Community Articles

Annabel Hennessy, The Daily Telegraph FACEBOOK is no longer considered cool by Australian teens with its popularity among youngsters plummeting 70 per cent in two years. A new survey by Best Enemies Education of 800 Australians aged 13-18 has revealed just 11.57 per cent say the Mark Zuckerberg site is their most used app — a dramatic decline from two years ago when it was ranked number one. Meanwhile, Instagram and Snapchat’s popularity is soaring, with more than half of teens Read more…

The Project – Channel 10 Social media giant Instagram has come under fire for a parents’ guide which suggests that not allowing kids to join social media increases their risk of social marginalisation. Click here to see further details on the story shown on The Project

The Daily Telegraph INSTAGRAM is guilt-tripping parents into letting children younger than 13 have their own accounts by claiming they will be bullied if they are not on the app. The social media giant also argues that having a public account­ is “part of the fun”. It has come under fire from cyber safety experts over its “parents’ guide to Instagram” which claims that kids who don’t have Instagram can “risk social marginalisation”. Best Enemies director Ross Read more…

The Daily Telegraph KIDS who play video games are being encouraged to take caffeine-loaded “supplements” to boost their reaction times and help them stay up all night playing. Best Enemies director Ross Bark, who runs cyber-safety courses in NSW schools, said “gaming supplements” were a growing problem parents needed to be aware of. “Schools are having issues with students crashing in class after spending all night playing games,” Mr Bark said. “It can have a Read more…

The Daily Telegraph POPULAR video games such as Fortnite and Minecraft are being used to harvest children’s personal data by web fiends who flog it to anyone willing to stump up the cash. Cyber-safety expert Ross Bark said crooks could use a child’s username and password for a gaming site like Fortnite to extract more information including phone numbers, credit card details, dates of birth and home addresses. “Websites like Fortnite ask users to hand Read more…

The Daily Telegraph CYBER-BULLIES would be banned from social media and slapped with an online­ version of an apprehended violence­ order as part of a radical plan to stop trolls. Anti-bullying charities are using a powerful parliamentary inquiry to call for a criminalisation of trolling — including giving child cyber-bullies a social media order (SMO) that would ban them from contacting their victims and using sites such as Facebook and Instagram. It comes after 14-year-old Read more…