Joined July 2025
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Pinned Tweet
31 Jul 2025
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A campaign for digital environments that protect, not punish, neurodivergent and vulnerable children.We share lived experience, critique failing systems, and push for change.✳️ Blog: saferbydefault.substack.com/
🔐 Email: safebydefault@protonmail.com
🌍 bit.ly/safebydefault
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Children have always made company with animals, characters and imagined beings.
AI companions are different. They are products built to simulate intimacy, sustain attachment and monetise the need open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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Violent youth repertoires now cross borders faster than the categories meant to explain them.
Not an argument for wider securitisation. An argument for better safeguarding, stronger belonging, and digital systems that stop glorifying violent scripts. open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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Southport was not only a story of missed warnings.
It was also a story of a child deteriorating across adolescence with too much open internet access and too little meaningful support.
Safe by default. Earlier help. Real digital support for families saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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When I was a teenager there were places to go.
Youth clubs. Discos. Saturday jobs. Festivals. Just… being out in the world.
Many of those spaces have quietly disappeared.
New essay: saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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Children do not live in one neat box called 'social media'
They move across messaging, gaming, school platforms, recommender systems and AI tools.
The real policy question is not just access. It is environment, design and responsibility. #SocialMediaBan open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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We keep asking why young people “snap”.
But what if some of it isn’t impulse?
What if it’s about:
– audience
– status
– not being seen as weak
Violence doesn’t just happen.
Sometimes it’s performed.
saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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We keep asking what’s wrong with young people or parents. But what if the problem is the system they’re in?
Familys hold
– neurodivergence
– economic strain
– school pressure
– 24/7 digital environments
This is a fragile ecology. open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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Adolescence is one of the most dramatic transitions in human development.
For thousands of years societies recognised this with rites of passage and structured paths into adulthood.
Today many of those structures have disappeared.
New essay: saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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We keep asking platforms to remove harmful content faster.
But what if the real problem is how digital systems are designed in the first place?
A new California bill hints at a shift:
From apps → to architecture.
#OnlineSafety #TechPolicy open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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We keep asking platforms to remove harmful content faster.
But what if the real problem is how digital systems are designed in the first place?
A new California bill hints at a shift:
From apps → to architecture.
#OnlineSafety #TechPolicy
open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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Two teenage parents were arrested on suspicion of possessing an indecent image. Six days later they were dead.
Raising questions about how safeguarding systems respond when vulnerable adolescents become the focus of criminal investigations.
New piece open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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“Red vs Blue” school fight rumours spread across UK social media this week.
Schools issued alerts. Police sent patrols. Two arrests followed.
Yet the fights themselves may never have been real.
What this reveals about youth safety & platform design: open.substack.com/pub/saferb…
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Reviewing EHCPs at 11 as children enter secondary school risks a support cliff edge at a known stress point.
Adolescence bigger schools digital exposure is not the moment to weaken protection.
saferbydefault.substack.com/…
#SEND #EHCP #Inclusion #EducationPolicy #PublicHealth
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Safe by Default retweeted
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You don’t need any previous experience – just be living in Liverpool, Edinburgh or Belfast and interested in your community's green and blue spaces.
Online training 6–7:30pm Tuesdaysy for 6 weeks. Apply by 17/02/26
👉greatercommunitymedia.com/gr…
ALT flyer for community journalism course
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The UK social media ban debate is moving fast but it’s still asking the wrong question.
Bans and “digital literacy” can’t carry the weight of structural gaps in care, education and safeguarding especially in AI-shaped environments.
Our latest piece saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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We keep talking about adolescent risk as if it’s new.
What’s new is the loss of youth clubs, camps, adventure playgrounds and trusted adults outside the family. Those spaces held risk with containment @bespaceaware
saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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New post on what the #764 network reveals about online harm. The core issue isn’t ideology. It’s relational, coercive escalation happening in private digital spaces, before anything fits our categories of #extremism #cse #violence #youth #onlinesafety saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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Autistic children are not invisible because they are unseen.
They are invisible because no part of the system is required to stay with them.
Part 9 of Kat Sumner’s series for @safe_by_default on safeguarding, risk, and responsibility.
saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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24 Dec 2025
Part 8 of our Safeguarding Autistic Children series is out now.
We look at how instability, exclusion and withdrawn support - especially at times like Christmas, increase risk in the environments of autistic youth
saferbydefault.substack.com/…
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