Cyber Safety in the News
Our Faces No Longer Belong to Us
The Wall Street Journal, October 12, 2025
Your likeness is now fair game for AI. Anyone is a click away from creating a digital version of you. This article opens by describing a small but unnerving personal moment: a baby-photo of her child, shared innocently, uploaded to another company’s AI service, and the thought seizes her: “What could they do with my son’s face?” She writes that in the age of AI; our likenesses are no longer our own. The article then introduces Sora as an example of this shift: the app can take a short user video (just a few seconds) and generate a realistic avatar or “cameo” of that person, which can then be placed in any number of AI-generated videos.
Beyond the technical possibility, the article dives into the risks: the author recounts how real-world people’s faces have been misused via deepfakes, for example, the meteorologist who found AI-generated impersonations of herself in explicit contexts, leading to trauma and reputational harm. The piece points out that while companies like OpenAI (the creator of Sora) build in safeguards (restricting some types of use, giving users control over their likenesses), the systems are still new and often reactive rather than proactive. The bottom line: as image manipulation & synthetic media become easy, traditional notions of consent, likeness-ownership and identity control are under serious threat. This is something we all need to consider when we post online.
Is Discord Safe for Kids? What Experts Want Every Parent to Understand
Parent’s Magazine, October 21, 2025
The article explains that the communications platform Discord, originally built for gamers, has grown into a broad interest-based chat space where teens split time across text, voice, and video channels. Discord’s structure, like anonymous direct messaging and minimal age-verification presents certain risks for younger users, such as exposure to strangers, inappropriate content, cyberbullying, grooming and even extremist recruitment.
One of the key expert warnings comes from Liz Repking of Cyber Safety Consulting: “The mantra of a predator is consistent: go where kids are and parents are not. It is easier to lure a child on Discord than in a public park, given that the predator can present himself in a non-threatening way, meaning, a 40-year-old man can present as a 15-year-old girl.” To help mitigate risk, the article emphasizes communication between parent and child, use of the platform’s Family Center tools and making sure the child knows they will not be punished for speaking up if something feels wrong.
YouTube Adds a Timer for You to Stop Scrolling Shorts
TechCrunch, October 22, 2025
YouTube is rolling out a new feature that allows users to set a daily time limit specifically for its Shorts feed. After the user consumes videos up to that set limit, a pop-up appears notifying them that “scrolling on the Shorts feed is paused.” The pop-up is currently dismissible, meaning the user can choose to keep scrolling despite the reminder.
This move is framed as part of YouTube’s effort to respond to public concerns around “doom-scrolling,” endless content loops and user burnout, even while preserving its engagement-driven business model. YouTube has previously offered tools like “Take a Break” and “Bedtime Reminders” via its digital wellbeing settings, and this new Shorts timer is positioned as an extension of those.
The article notes, however, that the new timer functionality is not yet integrated with the platform’s parental-control suite, meaning that parents cannot presently enforce a limit on a child’s Shorts usage. YouTube has said that more robust parental control features, such as non-dismissible prompts for children, are expected to arrive next year, so parents should stay tuned for that. We often recommend that parents set up parental controls on their student’s apps, and this one feels especially important given how YouTube shorts are where many students are spending much of their time online these days.
Never Mind Your Children’s Screen Time. Worry About Your Parents’
The Economist, October 23, 2025
Our concern at Cyber Safety Consulting is protecting students online, with a focus on how much time children spend in front of screens. This remains a top concern amongst parents as well, but there is a less noticeable but significant trend is the rising screen use among older adults. Pensioners are increasingly spending substantial portions of their day engaged with smartphones, tablets, and other digital devices.
This editorial highlights several risks tied to this shift: older adults often have more free time which can translate into “epic screen sessions,” leaving other activities neglected. Moreover, older users of digital media are especially vulnerable to online fraud, misinformation, and manipulation, and because they vote in larger numbers, the implications extend beyond personal habit to societal and democratic realms.
The article suggests that the digitalization of old age is not inherently bad, it can bring benefits like connection and entertainment, but it also calls for more thoughtful consideration of trade-offs. It urges families and policymakers to recognize that screen-time norms for seniors may need scrutiny just as much as those for children, and that conversations about digital wellbeing should span all ages.
People Magazine, October 24, 2025
A 10-year-old girl, Autumn Bushman of Roanoke, Virginia, died by suicide in March 2025. Her mother, Summer Bushman, says Autumn had been bullied at school and online, and was on her phone in bed shortly before her death. Autumn’s parents believe the unsupervised nighttime phone use and exposure to harmful content played a key role in her distress. “I had questioned that a couple of times, and she fought back and said, ‘Mom, I need my alarm,’ ” Summer Bushman told CBS News about her daughter taking the phone to bed at night.
Summer now warns other parents to be vigilant: she regrets giving Autumn a smartphone so young and allowing it in her bedroom at night. She urges parents to check their children’s devices, set boundaries around phone use (especially at night), and monitor signs of cyberbullying and emotional suffering. One of the best pieces of advice we give during our parent session is to remove devices from children’s bedrooms especially at night. In many cases, dangerous online situations typically begin behind closed doors at bed
