
A ban alone will have limited impact and could make things worse. A good strategy needs more educational content – and more money
As a parent, I understand the appeal of the announcement on Monday by the prime minister that would prevent children under 16 from using social media. Right now, you are in constant battle with the infinite scroll for your child’s attention, while their impetus to explore the real world is subdued by endless entertainment always within reach. At best, their rapidly developing brains are rotted by a diet of the synthetic, sensationalist and shallow – humanity’s least impressive creative output catering to its lousiest instincts. At worst, they are being preyed upon by forces intent on manipulating, exploiting or recruiting them. You look around and wonder where they are, even as they are right under your nose. You worry they will never experience the boredom that leads to creativity and propels us forward.
The desire to protect children from an often hostile environment makes sense, and the ban sends a signal of what we deem acceptable, and maybe even opens up the possibility of a behavioural shift in how we use social media. But evidence from Australia, where similar legislation was enacted last December, is not encouraging. According to one study, two-thirds of young people retained their accounts, while 51% of those most affected by the ban now see less news. The fact is that this demographic get most of its news from social media feeds, consumed incidentally amid footage of fights, diet tips and dance crazes and conveyed by influencers whose shtick is authenticity not accuracy. But it is encountered nonetheless. If we remove access, we need to create alternative routes to news and information.
Continue reading...Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nick Ames, Lucy Ward and Jacob Steinberg as England start their World Cup in style
Continue reading...Twenty-five years after she released her debut album, we pick the best of an artist pairing Chopin-inspired piano with pop, soul and powerful emotion
Two different takes on the same album – one traditional, the other more beat-heavy – packaged together, Keys was an experiment that didn’t quite work, but Skydive, co-written with Raphael Saadiq, is a fine song: both versions are great but Mike WiLL Made-It’s bumping rework wins by a fraction.
Continue reading...In an industry dominated by men, many women dedicate themselves to the craft of editing – as well as managing directors’ egos – to create some of the most celebrated and memorable big-screen classics
Behind every great director, to coin a phrase, is a great editor – and as the tributes paid earlier this month to the late Marcia Lucas, Oscar-winning editor of Star Wars: Episodes IV to VI, and former wife of creator George Lucas, reminded us, that editor is often a woman. In a historically male-dominated industry, this familiar Hollywood dynamic is a phenomenon that is worth investigating.
It goes back decades. During the supermacho Hollywood new wave era, Dede Allen worked with Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) and Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon), and Thelma Schoonmaker edited Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and GoodFellas for Martin Scorsese (and much else besides). David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia may have contained no female speaking characters, but it won Anne V Coates an editing Oscar. Anne Bauchens was nominated for Cleopatra in 1934, when the Oscars’ editing category was created, and became its first female winner in 1940 for Cecil B DeMille’s North West Mounted Police.
Continue reading...As the pornography platform has exploded in popularity, a side industry has emerged: middlemen who encourage young women into the industry, then take a large cut of their earnings
Markuss Hussle wants his online students to understand one thing: he knows how to make money. There is no subtlety involved. He gives an hour-long presentation in one video, sitting next to his silver Lamborghini. In another, he splices his money-making tips with footage of a ski weekend with his friends in Courchevel, in the French Alps, including shots of private jets, helicopters and a girlfriend in a fur coat. He claims the trip cost $100,000 (£75,000). He shows off his watches and his swimming pool and talks about how his mother worked three jobs as a cleaner until he “retired her” and bought her a home by the sea.
If you were not paying close attention to the spreadsheets and presentations interspersed with the motivational lifestyle content, you might guess he was offering guidance on how to trade shares or invest in cryptocurrency. There are a lot of performance graphs and much discussion of account management, optimisation, scaling, working smart and tripling profits.
Continue reading...Starmer’s EU reset is aimed at the conference room. Meanwhile Farage and the hard right mine ethnic resentment on the streets
What story does Britain tell itself about Brexit, 10 years after the vote that transformed the country? Watch TV or read the papers and you find one of two viewpoints: from the common room or the conference room.
The common room story is about chums and how they fall out. Friendships forged on hallowed playing fields and over Cotswold kitchen suppers, then dashed on the rocks of ambition. The new BBC documentary Brexit: A Very British Civil War is the latest in the genre, recounting what Dave said to Boris said to Michael said to Dom. It oohs at the deals struck over sets of tennis, and aahs at the then prime minister threatening dissenters with: “I will fuck you up for ever.” This is David Cameron as box office: the Scarface of the Bullingdon Club. And Brexit, you understand, was simply an Oxford fracas that got out of hand.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Jamie Varley jailed for life and partner John McGowan-Fazakerley jailed for 25 years over death of Preston Davey
A secondary school teacher has been jailed for life for sexually abusing and murdering the baby boy he was adopting with his partner.
Jamie Varley, 37, was sentenced to a whole-life order on Thursday for abusing and killing 13-month-old Preston Davey. It means he will stay in prison for the rest of his life and never be eligible for parole, the judge Mr Justice Turner said.
Continue reading...Pete Hegseth said the US is prepared to reimpose a blockade against Iran if it fail to fulfil its commitments under the agreement
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Donald Trump had urged Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “stop blowing up buildings” during a phone call about Israel’s military campaign in Lebanon, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
The newspaper cited sources who overheard the phone conversation between the two leaders, whose relationship has grown increasingly hostile as the war raged on.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Event co-founded by Jordan Peterson will bring together global populist-right figures, US state officials and Eton teachers
The Reform UK MPs Sarah Pochin and Andrew Rosindell will be there. As will a plethora of Reform advisers, backroom staff and figures such as Ben Delo, a British crypto billionaire who has given £4m to Nigel Farage’s party.
Yet as populist-right politicians from across the globe and their multimillionaire backers prepare for this year’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) – a rightwing London summit labelled an “anti-woke” Davos – others whose expected attendance has not been publicised potentially raises more questions.
Continue reading...Kyiv says attack, which also forced evacuation at Russia’s biggest airport, was in response to strike on historic monastery
Ukrainian drones have hit several locations across Moscow in Kyiv’s biggest air raid on the city since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, setting a major oil refinery on fire and forcing evacuations at the country’s largest airport.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described the attack as a response to Russia’s striking of a historic Kyiv monastery complex earlier this week.
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