Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Eamon McCrory, Professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology, UCL

Between 2014 and 2024, the proportion of people aged 16–24 in England experiencing mental health issues rose from 19% to 26%.

This means over 1.6 million young people – enough to fill Wembley Stadium 18 times over – are affected by mental ill-health today.

Social media is often at the centre of conversations about what’s driving this trend. But while our increasingly digital lives are part of the story, the bigger picture is more complex. Young people are arguably spending more time online partly because the real world has less and less to offer them.

At the heart of their declining wellbeing is the hollowing out of the real-world infrastructure that supports healthy social development, with social lives becoming increasingly fragile and “thinned”.

This “social thinning”, a term we developed in research exploring trauma, includes fewer opportunities to play, take risks and build supportive relationships. This thinning, we believe, has worrying implications for development and mental health.

One of us (Eamon McCrory) is a neuroscientist who has spent years studying risk and resilience and brain systems that develop across adolescence. During this period, the brain refines the systems that help us understand others, form a clear sense of self and regulate our emotions.

Teenagers are wired to explore friendships, navigate complex social groups and practice handling conflict and rejection. These experiences help young people develop agency and independence.

But developing these abilities depends on spending time in a wide range of real social environments with different kinds of relationships, from casual interactions to close friendships.

When chances to practise these skills shrink, it can lead to loneliness and consequences for development. It can become harder to trust others, feel connected to peers or manage strong emotions.

For example, one study used the pandemic as an opportunity to test the effect of a significant reduction in social connections between teenagers. The researchers found that trust was low in adolescents during lockdown, and this in turn was associated with high levels of stress.

In other words, the evidence points to deprivation of social connection as having developmental consequences, and over time, an increased risk of mental health difficulties.

Thinning social worlds

The real-world experiences that support these crucial neurological processes have been steadily declining. Between 2011 and 2023, over 1,200 council-run youth centres in England and Wales closed, and £1.2 billion has been stripped from youth service budgets since 2010 in England. Meanwhile, parks and open spaces have suffered from underinvestment.

Cultural shifts have also had an impact. It has been suggested that fears about safety and a desire to minimise risks for their children have produced a “risk-averse” parenting culture. In schools, rising academic pressures and an emphasis on achievement have come at the expense of play and exploration.

Research suggests that children today have significantly less freedom to roam, play outdoors, or gather with peers than previous generations.

The environments in which young people can explore, fail safely and develop social mastery have been radically narrowed. It is into an already thinning social ecosystem that digital platforms enter.

Digital help and harm

Despite many arguments to the contrary, digital spaces are not inherently harmful. They can offer connection, self-expression and community.

This can be particularly true for those marginalised offline, with research suggesting social media can actually support the mental health and wellbeing of young LGBTQ people. Our online and offline lives are deeply intertwined, with online connections often allowing us to deepen existing relationships.

The problem is less that young people are online, and more that online life has rushed in to fill the gaps left by a shrinking offline world.

Moreover, digital platforms are built for profit, not development. Young people are shaping their identities, sense of belonging and social status within systems designed to drive constant engagement – a phenomenon which is only accelerating with the advent of AI.

Social media platforms encourage comparison, performance and rapid responses. More broadly, the digital world can pull attention away from the real world and place young people under persistent pressure. It can also affect how – across a formative period of development – they make sense of themselves and the world around them.

Solid foundations in a digital world

There is growing recognition that preventing mental ill health means investing in the social foundations of childhood. McCrory is the chief executive of the mental health charity Anna Freud, which is making a significant shift towards prevention: prioritising building strengths,reducing risks and supporting wellbeing before problems become entrenched. And, of course, positive relationships are the cornerstone of healthy development.

To reverse rising rates of mental ill health, we need to reimagine and invest in the social scaffolding that supports healthy development, ensuring children and young people grow up in socially rich environments. This requires serious investment in youth services, outdoor spaces and community infrastructure.

Schools need more time for play, creativity and extracurricular activities, not just academic performance. Families need support to create shared experiences, from outdoor play to community participation.

Digital platforms are now part of everyday life, but they must complement rather than replace experiences in the physical world. By enriching, not thinning, young people’s social worlds and giving them places and relationships that build trust, foster agency and support connection, we can strengthen the foundations for lifelong wellbeing.

Eamon McCrory is affiliated with UCL (Professor of Developmental Neuroscience and Psychopathology) and Anna Freud (CEO)

Ritika Chokhani is currently the recipient of a PhD studentship funded by the Wellcome Trust, focusing on similar research areas.

– ref. Young people’s social worlds are ‘thinning’ – here’s how that’s affecting wellbeing – https://theconversation.com/young-peoples-social-worlds-are-thinning-heres-how-thats-affecting-wellbeing-272111

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sara Read, Lecturer in English, Loughborough University

You may have noticed people out and about with little stickers on their faces. Perhaps you’ve seen moons, stars, clouds or even smiley faces adorning people’s cheeks and chins. Maybe you wear them yourself. While some people do wear them as accessories, these colourful stickers are medicated “pimple patches”, designed to treat spots or acne.

Some of the patches simply contain a gel formula, which keeps the emerging blemish moist to aid healing. Some wearers opt for near-transparent film patches to get the benefit in a more inconspicuous way.

Far from a new fad, beauty patches have a long history. The trend first took off in 17th-century Europe, with patches made from paper, silk or velvet, or even fine leather, cut into lozenge shapes, stars or crescent moons.

They could be made in many colours, but black was generally preferred as it made a stark contrast to the idealised pale face of western upper-class men and women, who saw this complexion as a status symbol, showing they did not go outdoors to work. The play Blurt, Master-Constable from 1602 explains another appeal of the patches – when well applied, they could “draw men’s eyes to shoot glances at you”.

Mentions of patches occur regularly in print from the late 16th and early 17th century. Just like today, beauty patches had a dual function. In his 1601 play Jack Drum’s Entertainment, John Marston explains that: “Black patches are worn, some for pride, some to stay the rheum, and some to hide the scab.”

So, some were worn by people wanting to make themselves seem more attractive, and some – sometimes medicated – were used to dry up sores. Some patches were used to conceal blemishes like the scars left by diseases such as smallpox or even syphilis.

No one’s 20s and 30s look the same. You might be saving for a mortgage or just struggling to pay rent. You could be swiping dating apps, or trying to understand childcare. No matter your current challenges, our Quarter Life series has articles to share in the group chat, or just to remind you that you’re not alone.

Read more from Quarter Life:

• Why thinking about ageing is so complex when you’re a woman in your 20s today

• How to be happy with what you have – and avoid the trap of comparison

• Your ‘skin barrier’ protects your skin and keeps it hydrated – here’s how to look after it

This latter use was the reason moralists took issue with patches. One anonymous book from 1665 claimed a chaplain of King Charles I had given a sermon comparing beauty patches to the biblical mark of Cain. It is reported that he went so far as to suggest that wearing these accessories invited plague epidemics: “black-patches and beauty-spots … were Forerunners of other Spots, and Marks of the Plague”.

Other moralists focused on how, just like makeup, their job was to conceal and present a false front, which could trick admirers. This was a criticism that took on more weight into the 18th century, when people linked the use of patches to sexual promiscuity.

A Harlot’s Progress by William Hogarth (1731) is a series of images depicting the fall of a country girl, Moll Hackabout. Newly arrived in London, she is tricked by the real life brothelkeeper Elizabeth Needham. Needham’s face is covered with black patches.

Civil servant Samuel Pepys makes over a dozen mentions of these patches in his diary between 1660 and 1669. He first encountered “two very pretty ladies, very fashionable and with black patches, who very merrily sang all the way” on a business trip to the Hague in spring 1660.

The next day on a stroll through town, he noted how: “Everybody of fashion speaks French or Latin, or both. The women many of them very pretty and in good habits, fashionable and black spots.”

He noted that patches were often moistened with spit to hold them on. In May 1668, he recalled seeing Lady Castlemayne – mistress to Charles II – demanding a patch from the face of her maid, wetting it in her mouth and applying it to the side of her own face. We know from Pepys that James, Duke of York also favoured a patch or two.

By August that same year, Pepys noted in a diary entry that his wife Elisabeth was sporting black patches to a christening. Yet he seemed to have forgotten this when he noted in November that: “My wife seemed very pretty to-day, it being the first time I had given her leave to wear a black patch.” He sported a patch himself in September 1664 when he woke with a scabby mouth.

The fashion for wearing patches rose higher in the Restoration era (1660-1700), when returning royalist exiles from the Commonwealth brought home French fashions that they considered the height of sophistication.

English writer Mary Evelyn explained that mouches was the fashionable French name for “Flies, or, Black Patches”, since patches were called “flies” in French and sometimes in English too. Evelyn’s poem The Ladies Dressing-Room Unlock’d, published posthumously in 1690, was a biting satire on the Francophile fashions of Restoration London that Evelyn thought only the vulgar would indulge in.

While it is hard to see how people wearing spot patches nowadays might be subject to the same sorts of moralising backlash seen in the past, there are corners of the internet that mock people for going out in public with visible spot patches.

Whether they work or not, pimple patches are a harmless accessory. From the late 17th century, books begin to refer to patch boxes, ornate little containers specifically designed to hold patches.

Fashionable types came to like to be seen carrying a little silver box especially designed to hold their velvet or silk patches. Perhaps this will be the next development in the modern pimple patch craze.

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.

Sara Read 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. Pimple patches have hidden our blemishes for hundreds of years – historian explains – https://theconversation.com/pimple-patches-have-hidden-our-blemishes-for-hundreds-of-years-historian-explains-271013

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sayed Elhoushy, Senior Lecturer in Marketing, Queen Mary University of London

Since November 2025, commuters at Southwark tube station in London have been passing walls lined with vintage-style posters parodying oil and gas advertising, instead of ads promoting flights or energy companies. One 1950s-style poster shows a woman holding a small yellow aeroplane as if it were a cigarette; another has the slogan: For a quicker climate crisis use … Fossil Ads.

This visibility and attention to the climate crisis is welcome. But with more campaigns competing for attention – often with conflicting messages – the effect can quickly become overwhelming. Messages designed to raise awareness or inspire action also trigger ad fatigue.

Ad fatigue is well recognised in marketing: when people encounter the same message too often, it loses impact. A growing body of research shows that repeated exposure to similar advertising messages has negative consequences within and beyond climate contexts. Climate ad fatigue refers to a decline in effectiveness when people become overexposed to climate-related messages.

Researchers like me are investigating how certain climate messages create fatigue. One study shows that people who already feel worn down by constant climate messaging can become even more fatigued after seeing one more headline. That added fatigue doesn’t only decrease their interest — it reduces compassion and reduces willingness to support climate action.

Another study highlights the role of attention. Paying attention to climate change is a precondition for climate-friendly action. But attention is easily disrupted. When people are stressed, distracted or overloaded with information, climate communication becomes something to tune out rather than engage with.

Despite rising fatigue, the advertising industry is expanding rapidly. Global ad spending is expected to reach US$1.17 trillion (£0.88 trillion) in 2025 up from roughly US$792 billion in 2024. Sustainability advertising represents a growing share as brands compete to position themselves as environmentally responsible.

Oil and gas companies have increased their climate-related communication. Although many of these campaigns focus on green initiatives or future sustainability goals, critics argue that the messaging can obscure ongoing fossil-fuel operations.

Transport for London records show that hundreds of oil and gas ads have run across its network in recent years. These campaigns reach millions of commuters.

The rise of counter campaigns

Across the UK and Europe, campaign groups are pushing for limits on fossil-fuel ads in public spaces. Examples include ad-free city initiatives and petitions to prohibit such advertising altogether.

Comparisons with past tobacco advertising rules are becoming more common, with some arguing that fossil-fuel ads should face similar restrictions. The campaign at Southwark station by Badvertising, by a climate charity called Possible, reflects this wider movement.

Yet, as both sides escalate their advertising, the public risks becoming more fatigued. Research shows that people – especially children and young people – increasingly worry about the planet and often feel sad, anxious, powerless or guilty.

These emotional reactions mirror wider findings that fear-based or stress-inducing contexts often reduce responsible behaviour. Managing these emotions is important.

If climate ads are starting to grow and feel tiring, repeating the same crisis-driven messages can push people away. What keeps attention instead is relevance, creativity, and variety.

A report by thinktank ClimateXChange shows that climate messages work better when they are rooted in local realities, focused on solutions, and linked to clear, achievable actions. Storytelling plays a key role here, helping people see how climate change connects with their own lives, rather than something abstract and difficult to influence.

Creativity matters too. Research shows that creative ads, characterised by high divergence and relevance, is less likely to wear out over time. A report by a climate charity also suggests that using different frames, voices and formats – from personal stories to humour, visuals or creative perspectives – can help advertisers prevent fatigue in increasingly crowded media environments.

For the public, managing climate ad fatigue isn’t about disengaging. It is about being more selective where attention goes. People can choose to ignore climate messages that place responsibility mainly on individual behaviour, and instead engage with communications that point to systemic causes and collective solutions.

Campaigns such as the Southwark posters do this by shifting attention away from personal choice and toward the industries and regulatory systems. Public support for restrictions on fossil fuel ads, similar to those applied to tobacco, would reduce misleading messages at their source instead of placing the burden on people to filter them out.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 47,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

Sayed Elhoushy 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. How climate campaigns can cut through ad fatigue – https://theconversation.com/how-climate-campaigns-can-cut-through-ad-fatigue-269839

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yang Ding, Lecturer in Marketing, University of Reading

Every December, many shoppers plan to buy fewer things and choose more sustainable options. Yet as the month goes on, spending rises and fast fashion becomes hard to resist. Christmas has become a moment when good intentions collide with discounts and the emotional pull of seasonal fashion.

That contradiction became unusually visible when fashion giant Shein opened its first permanent shop inside the BHV department store in Paris in November. Crowds formed as shoppers tried to get in, while protesters stood outside holding signs and shouting “shame” over concerns about its ESG (environmental, social and governance) track record.

Shein has taken rapid turnaround times and low prices to a new level, taking it beyond fast fashion to “ultra-fast fashion”.

Some other brands with retail space inside the department store announced they planned to withdraw in protest at Shein’s presence. And the opening of new Shein stores across France has been delayed.

There was more controversy. The French government demanded controls, including age verification, on parts of Shein’s online platform amid investigations into banned weapons and childlike sex dolls on its site, placing the company under more scrutiny.

When it was made aware of the products in November, a spokesman for Shein said the company was taking the issue “extremely seriously”. It disabled the part of its site where third-party sellers list their products.

At the same time, shoppers entering the Paris store found higher prices than online, which added another layer to the debate over Shein’s transparency and the wider environmental and labour concerns linked to fast fashion.

What makes Christmas such a powerful moment for fast fashion is not only seasonal marketing but also the psychological dynamics that help consumers assuage their environmental guilt. Fast fashion already accounts for a significant share of online clothing sales in France, and Shein has become one of the largest retailers by volume, despite rising public criticism.

In the UK, sales of fast fashion have reached billions of pounds, with strong annual growth, suggesting that affordability eventually outweighs ethical concerns.

Research into consumer behaviour shows that people often use moral excuses to justify questionable purchases, telling themselves that everyone else is doing the same or that the harm is distant and indirect. This softens the ethical tension long enough to make the purchase.

Beyond guilt reduction, fast fashion benefits from what marketing researchers describe as temporal discounting. This is when consumers focus on short-term enjoyment and price rather than longer-term environmental damage.

Shein’s rapid production model turns digital trends into products within days, producing instant gratification. Future harms such as waste or emissions are psychologically distant at the moment of buying. These mechanisms help explain why fast fashion continues to flourish even as climate concerns grow.

In many ways, the Christmas rush exposes a wider conflict between consumers’ ethical intentions and the realities of global retail. This paradox is not only personal. It also shapes how governments and the public respond to Shein’s growing presence.

The protests outside the Paris store echo the tension across regulatory and societal institutions, where concerns about labour conditions and environmental impact collide with the influence of a company that has become central to contemporary fashion.

Why the Paris protests matter beyond ESG

It may be tempting to see the demonstrations in Paris simply as another reaction to environmental issues. Yet concerns around Shein were already part of the public debate long before the store opened. Fast fashion has relied for decades on outsourcing to cheaper manufacturing centres with limited worker protections.

Even after the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013 when 1,134 people (mainly garment workers), were killed in Bangladesh when their factory building collapsed, many European fast fashion companies continued to face criticism about their environmental violations across global supply chains.

What distinguishes the current controversy are not the ethical problems but the challenge Shein poses to the traditional balance of power in global fashion. For much of the past century, European companies dominated the industry and shaped international tastes.

Now Shein’s algorithmically-driven and hyperresponsive model is disrupting that dominance. This speed fuels waste and environmental damage even as its low prices keep attracting millions of shoppers.

In this sense, for Shein, Paris becomes more than a retail location. Success in one of the world’s fashion capitals would mark an important moment in Shein’s global expansion and signal that it is no longer operating at the margins.

It would also test whether this new type of fashion giant can prove itself beyond its online audience, in the eyes of regulators, partner brands and in-store shoppers.

The pushback Shein faces in Paris points to a broader anxiety about who now holds influence in the fashion industry. A Chinese fast fashion giant has bypassed traditional European gatekeepers and challenged the established hierarchy of who shapes the industry’s future.

In response to a 2024 report criticising working conditions in some of the factories it uses, Shein said in a statement it was “actively working to improve our suppliers’ practices, including ensuring that hours worked are voluntary and that workers are compensated fairly for what they do”. And with regard to criticisms about its environmental impact, Shein has said its use of AI has now cut the amount of waste generated in its production processes.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why shoppers buy fast fashion even if they disagree with it – https://theconversation.com/why-shoppers-buy-fast-fashion-even-if-they-disagree-with-it-271452

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of Essex

In the year and a half since Labour won a landslide in the 2024 general election, over 400 polls have been published. Combined, these polls tell a story of a government and its traditional opposition party losing support and fringe parties gaining ground. The big question this poses is whether Reform can win the next general election.

When these polls are combined into weekly averages since the general election, they show that Labour and Reform have averaged 25% in vote intentions over this period. The Conservatives have averaged 21%, the Liberal Democrats 13% and the Greens 9%.

Vote intentions since the 2024 election:

The trends show that support for Labour has declined continuously since the election. In the case of the Conservatives, they were ahead of Reform until shortly after Kemi Badenoch was elected as leader. From this point on, Nigel Farage’s Reform party moved well ahead of both Labour and the Conservatives.

It appears that Badenoch’s strategy of trying to outdo Reform in rightwing rhetoric has failed. The Liberal Democrats have remained close to their 13% support throughout. The Greens received a boost when Zack Polanski was elected leader in September 2025. The Greens are now a strong rival to Labour, hoovering up leftwing voters who supported Labour in the general election. This is particularly true if the new leftwing Your Party cannot settle its internal squabbling.

Where does the Reform vote come from?

It is interesting to know where the Reform vote comes from – and especially whether it is taking more votes from Labour or the Conservatives. One way of finding this out is to conduct a panel survey to ask the same people about their voting intentions over time, to see if it changes. Unfortunately, this cannot be done with polling data since it’s too difficult and expensive for pollsters to keep contacting the same people.

An alternative and much easier way of finding out where the vote comes from is to look at the strength of the relationship between trends in Reform voting and voting for the other parties. To do this, we need to look at the changes in support for all five parties. As an example, the correlation between changes in the Reform vote and changes in the Conservative vote over this period is -0.40.

If the correlation were -1.0 that would mean a decrease of Conservative support by 1% would produce an increase in Reform support of 1%. If the correlation was zero it would mean the Conservative vote did not influence the Reform vote at all. It appears that there is a moderately strong negative relationship between Conservative and Reform voting. Put another way, a fall of 10% in Conservative voting translates into an increase in the Reform vote of 4%. A fall of 10% in support for Labour delivers an increase of 3% for Reform.

The effects of changes in vote intentions for the national parties on changes in Reform voting since the general election:

However, there is a complication arising in the calculation when looking at each of the other parties and Reform voting separately. This approach fails to account for the relationships between these other parties.

If, for example, Reform does well against the Conservatives, this will help Labour because the Tories are a strong challenger to the Labour party. If Reform weakens support for the Tories, this could rebound to give Labour an advantage over Reform.

We need to look at the interactions between changes in support for all parties at the same time to get a clear picture.

This is done using multiple regression, which is a statistical technique that predicts changes in the Reform vote from changes in all the other party votes at the same time, thereby taking into account interactions between them.

The effects are quite strong, and they are roughly the same for Labour and the Conservatives. A fall of 10% for each of them boosts the Reform vote by 6%. The effect of Liberal Democrat voting on Reform, meanwhile, is negligible, with a coefficient of -0.08.

However, the Green vote does affect Reform, having a coefficient of -0.34. In other words, a fall of 10% in the Reform vote will boost the Green vote by about 3.4%.

The pattern observed in the polls is of Labour’s vote share continuously declining and of the Conservative vote increasing to begin with and then subsequently declining. This situation looks different when you consider their individual relationships to Reform but, in the event, when all the interactions are taken into account, they both end up losing votes to the newer party to the same extent.

This has implications for the May 2026 local elections. The leadership positions of both Keir Starmer and Badenoch are at risk if these contests turn out to be a disaster for their parties.

Unless Reform’s support starts to weaken, both parties could lose the same proportion of votes to Reform. And at the moment the party shows little sign of doing so. That said, there are four years to go at the outside to the next election – and with volatile polls like these, anything can happen.

Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.

Sign up for our weekly politics newsletter, delivered every Friday.

Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC.

– ref. What the year in polls tells us about Reform’s growth – and Labour and Tory losses – https://theconversation.com/what-the-year-in-polls-tells-us-about-reforms-growth-and-labour-and-tory-losses-271827