Hello — it's been a busy birthday week in our house. Two of us share the same date, which means a small party to organise but double the cake, and that is NEVER a bad thing in my book. So I'm not complaining!

It's been an equally big week for children and tech. The FBI has issued a national warning about predator networks operating through gaming platforms. YouTube has done something genuinely useful. And the UK government, after holding the line for 18 months, conceded this week that it will impose social media restrictions on under-16s, regardless of what its own consultation concludes. That is a big shift, even if the timeline is still quite long.

Grab your coffee (and cake) and have a read.

— Heidi

If you've searched "when should kids get a phone" recently, you'll have come back with a lot of confident answers. Age 10. Age 13. Never before secondary school. Wait until they can drive. The certainty is consistent. The research underneath it is more complicated.

Jonathan Haidt's 2024 book The Anxious Generation argues that smartphones have fundamentally harmed adolescent mental health, with the sharpest effects on younger teenage girls. Other researchers, including Andrew Przybylski at Oxford and Candice Odgers, have looked at the same data and concluded the effects are smaller than Haidt suggests, and that other pressures could equally explain rising rates of anxiety and depression. What most researchers do agree on: younger teenagers are more vulnerable than older ones, and the older a child is when they get their first phone, the better their mental health outcomes tend to be. That's a direction of travel, not a magic number.

If you're a parent in England, the calculation just changed. In April 2026, the government gave statutory force to the school phone ban. Phones must be stored or confiscated throughout the school day in every school, including independents. Which means "we need to keep in touch during the day" isn't the argument it was twelve months ago.

What is left is the readiness question — and it's more useful than asking whether your child has turned a particular age. Does your child understand that what they send online can be shared? Can they handle exclusion or unkind comments without spiralling? Are they already managing existing screen time without it being a constant source of conflict? And the unglamorous one: are they responsible enough to carry an expensive piece of tech in their school bag every day without losing it?

The other thing worth knowing: the smartphone-or-nothing framing is false. Basic feature phones do calls and texts and very little else. Deliberately minimalist smartphones exclude the addictive elements while keeping maps and messaging. Children's smartwatches exist for younger ages, though many schools now treat them like phones. One fact most parents don't realise: a phone with no data plan can still access the full internet over Wi-Fi. So a "basic" device with Wi-Fi capability isn't necessarily as restricted as it looks.

If you decide your child is ready, four things worth establishing before the phone arrives rather than after. The phone is yours, on loan. No bedroom overnight — the sleep evidence is among the most solid in this whole field. You will check it openly — not surveillance, just part of the agreement. And social media is a separate conversation: a phone at 13 is one decision; Instagram at 13 is a different one.

The clearest thing the evidence supports is that the decision itself is worth making deliberately, with a plan for what comes next, rather than defaulting to whatever age happens to feel normal in your particular social circle.

Read the full guide: When Should Kids Get a Phone? The Full Picture for Parents →

Want help with the conversation itself? The first phone is one of the eight technology conversations every parent will have. The Download is our free guide that walks through what to say, what rules to set, and how to revisit them as your child grows.

FBI field offices across the United States issued open letters to parents in late April warning of a sharp rise in activity from organised online networks known as "764." More than 450 active investigations are running nationally. On 27 April, Children First Canada held a rally on Parliament Hill calling for online harms legislation, with the father of a 15-year-old girl who died in connection with 764 last year among the speakers. Canada designated 764 a terrorist entity in December 2025. This is one of those stories where a UK or European parent reads "FBI" and assumes it doesn't apply. The networks operate through gaming and messaging platforms that don't respect borders, so it does.

What 764 is, briefly. Organised online groups — not lone individuals — that target children through games and messaging apps. The pattern: build a fake friendship over weeks, isolate the child, then use what they've shared as leverage. The "fake friend" stage is what makes it different from the predator stereotype most parents grew up with. There is nothing alarming at the start. That is the design.

The conversation worth having this week. This is the part that matters most. The line is something like: if anyone online ever threatens you with an image, a recording, or a piece of information — anyone, ever — the response is to come to me, immediately. I will not be angry. We will deal with it together. Shame is what online blackmail relies on, in 764 cases and in ordinary sextortion cases. Sextortion reports from under-18s rose 72% between the first half of 2024 and the first half of 2025, according to the Internet Watch Foundation. The conversation that lands before a child is in trouble is worth ten conversations after.

Most children will never come close to a 764 network. But every child benefits from knowing — calmly, ahead of time — that there is no version of trouble online that you would rather they handle alone.

YouTube rolled out a new parental control on 20 April that lets parents set the daily limit for the Shorts feed to zero minutes. When the limit is set, Shorts disappear from the YouTube homepage and the Shorts tab, and a full-screen notice appears if anyone tries to scroll the feed. YouTube is calling it an industry first.

The detail that matters most for parents: on adult accounts the limit can be dismissed and ignored. On supervised teen accounts the limit is enforced and the teen cannot override it. That's a meaningful distinction, and it's the first time YouTube has given parents a real lever on Shorts-style infinite scroll.

Why this is worth doing. The evidence on short-form video and adolescent sleep, attention, and mood is among the more consistent findings in the field. Last week's Pew study found that 37% of teen TikTok users say the platform hurts their sleep — the highest of any platform tested. Shorts works the same way. If your child has a supervised YouTube account, this setting is the closest thing to a clean fix any platform has offered for the infinite-scroll problem.

How to set it. On the YouTube app, with your child's supervised account active, tap their profile → the settings gear → Time management → Shorts feed limit → set to zero. The change applies immediately. Parents of supervised accounts can also now set custom Bedtime and Take a Break reminders from the same menu.

One honest note. If your child is on YouTube without a supervised account — a regular adult account, which many older teenagers have — this control is a soft limit they can dismiss with a tap. The strict enforcement is the supervised-account version. Worth knowing as you decide which kind of account makes sense for your child's age.

This isn't a fix for everything YouTube does. But Shorts is one of the better-evidenced harms, and now there's a setting parents can change tonight that genuinely does what it says.

Read the full guide: How to turn YouTube Shorts off for your child →

🇬🇧 United Kingdom — In a major shift, the UK government conceded on 27 April that it will impose "age or functionality restrictions" on social media for under-16s, regardless of what the public consultation concludes. Education Minister Olivia Bailey told the Commons the Secretary of State must — not may — act after the consultation closes on 26 May. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill now carries a statutory duty to act, with a 12-month window after royal assent to lay regulations. Lord Nash, who pushed the Lords amendment four times, called it a "major breakthrough." Eighteen months ago Labour said a ban was not being considered.

🇹🇷 Turkey — Parliament passed a law banning under-15s from social media on 23 April. Unusually, the law also covers online gaming platforms and ends anonymity by requiring identity verification for all social media users. President Erdoğan has 15 days to sign and is expected to.

See where every country stands on the Wired Parents Country Tracker, updated every Thursday →

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Alabama just forced Roblox into ID-or-face age verification. A $12.2m settlement plus binding injunction means Roblox must implement government ID or facial recognition before any user can access chat, and bans all adult-to-child chat without explicit parental permission. Nevada settled separately for $12.5m with similar reforms.

Ofcom's six-platform deadline passed yesterday. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube and Roblox were required to respond by 30 April on what they are doing to keep children safe. Ofcom's full report is expected in May, alongside research on whether anything has actually changed during the first year of the Online Safety Act.

EU regulators have found Meta in breach of EU law over under-13s on its platforms. The European Commission's preliminary finding, published on 29 April, concluded that Facebook and Instagram are failing to enforce their own minimum age of 13 — minors can enter false birthdates with no verification, and Meta's tool for reporting underage accounts requires up to seven clicks and is often not followed up. The Commission estimates 10–12% of EU children under 13 are using the platforms. Meta now responds before any final decision and possible fine.

Last week I asked whether you'd consider an AI chatbot toy as a gift for your child. Voting was split between "hadn't heard of them until now" and "not buying one regardless of safety claims."

One voter commented: "Not buying one, and if a relative gives one, it's getting immediately returned or otherwise removed from our house. My husband is a software engineer, and we know waaaaay too much about how tech safety works to allow something like this in our home."

The people closest to the technology often turn out to be the most cautious about it and on AI toys, that pattern is definitely showing.

The UK consultation on social media restrictions for under-16s closes on 26 May. After that the government has a 12-month window to lay regulations, with a progress report due at three months. Ofcom's platform responses are expected to publish in May. The second phase of the New Mexico trial against Meta begins on 4 May, where a judge decides whether Meta must change how its platforms operate, not just pay damages.

Until next Thursday!