Daily Safeguarding News - Safer Schools NI

NSPCC warns misogynistic videos are harming children

In recent weeks there has been a surge in discussion in the media about online misogyny, toxic masculinity and the ‘Manosphere’.
Over the years, the NSPCC have frequently addressed this issue and it has recently noted that the increase in misogynistic content is causing harm.
NPSCC Childline counsellors offer support to children and have heard from young people who have been exposed to the impacts of these videos in the classroom.
One 13-year-old girl disclosed to Childline that “all the boys” in her class were talking about these videos and taking whatever they said seriously.
Check out our article, ‘A Review of Harmful Content Online’, for our advice on harmful content, and more information on misogyny and Andrew Tate.
For more on this story, please visit the Yahoo website.

Research from the Children’s Commissioner for England has found that one in 10 children have viewed pornography by the time they are nine years old.
Dame Rachel de Souza has said that the consumption of pornography is “widespread” among children.
Harmful effects include 47% of young people between 16 and 21 believing that girls “expect” physical aggression in sex.
The report also suggested that Twitter is the platform where the highest percentage of children had seen pornography, followed by dedicated pornography sites and then Instagram.
To read the full story, please visit the Sky News website and the Children Commissioner’s website.

On Monday, ElevenLabs reported finding an “increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases during its recent beta launch”.
The AI company didn’t point to any specific instances of abuse, however, Motherboard found that 4chan members appear to have used the product to generate voices that sound like various celebrities, such as Joe Rogan and Emma Watson.
They found that 4chan members were using these celebrity voices to generate racist, transphobic and violent content.
On its website, ElevenLabs offers “speech synthesis” and “voice cloning”, and given the high quality of the generated voices, adds more concern surrounding the risk of deepfake audio.
ElevenLabs have stated that it is exploring more safeguards around its technology.
Check out our ‘Beginners Guide to Deepfakes’ for more information on deepfakes.
For more on this please visit the Vice website.

Schools have sent warnings to parents over ‘The Game’ which contains disturbing self-harm challenges.
The game’s so called ‘rules’ are understood to have been shared on various apps and social media platforms.
For our advice on this, please read our Online Safety Update on ‘The Game’ on Roblox.
To read the full story, go to the MSN’s website.