European Commission has concerns about app’s impact on children, as well as addiction

The EU has given TikTok 24 hours to provide a risk assessment over a new service it has launched in the EU amid concerns it will encourage children to become addicted to videos on the platform.

The watch-and-get-rewarded application, TikTok Lite, launched in France and Spain this month, effectively offering users prizes such as Amazon vouchers, gift cards via PayPal or TikTok’s Coins currency for points earned through “tasks”.

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Rules governing political campaigning on terrestrial television don’t apply to streaming or online – and parties are starting to play dirty

One of my favourite jokes in The Simpsons concerns the unhinged nature of US political advertising. “Mayor Quimby supports revolving-door prisons,” a growly voice narrates over footage of exactly what you imagine. “Mayor Quimby even released Sideshow Bob, a man twice convicted of attempted murder.” And then, a final disclosure at a noticeably faster pace: “Vote Sideshow Bob for Mayor.”

This was a great joke – but it wasn’t entirely a joke. The real revolving door ad, which featured similar imagery, had been used by the George HW Bush campaign to tar his 1988 opponent, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, as soft on crime. That in turn was a sort of sequel to the “Willie Horton” ad, in which other Republican operatives had tried to pin the violent crimes of the eponymous African American on Dukakis, governor when Horton was released on furlough. The entire campaign was widely condemned as one long racist dog-whistle intended to terrify white people into voting Republican. It also, upsettingly, worked.

Jonn Elledge’s new book, A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps, is published on 25 April

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Announcement of streaming service for content ‘at risk of cancellation’ comes as company shares continue downward slide

Donald Trump’s social media empire has announced plans to launch a streaming platform. Its shares continued to fall.

Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Truth Social, has come under pressure since its stunning stock market debut last month left the former president with a vast stake worth about $4.9bn on paper.

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Grace Keeling says TV needs more authenticity and better representation if it wants to attract younger viewers

TV should “move with the times”, take risks and be less “polished” in order to attract younger audiences, the TikTok star Grace Keeling has said.

Record numbers of young viewers are switching off traditional television in favour of short-form content, according to the media regulator, Ofcom, with Enders Analysis revealing a 30% decline in 16- to 34-year-olds watching TV shows with their parents.

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The rise in mental health problems in young people should force politicians to act

Across the rich world, a problem emerges. Children are spending more time hunched over iPhones working on their personal brands and less time building mud huts in the woods with their friends. Social stakes have got higher: the right post, message, or photo can give you a huge blast of approval; one mis-step could make you an outcast.

Playful and elastic real-life interactions have been replaced by unforgiving virtual hierarchies, in which your position is precisely quantified, recorded and made to matter more.

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Cross-party committee urges creation of strategy engage with new platforms that appeal to young

The government needs a TikTok strategy to help combat misinformation directed at young people, MPs have said.

Members of the cross-party culture, media and sport committee said the government needed to adapt to new apps and platforms that appeal to young people who are increasingly turning away from traditional sources of news.

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Report finds particularly complex factors may explain surge in birth-registered females referred to NHS Gids

In 2009 the NHS’s gender identity development service (Gids) saw fewer than 50 children a year. Since then, demand increased a hundredfold, with more than 5,000 seeking help in 2021-22.

In her review of gender services , Dr Hilary Cass said there had been a “dramatic increase” in presentations to gender clinics in the last decade, in particular by birth-registered females. In 2009, Gids treated 15 girls. By 2016, that figure had risen to 1,071.

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Regulating new technology is never simple, but the status quo offers inadequate protection

The principle that some products are available to adults and not children is uncontroversial. Access to weapons, alcohol and pornography is curtailed in this way because a level of maturity is the precondition for access (but not a guarantee of responsible use).

Until recently, few people put smartphones in that category. The idea of an age restriction on sales would be dismissed as luddism or state-control freakery. But ministers are reported to be considering just such a ban for under-16s. Opinion polls suggest that it could be popular with parents. Government guidance already calls for a de facto ban on mobile phone use in schools in England and Wales. Many headteachers had already imposed rules to that effect. If there is not yet a consensus that young people’s use of smartphones needs stricter regulation, that is the trajectory.

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