Author: MIL-OSI Publisher

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Markus Gottschling, Research Associate in Rhetoric, University of Tübingen

In the new documentary, Babo, viewers watch the gifted yet controversial German rapper Haftbefehl almost destroy himself with cocaine. The documentary, which follows both his huge success and his personal crises, has become the most-viewed film on Netflix Germany – a sign of what gets the country talking.

Haftbefehl (literally meaning “arrest warrant”) is one of Germany’s most famous rappers. He’s known for his brutal and drug-glorifying lyrics. Born Aykut Anhan, he is the documentary’s titular “Babo”, a formative figure in German-language rap. Babo – slang for “boss” or “leader” – has been Haftbefehl’s self-proclaimed nickname ever since his breakthrough song Chabos Wissen Wer Der Babo Ist (Chabos Know Who the Babo Is, “chabos” is Romani for boys).

Some consider him a gifted artist, whose command of language has shaped an entire generation in Germany, or a role model, particularly among people with a migrant background. Some student representatives have even urged that Haftbefehl’s lyrics be incorporated into school lessons.

Others see him as a misogynist and antisemite because of some of his lyrics. But admirers and critics alike are now taking part in a broader, and unexpectedly fruitful, public conversation. From the culture pages of major newspapers to office small talk and TikTok, people are suddenly talking about systemic racism, drug-fuelled decline and what counts as art. As linguists and rhetoricians interested in researching common ground, this debate has drawn our attention.

Haftbefehl the orator

On his albums, Haftbefehl raps about growing up as a drug dealer in the housing projects of Offenbach, a city near Frankfurt am Main; about his own drug use and about his meteoric rise to rap superstardom. On the surface, his lyrics follow a street-rap formula, full of familiar hip-hop clichés, but there is more to Haftbefehl’s writing.

His style is shaped by the way he switches between languages and registers, amplifying the force of what he says: “Das ist kein Deutsch, was ich mache, ist Kanakiş” (“What I’m doing isn’t German, it’s Kanakiş”, Kanakiş is his signature slang style). Such multi-ethnic youth varieties of the German language should, as research suggests, no longer be regarded as a sign of lack of integration, but rather as a dynamic dialect.

Threading Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic expressions into German lyrics, he reaches listeners on the streets as well as middle-class teenagers in their bedrooms. No wonder then that Babo had already been declared the official youth word of the year 2013 in Germany.

Haftbefehl is what rhetorical theory would call an orator. In the documentary, we see a speaker whose power lies in weaving content, character and emotional force into one persuasive story.

His message can’t be separated from his image. The emotion in his words and music creates a kind of persuasion that feels lived-in – the mix of tough and vulnerable traits comes across as authentic. Haftbefehl is seen as the “Babo” because his lyrics, sound and personality go beyond what listeners expect, giving them both intense honesty and creative use of language and music.

More and more, however, the documentary shows his severe addiction to cocaine. We hear the rattling and gasping of his breathing and learn how, after an overdose and while still in intensive care, he tore out his tubes and ran off to use again. We also meet other artists, managers and assistants who speak both of his lyrical genius and of his excesses. Anhan is portrayed as a “force of nature” that cannot be contained.

Why he lays himself so completely bare – presenting himself as a junkie with suicidal impulses, as a bad father and as the kind of partner nobody would wish for – is something Anhan himself explains right at the beginning of the documentary: “Do you know why I’m here? In case something ever happens to me, so that my story will be told correctly. From my perspective.”

All of this culminates in a specifically German discourse, one that Haftbefehl’s story shapes. No one questions whether his story has been told “correctly”. But in the documentary’s narrative mirror, we see a problematic figure re-emerge: the romantic genius, tossed between genius and madness.

One scene shows the rapper as a sensitive artist beneath the armour of his superstardom. Haftbefehl plays the production team a song by the German folk singer Reinhard Mey on his smartphone, visibly moved.

The song, written over half a century ago, seems entirely out of place within the rapper’s harsh style – and yet he, and along with him the audience, immediately recognise the parallels to the brokenness of his own life.

In the end, the documentary doesn’t so much show us who Haftbefehl is as provide a pretext for talking about him. This makes his story feel like both a warning and a rescue. We learn that both Anhan, the person, and “Haftbefehl”, the persona, are pushed into getting help when Anhan’s younger brother tricks him into entering a closed rehab clinic in Turkey.

And when we finally see him at the end – overweight, with a flattened nose from cocaine use and a nervous leg twitch – he talks about how he is keeping up: “I’m doing fine, bro. I was in therapy.” In that moment, the documentary gives us a small bit of hope that his future might turn out better.

The deeper issues behind Haftbefehl’s story, however, only really emerge when people begin to discuss what the documentary leaves out: the absence of his mother, or how racism and class differences affect migrant kids – precisely the kind of work public discourse can do, and the reason we need to study it.

Germany has been split into people who admire Haftbefehl and people who can’t stand him. And yet, by talking about Anhan, the country has oddly been brought together.

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Nina Kalwa receives funding from the German Research Foundation.

Markus Gottschling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Babo: the Netflix documentary forcing Germany to confront race, class and the cost of fame – https://theconversation.com/babo-the-netflix-documentary-forcing-germany-to-confront-race-class-and-the-cost-of-fame-269980

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Finn McFall, KTP Associate, University of Surrey

When two people book the same flight, they can get wildly different carbon footprints from online calculators. Many carbon calculators leave out big chunks of climate impact or rely on oversimplified assumptions.

Here’s what’s missing, why it matters and a practical checklist you can use to judge any flight estimate.

1. CO₂ isn’t enough

If a tool only reports in kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO₂), it misses two other groups of emissions:

Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e) is a metric that converts the impact of other greenhouse gases such as methane to an equivalent of carbon dioxide using science-based data that shows their global warming potential. If a calculator only shows CO₂, it undervalues the footprint.

A calculator that references CO₂e includes CO₂ as well as those other greenhouse gas emissions so it is more comprehensive. Good practice cites the metric and links to the emissions table used.

Non-CO₂ impacts are the ways that aircraft warm the climate via nitrogen oxides, water vapour and contrails. These trap heat, effectively acting like a blanket that reflects heat from the Earth back down to the ground. Research shows that these non-CO₂ effects can be comparable to or larger than CO₂ alone on common time horizons.

This means that a CO₂e-only number still undervalues total climate impact for aviation because it doesn’t take into account the effect of nitrogen oxides, water vapour and contrails. The magnitude of non-CO₂ impacts varies with altitude, latitude, weather and time of day, but it’s too large to ignore.

Calculators should quantify it transparently, with uncertainty. The best calculators take into account CO2e and non-CO2 categories.

2. Planes don’t really fly in straight lines

Another source of undervaluation is distance. Many tools assume a great-circle path (shortest distance between the origin and destination airports), plus a small, fixed distance. Real flights are shaped by winds, storms, congestion, military zones and airspace closures that force long detours. Even regular routes between A and B can change on a daily basis due to these variables.

Studies show average detours of several percent even in “normal” times, let alone the current geopolitical state of the world. Increased distance means more fuel consumption and more emissions. So if a calculator doesn’t adjust for route deviations, it will undershoot fuel burn.

By using recent historical route data to adjust pre-flight estimates, the number better reflects how that route is flown now, not how it flies in idealised conditions.

3. Scope: what counts?

Even when distance and emissions are handled well, many tools leave the system boundary, which defines which sources of emissions are included or excluded, too narrow. Many tools disregard the emissions involved in mining for the materials, extracting the fuel and constructing the aircraft themselves.

A comprehensive, standards-aligned footprint includes well-to-tank emissions (fuel extraction, refining, transport), in-flight services and the aircraft and airport life cycle.

ISO 14083, the international standard for the quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from transport chains (2023) sets common rules for quantifying and reporting transport emissions. Good calculators align to it to make their scope explicit and comparable.

But better calculators go beyond it to cover the full scope of flight emissions. If a carbon footprint excludes upstream emissions or infrastructure, expect it to be lower than a comprehensive life cycle view.

4. How your emissions are allocated

Per-passenger emissions accounting involves dividing aircraft-level impacts across seats and cargo. Cabin class and seat density change the space per passenger. Seats in business or first class can have multiple-times the per-capita impact of economy class on the same aircraft.

Load factors (how full a plane is) change the denominator too. Passengers on a plane that’s half full should be allocated twice the emissions. Good methods use load factors and aircraft seating plans that are route, airline and season specific, rather than generalised global assumptions.

5. Baggage and belly cargo

From a traveller’s perspective, it feels unfair if a hand-bag-only passenger gets the same carbon allocation as someone checking 30kg of luggage. Most calculators assume a single average baggage weight, so light travellers subsidise heavy ones. Better approaches allow users to declare baggage or apply route specific baggage factors.

Most passenger flights also carry freight in the belly of the plane. If a calculator attributes all aircraft emissions to passengers, it overstates per-passenger numbers. Fair practice is to split emissions between passengers and airline cargo using load data.

What ‘better’ looks like

Based on recent peer-reviewed work, here is a checklist for any flight calculator. When you next see a carbon footprint for your flight, ask whether it is:

• comprehensive – does it include CO₂, CO₂e and non-CO₂ as well as aligning with ISO 14083 or better, covering the full scope of emissions for an air travel passenger?

• accurate – does it use modern, data-driven methods to predict flight path and fuel consumption, and specific, up to date data for all variables, including load factors and seating configurations?

• transparent – are the methods and data sources published with its limitations and is it peer-reviewed?

• effectively communicated – is there a breakdown of emission sources and is it easy to understand and make targeted climate decisions?

When calculators tick all these boxes, the debate shifts from arguing over a single figure to acting on the biggest drivers. That’s how footprints become tools for change rather than just numbers on a screen.

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Finn McFall works on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between Therme Group and the University of Surrey, co-funded by UKRI through Innovate UK.

Xavier Font works for the University of Surrey. He is part of the academic team working on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between Therme Group and the University of Surrey, co-funded by UKRI through Innovate UK.

– ref. How much CO2 does your flight really produce? How to know if carbon footprint claims are accurate – https://theconversation.com/how-much-co2-does-your-flight-really-produce-how-to-know-if-carbon-footprint-claims-are-accurate-268746

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dipa Kamdar, Senior Lecturer in Pharmacy Practice, Kingston University

It’s the kind of promise that stops thumbs mid-scroll: “Take Molecule and forget food exists.” Viral TikTok clips show influencers flaunting rapid weight-loss transformations, tapping into the body image concerns that leave many young people struggling with what they see in the mirror.

These perceived imperfections are increasingly being addressed through quick fixes – pills and injections that promise effortless change. In the US and UK, weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy dominate the headlines. But in Russia and eastern Europe, a different trend is emerging.

Young people are turning to a drug called Molecule, with some sharing their experiences in a recent BBC report. Behind the social media hype lies a troubling truth: Molecule contains a compound banned in the UK, EU and US for its dangerous side-effects.

The ingredients purported to be in Molecule include dandelion root, fennel seeds and black tea – benign-sounding botanicals that disguise what tests have actually found. These pills contain sibutramine, a substance with a chequered regulatory history.

Sibutramine

Sibutramine was originally sold on prescription under the name Reductil and was widely used to help people lose weight. It works by altering brain chemicals that control hunger. Specifically, it increases levels of serotonin and noradrenaline in the part of the brain that signals when you feel full – meaning people feel satisfied faster and eat less.

Sibutramine can also slightly increase how quickly the body burns energy and prevent metabolism from slowing during weight loss. Together, these effects can help people lose weight and make it easier to maintain that weight loss.

In one study, people who were overweight or obese lost 5–10% of their body weight when they used sibutramine along with consuming fewer calories, exercising regularly and getting support to change their habits. However, the drug’s use declined as more evidence emerged that it could increase the risk of serious heart problems.

In 2010, the European Medicines Agency stopped allowing sibutramine to be prescribed after the results of the large Scout trial were published. This study showed that the drug raised the risk of heart attacks and strokes, particularly in people who already had heart problems.

The US and the UK’s drugs regulators followed suit, citing that the risks outweighed the benefits. The decision was unequivocal: sibutramine was too dangerous for general use.

The side-effects of sibutramine are not just theoretical – they’re well-documented and potentially life-threatening. Common reactions include dry mouth, constipation, insomnia and headaches. But more worrying, the drug can raise blood pressure and make the heart beat faster by stimulating the body’s “fight or flight” system.

This adds extra strain on the heart, which is particularly risky for people who already have heart or circulation problems. In more serious cases, it can lead to a heart attack or stroke.

Serotonin syndrome

Sibutramine can also interact in dangerous ways with other drugs, which many people taking it may not realise. For example, if it is taken alongside certain antidepressants – such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors – it can trigger a condition called serotonin syndrome.

Both drugs raise serotonin levels, and if those levels become too high, it can cause a serious and potentially life-threatening reaction. The same risk can also occur if sibutramine is taken with some migraine medicines, such as sumatriptan, or certain opioid painkillers, such as fentanyl.

Serotonin syndrome can cause symptoms such as confusion, restlessness, sweating, fever, a fast heartbeat, muscle spasms and problems with coordination.

Sibutramine is processed by enzymes in the liver, so it can also interact with other medicines that are broken down in the same way. Some antibiotics such as erythromycin and antifungal drugs such as ketoconazole can block these liver enzymes, thus raising the levels of sibutramine and increasing the risk of side-effects.

In Russia, sibutramine is still available with a prescription for treating obesity in adults. Yet sibutramine continues to surface in unlicensed supplements, including Molecule, often sold under misleading labels proclaiming them “natural” or “herbal” and sold online or through informal channels.

These products bypass regulatory scrutiny, making it difficult for consumers to know exactly what they’re taking. The accessibility is deceptive: what looks like a harmless supplement bought from a seemingly legitimate online seller may contain a banned drug that can cause serious harm.

This comeback shows just how risky unregulated diet pills can be and why it is so important to check that any supplement is safe and legal before taking it. The story of sibutramine is a warning: even medicines that were once approved can have hidden dangers, especially if they are misused or sold illegally. And the promise of easy weight loss often comes with a cost much higher than what is listed on the label.

Dipa Kamdar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Molecule: what’s in this dangerous, illegal slimming pill? – https://theconversation.com/molecule-whats-in-this-dangerous-illegal-slimming-pill-268933

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Bailey, Professor of Business Economics, University of Birmingham

The growth in sales of electric vehicles is a positive step in the UK’s journey to net zero. They are cleaner, quieter and better for the environment.

But while they produce less pollution, electric vehicles (EVs) also produce far less revenue for the treasury. And as more drivers ditch petrol and diesel, the government’s annual £35 billion haul from fuel duty and road tax will dwindle fast.

This is because owners of electric vehicles don’t pay fuel duty, quietly gliding past petrol stations and the tax collector. And for years, that’s been an intentional policy nudge to help the technology take off.

But as EVs go mainstream, those lost tax receipts become impossible to ignore, especially given the UK’s current economic predicament. So the government is now considering a radical reform to make up some of that revenue by charging EV owners per mile travelled.

The idea is that those who drive more, pay more. And it could even be fine-tuned to discourage congestion, perhaps by charging more for driving in a city or town centre during rush-hour. Larger vehicles could pay a higher rate, since an SUV is likely to have a more damaging impact upon a road surface than a smaller city car.

In theory, it’s a fairer and more modern way to fund our roads – and for the treasury it must seem like a good way of restoring predictability to public finances.

But for many Britons, road pricing is a very sensitive subject. When the Blair government floated a similar idea in 2007, the response was intense.

And the danger of a pay-per-mile tax introduced too quickly, by a government desperate for revenue, is that it could trigger a fierce public backlash and risk stalling the EV transition.

Springing a new charge on EV owners who bought their cars on the promise of cheaper running costs, for example, could feel like a betrayal. And public trust in the green transition depends upon fairness and predictability.

If EV drivers suddenly find themselves paying more than they expected to, others will think twice before making the switch, which could slow EV adoption when momentum is finally building.

There’s also the issue of how such a system would actually work. To charge by the mile, the state needs to know how far you’ve driven. That could mean annual odometer checks or, more controversially, real-time tracking via GPS.

The latter might be efficient, but it also sounds pretty Orwellian. Handing the government or private contractors a record of every journey would raise concerns about surveillance and data privacy. Even if the system were technically secure, it could still feel like a step too far for many drivers.

Then there’s geography. A flat per-mile charge would hit rural motorists, who tend to drive further and have fewer public transport alternatives, hardest. Urban drivers, meanwhile, could face a double tax if road pricing overlaps with congestion zones.

So fairness could make or break this policy.

Part of this fairness will come down to timing. Right now, EVs are still more expensive to buy than petrol or diesel cars, charging infrastructure remains patchy and household budgets are under pressure from inflation and high energy costs. Is this really the moment to make EV driving more expensive?

A premature shift to pay-per-mile taxation would punish the very people the government has spent years encouraging to go green. It would also send a damaging signal to the market: that the rules of the game can change overnight.

Full speed ahead?

But the shift to EVs is both inevitable and desirable, so the sensible path is probably a gradual one. This year, owners of EVs began paying road tax – a small but symbolic step toward equal treatment with other car drivers. Beyond that, if the UK is to move to a pay-per-mile model eventually (and it probably will) the design needs to be spot on.

It needs to be transparent about the need to replace lost fuel duty. It needs to respect privacy, by basing the system on reported mileage – not GPS tracking – maybe as part of the annual MOT.

It also needs to be fair, with rates adjusted for geography and access to public transport, and different rates for different sized vehicles, to account for greater impact upon roads.

It may also be worth ring-fencing the revenue it creates to improve roads, expand public transport and invest in charging networks. If drivers can see where their money is going, they may be more amenable to charges.

Handled with care, a mileage-based system could modernise the way Britain funds its transport network while keeping net zero on track. But rushing to impose new charges on EV drivers just to plug a fiscal hole would be short-sighted and self-defeating.

The government should resist the temptation for a quick fix, and instead build a system that is gradual, transparent and fair. Do this, and road pricing could work as a long-term solution. Do it badly, and it risks becoming a symbol of another tax grab and a green betrayal.

The road to a sustainable transport tax system will be long and winding. The UK can get there, but only if it drives things forward carefully.

David Bailey receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council through its UK in a Changing Europe programme.

Phil Tomlinson receives funding from the Innovation and Research Caucus (IRC). He also drives an electric vehicle.

– ref. UK plans for pay-per-mile electric vehicle tax could make the system fairer – or provoke a fierce backlash – https://theconversation.com/uk-plans-for-pay-per-mile-electric-vehicle-tax-could-make-the-system-fairer-or-provoke-a-fierce-backlash-269728

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Ratcliffe, Lecturer in Sustainability, Tourism and Heritage Management, York St John University

Thousands of visitors each year explore the landscapes of the UK’s national parks on foot, through walking, rambling, hiking, mountaineering and, more recently, forest bathing.

Many of the earliest advocates for a national park system were notable walkers. They ranged from Lake District conservationists such as William and Dorothy Wordsworth to the ramblers who staged the Kinder Scout trespass in 1932 to demand greater access to the countryside.

I study the relationship between nature and culture in these national parks. As part of my research, I conduct semi-structured walking interviews with communities in the North York Moors national park to further understandings of this relationship. I am part of a wider research team who work with a diverse range of protected landscapes.

Walking, tied to public access and a growing environmental consciousness, grew as an organised leisure activity over the course of the 20th century alongside the development of ideas to protect the UK countryside. Many walkers, often young, working-class people who were members of rambling and hiking clubs, campaigned for greater access to and further protection of the countryside.

The popularity of walking was affirmed with the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949, which established England’s rights of way network and founded the UK’s national park system.

The North York Moors, in the north-east of England, was designated a national park in 1952, following this Act. The 1950s then saw a new wave of walkers to the park, encouraged by the increasing use of motor cars, the rise of walking clubs and the spread of youth hostels.

The Lyke Wake Walk was created in 1955 by a local farmer and Cambridge graduate called Bill Cowley. It’s a 42-mile crossing of the North York Moors which became a popular charity walk in the 1960s and 1970s. This increase in walkers brought controversy at the time, especially among the farming population, because of the levels of erosion it was causing. At its peak, 10,000 people crossed the moors each year, not always on public rights of way. Challenge walks were very new back then and most of the people attempting it were inexperienced. Two mountain rescue teams were formed as a result of lost and distressed walkers.

Today, it is still a celebrated “challenge” walk undertaken by ramblers and runners. And 2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the first set of ramblers to successfully cross the park.

Walking through modern parks

The national park’s modern history is closely tied to two other long distance footpaths: the Cleveland Way and the Coast to Coast walk. Alec Falconer, one of the founding members of the Middlesbrough Rambling Club campaigned for a long distance walk around the periphery of the North York Moors. Thanks to his work, the Cleveland Way was established in 1969.

This was the country’s second largest trail at the time, following the establishment of the Pennine Way in 1965. Up to 2,000 hikers complete the whole trail each year.

Created by guidebook author Alfred Wainwright, the Coast to Coast walk is one of the UK’s most popular long-distance footpaths and runs across this national park. Some 6,000 people a year walk the trail, which brings many international visitors to the park. Restoration and conservation work is currently ongoing as this walk is upgraded to a national trail.

With the gradual expansion of tourism in the North York Moors since its national park designation in the 1950s and the increasing popularity of these footpaths, more pressure has been put on the landscape through walking. Paths have been eroded in places with the responsibility of maintenance falling upon the national park authority and landowners. A ranger I spoke to during a walking interview as part of my research commented on the condition of a footpath on Fylingdales Moor:

“I know this path very well … this used to be horrendously boggy and the park is doing a damn good job here … you are on the old smugglers trod route.”

Today, walking is one of the most popular activities in the park. Some 6.5 million people in 2024 visited the park for a short or long walk. The park offers an expansive network of public rights of way alongside extensive open access land.

Some paths make use of the park’s industrial heritage, using old rail tracks as walking routes, such as the Cinder Track which is a disused railway and now a footpath and cycle track through the park from Scarborough to Whitby.

Walking in this national park plays a vital role in supporting the wellbeing of nearby urban communities, such as Middlesborough and Scarborough. Residents from disadvantaged backgrounds access the park to improve their physical and mental health and the North York Moors National Park Authority aims to build on this through the growing popularity of NHS programmes which socially prescribe nature-based activities.

As a support worker from the local community told me: “Getting out here in that fresh air. It is relaxation and peacefulness. It brings a different mindset connecting with nature. I get something to take home.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more people have come to appreciate the importance of visiting the national park for health-related reasons. Not only for its extensive heather moorland, the largest in England and Wales, but also for its distinctive coastal villages and other special qualities of the park. Yet many who visit do not realise that the North York Moors landscape is not natural – much of the heather moorland is farmed and managed by private landowners for shooting and farming purposes.

In a time of ecological uncertainty, walking is a vital means of sensing and interpreting a countryside in transition – marked by biodiversity loss, a deepening climate crisis and emerging landscape recovery and rewilding projects that reimagine the relationship between people and land.

Through walking, new creative responses can emerge to address sustainability challenges, including social inequalities, climate and biodiversity emergencies, across the UK’s protected landscapes.

Many of the debates around walking that shaped the original designation of the UK’s national park system remain relevant today – particularly those concerning access and the right to roam, the balance between land conservation, protection and development and approaches to moorland management and land use.

Walking through the moors enable us to engage deeply, respectfully, and reflectively with these ongoing discussions and consider the future of the UK’s uplands.

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Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

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Tom Ratcliffe works for York St John University. Tom received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for his PhD thesis. Tom is affiliated with the North York Moors Association.

– ref. Walking through the North York Moors National Park – a place of adventure, conservation and healing – https://theconversation.com/walking-through-the-north-york-moors-national-park-a-place-of-adventure-conservation-and-healing-266929

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Leo Ziegel, Independent Postdoc Affiliated with the Global & Sexual Health research group (GloSH), Karolinska Institutet

Teenagers all over the world use social media and messaging apps as part of their daily lives. This is accompanied by growing concerns about negative effects of social media on youth mental health – and ongoing debates around limiting screen time and access to digital devices.

What’s frequently missing in these conversations, though, is what teenagers themselves think. How do online activities affect their mental health? How do they want adults to engage with them around this issue? Figuring out the concerns that young people have is crucial to addressing the ways these might be affecting their mental health.

In our recent research, we collaborated with Unicef and partners around the world to interview over 490 young people aged ten to 19 about their mental health and use of digital communication. This was a unique study, given the diversity of countries included: Belgium, Chile, Egypt, Indonesia, Jamaica, Jordan, China, Malawi, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States.

We found that the young people had nuanced views. They reflected on both positive and negative aspects of digital communication. The views they expressed were fairly similar across countries and income levels, pointing to shared sentiments among young people in an increasingly globalised digital world.

Across countries, young people repeatedly mentioned that adults are not sufficiently involved or do not understand what children and teenagers do online. They also pointed out that adults too seldom reflect on their own digital activities. And perhaps contrary to what adults might expect, young people wanted adults to know and care about their online lives. A young boy from Chile said:

I have a friend that I met through a game. He speaks to me six days a week to tell me that he has problems and that he cannot tell his parents, because when he tells them they minimize it. I try to help him […] but I am not an adult who has lived those things.

Many participants emphasised that digital communication can provide social and emotional support and belonging, which are good for wellbeing. But young people also reported how digital interactions can increase stress and anxiety by constant social comparisons, cyberbullying and time-wasting. They wanted adults to give them more guidance about how to deal with what they experienced online.

According to the young people, the quality of their online interactions is really important. Positive and supportive communication tends to act as a buffer to negative emotions. Negative interactions or passive consumption of others’ content, however, tend to create or amplify poor mental health, such as symptoms of depression.

Comparisons and bullying

They told us that constant comparisons with celebrities and influencers – their physical appearance and economic success – create unrealistic life expectations and promote harmful gender stereotypes. For girls in particular, this meant a pressure to look “pretty”, as well as feeling that their self-worth was linked to the number of likes or interactions received on social media posts.

Many young people told us they knew that online content is not necessarily genuine, but that such social comparisons still affected their mental health negatively. A teenage boy in Sweden said:

I think social media has a very big influence. You compare yourself with other people. You don’t see that they are another human being, [that] they have other problems. You only see this facade of a human being that is perfect, and it makes you feel worse.

Another major negative aspect was bullying on social media or in chat groups. Digital tools extend bullying from physical settings, such as in school, into young people’s private spaces. “With social networks we are never protected from the opinions of others,” one boy said.

Both boys and girls feared their photos being misused or being disseminated in embarrassing or threatening ways. Young people in a number of countries also felt that girls are more vulnerable to sexually explicit abuse online.

But young people globally agreed that digital communication helps them to develop and strengthen their social connections. Our interviews took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, when this connection was particularly important. Social media helped them to make new friends from far away who shared similar interests or faced similar challenges. This created mutual support to navigate mental health challenges. A teenage girl in Chile said:

You sometimes get stuck on the internet because there are people who you can get to know, who for example have the same interests, and there you no longer feel rejected… The people around you, they do not accept you…. [The internet] can make you feel better, like you are not alone.

The young people also told us that social media and online gaming distract them from problems and stressors, helping them cope with mental distress. They talked about the value of anonymous help for mental distress online, as well as being able to find accessible information about mental health online.

To help young people deal with how their online lives affect their mental health, adults need to strengthen their own digital literacy and listen to young people’s perspectives. Initiatives that promote safer online environments should be designed together with young people to be relevant, trusted, and effective.

Leo Ziegel reports funding from Trygg-Hansa.

Carl Fredrik Sjöland is a researcher at Karolinska Institutet and is independently employed at the Public Health Agency of Sweden.

– ref. What teenagers want adults to know about their digital lives – https://theconversation.com/what-teenagers-want-adults-to-know-about-their-digital-lives-266014

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anthony Downey, Professor of Visual Culture, Birmingham City University

Please note his piece contains spoilers for Ex Machina.

In the more than a decade since its release in 2015, the film Ex Machina – written and directed by Alex Garland – has proved to be an insightful forerunner to contemporary concerns surrounding the social and cultural impact of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and what is now commonly termed “superintelligence”.

Through the central figure of Ava (an advanced humanoid played by Swedish actor Alicia Vikander), the film explored the ramifications of an AI attaining human-level intelligence and, thereafter, assuming superintelligence.

The arrival of superintelligence in AI systems, it has been argued, would signify a level of consciousness and “brain” power that would rapidly challenge the idea of creativity being a uniquely human activity. Anticipating and fearing such an outcome, Ava’s creator, the tech entrepreneur Nathan (Oscar Isaac), hires Caleb (Domhnall Gleason), a programmer, to perform a kind of Turing test on her (a way of assessing if AI can think).

In a succession of events that map her evolving sense of selfhood and self-awareness, Ava notably expresses her creativity and potential consciousness through a series of complex drawings, including a landscape image of her surroundings and a portrait of Caleb. Convinced that she has indeed attained consciousness, Caleb sees Ava’s creativity and ingenuity as a clear sign that she has not only passed the Turing test but has also achieved a form of superintelligence.

It is precisely this vision of the imminent arrival of superintelligence that is central to both the film and wider debates about whether AI-powered models of innovation will supersede, if not in time replace, human creativity.

The idea that AI will indeed achieve levels of creative thinking and innovation has recently become central to unprecedented levels of investment from companies – including OpenAI, Scale AI, Anthropic, Anduril and Meta (which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Meta AI) – who appear to have few reservations about the possibility of superintelligence becoming a reality.

But what form will creativity in AI take, and will a breakthrough in the way machines “think” really enable them to be creative?

Not merely a machine

In what is now considered to be a watershed moment for AI, a verifiable level of machine creativity was arguably proven in a now infamous game of Go.

Centred on a player’s ability to capture territory on a board, Go is widely considered to be one of the most complex games of strategy ever invented. In March 2016, Lee Sedol, the 18-times world Go champion, was nevertheless convincingly defeated in a five-game match against DeepMind’s AlphaGo.

AlphaGo confounded Sedol in the second game of that match when it executed what has since become known as “move 37”. A counterintuitive gambit initially thought to be a glitch in the programme, move 37 was so profoundly outside of the usual patterns of play that for many – programmers, commentators and players alike – it was seen as unequivocal evidence of creative intuition in a machine.

As Sedol magnanimously noted following the game: “I thought AlphaGo was based on probability calculation and that it was merely a machine. But when I saw this move, I changed my mind. Surely, AlphaGo is creative.”

For all the warnings about the future impact of AI on the creative industries and concerns about authorship, labour, commodification and cultural value, it is important to note the degree to which human creativity is being increasingly supported by developments in AI.

When we look again at Ava’s drawings in Ex Machina, they not only illustrate the ubiquitous presence of neural networks but also the methods by which AI-enhanced models of image production learn to predict patterns from input data, or datasets.

In a key scene in the film, we learn that Ava’s neural networks have been programmed using information – datasets – illegally harvested by Nathan from Blue Book, the Google-style company that he founded and owns. Notably, Ava’s drawings reflect the datasets on which she has been trained.

When we use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), an AI that creates text, images, videos and other content to concoct images, we are likewise leveraging it to generate content based on the datasets used to train machine models of image production.

Widely employed in programs such as Dall-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion – all of which enjoy a wide consumer base – GenAI powers both Ava’s neural networks and is likewise shaping future models of human creativity.

In a recent report from the Royal Institute of British Architects it was observed that the proportion of architectural practices using AI in their designs in 2025 stood at 59%, compared to 41% in 2024. This increase in the use of AI led the report’s authors to ask whether an AI could replace the role of the architect in the not-so-distant future.

Adding to these debates, in June 2025 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development published an extended research paper that further detailed the degree to which GenAI is being regularly used to enhance human creativity through the use of neural networks and autonomous systems.

Autonomous thinking machines

It is precisely this term “autonomous”, however, that sparks controversy about AGI and superintelligence, nowhere more so than when we consider the widespread deployment of AI in self-driving vehicles, robots, unmanned drones and automated weapons systems. Elon Musk, an early investor in DeepMind (the company behind AlphaGo), recently announced that the long-term success of Tesla lies with humanoid robots, or autonomous Optimus bots.

Meanwhile, in what is major concern for governments and international organisations alike, autonomous weapons systems are already providing the means for the eventual automation of war. These developments foreshadow the spectre of unmanned aerial systems that can independently identify, target and kill an “enemy” without much by way of human intervention.

It is this vision of an autonomous superintelligence acting independent of human control or oversight that has long haunted our often-fraught relationship with advanced technologies.

At the close of the film, Ava has achieved a level of autonomous agency that suggests the presence of AGI, if not a conscious level of decision-making or superintelligence. We watch in horror as she kills her creator Nathan and imprisons her sympathetic ally, Caleb.

If an AI-powered superintelligence does become a reality, it could not only trigger a radical rethink of how we understand human creativity but, more crucially, spark an existential crisis in the very meaning, if not future, of humanity.

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Anthony Downey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Ex Machina: could “superintelligence” challenge the idea of creativity as a uniquely human activity? – https://theconversation.com/ex-machina-could-superintelligence-challenge-the-idea-of-creativity-as-a-uniquely-human-activity-264709