in the act of half-swiping them: The “eyes” emoji appears while the lurker is lurking. Sometimes, these changes can create a whole new set of problems and digital drama as more and more students use Snapchat as their main form of communication with their peers.

 

Allison Bonacci featured in Washington Times article: Teen girls lead 60% surge in depression rates, CDC report finds

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By Sean Salai – The Washington Times – Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Teenage girls led a 60% jump in the number of Americans reporting clinical depression symptoms from 2013 to 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday.

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics found the share of people ages 12 and older who reported clinical depression symptoms in a two-week period increased from 8.2% of those surveyed in 2013-14 to 13.1% between August 2021 and August 2023.

Among the depressed in 2021-23, the federal agency found that 39.3% received counseling or therapy from a mental health professional in the previous 12 months. That included 43% of female respondents and 33.2% of male participants in a public health survey.

Depression rates were highest among female respondents — 16% compared with 10.1% of male participants — and decreased as age increased. The prevalence of depression ranged from 19.2% of all adolescents ages 12-19 to just 8.7% of all adults 60 and older.

By comparison, an earlier CDC report showed that depression rates among Americans ages 20 and older did not change significantly from 2007-08 to 2015-16.

Debra Brody, a CDC epidemiologist and lead author of the report, said she could not explain the surge because the survey “is not designed to identify cause and effect relationships.”

“In addition, our study was not designed to assess underlying factors for trends in depression,” Ms. Brody told The Washington Times.

Several mental health experts not connected with the study blamed social media addiction for the trend.

They noted that the CDC surveys from 2013 to 2023 coincided with smartphone ownership becoming widespread among teens, who they said rely more than older adults on digital interaction for their self-worth.

“Social media is a major factor, especially for girls,” said Laura DeCook of the California-based company LDC Wellbeing, which leads mental health workshops for families. “It fosters insecurity, cyberbullying and pressure to perform. Girls are also more likely to internalize emotions, which shows up more in diagnoses like depression.”

Classic signs of depression include lack of energy, sleeplessness, self-hating thoughts and behavior, difficulty concentrating and completing tasks, frequent crying and persistent sadness.

According to psychologists, these symptoms have long been more common among young people. They say the best response is to accept the feelings rather than minimize them or tell teenagers to “cheer up.”

“Contrary to stereotype, older people have long had lower rates of depression than adolescents,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychologist and addiction researcher. “The present findings are consistent with that pattern.”

In a second report on people ages 18 and older who responded to a separate public health survey in 2023, the CDC found women and people living alone were likelier than men and cohabiting adults to take prescription medications for depression.

The CDC said Wednesday that 15.3% of women reported taking antidepressants in 2023, more than twice the 7.4% of men who said the same.

The agency also noted that 14.4% of adults living alone in 2023 were medicated for depression compared with 10.9% of those living with others.

Since the pandemic, public officials have declared a youth mental health crisis linked to screen addiction and flagged an “epidemic of loneliness” driven by record numbers of Americans living alone.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, declared April 13-19 a Screen-Free Week for “Virginians of all ages” to take a break from smart devices and reconnect with “the world beyond the screen.”

“Protecting Virginia’s children and strengthening families is at the heart of everything we do,” Mr. Youngkin said Monday. “Virginia Screen-Free Week is a call to action — to hit pause on the noise of digital distractions and say yes to deeper connection, stronger mental health and a brighter future for our youth.”

In a statement to The Times, Virginia Health and Human Services Secretary Janet V. Kelly said the CDC findings echo a survey that showed depression rates increasing to 20% of her state’s teens in 2023, as roughly 78% spent over three hours a day on non-academic screen time.

“This tracks across multiple studies we have seen, including past reports from the CDC, that U.S teen girls are experiencing increased sadness and violence, that teen girls are more vulnerable to mental health risks related to online and social media exposure, and that suicide attempts in teen girls have increased, and rising rates of suicide in Black girls,” Ms. Kelly said.

Over the past two years, Virginia and several other states have banned cellphones from K-12 classrooms, noting that children increasingly use them for distractions rather than texting mom.

While boys often use digital screens to play video games that externalize their feelings, experts note that girls are more vulnerable to solitary doomscrolling on social media platforms.

Allison Bonacci, director of education for Cyber Safety Consulting, an Illinois-based company that works with schools to develop internet safety policies, said that leads to more girls neglecting sleep and exercise. 

“Girls are more likely to use image-based platforms like Instagram and TikTok, which can intensify appearance-related comparisons and body dissatisfaction,” Ms. Bonacci said. “They’re also more likely than boys to experience digital drama like exclusion and gossip online.”

Read more here: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/apr/16/teen-girls-lead-60-surge-depression-rates-cdc-report-finds/