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On trial, Trump is a shadow of the superhero his supporters crave | Sidney Blumenthal

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He wants his devotees to see the court case as trial by combat, with him as warrior. But the truth is more pathetic

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Many parents of digitally obsessed teens must have wished they could bin their smartphones. As evidence mounts about the risks of social media, there is a growing public clamour to protect children better - with some now even calling for a ban.

The debate in the UK took on a fresh resonance in recent days after Esther Ghey, the mother of the murdered teenager Brianna, added her voice to those highlighting the dangers of smartphones.

"We'd like a law introduced, so that there are mobile phones that are suitable for under-16s," she told the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg last Sunday. "So if you're over 16, you can have an adult phone, but then under the age of 16 you can have a children's phone, which will not have all of the social media apps that are out there now."

In demanding tougher curbs on big tech, she echoed other bereaved parents who believe social media played some role in the loss of their children - including Ian Russell, whose daughter Molly took her own life after viewing harmful content online.

Ghey's intervention came days after social media bosses including the Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg faced a ferocious grilling in the US Senate over their companies' role in facilitating child sexual exploitation and drug use. He told them: "I'm sorry for everything you've been through."

Some US lawmakers are already going further than castigating the titans of big tech: the conservative state of Florida is debating legislation aimed at banning under-16s from using social media.

In the UK, reports before Christmas suggested Rishi Sunak was considering tougher curbs on social media use by children - though the new Online Safety Act, years in the making and meant to protect children online, is still in the process of being implemented.

A government spokesperson said ministers were focused on the act, but added: "We will always look at ways that children and other internet users can be kept safe online."

The Tory MP Miriam Cates, the co-chair of the New Conservatives caucus of MPs, recently called for the UK to follow Florida's lead with a social media ban - warning that "ordinary mums and dads are completely unequipped to do battle with the goliaths of Meta, TikTok and Apple".

Calls for a crackdown come on the back of a growing body of evidence about the dangers of unfettered social media access.

The US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory statement last year, warning of "growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people's mental health".

He cited a study that showed adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media, "face double the risk of experiencing poor mental health outcomes, such as symptoms of depression and anxiety".

Another US academic paper, which mapped the staggered rollout of Facebook across college campuses against data on students' health, showed that the arrival of the social network coincided with "increased symptoms of poor mental health, especially depression".

Despite the acknowledged dangers, few experts and campaigners the Guardian spoke to believed an outright ban on social media use by the under-16s was workable, or even desirable - though all are united in believing tech firms must do more.

"The people we really want to be taking responsibility for children being safe online are the tech companies," says Rani Govender, the senior policy officer at the NSPCC.

"We completely recognise why so many parents and families are worried about this, but we think it keeps coming back to how can we make these apps, these games, these sites, safer by design for children?"

She points to the importance of implementing requirements in the Online Safety Act, for firms to take a tougher approach to enforcing minimum age limits for creating social media accounts, which are widely flouted.

Media regulator Ofcom is in the process of publishing codes of conduct that will set out in detail firms' responsibilities on this and other issues.

Lady Beeban Kidron, who campaigns for children's rights online, says there is understandable focus on removing harmful content from apps - but policymakers should also be focusing on their underlying design.

"What we have to concentrate on is, why are we allowing companies to give addictive products to children? There is no reason on God's earth that they have to be designed to be addictive. That is a business choice," she says, adding, "you've basically got a faulty product here: they need to fix it."

That would mean looking under the bonnet of popular apps and rewiring the algorithms blamed for hooking teens - and in some cases, for radicalising them.

Just this week, academic research suggested the video-sharing app TikTok would serve up increasingly misogynistic content to boys who sought content about loneliness, or asked questions about masculinity.

"Algorithmic processes on TikTok and other social media sites target people's vulnerabilities - such as loneliness or feelings of loss of control - and gamify harmful content," warned the lead author, Dr Kaitlyn Regehr, who carried out the study in partnership with colleagues at the University of Kent.

A TikTok spokesperson rejected the findings, insisting: "Misogyny has long been prohibited on TikTok and we proactively detect 93% of content we remove for breaking our rules on hate. The methodology used in this report does not reflect how real people experience TikTok."

Andy Burrows is adviser to the Molly Rose Foundation, set up in Molly Russell 's memory to campaign for change. He warns against the temptation to shut off social media altogether for children who need to learn to navigate the online world.

"The idea of pulling up the drawbridge may seem a superficially attractive and easy solution, but I think it comes with potential unintended consequences, and in particular it risks delaying and perhaps even intensifying the risks that young people will face when they do go online," he says.

Deana Puccio, a former New York prosecutor, runs workshops in schools to help teens tackle issues such as sexual harassment and negative body image - including coping with the onslaught of social media.

She says the role of parents and schools is crucial. "This is about us all banding together, and the social media companies, and having an interdisciplinary approach to recognising the fact that, yes, our kids are suffering with mental health issues more than ever before - anxiety, depression, body image, self-harm - because of what they're seeing. There's no log off time," she says.

Puccio, the co-founder of The Rap Project with broadcaster Allison Havey, praises the growing number of schools that now ban smartphone use. But she adds: "The problem is, for us to restrict or ban it, all the adults have to be on board - and they're not. Kids aren't getting this in a vacuum: we're giving it to them, as a society."

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'Our kids are suffering': calls for ban on social media to protect under-16s

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Debate gains traction as evidence grows on negative impact of social media use on mental health of young people

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Analysis LK 2021 1.2 Vision 2040 Add material Part 2

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Analysis LK 2021 1.2 Vision 2040 Add material Part 2

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Midnight Oil - Beds Are Burning with Lyrics

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Analysis LK 2021 1.2 Vision 2040 Add material Part 1

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Analysis LK 2021 1.2 Vision 2040 Add material Part 1

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Meet the Italian architect behind the world's first vertical forest

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Green architect Stefano Boeri believes trees are just like humans, with their own personalities and ways of communicating.

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Analysis LK 2021 1.2 Part 3 Discussion Ban all electronic devices from classrooms

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Analysis LK 2021 1.2 Part 3 Discussion Ban all electronic devices from classrooms

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"The scourge"

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Mobile phones and other devices to be banned from Dutch classrooms

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Education ministry in the Netherlands says tech is a distraction from learning and will only be allowed if specifically needed

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‘I’m not the Chinese on the corner’: Barcelona’s shopkeepers reclaim their names

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Campaign launched by students aims to overcome the ‘micro-racism’ that labels shops and bars by the origins of their owners

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Artist Neil Harbisson was born completely color blind, but these days a device attached to his head turns color into audible frequencies. Instead of seeing a world in grayscale, Harbisson can hear a symphony of color -- and yes, even listen to faces and paintings.

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chadenfreude is a dark and powerful force, although, upon looking it up, it's not quite what I thought it was. Malicious pleasure in the misfortunes of others, says Chambers. Mine's not exactly like that - it's better, and worse. Better in the sense that my pleasure isn't malicious; it's less about malice than amusement. But it's worse in that it's not all "others" I apply it to. Just my friends.

One of my closest friends has a Porsche Taycan, a reassuringly expensive electric sports car. To his distress, the heating has gone kaput. Now, I thought the whole point of spending six figures on a motor was that a) it would never break down and b) if it did, a quick phone call to a special number would be enough to get a helicopter full of German engineers dispatched to your home address to put things right. Maybe they'd abseil on to the drive if they can't land in the garden.

Not so. He was told that he'd have to take it to a dealer where they'd need five days to triage it. Triage! Yes, really. Do they dress up as nurses to do it?

Anyway, it will probably take several weeks to fix because, as Porsche has acknowledged, there is a known issue with the Taycan's "heater matrix" (me neither) and supply chain issues mean no new matrixes will be falling from the sky in a hurry.

In the meantime, until a temporary car of some kind is issued, the poor bloke is effectively driving around in the world's most expensive fridge. He's been out and bought a new hat, gloves and scarf for his daily commute. I'm sorry, but the schadenfreude - appropriately, I suppose, for a German car - is overwhelming. I love nothing more than calling him on his way in to work and listening to his teeth a-chattering as he tries in vain to form words. It seems likely that other Taycan drivers around the country, and elsewhere for that matter, are in the same freezing boat. Even if you're the kind of motorist who considers Porsche owners to be on the flash side of acceptable, do try to have a heart and keep an eye out for them on the road, blue with cold as they forlornly scrape the ice from the inside of their windscreens.

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My friend is driving a freezing-cold Porsche - and the schadenfreude is delicious | Adrian Chiles

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chadenfreude is a dark and powerful force, although, upon looking it up, it's not quite what I thought it was. Malicious pleasure in the misfortunes of others, says Chambers. Mine's not exactly like that - it's better, and worse. Better in the sense that my pleasure isn't malicious; it's less about malice than amusement.

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The classic ocean poetry taking on troubling new meanings

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S Eliot wrote The Dry Salvages as second world war bombs fell on London. The poem imagines humanity adrift in a leaky boat, the sea "all about us". But poetry, like the sea, is never still. "Where is there an end to the drifting wreckage," the poem asks.

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'People are saying the climate crisis is real, only because it has knocked on the door of the global north,' says Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist.

Africa accounts for 15% of the world's population but 4% of greenhouse emissions - compared with 23% by China and 19% by the US. More than 18m people in the Horn of Africa risk starvation after years of drought, but the countries suffering the worst effects of climate change did not cause this global crisis.

Here Nakate speaks about this climate injustice, ahead of next month's Cop27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, when countries from across the global south will call for billions of dollars of financing for adaptation, the transition to green energy, and climate reparations.

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Why is Africa bearing the brunt of the climate crisis? - video explainer

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'People are saying the climate crisis is real, only because it has knocked on the door of the global north,' says Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan climate activist. Africa accounts for 15% of the world's population but 4% of greenhouse emissions - compared with 23% by China and 19% by the US.

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Earth's wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as humans continue to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and pollute on an industrial scale.

From the open ocean to tropical rainforests, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles is in freefall, declining on average by more than two-thirds between 1970 and 2018, according to the WWF and Zoological Society of London's (ZSL) biennial Living Planet Report. Two years ago, the figure stood at 68%, four years ago, it was at 60%.

Many scientists believe we are living through the sixth mass extinction - the largest loss of life on Earth since the time of the dinosaurs - and that it is being driven by humans. The report's 89 authors are urging world leaders to reach an ambitious agreement at the Cop15 biodiversity summit in Canada this December and to slash carbon emissions to limit global heating to below 1.5C this decade to halt the rampant destruction of nature.

The Living Planet Index combines global analysis of 32,000 populations of 5,230 animal species to measure changes in the abundance of wildlife across continents and taxa, producing a graph akin to a stock index of life on Earth.

Latin America and the Caribbean region - including the Amazon - has seen the steepest decline in average wildlife population size, with a 94% drop in 48 years. Tanya Steele, chief executive at WWF-UK, said: "This report tells us that the worst declines are in the Latin America region, home to the world's largest rainforest, the Amazon. Deforestation rates there are accelerating, stripping this unique ecosystem not just of trees but of the wildlife that depends on them and of the Amazon's ability to act as one of our greatest allies in the fight against climate change."

A set of graphs showing the decline in biodiversity since 1970 across the 5 world regions

Africa had the second largest fall at 66%, followed by Asia and the Pacific with 55% and North America at 20%. Europe and Central Asia experienced an 18% fall. The total loss is akin to the human population of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Oceania and China disappearing, according to the report.

"Despite the science, the catastrophic projections, the impassioned speeches and promises, the burning forests, submerged countries, record temperatures and displaced millions, world leaders continue to sit back and watch our world burn in front of our eyes," said Steele. "The climate and nature crises, their fates entwined, are not some faraway threat our grandchildren will solve with still-to-be-discovered technology."

She added: "We need our new prime minister to show the UK is serious about helping people, nature and the economy to thrive, by ensuring every promise for our world is kept. Falling short will be neither forgotten nor forgiven."

A young lion looks towards the city skyline in Nairobi national park. Lions are listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list, with perhaps as few as 23,000 left in the wild. Photograph: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images

Leading nature charities have accused Liz Truss of putting the economy before nature protection and the environment, and are concerned rare animals and plants could lose their protections when her promise of a "bonfire" of EU red tape happens later this year.

The report points out that not all countries have the same starting points with nature decline and that the UK has only 50% of its biodiversity richness compared with historical levels, according to the biodiversity intactness index, making it one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

Land use change is still the most important driver of biodiversity loss across the planet, according to the report. Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF-UK, said: "At a global level, primarily the declines we are seeing are driven by the loss and fragmentation of habitat driven by the global agricultural system and its expansion into intact habitat converting it to produce food."

The researchers underscore the increased difficulty animals are having moving through terrestrial landscapes as they are blocked by infrastructure and farmland. Only 37% of rivers longer than 1,000km (600 miles) remain free-flowing along their entire length, while just 10% of the world's protected areas on land are connected.

Future declines are not inevitable, say the authors, who pinpoint the Himalayas, south-east Asia, the east coast of Australia, the Albertine Rift and Eastern Arc mountains in eastern Africa, and the Amazon basin among priority areas.

The IUCN is also developing a standard to measure the conservation potential of an animal, known as its green status, which will allow researchers to plot a path to recovery for some of the one million species threatened with extinction on Earth. The pink pigeon, burrowing bettong and Sumatran rhino were highlighted as species with good conservation potential in a study last year.

A wild pink pigeon - identified as a species that could benefit from conservation efforts - at Black River Gorges national park in Mauritius. Photograph: Mauritius Wildlife Photography/Alamy

Robin Freeman, head of the indicators and assessments unit at ZSL, said it was clear that humanity is eroding the very foundations of life, and urgent action is needed. "In order to see any bending of the curve of biodiversity loss ... it's not just about conservation it's about changing production and consumption - and the only way that we are going to be able to legislate or call for that is to have these clear measurable targets that ask for recovery of abundance, reduction of extinction risk and the ceasing of extinctions at Cop15 in December."

The headline of this article was amended on 13 October 2022. The figure of 70% relates to the average decline across a range of animal populations since 1970, not to the percentage of animal populations "wiped out" since then as an earlier version said.
Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

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Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals

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Huge scale of human-driven loss of species demands urgent action, say world's leading scientists

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Why the Dutch don't say sorry - BBC Reel

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The Netherlands may be a small country, but the Dutch are known for many things: cycling, cheese, coffee shops, windmills and being the tallest people in the world, but there's only one thing they rarely do. Dutch people don't say sorry.

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an analysis by alma

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Cartoon 1 Our love affair with digital is over

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Cartoon 1 Our love affair with digital is over

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Brainstorming on main topics and issues 2021