About DigiShield Kids
DigiShield Kids is a child safety project of DigiShield Labs Ltd, an independent research company working at the frontier of AI safety, human-AI methodology, and children's digital risk.
The work examines how platforms, content formats, and generation techniques create new risk conditions before formal guidance exists.
Meet the team
I came to AI safety research through an unusual route. My doctorate at the University of York trained me to read change over time, how cultural forms emerge, stabilise, mutate, and spread across populations. When I began using generative AI tools early in their public release from 2022, I recognised the same dynamics playing out at digital speed: content evolving through algorithmic selection, platform architectures shaping what children encounter, and risk patterns migrating across environments in ways that conventional monitoring was not designed to catch.
That recognition turned into DigiShield. The methods I use, such as systematic observation, pattern classification, cross-platform assemblage analysis — are archaeological in origin but applied to live digital ecosystems. The goal though, is practical: producing safeguarding intelligence that schools, regulators, and child protection professionals can act on now, not theoretical frameworks for future consideration.
Qualifications
PhD, University of York
Enhanced DBS (children)
Safeguarding training
Safeguarding Children Level 1 & Level 2
Prevent Training
NSPCC Keeping Children Safe Online (4.0)
Online Safety Training
Mental Health Awareness Training
Recent publications
Probing the Wrong Kind of Mind: Why AI Welfare Evaluation May Be Ontologically Misapplied (2026)
Algorithmic Faces: TikTok Makeup as Platformed Performance, Skill Acceleration, and Reversible Selfhood (submitted)
Why this work matters
- Children encounter technologies faster than regulatory frameworks adapt to them.
- Generative systems increasingly blur boundaries between entertainment, instruction, and authority.
- Content mutations occur across platforms in ways that standard monitoring does not capture.
- Risk signals often become normalized before safeguarding communities recognize them.
DigiShield exists to surface these patterns early and interpret them within safeguarding contexts.
What DigiShield is, and is not
What we do
- Monitor public digital ecosystems using OSINT methods
- Identify patterns across platforms and formats
- Interpret findings for professional safeguarding contexts
What we do not do
- Provide individual advice or crisis support
- Offer clinical or therapeutic services
- Act on behalf of platforms or technology companies
Our approach
DigiShield combines open-source intelligence techniques with pattern analysis, focusing on how systems are experienced rather than how they are described in policy documents or marketing materials.
Findings are interpreted within UK safeguarding frameworks. Analysis acknowledges uncertainty where it exists.
Independence and ethics
DigiShield operates without platform funding, affiliate relationships, or commercial partnerships that would compromise research independence.
DigiShield does not collect private data, access closed systems, or engage in covert monitoring. All research uses publicly available sources.
Organisation and credentials
Legal entity
Company: DigiShield Labs Ltd
Companies House: 16729585
Registered address: Popeshead Court Offices, York
ICO registration: ZC000036
Who this work is for
Schools and MATs — briefings, CPD workshops, DSL training
Local authorities — bespoke safeguarding intelligence
Regulators and policymakers — evidence submissions, technical briefings
Journalists and researchers — specialist source, background briefings, data
For professional, research, or media enquiries: contact form or info@digishieldkids.com