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Who you go to jail for the Snapchat? The pressures on children today through social media make it extremely easy to get involved in gang violence,drug crime but an initiative taking place across Greater Manchester is aiming to persuade  youngsters to go down a different route and think of the consequences of decisions and actions that they take. Deputy Mayor, Kate Green, who took office this week,and Mayor, Andy Burnham, visited Newman College RC in Oldham to observe a session delivered to pupils by one of Greater Manchester Violence Reduction Unit’s partners, on the consequences of crime and how decisions young people make can shape their lives. The session was delivered as part of the Violence Reduction Unit’s (VRU’s) community-led programmes initiative, by organisation 1Message and their founder and CEO Matthew Norford, a former gang member. Speaking to a group of 13-14 year olds Matthew gave the group a series of scenarios designed to illustrate how easy it is to get trapped into a rollercoaster situation .How far would you go to protect someone you love? If for example they ran into the house with a knife used in a stabbing incident,would you shop them to the police? The session

Illustration: Lazaro Gamio / AxiosExperts are increasingly warning of a connection between heavy social media use and mental health issues in children — a hot topic now driving major lawsuits against tech giants. Why it matters: Seattle Public Schools' recently filed lawsuit against TikTok, Meta, Snap and others — which accuses the social media giants of contributing to a youth mental health crisis — is one of hundreds of similar cases.Driving the news: Some scientists who study technology's effects on children say the negatives far outweigh any positives."There is a substantial link to depression, and that link tends to be stronger among girls," Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and leading expert on the subject, tells Axios."The more time the teen, particularly a teen girl, spends using social media, the more likely it is that she will be depressed," said Twenge, whose book "iGen" describes how technology has shaped Gen Z.The same is true for self-harm, Twenge said. "The more hours a day she spends using social media, the more likely she is to engage in self-harm behaviors — the link is there for boys as well, it's just not as large."Backstory: In a landmark ruling

VIDEO: Man accused of sending child porn over Snapchat. Updated: 6 minutes ago. Geo resource failed to load.

Meta is ending its partnership with the controversial outsourcing firm responsible for moderating graphic content in East Africa. Insider's reporting shows its new partner is no better.Jonathan Ernst / ReutersMeta ended its contract with an outsourcing firm, Sama, that moderated graphic content in Africa.One Sama moderator described moderating graphic content as "living in a horror movie."its replacement, Majorel, is no better. It's the dirty secret to how your newsfeed stays clean.On Tuesday, Facebook confirmed that it would be ending its contract with Sama, the outsourcing firm responsible for moderating graphic content in East Africa.The news, first reported by Time Magazine, comes on the backs of a lawsuit by a former content moderator employed by Sama in Nairobi, Kenya, alleging severe mental health trauma as a result of their work alongside other labor violations.According to Foxglove Legal, a legal nonprofit that investigates Big Tech companies,  $2.2 billion European outsourcing firm Majorel will be taking over the contract. But Foxglove said Majorel is no better than Sama in its treatment of moderators — something also shown by Insider's reporting from this past summer investigating the abhorrent treatment of Majorel's content moderators working for TikTok's parent-company ByteDance in Morocco.It's a sign of how

Some Seattle students are calling out their district for suing social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat.

Families suing social media companies Suing Social Media: Families say social media algorithms put their kids in danger | 60 Minutes 13:29 The largest school district in Washington state is suing several major social media companies for creating apps that it says exploit children and contribute to a "youth mental health crisis." Seattle Public Schools filed a lawsuit against Facebook, Instagram and their parent company Meta as well as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube and others for their roles in the allegations.The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington on Friday, alleges that the rapid growth platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok have seen is a result of designs and operations that "exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users.""Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants' social media platforms," the complaint says, adding that their "misconduct has been a substantial factor in causing a youth mental health crisis." In statements to CBS News, companies defended their practices and said teen safety and well-being were important.As stated in its complaint, the school district claims

DEL REY — On Friday, January 6, 2023, a resident of the Del Rey neighborhood of Los Angeles, Mark David Wallin, 42, pleaded guilty to the federal criminal charges of one count of production of child pornography and one count of enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity, the U.S. Department of Justice released in a statement. Wallin has been in custody since his arrest in July 2022.  According to the Department of Justice statement, from 2019 to August 2021, Wallin used the internet, specifically the multimedia instant messaging app Snapchat, to meet preteen boys and girls, both abroad and in the United States, in order to develop virtual romantic relationships with them. Wallin did this with the intent to collect sexually explicit images and videos of them; he also persuaded his victims to engage in sexually explicit conduct via video-chat, so that he could take screen shot images and videos of them, according to court documents. After his victims sent him sexually explicit content, Wallin would demand more sexual images and videos from them.  In February and March of 2020, Wallin lured a victim, approximately 9 or 10 years old at the time, into engaging in

Seattle’s public schools district has filed a lawsuit in the US against multiple major social media companies, accusing them of harming young people’s mental health across the country.The lawsuit which was filed on Friday with a US district court accused the social media companies behind TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube of creating a “mental health crisis among America’s youth”.“Defendants’ growth is a product of choices they made to design and operate their platforms in ways that exploit the psychology and neurophysiology of their users into spending more and more time on their platforms. These techniques are both particularly effective and harmful to the youth audience,” the 91-page lawsuit said.“Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms,” it added, citing harmful content including extreme diet plans and encouragements of self-harm.The lawsuit went on to attribute the companies’ alleged misconduct to the rising rates of anxiety, depression, thoughts of self-harm and suicide ideation experienced among young people.According to the lawsuit, from 2009 to 2019, there was on average a 30% increase in the number of students at

SPS filed a lawsuit against social media companies claiming they contributed to youth mental health crisis which in turn is straining the school district SEATTLE — Seattle Public Schools, the largest school district in the state, is suing major social media companies behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat over their impact on youth mental health. Attorneys said Seattle Public Schools (SPS)  may be the first district in the country to sue social media companies. The 92-page lawsuit claims the social media giants violated Washington’s public nuisance law and intentionally contributed to the youth mental health crisis in the state. More than 16 million daily TikTok users are under the age of 14. That's just one statistic laid out in a lawsuit SPS hit social media giants like Meta, Snapchat, and YouTube with Friday. The school district is represented by Keller Rohrback, a Seattle-based firm that routinely litigates against the most prominent corporate defendants on behalf of school districts and local governments. The lawsuit alleges that social media companies have intentionally contributed to the youth mental health crisis. “Now you can actually put a number on whether you're popular or not, how many likes you have versus how many likes

SEATTLE (AP) — The public school district in Seattle has filed a novel lawsuit against the tech giants behind TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, seeking to hold them accountable for the mental health crisis among youth.Seattle Public Schools filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court. The 91-page complaint says the social media companies have created a public nuisance by targeting their products to children.It blames them for worsening mental health and behavioral disorders including anxiety, depression, disordered eating and cyberbullying; making it more difficult to educate students; and forcing schools to take steps such as hiring additional mental health professionals, developing lesson plans about the effects of social media, and providing additional training to teachers.“Defendants have successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking tens of millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of Defendants’ social media platforms,” the complaint said. “Worse, the content Defendants curate and direct to youth is too often harmful and exploitive ....”Meta, Google, Snap and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment Saturday.While federal law — Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act — helps protect online companies from liability arising from what