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"But it's not hard to see how social media and a rise in misogyny are, in fact, related. Social media sites trap girls in spirals questioning their attractiveness and self-worth. They're encouraged to compare themselves to others and seek approval for the way they look, while reinforcing beauty standards that favor thinness and whiteness. They feel pressured to promote themselves as objects. There have been many studies establishing all this over about the last 10 years, including Facebook's own research into girls and Instagram - research that the company suppressed until exposed by whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021. "Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression," Facebook's study noted. "This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.""

"Kids aged 5 or younger who experience two or more hours of daily screen time are nearly eight times more likely to be diagnosed with focus-related conditions including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), says Michael Manos, director of the ADHD Center for Evaluation and Treatment at the Cleveland Clinic.   That's because these devices likely impact the brain, he explains. Electronics allow for repeated stimulation and immediate gratification every few seconds. And when we become accustomed to such rapid and frequent stimulation, it can be hard to focus when things in the real world aren't as mesmerizing. "Screen time makes the regular world seem rather dull, like watching a plant grow," says Manos. "

""People glamourise them types of things and the smallest thing can be escalated on social media," he said. "A fight can happen between two people and they can squash it [reach a truce], but because the video's out there on social media and it looks from a different perspective like one is losing, pride is going to be hurt so you might go out there and get some sort of revenge and let people know, you're not going to mess with me." It all created anxiety, explained St Clair-Hughes. "The fearmongering on social media puts you in a fight or flight state so when you leave the house now you are either on the front foot or on the back foot. So you step outside ready to do whatever you need to do … It's the subliminals - no one's telling you to pick up a knife and commit violence, it's just the more that you see it …""

"Murky and misty streets, coughing townsfolk, and the distant toll of a plague doctor's bell all feature in Hogne's most-watched video, which has racked up 53 million views. It has sparked fascination among many, but historian Dr Amy Boyington describes the medieval-themed video as "amateurish" and "evocative and sensational" rather than historically accurate. "It looks like something from a video game as it shows a world that is meant to look real but is actually fake." She points out inaccuracies like the depiction of houses with large glazed windows and a train track running through the town which wouldn't have existed in the 1300s. Historian and archaeologist Dr Hannah Platts has also noticed significant inaccuracies in a video depicting the eruption of Mount Vesuvius at Pompeii. "Due to Pliny the Younger's eyewitness account of the eruption, we know that it didn't start with lava spewing everywhere so to not use that wealth of historical information available to us feels cheap and lazy.""

""The rebirth of longform runs counter to everything media experts are peddling. They are all trying to game the algorithm. But they're making a huge mistake….""