will have to pay up if they fail to enforce it. but will it work? kids are smart, right? like, we're smart. we'll find our way to get around it. should social media be treated as a danger to our young, like drinking and smoking? or is the industry capable enough of changing itself? i'll be discussing that with emma mills, the headmistress of a school where one pupil was murdered, and sunita bose, who represents australia's digital media industry. and later in the show, as warnings about cyber attacks on the uk and america are given by government officials, we look at the battle to stay ahead of the hackers with this week's ceo, wendy thomas of secureworks. wherever you'rejoining me from around the world, once again, a big hello and a warm welcome to the show. now, 20 years ago, mark zuckerberg changed

the world with the launch of what would become facebook. that means that every child born since 2004 has grown up in the era of social media, and it's become very big business. in those 20 years, facebook — the company — has changed its name to meta and now owns instagram, whatsapp and messenger. collectively, they get four billion users a month and have a market valuation of more than $1 trillion. as for other platforms, elon musk paid $41; billion for twitter two years ago and then changed its name to x and got rid of thousands of moderators — human beings who check what content is on the platform and whether it's appropriate. well, chinese—owned tiktok is reported to be worth up to $100 billion. and then there's alphabet, which used to be called google. and it owns sites like youtube, which is one of the most popular with teenagers sharing videos with each other. in america, pew research

estimates that 95% of americans aged between 13 and 17 use a social media platform. here in the uk, one in three pupils between 11 and 18 years old spend five hours a day on social media — as much or more time than they often do in the school classroom. and there's a growing body of work which shows that its impact on young people's mental health has been severe. in america, the surgeon general has issued advice about young people's use of social media, saying... and in australia, they're doing just that — legislating to ban young people from the platforms for the sake of their mental health. for the mums and dads, social media is doing harm to our kids and i'm calling time on it. i've spoken to thousands of parents, grandparents,

aunties and uncles. they, like me, are worried sick about the safety of our kids online and i want australian parents and families to know that the government has your back. well, in a moment, we'll hear what the digital industry thinks of that law. but what very few people dispute is that the unrestricted access to the digital world has played a role in some tragic instances of mental health illness, with devastating consequences. last year, british teenager brianna ghey, who had dreamed of becoming a social media influencer, was murdered by two other young teenagers, one of whom said in court she had accessed the dark web at the age of 1a. the headmistress of the school which brianna attended is campaigning to keep children saferfrom the perils of the digital world, and i spoke to her earlier. emma mills, welcome to the show. you've described this new generation of kids, the first with social media

on their phones, unrestricted access to the internet, as guinea pigs. you said it's like putting them in cars without seat belts and airbags. in the school that you run, what issues has social media brought to your attention? there's such a whole range of issues that are that happening day to day for young people. there's the dangers that people think about when they think about kind of children being online, like inappropriate content that they're accessing, anybody in the world being able to contact them and the dangers that come with that, especially in terms of grooming. but there are so many other layers to it as well. i've been in education for over 20 years now, and you can see the difference in young people now to what they were like 20 years ago. and there's all the issues of sexting, whether that's sending nudes or, you know, inappropriate messages to each

other, a desensitisation to these things as well. a lot of the social media apps are open so that anybody can send things through to young people. and receiving inappropriate images from complete strangers, especially on snapchat, is really, really common, and there's a desensitisation to that for young people. an increase in bullying, a real increase in terms of mental health concerns and anxiety, that constant draw to the screen and the anxieties that that brings in terms of expectations and all the influences that are out there. and just that reliance as well. emma, there was a tragic case of one of your students, brianna ghey, being murdered by other students, one of whom attended your school. what role do you think social media played in that? again, it's... it's quite multi—layered, that. i mean, there's a question there of whether brianna's

own addiction to social media actually led her to being more vulnerable and more susceptible to being kind of drawn in by scarlettjenkinson. i do think there was a part there because brianna was very addicted to social media. she was addicted to kind of the likes and comments that she would get on tiktok — that kind of dopamine hit, i suppose. that's the way social media is coded, is to do that. but then there's also the element of scarlett was on the dark web. we know that she was watching real—life torture videos on there. what impact does that have on a young mind? is there a desensitisation element there? we know that both of the murderers, scarlett and eddie, were both googling stuff about how to kill people, stuff about weapons. scarlett was researching serial killers, so there's... there's that element. and plus the fact that

the whole murder was actually planned on whatsapp as well. and something that i'm really, really keen to look into, and i know esther, brianna's mum, is really keen to look into, is this idea of parental controls and how parents know what their children are accessing online. and i feel if that had been in place, then these concerns around scarlet and eddie could have been picked up and a lot sooner, and intervention or help or support could have been put into place that might have stopped them getting to the point where they murdered someone. do you agree with what's being proposed? is a ban the answer? so i think the research needs to be there to say, well, what is the most appropriate age for children to have a smartphone, for them to have access to the internet, for them to be able to have access to social media? i would like to see it so that there's child—friendly sim cards, so that it's something

that's in—built into a phone for parents, so parents don't have to buy their own parental control app, put it onto a phone. you know, it's an extra cost. the child—friendly sim card should be in—built with parental controls, and that should be the law until you're 16. so you're not saying children can't have phones and children can't have access to social media, but what you're doing is you're holding their hand as they go into that world. so, just to be clear, what do you make of the ban being proposed in australia that all under—16s should not be allowed to access social media? i think it's hard, isn't it? because what you've got to be careful of is that if you have a total ban until you're 16 and then it's almost falling off a cliff edge, isn't it? this is the world that these children are going to be living in. and it has, sadly, ithink, become part of society. but there are benefits to the internet as well. there are — there can be — benefits to social media.

why not start with having the social media firms regulate the industry? what instagram have brought in at the moment, it's not going to have the moment, it's not going to have the impact we need to see. social media is still addicted for students. there are still lots of dangers out there. the layer of safety is needed. it's difficult with social media companies themselves, they are a business, they are built on the business model. it's almost like it needs an external person to take responsibility and say, no, it's a

public responsibility, it's a health responsibility, a safeguarding responsibility, a safeguarding responsibility, to ensure these safety measures are put in place. it's like with smoking, it wasn't down to the tobacco companies to ensure safety measures were put in place in terms of smoking. it was looked at by public health, by the government. things were put in place. government. things were put in lace. ~ �* , ., government. things were put in lacer �*, ., ., ., government. things were put in lace. �*, ., . ., ., place. whether it's for alcohol or tobacco, place. whether it's for alcohol or tobacco. if— place. whether it's for alcohol or tobacco, if you _ place. whether it's for alcohol or tobacco, if you bring _ place. whether it's for alcohol or tobacco, if you bring in - place. whether it's for alcohol or tobacco, if you bring in bans, - place. whether it's for alcohol or i tobacco, if you bring in bans, does it not make it harder to go further by making it more secretive? i understand what you mean, but not all children go and drink and smoke. the majority, if a law is set... obviously people and children that don't, but social media use would be easier to monitor than something

like smoking. you have a digital footprint there. ai technology exists. to pinpoint the age of a user. to access really accurately... just because someone's going to break a rule doesn't mean you shouldn't have a rule. there will always be people who try to break the rules. emma mills, headteacher of birchwood community high school, thanks forjoining us on the programme. thank you very much. as we've been hearing, australia is set to become the first country in the world to ban under—16s from social media platforms and make the companies themselves responsible for enforcing that ban. it won't come into law for at least 12 months, but what does the industry make of it all? well, my next guest is the managing director of australia's digital industry group known as digi. members include the companies which own facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok, x and twitch. sunita bose, thanks very much forjoining us on the programme.

we've heard about the damage social media is doing by exposing children to misinformation, bullying, grooming or worse. do you support a ban? as someone who's worked in online safety for a decade, i certainly share community concerns about all that can go wrong online. the challenge with the australian proposal is that in our efforts to make young people safer online, it risks making them less safe. on mainstream digital platforms with whom i work at the digital industry group, while they're far from perfect, they do have a wide range of safety guardrails — technology that detects harmful content. teams of people who are working to take this down rapidly. when you ban such services, young people are still determined to get online and you risk pushing them into darker, less safe, less regulated parts

of the internet where those guardrails don't exist. this has been a concern, notjust expressed by industry, but by australia's esafety commissioner. we've also heard from our children's commissioner and our human rights commissioner warning about these unintended safety consequences. you mentioned the australian proposals. the onus would be on social media platforms. the users themselves wouldn't get penalised. so, is that possible? could that work? in australia, the government has been exploring age—assurance technologies that... to take a step back, in orderfor a service to understand the age of its users, there are a range of methods, ranging from self—declaration — where i tell you my age or my date of birth — to more privacy—intrusive methods, such as providing my identification or linking to a government id or providing an image of my face through facial recognition. what we don't yet know with this proposal is what form of technology the government is mandating.

right now, the industry uses a range of different technologies. but in practice, that's not always working. so do you accept that harm is being caused by using these platforms? i accept that there certainly has been harm, and anyone who has had a bad experience, you're right to think that more needs to be done. we're also hearing from a range of mental health experts, youth experts who are also emphasising the connectedness and community that social media does bring to young people. we've had expert warnings here that a ban risks causing isolation and cutting off disadvantaged youth, lgbtqi+ youth, indigenous youth here in australia, and those who live in regional areas. so while we certainly must remain focused on ensuring digital platforms are making their spaces safe and that we've got the regulations to encourage them to keep that online safety work going,

we also need to look at the harms that will come from a ban. we've spoken to the headmistress at the school where brianna ghey used to study. she was brutally stabbed by two 15—year—old—students, one of whom had accessed the dark web, and both of them had messaged each other on whatsapp. what can be done to stop those kinds of actions and children interacting with social media in that way? these stories break my heart as a parent, and certainly we need to ensure that services are taking all the steps that they can to protect young people when it comes to issues like cyber bullying. certainly in australia, we've got strong takedown powers for the esafety commissioner and strong incentives for companies here to work on those issues. i'm not familiar with that example because i'm here in australia, but you spoke of messaging services. it's important to know

that the australian proposal here doesn't actually encompass messaging services. it's quite a complex question. i want my kids to be able to message me to be picked up from the bus stop. we can't cut kids off from messaging, but certainly that can be an area where there can be cyberbullying. so there's a challenging question with this proposal as to how we solve the problems we're trying to solve. certainly, this proposal wouldn't address anything that emanated on the dark web. and as i noted, there is a risk that such a ban of mainstream services does push young people to the dark web. the platforms themselves seem to be introducing measures to tackle these issues. do you think legislation is needed? i do think legislation is needed. and in australia, we do have a robust online safety act that is ever evolving. certainly the organisation i work for, digi, has been working to propose new changes to that online safety act to ensure that it stays future—proofed for emerging threats.

at the same time, we are seeing continuous innovation and investment from the mainstream industry. at a minimum, they have safeguards in place to detect and rapidly remove harmful content, and those systems must continually improve. they've got specific protections for young people and their privacy online, restrictions on being contacted by strangers, parental controls where parents can take a more active role in restricting friend requests, download requests, screen time. we've also seen some services introduce young—people—specific versions of their services. we certainly need that work to continue, and regulation plays an important role in encouraging that work to continue. what do you think should be done straight away? and what would you like the industry to look like in five years' time? that's a great question. one of the areas that my organisation is very focused

on in australia is how we ensure that australia's online safety act is future—proof. we've been working to propose new legal restrictions here in australia around minors' access to adult content and a range of different harmful content, that we want to ensure that the industry has strong incentives, notjust the mainstream industry, but across the tech stack, to take effective and fast action. in my view, we need to work hard to ensure that online spaces are safe, and that a focus on safety will be more effective than a blunt ban. sunita bose, managing director of digi, thanks very much forjoining us on the programme. thanks for the opportunity. we have heard warnings in the us and

uk about potential cyber attacks from russia and china on critical infrastructure. it is estimated to cost businesses and governments trillions according to many surveys of businesses whose job it is to keep the system safe. one of those companies is secure works, and earlier i spoke to them. wendy thomas, welcome to the programme. we've witnessed global tensions rise over the past few months, and here in the uk, we're being warned of cyber attacks from russia. in america, they're being warned of attacks from china. have you noticed the increase in these threats or attacks from these countries yourself? we absolutely have. we saw a 30% increase in active threat groups in 2024 alone. and certainly russia and china lead the pack in terms of those attacks, notjust in terms of cybercriminal groups, but nation—state—sponsored activity to either disrupt operations or, frankly,

access critical infrastructure or intellectual property that might be interesting for other reasons. and you operate in, if i understand it, over 50 countries. what kind of difference in threat do you notice, or are they all pretty similar because they're taking place beyond borders? the nation—state activity, i would contrast to cybercriminal activity, and that does vary by region. so when we look at last year, about a third of cyberattacks were against industrial organisations, manufacturing organisations. so think about attacks on oil and gas infrastructure or health care facilities who are using operational technology for surgeries and other things. those systems are particularly vulnerable and so easily encrypted to extract ransomware payments. so we definitely see an increase in attacks against vulnerable infrastructure and/or nation—state activity accessing important information.

and that does vary by region based on kinetic warfare going on, obviously, in the middle east or in the russia—ukraine conflict. so we do see differences, or areas of focus, i should say, by region, depending on the threat actor. what are the biggest threats businesses should be looking out for, and how damaging can they be? unfortunately, the average cost of a breach last year globally was about us $4 million, about $8 million in the us alone, and so they can be quite damaging and something that, if you're not prepared, can stop your business in its tracks on any given day. so we encourage organisations to think about, three quarters of the attacks happen in the same way. they either happen because an identity has been compromised. you know how many passwords you have to log in to different applications. those identities are sitting out there in the dark web and are actively used by threat actors to get into a system to find the information or the

systems that they want to target. the second way is simply software vulnerabilities. so we continue to accept as a society flawed software that's issued quickly but unfortunately creates lots of unlocked back doors. and three quarters of attacks are across those two vectors for businesses. so having a programme to monitor the identities and access and, frankly, what information different passwords can access inside of your business is really important. and continuing to understand those internet—facing vulnerabilities that your business has that can be that back door that's unlocked. those are the two most important ways to prevent that costly ransomware attack. it feels like industries like yours and fraudsters and hackers are all in a race to stay ahead of each other. that's pretty good for business, isn't it? yes, it is. it is unfortunate that this is a business that's growing. and so we think about...

everything is focused for those cybercriminals about disrupting their economic model. every time you create that locked door that they can't get through easily, you make the cost of an attack longer and more expensive, the more you disrupt that criminal ecosystem. every single one of us can create that friction with harder passwords, using another way to authenticate that we're logging into sensitive things like our bank account or payment applications. and if we're all willing to accept just that little bit of extra friction, we create even more friction for the criminal actor. and disrupting that economic model, because they are running a business, is absolutely key to turning the tide in this fight. and i would be proud if we were able to do that. wendy, we've covered a lot of ground over this cyberbattle going on. can it ever be won? oh, it absolutely can be won. and that doesn't mean that the attacks have to stop. itjust means that the attacks can't be as lucrative as they are today.

if you look at cybercrime today, if you calculated it as an economy, it would be the third—largest economy in the world. and that means that this is all about making this a less lucrative form of crime. and to do that, we all have to share intelligence across the public sector and the private sector. we as individuals have to become more cyber aware and willing to take that extra moment of time to not share our data, to create hard passwords, to just do the basic things that, again, make us a hard target, not an easy target for these threat actors. so while i know it's not an easy fight, i absolutely believe that the combination of superior technology and security expert services in a scaled way can turn this tide if we all operate as a community. wendy thomas, thank you very much. great to see you. well, that's it for this week.

i hope you enjoyed the show. don't forget, you can keep up with the latest on our global economy on the bbc website or the smartphone app. you can also follow me. i'm on x. i'm @marklobel. thanks for watching. i'll see you soon. bye—bye. hello. meteorologically speaking, saturday was the last day of autumn. it was bright enough across many eastern areas of the uk, in the west, though, we had thicker cloud and a bit of drizzle at times. wherever you were, though, it was very mild with temperatures six degrees above average in the highlands, achnagart seeing a high of 15 degrees. the average at this time of the year is nine. and these mild south south—westerly winds continuing to blow a band of rain across from scotland and northern ireland, moving it into wales and western areas of england over the next few hours. these are the kind of temperatures you'll have to start your breezy sunday morning, as our band of rain

continues to push its way eastwards with time. now, behind that, actually, we should get some brighter weather, so sunny spells are in the forecast for western areas. there will be some scattered showers though at times, so not entirely dry. it will, however, continue to be very mild, and for the first day of winter, temperatures could reach around 14—15, maybe even 16 degrees in the mildest spots. but that milder weather isn't going to hang around for very long, because heading into monday, behind this weather front here, we get a flow of much colder north westerly winds heading in, and that will be dropping the temperatures across northern areas as we go through the course of monday. so, mild enough start to the day on monday for many areas, a band of rain pushes across northern england, reaches north wales reaches north wales and north midlands. and north midlands. behind that, sunshine comes behind that, sunshine comes out with some scattered out with some scattered showers, gusty winds showers, gusty winds through the irish sea through the irish sea and the north sea, reaching and the north sea, reaching gale force at times and making gale force at times and making it feel a little it feel a little on the chilly side. on the chilly side. temperatures not doing temperatures not doing too badly across much too badly across much of england and wales, of england and wales, but through the afternoon, but through the afternoon, further northwards, temperatures will be dropping further northwards, through the afternoon,

and it will start to get colder and colder. then, through monday night, that colder air surges its way southwards — a real turnaround weather fortunes. we get a widespread frost, a much colder night on the cards. temperatures will be dropping well, that takes us on into tuesday, and it's a dry, sunny start to the day, if cold for most of us. the exception is northern ireland, where we get this band of rain. the rain starts to move into that colder air, we start to see a little bit of snow on its leading edge, initially falling across parts of scotland. and it's across the hills of northern scotland that that lasts longest could cause one or two issues, but eventually milder air will mean that the snow all turns back to rain, and then later in the week, yes, it is set to turn a good deal milder. with that milder weather comes thicker cloud and rain at times. that's your weather. bye—bye.

the pro—western president of georgia has told the bbc she'll stay in her post, amid a crisis over the government's decision to suspend accession talks with the european union. salome zoura—bichvili's term is due to end in two weeks' time. but she says she will not stand down because the current parliament is what she calls "illegitimate". the ruling georgia dream party announced on thursday that it will put talks with the eu on hold until 2028. a quick warning these pictures coming up may have some flashing images. this is the scene now live in tbilisi. earlier police used water cannon and tier gas against demonstrators who turned out in their thousands near the parliament building in the capital for a third night running.