Technology

Is the page finally beginning to turn on children and screens? For the first time since the advent of social media, we are seeing a burgeoning alliance across all political divides to protect children from digital harm. In 2024 Jonathan Haidt delivered an urgent manifesto for change in The Anxious Generation, and at the beginning of this year Australia responded with a ban on social media for under-16s. Now even Britain is finally recognising the scale of the problem. Despite this week’s decision by MPs to consult rather than enforce, the fight will rage on. Deliberation doesn’t work in the arena of addictive substances. However, the war on classroom screentime

The nicest thing anyone has said to me recently is: ‘But surely you’re far too young to remember cassettes?’ Sadly, I had to break it to my new neighbour that, as a child of the 1980s and a 1990s teen, I’m not – which is why I’m bemused to learn that tapes are the latest piece of retro tech to make a comeback.  Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Charli XCX are among artists who’ve released new music on cassette, fuelled by Gen Z’s apparently insatiable appetite for nostalgia and clunky devices long since sent to landfill.   Sure, I can see the appeal in a format with a bit of soul and