Shared Links (weekly) April 6, 2025
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Sharing – AI-Powered Abuse: The Growing Concern of Child Exploitation Imagery
This is an issue that I suspect gets confusing for many people. Creating deepfake abuse imagery has become relatively easy to do, but in many places, it is illegal. The harm, though, is indirect. A child wasn’t being abused to create the images, but once they are in public, the child who is being portrayed in the picture is being harmed in other ways.
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Sharing – Teens feel less emotional support than their parents think they do, new report shows
I can’t help but wonder how many of those teens who feel like they have no one to talk to about their emotions have parents who don’t think their teen has emotional struggles because, surely, they would talk to their “supportive” parents.
Don’t assume your kids are fine because they haven’t talked to you about struggling. They may be in that gap.
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Sharing – New Research from Thorn: Financial Sextortion on the Rise, Targeting Teen Boys
The use of AI is a new twist. It’s not enough to tell young boys not to send explicit selfies; they also need to understand that someone may use AI to create an explicit image of them regardless. Education must include societal-wide awareness that an image may not be what it appears to be. That has to be part of this. The extortionist’s main weapon is the shame of having explicit photos of their victim out among their friends and family. Shame is powerful. When we live in a world where anyone with an internet connection and a photo of your face can turn that into an explicit image of you, we need to eliminate the shame. There’s no shame to be had for someone else’s bad actions.
