Category Archives: Young people

Online gangs of teenage boys sharing extreme material are ‘emerging threat’ in UK

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National Crime Agency says such groups are fuelling crimes including fraud, violence and child sexual abuse

Teenage boys are joining online gangs where they share sadistic and misogynistic material that fuels crimes including fraud, violence and child sexual abuse, the director general of the National Crime Agency has warned.

Offenders in online communities collaborate and compete to cause harm online and offline through cyber-attacks such as launching malware, ransomware or executing data breaches; fraud; extremism; grooming and blackmailing; serious violence; and child sexual abuse, according to the NCA, which leads the UK’s fight to cut serious and organised crime.

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Suzanne drives eight hours to get ADHD medicine from a specialist. Australian GPs say they need more prescribing powers

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Exclusive: Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners urges Albanese government to increase range of medicines they can prescribe

Every three months, Suzanne Grobke makes an eight-hour round-trip to access the ADHD medicine her 12-year-old daughter depends on.

“My daughter was diagnosed with ADHD when she was three and we see a paediatrician in Sydney because it was up to a two-year wait to see someone regionally,” she said.

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Labor’s ‘devastating’ bail laws overhaul sparks outrage from legal, human rights and First Nations groups in Victoria

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Proposed changes, which include scrapping principle of remand as ‘last resort’ for youth, condemned as ‘backwards step’

Legal, human rights and First Nations groups have condemned the Victorian government’s overhaul of the state’s bail laws, which will force the courts to treat children accused of serious crimes like adults when deciding whether to remand them or release them into the community.

The premier, Jacinta Allan, on Wednesday announced proposed changes to the Bail Act that would result in more unsentenced people who have not been convicted of a crime being remanded in custody.

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Mental health crisis ‘means youth is no longer one of happiest times of life’

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UN-commissioned study in UK, US, Ireland, Australia, Canada and New Zealand finds satisfaction rises with age

For more than half a century, the midlife crisis has been a feature of western society. Fast cars, impulsive decisions, and peak misery between the age of 40 and 50. But all that is changing, according to experts.

In a new paper commissioned by the UN, the leading academics Jean Twenge and David Blanchflower warn that a burgeoning youth mental health crisis in six English-speaking countries worldwide is upending the traditional pattern of happiness across our lifetimes.

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Young adults increasingly struggling offline turn to ASMR videos, report finds

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Visceral videos of people playing with slime or braiding hair soothe those who feel overwhelmed by in-person contact

Younger adults are increasingly overwhelmed by in-person interaction and soothing themselves instead with sensory online content, according to a report on the wildly popular online content known as ASMR.

ASMR – autonomous sensory meridian response – describes a particular sensory phenomenon that is triggered by specific sights or sounds, which usually begins with a tingling sensation across the scalp and results in feelings of deep calm and relaxation.

47% of those aged 25-34 said they felt overwhelmed in noisy or busy places such as shopping centres or train stations, compared with 35% of those aged 55-64.

39% of those aged 18-24 felt the need to shut out noise, for example using noise-cancelling headphones in public, compared with only 21% of those age 45-54.

Younger age groups were also more likely to prefer chatting to people online rather than face to face and to prefer to work alone rather than around other people.

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Extreme online violence may be linked to rise of ‘0 to 100’ killers, experts say

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Criminal justice specialists call for new approach to identify emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions

The rise of “0 to 100” killers who go from watching torture, mutilation and beheading videos in their bedrooms to committing murder suggests there could be a link between extreme violence online and in real life, experts have said.

Criminal justice experts advocated a new approach, inspired by counter-terrorism, to identify an emerging type of murderer with no prior convictions, after cases such as Nicholas Prosper, who killed his mother and siblings and planned a primary school massacre.

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‘A source of national shame’: shelters in England turn young people away as number of rough sleepers soar

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Charities across the country highlight the rising demand for emergency accommodation as costs spiral to care for those most in need

Holly Udobang is packing the last bag: a sleeping mat, gloves, woolly hat, waterproof poncho, hand warmers. It’s the sort of kit that teenagers might need for a Duke of Edinburgh trip.

But this bag is for young homeless people, to give them a fighting chance of getting some sleep on the streets of London. Holly and her colleagues at the New Horizon Youth Centre are packing them to give to the young people they now have to turn away every day, as an increasing number of emergency shelters shut their doors.

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UK parents suing TikTok over children’s deaths ‘suspicious’ about data claims

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Platform cites ‘legal requirements around when we remove data’ after lawsuit filed over deaths of children attempting ‘blackout challenge’

Four British parents who are suing TikTok for the alleged wrongful deaths of their children say they are “suspicious” about the social media platform’s claim to have deleted their children’s data.

The parents have filed a lawsuit in the US that claims that their four children died in 2022 as a result of attempting the “blackout challenge”, a viral trend that circulated on social media in 2021.

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Retailers to be required to report suspicious or bulk purchases of knives

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New raft of measures labelled Ronan’s law include tougher sentences for those caught selling blades to under-18s

Retailers will be required to report suspicious or bulk purchases of knives, and those caught selling blades to under-18s will face tougher sentences under a new raft of measures to clamp down on young people’s access to weapons labelled Ronan’s law.

Named after Ronan Kanda, the 16-year-old killed in Wolverhampton in 2022 by a teenager carrying a 22in ninja blade he had ordered online, the new laws are part of a raft of anti-knife crime plans announced by the government on Wednesday.

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E-scooters blamed for big jump in children caught in UK driving without insurance

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Hundreds of teenagers have been given an IN10 police endorsement since 2020, says road safety charity


Electric scooters have been blamed for a surge in the number of children being penalised for driving without insurance.

Since the start of 2020 almost 800 children aged between 13 and 16 have been given an IN10 endorsement – the code used by the police for “using a vehicle uninsured against third party risks” – according to data obtained by a road safety charity.

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Sweet romance: Japanese boys start buying into gift giving on Valentine’s Day

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Women are traditionally expected to buy chocolates for male colleagues on Valentine’s Day but teenage boys are shunning the one-sided custom

It has been several years since Japanese women first signalled their contempt for the long tradition of showering male colleagues with chocolates on Valentine’s Day. Now the country’s young people are slaying another sacred cow associated with Friday’s orgy of commercialised romance: one-sided gift giving.

Traditionally, women are expected to buy gift-wrapped chocolates for the men in their working lives, usually senior colleagues and others to whom they feel indebted – a tradition called giri choco, literally “obligation chocolates”.

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Children still being sent far from home for mental health care in England

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Figures show practice continues eight years after pledge to end it, potentially impeding young people’s recovery

Children and young people in England with serious mental health problems are still being sent for treatment many miles away from their homes because bed shortages in some areas remain so severe, despite a pledge to end such practices eight years ago.

NHS England promised in 2017 to stop forcing highly troubled under-18s to leave family and friends after some received care more than 300 miles from where they lived.

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UK childhood mental health crisis to cost £1.1tn in lost pay, study finds

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Researchers estimate lifetime earnings lost as charities call for independent review of causes of the crisis

More than £1tn will be lost in lifetime earnings in the UK as a direct result of the mental health crisis in young people, research estimates.

Published to launch the new Future Minds mental health campaign, the study forecasts the financial burden of failing to tackle the mental health crisis.

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Deletion of ‘gang matrix’ database will destroy evidence against police, say campaigners

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Data to be permanently deleted on 13 February after ‘matrix’ was found to be unlawful

Campaigners say deletion of an unlawful database known as the “matrix” will destroy vital evidence of discriminatory policing and prevent miscarriages of justice being exposed.

The gangs violence matrix (GVM) operated by the Metropolitan police, which linked individuals to alleged gang membership, is being permanently deleted on 13 February after it was found to be unlawful in 2022.

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AI tools used for child sexual abuse images targeted in Home Office crackdown

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UK will be first country to bring in tough new laws to tackle the technology behind the creation of abusive material

Britain is to become the first country to introduce laws tackling the use of AI tools to produce child sexual abuse images, amid warnings from law enforcement agencies of an ­alarming proliferation in such use of the technology.

In an attempt to close a legal ­loophole that has been a major ­concern for police and online safety campaigners, it will become illegal to possess, create or distribute AI tools designed to generate child sexual abuse material.

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Keir Starmer did not discuss threat of US tariffs on UK imports in first call with Donald Trump, No 10 says – UK politics live

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Downing Street says PM’s call with Trump was ‘warm’ and did not include tariffs, Greenland, defence-spending or Ukraine

The hearing has stopped for a short break. Heather Hallett, the chair, tells Badenoch that her evidence will be finished by lunchtime.

Keith is now asking Badenoch about the fourth report produced by the Race Disparity Unit. It was produced in December 2021.

Relevant health departments and agencies should review and action existing requests for health data, and undertake an independent strategic review of the dissemination of healthcare data and the publication of statistics and analysis.​​

Government is not necessarily great at delivering these systems. They tend to be big boondoggles for the private sector, but there are private sector companies that can deliver this. There need to be caveats around that.

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Gender dysphoria diagnoses among children in England rise fiftyfold over 10 years

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Study of GP records finds prevalence rose from one in 60,000 in 2011 to one in 1,200 in 2021 – but numbers still low overall

The number of children and young people in England with a diagnosis of gender dysphoria recorded by a GP has risen fiftyfold over 10 years, researchers have found, though numbers are still relatively small.

The growing number of birth-registered females seeking referrals to gender clinics has raised concerns in recent years, with tensions over how best to tackle gender dysphoria in children resulting in the Cass review last year.

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Schools ‘need more help’ to tackle rising number of sexual assaults by pupils

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Charities say better guidance is needed over increasing number of sexual assaults in UK primary schools

Schools must be given clearer guidance on how to handle peer-on-peer sexual abuse among pupils, charities have demanded.

Rape Crisis and other charities wrote to England’s education secretary Bridget Phillipson and Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, last week, calling on the government to step in with clearer statutory guidance on how schools in England and Wales should address sexual violence when both the victim and the alleged perpetrator are pupils.

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A Chinese app is rocketing up download charts – but in Australia, the sudden uptake is not just about TikTok

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Experts say the flood of users to RedNote highlights flaws in the Albanese government’s social media ban

As the TikTok ban looms in the United States, users have flocked to RedNote, also known as Xiaohongshu, a China-based app that looks similar to Instagram.

But in Australia, where there is no imminent TikTok ban, the app is also rocketing up the app download charts. And it doesn’t just tell us about TikTok – it also exposes issues with Australia’s forthcoming social media age ban.

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One in five Britons aged 18-45 prefer unelected leaders to democracy, poll finds

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Exclusive: Voters overall are downbeat about politics and almost two-thirds think ‘the UK’s best years are behind us’

One in five generation Z and millennial Britons prefer strong leaders without elections to democracy, and voters overall are feeling downbeat about politics, a report has found.

The polling, due to be published next week as part of the FGS Global Radar report, found that overall 14% of people agreed with the statement: “The best system for running a country effectively is a strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with elections,” rather than the alternative: “The best system for running a country effectively is democracy.”

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