Category Archives: Young people

‘We live on Pot Noodles’: rickets hits homeless families with no kitchen

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Families placed in hotels in England are being forced to live on snack foods, putting young people’s health at risk

Homeless children placed in hotels are developing rickets and other diet-related health problems because their parents lack anywhere to cook.

The Magpie Project, which works with homeless mothers in the east London borough of Newham, where more households are living in temporary accommodation than anywhere in the country, said families living in hotels were eating an unhealthy diet of takeaways and snack foods because they had no cooking facilities or anywhere to store fresh produce.

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Instagram actively helping spread of self-harm among teenagers, study finds

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Researchers say parent company Meta is failing to remove explicit images on the social media site

Meta is actively helping self-harm content to flourish on Instagram by failing to remove explicit images and encouraging those engaging with such content to befriend one another, according to a damning new study that found its moderation “extremely inadequate”.

Danish researchers created a private self-harm network on the social media platform, including fake profiles of people as young as 13 years old, in which they shared 85 pieces of self-harm-related content gradually increasing in severity, including blood, razor blades and encouragement of self-harm.

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Australia passes world-first law banning under-16s from social media despite safety concerns

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Bill passes amid warning that process has been rushed and that a ban could push teenagers towards the dark web or into isolation

Australia’s parliament has passed a law that will aim to do what no other government has, and many parents have tried to: stop children from using social media. The new law was drafted in response to what the Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese, says is a “clear, causal link between the rise of social media and the harm [to] the mental health of young Australians.”

On Thursday, parliament’s upper house, the Senate, passed a bill by 34 votes to 19 banning children under 16 from social media platforms.

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Proportion of children in Great Britain with gambling problem has doubled, data reveals

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Gambling Commission figures show shock rise to 85,000 in number of young people suffering gambling harms

The proportion of young people in Great Britain with a gambling problem has more than doubled, according to “astonishing” official data that prompted calls for urgent government intervention.

New figures from the Gambling Commission, which regulates bookies, online casinos and the national lottery, revealed a shock rise, to 85,000, in the number of children classified as having a gambling problem under widely used diagnostic criteria.

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LNP leader launches Queensland election campaign with promise of mandatory isolation for child offenders who assault guards

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David Crisafulli pledges minimum isolation periods for youths who attack staff despite evidence of dangers of solitary confinement

The Liberal National party leader, David Crisafulli, has promised to introduce “mandatory isolation periods” for children who assault workers in youth detention, as the Queensland opposition formally launched its state election campaign on Sunday.

Speaking to a crowd of LNP candidates and party faithful in Ipswich, Crisafulli focused much of his remarks on what he has dubbed the state’s “youth crime crisis”.

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Overwhelming majority of young Americans worry about climate crisis

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Survey of young people aged 16-25 from all US states shows concerns across political spectrum

The overwhelming majority of young Americans worry about the climate crisis, and more than half say their concerns about the environment will affect where they decide to live and whether to have children, new research finds.

The study comes just weeks after back-to-back hurricanes, Helene and Milton, pummeled the south-eastern US. Flooding from Helene caused more than 600 miles of destruction, from Florida’s west coast to the mountains of North Carolina, while Milton raked across the Florida peninsula less than two weeks later.

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Salford Lads Club: historic youth centre battles to keep doors open

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Building opened in 1904 and featured on Smiths album sleeve needs ‘urgent cash injection’ as grant income falls

Salford Lads Club, the youth centre immortalised by the Smiths on the sleeve of their third studio album The Queen Is Dead, is under threat of closure.

The rising costs of maintaining and running the Grade II-listed building, as well as a drop in grant funding, have left it with a shortfall of about £250,000.

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Portugal pauses audacious plan for decade of tax breaks for young people

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Measure designed to stem brain drain is pulled from budget at last minute amid conflict between coalition partners

Portugal has paused plans intended to stem the country’s brain drain by offering young people a decade of progressive tax breaks that would have seen them paying nothing at all in their first year of work.

The proposal, advanced by the centre-right minority government of Luís Montenegro, had been one of the most eye-catching schemes in Portugal’s 2025 budget.

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‘He felt absolutely lost’: the crisis behind the rising number of UK children being homeschooled

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Anxiety is the most common reason why parents choose to take pupils out of school

Steve Bladon has been a headteacher for a decade. Yet when he found himself temporarily home educating his 11-year-old daughter, who had such severe anxiety that she couldn’t leave the house, he admits he felt “absolutely lost”.

“Initially we had no idea what to do,” he said. “All we knew was that she needed time and space, so we weren’t compounding her anxiety.”

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EU to offer new youth mobility scheme in test of Labour ‘reset’ with Brussels

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Officials warn repeat of Tory rejection could dent new government’s hopes of pacts on defence and agriculture

Fresh proposals to allow young people to move between the UK and the EU will be presented to the British government within weeks, in what is seen as a key early test of Labour’s “reset” in relations with Brussels.

Informed sources say the first draft of a new version of Ursula von der Leyen’s April proposal has already been discussed by member states and will be put to a working group in Brussels next week.

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Young people addicted to ketamine a national problem, says UK expert

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Situation potentially fuelled by people unable to access mental health services self-medicating, clinic founder says

Young people becoming addicted to ketamine is a national problem that is growing rapidly, a leading addiction psychiatrist has said.

Specialist ketamine clinics have recorded a surge over the past two years in the numbers of young people coming through their doors, many of whom have struggled to engage with mainstream treatments. NHS and private clinics have also reported significant rises.

Owen Bowden-Jones, a consultant psychiatrist and founder of the pioneering Club Drug clinic, said he had seen a definite increase in young people after “a pretty big lift off” in ketamine’s popularity, making the drug a national problem.

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Death of the corkscrew? Only 27% of young people in UK own one, report says

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Prevalence of screw-top bottles and abstinence among young people blamed for falling popularity of gadget

It was once an essential piece of kit in every kitchen but, like the corks that gave it a reason to exist, tastemakers are announcing the “death of the corkscrew” after it lost the battle with screw-tops and younger consumers who do not know how to use one.

Forget music or fashion, it turns out that it is ownership of a corkscrew that divides young and old, according to research. Only 27% of 18- to 24-year-olds own one of the devices while for the over-65s that figure stands at 81%, according to the annual trends report by the household goods retailer Lakeland.

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YouTube to restrict teenagers’ exposure to videos about weight and fitness

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Platform will ensure algorithms do not keep pushing similar content to young viewers, even though it does not breach guidelines

YouTube is to stop recommending videos to teenagers that idealise specific fitness levels, body weights or physical features, after experts warned such content could be harmful if viewed repeatedly.

The platform will still allow 13- to 17-year-olds to view the videos, but its algorithms will not push young users down related content “rabbit holes” afterwards.

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School exclusions rise by fifth in England in past year, study finds

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Increasing amounts spent on educating pupils outside mainstream ‘where quality and safety is less guaranteed’

Suspensions and exclusions from schools in England went up by more than a fifth in the past year, according to analysis of live attendance data in a new report that raises concerns about children being shifted out of mainstream education into alternative provision.

Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) found that cash-strapped councils are spending increasing amounts on educating pupils outside the mainstream schools “where quality and safety is less guaranteed”.

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EU states working on fresh proposal for youth mobility scheme with UK

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Giving young people chance to work, learn and train across Europe is ‘glue’ between countries, says German ambassador

EU member states are working on an updated proposal for a youth mobility scheme with the UK after an earlier paper by the European Commission was rejected out of hand by Labour in April, it has emerged.

EU sources say the 27 countries hope to come up with viable negotiating points for Brussels in coming weeks to feed into the expected negotiations on a reset of EU-UK relations being sought by the British prime minister, Keir Starmer.

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‘Happiness recession’: UK 15-year-olds at bottom of European satisfaction league

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Quarter of British teenagers in age group report low life satisfaction, compared with 7% of their Dutch peers

More 15-year-olds are reporting low life satisfaction in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, amid what experts are describing as a “happiness recession” for British teenagers.

The group is at the bottom of European rankings in terms of life satisfaction across 27 nations, analysis by the Children’s Society reveals. In the UK 25% of 15-year-olds reported low life satisfaction, compared with 7% of Dutch children of the same age – the lowest level among any of the countries surveyed.

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Starmer appears to leave door open for potential EU youth exchange scheme

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PM does not rule out setting up system in future after meeting with Olaf Scholz, who stressed desire for closer ties

Keir Starmer has held the door open for some form of youth mobility exchange with EU countries after talks in Germany with Olaf Scholz, who stressed to the British prime minister his wish for closer such ties.

While Starmer said at a press conference with the German chancellor that the UK did not have plans to join the EU’s youth mobility scheme – with No 10 having previously ruled out such a move – speaking to reporters later, he pointedly did not rule out setting up some sort of system for other link-ups, for example student exchanges.

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How west Africa’s online fraudsters moved into sextortion

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With ‘hustle kingdoms’ teaching young people the tricks of the trade, there has been a surge in blackmailing crimes

In the late 90s and early 2000s, as internet connectivity began penetrating west Africa, young people soon realised that individuals in North America and Europe with access to more money than them and potentially susceptible to blackmail were now reachable by the click of a button.

Along came the “Nigerian prince” letters, a famous scamming technique employed by online fraudsters – known as Yahoo boys in Nigeria, Sakwa boys of Ghana and the brouteurs of Ivory Coast – preying on unsuspecting targets across the web. The emails typically involved someone pretending to be Nigerian royalty and asking for money, a claim so outlandish that victims presumed it couldn’t be a lie.

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‘A revolution is building’: can young people force change across Africa?

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Africa has the youngest population of any continent, and recent protests in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda suggest growing youth disillusionment. Will they be able to turn discontent into action?

The youth-led protests that have broken out in several African countries over the past weeks should, say observers, serve as warnings that a disillusioned generation blame the elders of the ruling political classes for missed economic opportunities.

From mid-June to early August, young people in Kenya hit the streets protesting against what they described as runaway corruption and high taxes levied by President William Ruto’s regime. In Uganda, what was shaping up as protests against the government in July were nipped in the bud by police after President Yoweri Museveni’s warning that those thinking of such protests “were playing with fire”. Nigeria saw short-lived protests against the poor handling of the economy by President Bola Tinubu’s government.

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Black children in England and Wales four times more likely to be strip-searched, figures show

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Children’s commissioner finds wide disparity with white counterparts in year to June 2023, with 88% of searches aimed at finding drugs

Black children are four times more likely to be strip-searched by police officers across England and Wales than their white counterparts, according to the latest nationwide figures disclosed by a watchdog.

The children’s commissioner also found that children under the age of 15 are a bigger proportion of those subjected to intimate searches, official figures from the year to June 2023 showed. Fewer than half of all searches of children in that year (45%) were conducted in the presence of an appropriate adult.

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