Tanmaxxing trend leaving gen Z cooked

Tanning isn’t new and, like every beauty norm, has seasons where it’s in and seasons where it’s out. But unlike their bronzed forebears, gen-Z tanfluencers know the risks of sun exposure.

Do online influencer posts count as news? Younger Canadians more likely to say yes

OTTAWA - Younger Canadians are more likely to say posts from influencers and online memes count as news, while the amount of news content on social media has dropped, a new report says.

"News organizations have long acted as information gatekeepers, determining which information reaches the public," says the report from McGill University’s Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy, released Tuesday.

"However, Canadians are now exposed to a wide variety of content producers, from influencers to citizen journalists, memes, and AI-generated posts, blurring the boundaries of what counts as ‘news’ and making perceptions of newsworthiness increasingly subjective."

Respondents were asked to rate different types of content that described a major political event on a scale from "definitely not news" (zero points) to "definitely news" (10 points).

Teen charged after Winnipeg teacher bombarded with disturbing images

A Grade 12 student has been charged after a police investigation into harassment against a teacher who was bombarded with sexually explicit messages — including intimate images of her generated by artificial intelligence.

The Winnipeg Police Service arrested a 17-year-old male on June 20 and charged him with one count each of criminal harassment, cybercrime-related mischief and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images.

He is also accused of making, printing, publishing, circulating and possessing explicit material.

“The emotional toll of this has been so huge,” said a newly certified teacher as she described the “sickening” messages she started receiving during her final practicum in the River East Transcona School Division.

Most Canadian teens have seen violence, gore online: survey

As Canada edges toward legislation meant to protect youths online, a new survey suggests most teens in the country have encountered real violence or gore on the internet.

Eighty-five per cent of the 1,007 teens who participated in an online survey in January commissioned by scholarly organization DIY: Digital Safety and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, reported seeing either form of brutality online.

More than 70 per cent had seen videos of physical fights, 65 per cent had viewed police violence, and 52 per cent watched someone being injured or killed in a war. Ten per cent reported seeing child sexual abuse material.

Half of respondents said they had watched footage of late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk being assassinated on stage at Utah Valley University last September, while 33 per cent had viewed mass or school shooting videos.

Australia plans to strengthen laws banning children from social media

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The Australian government plans to strengthen laws that ban children younger than 16 from social media platforms, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

Observers said on Friday the government was responding to evidence that the ban on young children holding accounts on platforms including Facebook, Instagram and YouTube had failed since it came into force on Dec. 10 last year. Australia was the first country in the world to pass legislation keeping youth off social media, but others have since followed.

Albanese told Parliament on Thursday this government was considering options to strengthen the ban.

“We’re working on that as a priority because this is something that other generations didn’t have to deal with, which is why it’s complex,” Albanese told Parliament.

Websites suggest conspiracies fed accused Montreal gunman’s ‘buffet extremism’

Online activity suggests accused Montreal shooter Seth Hatfield watched videos about weapons, the outdoors and a tangle of conspiracy theories and grievances.

However, experts warn against drawing conclusions about the gunman. They also urge people to stop sharing online images of Monday's shooting outside a Montreal hotel.

Police said two officers were shot — Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, 34, was killed along with a bystander, Michel Mizrahi, 68, and the shooter died in the crossfire.

The coroner identified the dead suspect as 25-year-old Seth Hatfield from Lethbridge, Alta.

AI chatbots hit the dating scene, becoming the lovelorn’s modern-day Cyrano

Marie Lansley recently started a new job in a new city while searching for a new partner. In her dating pursuits, the freshly minted San Franciscan said she’s been “trying everything”— including some help from artificial intelligence.

AI chatbots have become — for her and many others — de facto dating coaches and relationship experts.

Lansley, 36, consults AI chatbots for help in starting conversations, something she said she finds difficult on dating apps despite being comfortable doing so in person. Although she’s optimistic about the possibilities, she acknowledges the incongruency between the art of romance and the precision of technology.

“I am open to AI finding me the love of my life, but I’m also not fully convinced that it can,” Lansley said. “AI is great at making dating more efficient. But the chemistry — that’s always going to be analog.”

AI safety advocates say bill a good ‘first step’ on regulation, but more needed

The federal government’s proposed online safety legislation is a good start on regulating artificial intelligence chatbots — but more work will be needed to protect Canadians from their potential harms, a pair of advocates say.

Bill C-34, introduced earlier this month in the House of Commons, would regulate the companies behind AI chatbots by imposing on them a duty to act “responsibly.”

It includes measures to lower the risk of chatbots communicating harmful content and would put in place crisis intervention protocols for cases involving self-harm, suicide or violence.

Wyatt Tessari L’Allié, founder of Artificial Intelligence Governance and Safety Canada, said the bill’s effectiveness depends on how the details are worked out.

MPs urge action to undercut ‘manosphere’ by tackling anti-women ideology

OTTAWA - MPs are calling on the government to tackle the rise of antifeminist ideology by funding programs that undercut the "manosphere" of online influencers who blame women for men's problems.

The House of Commons status of women committee tabled a report Tuesday warning "antifeminist ideologies are becoming increasingly prominent in Canada and internationally."

The committee says boys and young men who are isolated or struggling to find their place in society are being presented with extreme content online that glorifies dominating and dehumanizing women and amplifies gender-based violence.

At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Conservative MP Dominique Vien, the committee's chair, told reporters witnesses who spoke to the committee struggled to identify a single reason for the rise in antifeminism.

Ottawa introduces privacy bill covering children’s data, right to request deletion

Proposed federal legislation would recognize privacy as a fundamental right of all Canadians and set higher standards for organizations when they manage children's data.

New Brunswick woman sues OpenAI, alleging ChatGPT led to daughter’s death

When 24-year-old Alice Carrier told ChatGPT that she had to die to stop the pain she was feeling, the chatbot allegedly appeared to agree. By the next day, Carrier was dead.

Winnipeg police warn of nihilistic violent extremism targeting children

Winnipeg police have warned against the escalating threat of online nihilistic violent extremism that targets children and youth and said officers are investigating incidents in Winnipeg.

Police said Friday online predators, who reject societal values, are intent on causing destruction or chaos rather than achieving a defined ideological objective.

“It’s happening, it is real,” Const. Claude Chancy said. “That’s why we have this whole plan process in effect. But at this point, we just cannot speak to any type of specifics in regards to investigations.”

Const. Andrea Lefort, an expert in violent extremism, said the public must understand the scale of the problem, noting the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service are aware of cases across the country.

Carney announces new intelligence exchange agreement with France

PARIS - Canada and France will deepen their defence and industrial co-operation through a new general security of information agreement, Prime Minister Mark Carney said in Paris on Friday.

Carney made the announcement in a joint statement alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, ahead of a bilateral meeting between the two at the Palais de l’Elysée.

“Businesses in both of our countries are doing more together, in energy, defence, critical minerals and now in (artificial intelligence)," Carney said.

"What this means is an ability to exchange classified information between our defence, our space, our AI and our aerospace sectors.”

Mother of B.C. cyberbullying victim Amanda Todd welcomes federal online safety bill

The mother of a British Columbia teen who died by suicide after being relentlessly tormented by a cyberbully says proposed federal legislation tackling online safety would have helped her daughter and will help save lives.

Carol Todd's daughter Amanda died in 2012 after being sexually exploited by an online predator.

Todd said in an interview on Thursday that the Safe Social Media Act addresses the mental and emotional toll of social media and is an important step toward keeping youth safe online.

It's also something Amanda would have wanted, she said.

Social media platforms, app stores at odds over who should enforce social media bans

As countries including Canada move toward social media bans in an attempt to keep youths safe online, tech companies are in a tug of war over who should be the gatekeepers.

Executives from Snapchat and Meta, the owner of Instagram, Facebook and Threads, have argued it should be app stores rather than platforms charged with verifying the ages of users when they try to add a platform to their phones.

Apple and Google, which run the App Store and Play Store respectively, have introduced some age-gating measures but appear to be at odds with social media platforms over whose responsibility those measures should be.

Experts say trying to put the onus on either side is pointless because app store owners, platforms, governments and parents all have to step up to keep kids safe online.

Oligarchs don’t care about ‘public good’

Don’t think the tech oligarchs are the good guys, fighting for democracy, in the next battle that’s coming. Because they’re not.

Ottawa’s new Digital Safety Act expected to include under-16 social media ban

OTTAWA - The federal government is expected to bar kids under the age of 16 from social media in new legislation set to be introduced Wednesday.

The government gave notice Tuesday that it will introduce a bill "to enact the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act." It has scheduled a technical briefing and press conference on the new bill for late Wednesday afternoon.

Culture Minister Marc Miller, who is taking the lead on the legislation, said the government will take all reasonable measures to ensure kids are safe.

“It’s obvious why it’s a priority. Kids are dying,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill.

U of W prof sues social media giants Meta, X

A University of Winnipeg professor is suing two social media companies in an attempt to determine who was behind online accounts used to crudely impersonate him and make vulgar comments he calls defamatory.

Impulsive kids easy prey for addictive-by-design content

The allure of the screen is powerful, and despite working full-time in the realm of media literacy education, my home is not immune to the siren song of social media.

Gamification and memes lure young people to sports wagering apps, prediction markets

When Rory McIlroy won the Masters for the second year in a row, Kalshi shared a photo of him on Instagram with the words, “Wait he’s goated.” When a video of NBA player Damian Lillard recovering from an injury circulated online, Kalshi’s main competitor Polymarket posted, “The league is cooked.”

If you don’t know what either of those phrases mean, it's because you may not be the target audience.

The posts and hundreds of others like it are exposing younger people to prediction market platforms, where users can put money on the line for the outcomes of real-world events — or absurd ones like when the U.S. will confirm that aliens exist or whether Jesus Christ will return before 2027.

Once on the platforms, companies keep users hooked with what they market as low-stakes, casual opportunities to make an easy buck, creating an environment that some say feels more like a game and less like a risky financial transaction with potentially harmful consequences. Indeed, recent academic research looking at 588 million trades on Polymarket found that profits were concentrated to just a very small group of top traders while the majority of users — 69% — lost money.

What tastes like a Korean pancake and is purple all over? An Oreo inspired by K-pop group BTS

Oreo is teaming up with K-pop supergroup BTS for a bit of marketing dynamite that capitalizes on consumers’ growing interest in global flavors.

Mondelez, Oreo’s parent company, said Tuesday that BTS-themed Oreos will go on sale June 1 online and June 8 in stores. The cookies, which feature purple wafers in a nod to the band’s signature color, will be sold in more than 80 markets around the world, making the partnership the brand's biggest to date.

The band also designed 13 embossments for the wafers, including the names of the seven members and an outline of the light stick that fans hold at BTS concerts.

The white-and-tan creme center of the sandwich cookies was formulated to taste like hotteok, a warm, brown sugar-stuffed pancake that’s a popular Korean street food.