A leading artificial intelligence researcher is warning that Character.AI's plan to ban chatbots for kids by late November may leave them susceptible to self-harm or suicide if they detach from an AI companion too quickly. Character.AI announced its decision to disable chatbots for kids in late October, in response to political pressure and news reports of teens who had become suicidal after prolonged use.
By better understanding young shooters and the factors that influence the propensity to commit these crimes, we may be able to reduce the incidence of mass shootings. This post focuses on factors unique to the online ecosystems that many young people, especially young men, inhabit. While there isn't a universally accepted definition of a "mass shooting," roughly following The Violence Project and other researchers,
"As one of the first countries in the EU, Denmark is now taking a groundbreaking step towards introducing age limits on social media," said the country's digitalization ministry in a statement. "This is done to protect children and young people in the digital world." "As a starting point, children under the age of 15 should not have access to platforms that may expose them to harmful content or harmful features," the statement said.
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Recent years have seen alarming increases in youth self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Parents, educators, and mental health experts are naturally concerned, and many blame social media. Governments have begun taking notice as well. In Australia, for instance, the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill will soon make it illegal for young people under 16 to access major social media platforms, effective December 2025.
Young people are in a bad way; they feel very sad, completely depressed. The worst thing isn't the anxiety, or being glued to their phones, or feeling lonely, or being unemployed, or even knowing that it's impossible for them to buy a house; the worst part is that, until just a few years ago, none of them expected to find themselves in this situation.
Of the respondents who reported negative effects (45 per cent) 97 per cent said it had some impact on them with 46 per cent saying it stayed with them for a while. Forty per cent reported feeling sad or emotionally low, while 39 per cent felt anxious or unsettled. More than a quarter (28 per cent) reported trouble sleeping afterwards, with three in 10 saying they chose to avoid similar content in future.
How we experience happiness used to follow a predictable rhythm. For decades, researchers across psychology and economics identified a stable "U-curve" of life satisfaction. We start off high as children, dip in early adulthood under the weight of responsibility and uncertainty, and rebound in old age once perspective softens the sharper edges of life. This was never some immutable law of nature, mind you. It was an artefact of the way our lives stacked up.
One of the key figures who is credited with inspiring this movement is Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist and professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. In his book The Anxious Generation,published last year, Haidt makes the case that the rise in social media and cellphone use is a major factor behind what's making kids more anxious and depressed.
From chronic struggles with burnout to a pragmatic, even skeptical take on how to lead their careers, the generation that entered the workforce during the age of quiet quitting has come to exemplify the quarter-life crisis. But what if this is the new norm, and the midlife crisis is going extinct the way other trappings of the 20th century have, like dial-up internet and Kodak film? What if Gen Z has giant, macroeconomically valid reasons for being plunged into a collective quarter-life crisis?
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The bill, which was signed into law on July 2, enacts the largest Medicaid funding cuts in U.S. history, slashing around $1 trillion from the program. Congressional budget estimates predict that over 10 million Americans will lose Medicaid coverage within the next 10 years.
"When the Trump administration threatened and then went through with their threat to cut the program completely, that told us that we had to step up to the plate."
Despite a wealth of evidence indicating that parenting is crucial to a child’s development, parenting guidance is frequently overlooked by mental health professionals, which can lead to inadequate treatment outcomes.
When Justice Samuel Alito challenged the ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio on such claims during oral arguments, Strangio made a startling admission. He conceded that there is no evidence to support the idea that medical transition reduces adolescent suicide rates.
Sorkin, who won an Academy Award for his screenplay for the original film, will write and direct the new installment. Sorkin, Todd Black, Peter Rice, and Stuart Besser are also producers on the project.
The decision left Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale School of Medicine who specializes in adolescent medicine, devastated and scared.
The majority of people leaving the waiting list at that time will have aged out. Sadly, some will have died whilst waiting - waiting times for NHS gender services have been cited in several prevention of future deaths reports.
