As mandatory checks began, not everyone in the queue for the Pryzm club was prepared
There was an extra thing for the hundreds of young people waiting in the queue outside Pryzm nightclub in Cardiff to worry about.
As usual, they needed to show ID, undergo a search and make sure they still had their phone, keys and friends with them – but for the first time they also had to produce a Covid pass, showing they were fully vaccinated or had tested negative.
Continue reading...Teenage boys’ easy access to violent sexual images is creating a crisis for them – and for women, argues the anti-porn campaigner
Violence against women is never far from the news, but currently it is high on the agenda – and porn features again and again as a factor. From the murder of Sarah Everard to the paltry sentence handed down to Sam Pybus, the latest man to use the so-called “rough sex defence”, it seems the world is riven with misogyny.
Sarah’s killer Wayne Couzens was attracted to “brutal sexual pornography”, the court heard during his trial. Pybus – who was sentenced to four years and eight months last month for manslaughter after strangling a vulnerable woman during sex – was also known to use violent porn. Tackling porn culture is clearly a key part of tackling sexual violence towards women. I have campaigned to end the sex trade for decades, and am well aware of its role in the sexual exploitation of women.
Continue reading...Covid’s toll on mental health of children and young people laid bare in report citing fears about the future, family and lockdowns
Almost one in five 15- to 24-year-olds around the world say they often feel depressed, according to a new UN report.
The children’s agency, Unicef, and Gallup conducted interviews in 21 countries during the first six months of the year.
Continue reading...Exclusive: ‘like’, ‘bare’, ‘that’s long’ and ‘cut eyes at me’ among terms showing up in pupils’ work now vetoed in classroom
A London secondary school is trying to stop its pupils from using “basically” at the beginning of sentences and deploying phrases such as “oh my days” in a crackdown on “fillers” and “slang” in the classroom.
Ark All Saints academy has produced lists of “banned” language which includes “he cut his eyes at me”, which the Collins dictionary says originates in the Caribbean and means to look rudely at a person and then turn away sharply while closing one’s eyes dismissively.
Ermmm …
Because …
No …
Like …
Say …
You see …
You know …
Basically …
He cut his eyes at me (he shot me a withering sidelong glance)
Oh my days (my goodness)
Oh my God
That’s a neck (you need a slap for that)
Wow
That’s long (that’s boring, tough or tedious)
Bare (very, extremely)
Cuss (swear or abuse)
Continue reading...In our new column, in which we make nice things happen for nice people, we meet Marvin Birch, who turned his life around – and now spreads the community love
Marvin Birch has lived on the Kingsmead estate in Hackney his entire life. It’s never had a good reputation. There was a terrible murder of a young boy there in 1985; in 1994 a newspaper article wrote the place off as “one of the most notorious estates in east London”. But Birch has always found it a place of community. “It’s a family,” he says. “When people who don’t live on an estate come to visit they always comment on how everyone is together: ‘You can go out of your house and kids are playing.’” That’s what inspired him, as an adult, to make a difference for children growing up there today.
As a teenager, Birch, now 26, was a prisoner of geography, subject to restrictions that made the simple act of visiting a supermarket a few roads away a life-threatening gauntlet. “There were a lot of postcode wars,” he says. He couldn’t walk a mile in either direction without being targeted. At the time, a member of his family was a gang member, which put entire swathes of Hackney off limits.
Continue reading...Protesters parading an effigy of Rodrigo Duterte in Manila call for policies that prioritise people and planet
A monstrous effigy of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was paraded through the country’s capital Manila on Friday as protesters joined a worldwide youth climate action.
About a hundred young people wearing masks gathered in one of several socially distanced demonstrations around the country in support of the global climate strike by the international Fridays for Future movement.
Continue reading...Nearly eight out of 10 of young Britons blame capitalism for the housing crisis and two-thirds want to live under a socialist economic system. How did that happen?
The young are hungry and the rich are on the menu. This delicacy first appeared in the 18th century, when the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau supposedly declared: “When the people shall have no more to eat, they will eat the rich!” But today this phrase is all over Twitter and other social media. On TikTok, viral videos feature fresh-faced youngsters menacingly raising their forks at anyone with cars that have start buttons or fridges that have water and ice dispensers.
So should the world’s billionaires – and fridge-owners – start sleeping with one eye open? Hardly. It’s clear that millennials (those born between the early 80s and the mid-90s) and zoomers (the following generation) are not really advocating violence. But it is also clear that this is more than just another viral meme.
Continue reading...Social media firm reportedly kept own research secret that suggests app worsens body image issues
Facebook has kept internal research secret for two years that suggests its Instagram app makes body image issues worse for teenage girls, according to a leak from the tech firm.
Since at least 2019, staff at the company have been studying the impact of their product on its younger users’ states of mind. Their research has repeatedly found it is harmful for a large proportion, and particularly teenage girls.
Continue reading...US researchers say teenagers are more likely to get vaccine-related myocarditis than end up in hospital with Covid
Healthy boys may be more likely to be admitted to hospital with a rare side-effect of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine that causes inflammation of the heart than with Covid itself, US researchers claim.
Their analysis of medical data suggests that boys aged 12 to 15, with no underlying medical conditions, are four to six times more likely to be diagnosed with vaccine-related myocarditis than ending up in hospital with Covid over a four-month period.
Continue reading...She won a Bafta for Alma’s Not Normal – and that was just the pilot episode. As the full series launches, the ex-standup talks about growing up in care, getting the comedy bug in Ibiza and finally hitting the big time
Earlier this year, Sophie Willan went through an extraordinary run of extreme highs and lows. She was filming her sitcom Alma’s Not Normal, a project she started working on years ago, when her grandmother died. She had brought Willan up for part of her childhood and inspired a character in the show. The day after, Willan found out she had been Bafta nominated for comedy writing.
A few weeks later, while she watched the ceremony on a laptop on a picnic bench outside the converted barn she was staying in, Willan was named the winner. Her response, posted on Instagram by castmate Jayde Adams, is the most joyous thing you may see all year: Willan takes off on a victory lap, magnificent red sequinned dress matching a tractor in the background, sprinting and shouting “What the fuck?” over and over. “I woke up all the kids that had been put to bed in the house next door,” says Willan, laughing. “It was fabulous. It was surreal.”
Continue reading...Possession could be criminalised as home secretary vows to ‘take tough action’ on use of laughing gas
Possession of nitrous oxide, one of the most popular drugs among 16- to 24-year-olds, could be criminalised after the home secretary ordered experts to review its effects.
Priti Patel said she was ready to “take tough action” on the widespread use of laughing gas, which is taken mostly through balloons filled from small metal cylinders often seen littering areas around nightclubs and music festivals.
Continue reading...Nicola Sturgeon says certificates in limited scenarios could protect public health and boost vaccine take-up
The Scottish government is proposing vaccine certificates for entry to nightclubs and large-scale indoor and outdoor events in an attempt to curb escalating Covid infections before the autumn.
Announcing the plans, which MSPs will be asked to vote on next week, the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said that – although expected with schools returning last month – “the scale of the increase [in infections] in recent weeks has been very concerning”.
Continue reading...Under-18s will be allowed to play online games for one hour on Fridays, weekends and holidays
China has ordered its online gaming companies to further reduce the services they provide to young gamers, in a move intended to curb what the authorities described as “youth video game addiction”.
Under the new rule, young gamers are only allowed to spend an hour playing online games on Fridays, weekends and holidays, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Continue reading...Benyamin Ahmed’s Weird Whales sell in cryptocurrency and ownership is stored on blockchain
A 12-year-old boy had made about £290,000 after creating digital pictures of whales and selling tokens of their ownership which are stored on blockchain.
Benyamin Ahmed’s collection of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales went viral during the school holidays. His success may be a harbinger of the digital business models that could disrupt the banking sector.
Continue reading...Laws intended to tackle child abuse are resulting in young men in consensual relationships being imprisoned. Activists argue a more nuanced approach is needed
Mani*, 21, began dating Noor*, 17, two years ago. They couldn’t see each other during the Covid lockdowns, but when restrictions began to ease, they would meet on the deserted banks of a canal in a small town in Tamil Nadu. The couple hoped to marry one day, but then Noor fell pregnant, and life turned into a nightmare.
Two months ago, Mani was charged with rape under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) law. After 48 days in jail, he was released on bail. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment.
Continue reading...JCVI decision comes two weeks after body recommended against routine vaccination of children
Covid vaccines will be offered to all 16- and 17-year-olds without needing the consent of their parents, after government experts reversed their advice from just two weeks ago.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) said older teenagers should be offered their first dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab and advice on when to offer the second dose would come later.
Continue reading...What is really going on with virtual sex and identity politics - and when did people stop caring about snooker? Four people born in 2000 offer their advice to people in their 50s, 60s and 70s
When interaction between the generations is interrupted – and there doesn’t even have to be a pandemic; sometimes we just forget to call each other – it is easy for misunderstandings to flourish. Negative perceptions can build to such a pitch that, even if you had your grandchildren standing right in front of you, you possibly wouldn’t want to tackle them head-on. Or perhaps your perceptions aren’t negative – there are just pockets of puzzlement.
Four zoomers – Patrick Baggaley, Freya Scott-Turner, Rachel Ayo Ogunleye and Aidan Nylander, all born in 2000 – are here to clear up everything. Baggaley is a chef based in London; Scott-Turner is studying journalism and living in Cambridge; Ayo Ogunleye is studying medicine and based in Beckenham, south London; and Nylander is between two degrees and lives in Newcastle.
Continue reading...It can feel as if the generation gap is wider than ever – but not when people really talk. Here, four sixtysomethings offer advice to those in their teens and 20s
We live in an era in which, for the most part, the generations do not mix frequently. Grandparents are visited occasionally; young people seek the freedom of independent living as early as possible. On social media, intergenerational warfare is commonplace, as members of gen Z (those born between the mid-90s and the early 10s) criticise older people for hoarding wealth, while baby boomers bemoan the perceived sensitivity of the younger generation.
But what would happen if baby boomers gave the TikToking young adults of today an insight into their thinking – and threw some life advice into the bargain? To that end, we assembled a panel of baby boomers – Tayo Idowu, 64, a marketing director from London; Liz Richards, 68, a retired nurse from Derby; Paul Gibson, 63, an accountant from Arundel, West Sussex; and Maggie Tata, 65, a carer from London – to answer gen Z’s questions (even the tongue-in-cheek ones).
Continue reading...Pilot scheme hopes to discover patterns that will help prevent more deaths
Measures are being introduced to try to identify what is driving rising murder rates in the wake of a spike in teenage deaths in some of the UK’s homicide hotspots.
All homicides in London, Birmingham and south Wales will be reviewed by the authorities in an attempt to learn from the chaotic sequences of events that often preempt a death.
Continue reading...As TV revisits the scandal, the author of an acclaimed play about it asks what the media and key institutions have learned – and whether survivors are now treated any better
Journalistic parlour game question: what are the most significant news stories of the past decade? Few would argue with the pandemic and Brexit. Not far behind, perhaps, is the Jimmy Savile scandal.
Not many stories change our world. This one did. It transformed how we deal with allegations of sexual assault. We reassessed our attitude to celebrity. We saw more clearly than ever how morally corrupt institutions could be. It was the harbinger of the #MeToo movement.
Continue reading...