Bereaved families and MPs call for tougher measures on mobile phones for under-16s
Bereaved families and MPs are urging the government to take tougher steps to protect younger teenagers from “horrific” content on social media.
The Australian government’s decision to legislate for a smartphone ban for under 16s has reignited the debate in the UK about further restrictions, and a Labour MP is hoping to get government support for curbs on social media.
Stuart Stephens is among those campaigning for the government to go further and spoke to Sky News.
Olly Stephens, 13, was murdered in 2021
Olly with his father Stuart
His son Olly was just 13 when he was murdered by other teenagers following a row which began on social media.
Mr Stephens said his son had been trying to stand up for another child who was a victim of “patterning” – humiliating someone and circulating it on video to blackmail them. Three 14-year-olds were jailed for Olly’s murder in 2021 – following an investigation involving 11 social media platforms.
“We are angry,” Mr Stephens said. “Without a doubt, without all that interaction he would still be here.
“There’s no accountability. These platforms are put out; kids use them, people get hurt, and we need to shine a light on that.
“I firmly believe that I lost my son because of weak governance and poor legislation, full stop, which is why we are doing what we are doing.
“I can’t show you any of the stuff that we saw on his phone, but it’s horrific. And a lot of that stuff you can’t unsee. And especially as a child, you’ve got a developing brain and you bombard them with horrific stuff that’s going to change them as an adult, and that’s not beneficial for society.”
Mr Stephens added: “You think this is never going to happen to you.
“He went into his world with the mobile phone. We need to bolster the legislation that’s already there, not weaken it.”
Olly’s parents Stuart and Amanda Stephens outside Reading Crown Court in September 2001. Pic: PA
Police searching an alleyway near to where Olly was killed in July 2001. Pic: PA
Mr Stephens supports a private members’ bill being drafted by Labour MP Josh MacAlister which would raise the age of internet “adulthood” in which a child can give data to social media apps from 13 to 16 – in order to stop them being bombarded with unsolicited content via algorithms.
This would go further than the measures in the Online Safety Act, passed a year ago, which the regulator Ofcom will be implementing in phases from next year.
Ministers have promised sanctions for tech companies who fail to clamp down on harmful material, such as violence, explicit material and disinformation, and do not implement rigorous age verification for their platforms.
The Technology Secretary, Peter Kyle, is not minded to enact a full smartphone ban for under-16s but has said that nothing is “off the table”.
Labour MP Josh MacAlister is calling for a change in the law
Mr MacAlister, a former teacher and now MP for Whitehaven and Workington, believes parents need to be empowered to stop their children “doom-scrolling” on social media and is hoping to get government support.
The MP, who has held meetings with parents, health professionals and tech experts, told Sky News he was concerned by figures showing the average 12-year-old is spending 21 hours a week online.
“We’ve reached a point where this is a topic of discussion at almost every family dinner table in the country. Parents, teachers, children themselves recognise the scale of this problem,” Mr McAllister said.
“We’ve got the Online Safety Act here in the UK, which is a great landmark initial piece of legislation, focused on obviously harmful content – violent images, pornography, those sorts of things.
“But in places like Australia, states in the US and France, governments are saying actually there is a wider effect of addictive social media smartphones and that’s taking children away from other activities.
“My bill is about trying to put that debate here into parliament and to persuade the government to act, to do really one simple thing through a number of measures.
“That is to make the version of smartphones that children use under 16 different to those above 16 – safer, less addictive; kick children off of them after they’ve spent a fair bit of time on their mobile.
“I don’t think that this is an issue where the genie is out of the bottle. We can absolutely set some new rules around this.”
Read more:
Nothing ‘off table’ in smartphone ban debate
Plan to ban phones from schools dropped
Susie Husemeyer is trying to restrict phone access to her daughter, Amelia, 12
Sky News spoke to parents who feel that even legal content is taking over their children’s lives. The group Smartphone Free Childhood, set up by parents, now has 150,000 members promoting the use of “brick” mobile phones without apps.
One of its members, Susie Husemeyer, is trying to restrict smartphone use for her daughter Amelia, who is 12 years old.
After giving her a smartphone in her last year of primary school and trying to impose a time limit, she had second thoughts and has now disabled the internet on the device.
Amelia said: “I have messages, music to listen to on the bus, and calls. There’s a lot of peer pressure that’s like, how come you don’t have WhatsApp? I get a lot of my friends saying, ‘Your parents are so boring. How come your parents don’t let you do this?'”
But while her friends are often glued to their phones, she supports her parents’ decision.
“It’s not good for your mental health, especially without any restrictions.
“Sometimes I think I wish I had WhatsApp, as people will have a birthday party and set up a group chat about it and I’ll be completely left out.
“But usually I don’t. It would be easier if everyone was banned.”
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Susie said: “There is no doubt about it, she is left out. I think that parents like me are just in such a hard place because we’re trying to do the right thing by our children.
“But at the same time, our children’s peers are all using phones that have all these things enabled. And these devices are just so addictive.
“My message to government would be we are in desperate need of preserving our children’s childhoods because childhood lasts a lifetime, a good childhood lasts a lifetime, and a distracted childhood lasts a lifetime too, in terms of how the brain develops.”
Some children’s charities say a total ban on smartphones or social media punishes teenagers and ignores the benefits of phones when used safely.
European Union regulators are reportedly mulling a $1 billion fine against Elon Musk’s X, taking into account revenue from his other ventures, including Tesla and SpaceX, according to The New York Times.
EU regulators allege that X has violated the Digital Services Act and will use a section of the act to calculate a fine based on revenue that includes other companies Musk controls, according to an April 3 report by the newspaper, which cited four people with knowledge of the plan.
Under the Digital Services Act, which came into law in October 2022 to police social media companies and “prevent illegal and harmful activities online,” companies can be fined up to 6% of global revenue for violations.
A spokesman for the European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, declined to comment on this case to The New York Times but did say it would “continue to enforce our laws fairly and without discrimination toward all companies operating in the EU.”
In a statement, X’s Global Government Affairs team said that if the reports about the EU’s plans are accurate, it “represents an unprecedented act of political censorship and an attack on free speech.”
“X has gone above and beyond to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act, and we will use every option at our disposal to defend our business, keep our users safe, and protect freedom of speech in Europe,” X’s global government affairs team said.
Source: Global Government Affairs
Along with the fine, the EU regulators could reportedly demand product changes at X, with the full scope of any penalties to be announced in the coming months.
Still, a settlement could be reached if the social media platform agrees to changes that satisfy regulators, according to the Times.
One of the officials who spoke to the Times also said that X is facing a second investigation alleging the platform’s approach to policing user-generated content has made it a hub of illegal hate speech and disinformation, which could result in more penalties.
X EU investigation ongoing since 2023
The EU investigation began in 2023. A preliminary ruling in July 2024 found X had violated the Digital Services Act by refusing to provide data to outside researchers, provide adequate transparency about advertisers, or verify the authenticity of users who have a verified account.
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X responded to the ruling with hundreds of points of dispute, and Musk said at the time he was offered a deal, alleging that EU regulators told him if he secretly suppressed certain content, X would escape fines.
Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner for internal market, said in a July 12 X post in 2024 that there was no secret deal and that X’s team had asked for the “Commission to explain the process for settlement and to clarify our concerns,” and its response was in line with “established regulatory procedures.”
Musk replied he was looking “forward to a very public battle in court so that the people of Europe can know the truth.”
Source: Thierry Breton
Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple a ‘bad actor’ with no crypto legal precedent set
US crypto exchange Coinbase has filed with the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to launch futures contracts for Ripple’s XRP token.
“We’re excited to announce that Coinbase Derivatives has filed with the CFTC to self-certify XRP futures — bringing a regulated, capital-efficient way to gain exposure to one of the most liquid digital assets,” stated Coinbase Institutional on April 3.
The firm added that it anticipates the contract going live on April 21.
According to the certification filing, the XRP (XRP) futures contract will be a monthly cash-settled and margined contract trading under the symbol XRL.
The contract tracks XRP’s price and is settled in US dollars. Each contract represents 10,000 XRP, currently worth about $20,000 at $2 per token.
Contracts can be traded for the current month and two months ahead, and trading will be paused as a safety measure if spot XRP prices move more than 10% in an hour.
“The exchange has spoken with FCMs (Futures Commission Merchants) and market participants who support the decision to launch a XRP contract,” the firm stated.
Coinbase is not the first to launch XRP futures in the United States. In March, Chicago-based crypto exchange Bitnomial announced the launch of the “first-ever CFTC-regulated XRP futures in the US.”
XRP futures trading is available on many of the world’s leading centralized crypto exchanges, such as Binance, OKX, Bybit and BitMEX.
Funding rates remain negative
In late March, Cointelegraph reported that XRP derivatives’ funding rates had flipped negative as investor sentiment turned bearish.
Related: XRP funding rate flips negative — Will smart traders flip long or short?
Funding rates are periodic payments between traders in perpetual futures markets that help keep the futures price aligned with the spot price. Positive funding rates mean that long traders (buyers) pay short traders, while negative funding rates mean short traders (sellers) pay long traders.
When funding rates go negative, it means short traders are willing to pay a premium to maintain their positions, indicating strong conviction from bearish derivatives traders.
XRP funding rates remained negative on major derivatives exchanges as of April 4, according to CoinGlass.
XRP OI-weighted funding rates. Source: CoinGlass
Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple a ‘bad actor’ with no crypto legal precedent set
Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao will begin advising the Kyrgyz Republic on blockchain and crypto-related regulation and tech after signing a memorandum of understanding with the country’s foreign investment agency.
“I officially and unofficially advise a few governments on their crypto regulatory frameworks and blockchain solutions for gov efficiency, expanding blockchain to more than trading,” the crypto entrepreneur said in an April 3 X post, adding that he finds this work “extremely meaningful.”
His comments came in response to an earlier X post from Kyrgyzstan President Sadyr Zhaparov announcing that Kyrgyzstan’s National Investment Agency (NIA) had signed a memorandum with CZ to provide technical expertise and consulting services for the Central Asian country.
The NIA is responsible for promoting foreign investments and assisting international companies in identifying business opportunities within the country.
Source: Changpeng Zhao
“This cooperation marks an important step towards strengthening technological infrastructure, implementing innovative solutions, and preparing highly qualified specialists in blockchain technologies, virtual asset management, and cybersecurity,” Zhaparov said.
The Kyrgyzstan president added: “such initiatives are crucial for the sustainable growth of the economy and the security of virtual assets, ultimately generating new opportunities for businesses and society as a whole.”
Kyrgyzstan, which officially changed its name from the Republic of Kyrgyzstan to the Kyrgyz Republic in 1993, is a mountainous, land-locked country.
It is considered well-suited for crypto mining operations due to its abundant renewable energy resources, much of which is underutilized.
Over 30% of Kyrgyzstan’s total energy supply comes from hydroelectric power plants, but only 10% of the country’s potential hydropower has been developed, according to a report by the International Energy Agency.
CZ has met with several other state officials in Asia
Malaysia also recently tapped CZ for guidance on crypto-related matters, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim meeting him personally in January.
CZ has also met with officials in the UAE and Bitcoin-stacking country Bhutan — however, it isn’t clear what those meetings entailed.
Related: Is Bitcoin’s future in circular economies or national reserves?
CZ’s latest pursuits come a little over six months after he was released from a four-month prison sentence in the US for violating several anti-money laundering laws.
Since being released, CZ has made investments in blockchain tech, artificial intelligence and biotechnology companies.
CZ also recently donated 1,000 BNB (BNB) — worth almost $600,000 — to support earthquake relief efforts in Thailand and Myanmar after the natural disaster in late April.
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