But looking away is a temporary fix. Palpable change comes from facing and tackling the issues of our world head on.

Check out Hybrid’s writers doing exactly that in the features below…

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“And as a mark of respect of that young man I am going to call the highest point we reached on that expedition, Mount Bryan” (from a letter written by Governor Gawler, Governor of South Australia in 1839)

That one line started an adventure to visit the mountain. That young man is my great great great Uncle. My maiden name is Bryan. Can I really have a connection with this Mountain on the other side of the world in Australia?

“To me the hills are part of my history and they’re becoming a part of yours” Tony Sumner commented when we discussed our connection.

His family have farmed the land on the Mount ever since that expedition was made in 1839. England had requested that an expedition was mounted to discover further land for agriculture. Bryan, age 19, an aide to the Governor, begged to join the group. Due to a failing horse and lack of water he disappeared and has never been seen again . “What happened to him … where did he perish … the locals have never had closure from his disappearance” Tony says.

It was becoming obvious that if you know this mountain it starts to know you. “It was a high spot, it was respected … would I say it was sacred? I would say a very strong yes”. Tony tells me, acknowledging aboriginals would have lived here.

He continues “there is an aura there … I have seen two storms head to the top and linger there”. It was also becoming obvious that this Mountain had been intertwined with our two families for longer than we had known.

When we travelled to the top of Mt Bryan in utes, with a bounding escort of kangaroos, in between the gum trees, Tony shows us his paddocks. Coming, coincidentally, from a sheep farming family in Dorset farming Dorset Horn sheep I enquire what sheep he farms. Incredulously he says “Dorset Poll” - the only difference being with horns or not.

Once at the top, covered in awe at the far reaching views and the fact that the expedition made it to here. The hot terrain is sparse. Tony tells me “it’s quite untamed. It’s not easy to muster.” But how much more inhospitable would it have been 180 years ago? There is nothing up there apart from a stone chair, a trig point and a modern intrusion of two masts.

Tony says “you must sit in Rex’s chair to which I reply “really” and quizzically “Rex’s chair”. My son is called Rex and Tony’s Uncle, who built the chair stone by stone, is called Rex. My Godfather, also a Dorset horn farmer, was called Rex, and would have been farming at the same time as this “Uncle Rex”.

We discover two of our children are about to start studying at Melbourne University together, starting that following week. They perch on a granite slab laying the foundations for a deep friendship.

And then we are told the Sumner family have just sold the farm and move out in 4 weeks. So we have only just coincided.

What connection got us there 4 weeks before they depart?

How did the two families end up farming the same breed of sheep?

What connection led Will and Lucy to study at Melbourne University at the same time?

How did the connection arise through the name Rex?

Was I just overthinking this or did Tony feel this human connection “oh hell yeah ..

… it’s like we’ve known you all our life ...we’ve definitely got a connection”. “I think there is some pull or force that is pulling us together”.

What had created this? The mountain, the aboriginals who had no doubt been displaced with the arrival of Gawler’s expedition or Henry Bryan himself whose body had remained somewhere there for 180 years?

Tom Quinn, a primary producer in Mount Bryan, lives facing the Mount, discusses the mountain “it is always there providing a silent strength to me living and farming in its proximity …(I) am drawn to it with a sense of belonging… I believe there was aboriginal existence”.

Tom continues “growing up in the fifties, sixties and seventies, we were taught virtually nothing of the first peoples of this country and we had very little contact with indigenous Australians. So unfortunately I can’t say with any accuracy.” Tony adds “there was a lot of secrecy and a lot not written down, a lot of stuff that is hidden… There’s a lot of stuff we don’t know”.

But whatever we don’t know, we all know we are attached to Mount Bryan. I am drawn back to the landscape regularly in my mind’s eye. I am baffled by the discovered connections. As Tony said “it’s a lot of incidents, a lot of coincidentals that are just almost a little bit mind boggling”.

Tom says “it will always be the recognition that I belong to Mount Bryan and have done so all my life”.

I like to think, there’s no doubt of the human connection, but in my wildest dreams, and despite being across two continents, part of me belongs there too.

How much would you invest in a country if you knew it could ask you to leave in 30 months? Would you go out of your way to integrate into the society, its culture, food, language, talk weather, have small talk with the barista or neighbour, and make friends with the locals ?

But what if you are fleeing political persecution or a deadly conflict in your home country, and this new country is your only hope for surviving and thriving?

The UK government has made refugee protection temporary for 30 months or two and a half years. Where does that leave refugees and their life in the UK?

Fahmi Sidou, 40, is no longer a refugee. He is a British citizen. Despite the powers and freedom that come with this passport and nationality, he has not returned to his home country Syria since he left a decade ago.

“Every Syrian person would like to be back in Syria, but they know what’s happening, it’s not safe, and the government is not good.”

Aleppo to Oxford– not a silk route

Fahmi is Syrian, Kurdish, British. He wears his multiple identities lightly, but his journey from Syria to Oxford has been anything but light. Originally from Afrin, a Kurdish majority region in Aleppo governorate in western Syria, where Kurdish language and identity was prohibited by the Assad regime for decades.

“Kurdish people if we live in Syria or Iran, if we don’t say we are Kurdish, it is fine. But it’s a problem if we say Kurdish. My name is Arabic, not Kurdish. I don’t have a Kurdish name.”

Working in the car battery business, he earned £2000-3000 per month, a significant amount in pre-war Syria time.

“I was travelling so much within Syria, my job was good, I knew people, and people knew me. Here I don’t know my neighbour, but in Syria, I knew the entire city”.

Fahmi was one of the many who protested against the Assad regime. He says the photograph of him at the demonstration (featured above) could have gotten him killed in Syria a few years ago. Tragedy did strike Fahmi’s family with a missing brother in law, and one of Fahmi’s brothers was killed by the Free Army in Daraa governorate in southern Syria (later Yarmouk Martyrs’ Brigade, a group affiliated with ISIS). Soon, he and his brother’s family decided to leave Syria.

Syria to Jordan to Egypt and finally to the UK in 2017. Fahmi and his brother’s family were supported by the UN on medical grounds, as his brother needed urgent dialysis for his kidneys. 20,000 Syrians were rehabilitated in the UK between 2017-2020.

Fahmi fondly recalls the support he received from the charity Asylum Welcome. “Everything was ready in the house, the ID, refugee card for 5 years.”

Fahmi was provided with English language lessons at a college in University of Oxford. One of his first jobs was as a cleaner in a restaurant. After a couple of stints in restaurants, he applied for a job as a maintenance worker.

The only problem– he did not know what ‘maintenance’ meant in English! But he did know the answer to the most important question in the interview– between a broken water pipe and electricity issue, which problem should be addressed first. He has been in maintenance work since 2022.

In 2018, Fahmi met his partner, also a Syrian, and previously a refugee.

‘It’s good when you work, you build connections, you know people. I have Syrian friends, Kurdish friends and English friends. Now I have more English friends.’

Plunging refugees into uncertainty with no durable integration to the UK

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The United Kingdom, the safe sanctuary for many asylum seekers fleeing all kinds of circumstances, has left asylum seekers in dire straits. Inspired by the restrictive Danish model, to reduce irregular Channel crossings, and reduce ‘pull factors’ to the UK, every 30 months, or two and half years, a refugee could potentially be sent back to their home country, if the country is deemed safe. If not safe, the refugee file will be reviewed every two and half years, making any real and durable integration for the refugees in the UK challenging.

“30 months is no time at all to be offered protection. It offers no stability at all for the migrants to stabilise their current circumstances, their living arrangements, their plans for the future, and normalise their lives”, says Dr. Tamsin Barber, Associate Professor in Sociology, and Chair of the Migration & Refugees Network at Oxford Brookes University.

She also foresees that “existing communities in the UK would have to play a much larger role, much more reliance on existing ethnic diaspora in the UK, and step up and take a much larger role in supporting the arrivals.”

Dr. Barber reflects on the safety aspect, “Two and a half years is not sufficient time for things to have improved in their home countries. And local relationships perhaps would have also gone awry. And the situation back home wouldn’t have settled down, and exploitation and threat would still be there in the communities.”

Fahmi’s hesitation to return to Syria, reflects this concern of safety. Ironically, despite protesting against the Assad regime, he says the current regime is more complex for people like him with multiple identities of Syrian and Kurdish.

“There is another problem now between Sunni, Alawaite, Kurdish, Druze, and Christians. In Syria, earlier we never had such problems. I worked with Sunni, Shia, Alawite, Christians, and we never asked when we met who is what.”

Dr. Esteban Devis-Amaya, Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Latin America Studies at Oxford Brookes University believes this change in refugee policy is ethically wrong.

“These people would have made a lot of connections their whole lives, would have been here, their families would have been created here, spouses, children. I think this anxiety is going to affect not only the refugees, but also those that are close to them, family members, friends, co-workers, etc.”

Dr. Esteban fortunately sees a silver lining and foresees that the administrative, social and cultural drawbacks for the Home Office will be so significant, that the policy change could be repealed later.

‘Firstly, it’s safe. People are kind. If there’s a problem with the government, you can speak to the government and question the government.’

Fahmi says he would still come to the UK, even if it was temporary.

So what if I just got rid of it?

07:15 am — My alarm rings. My first action of the day is not looking at Instagram and checking my email. I miss bathing my eyes in the bright colours of my phone.

The start into the first day of my week-long self-experiment living without a smartphone was reluctant. But I am not alone in wishing to get rid of it.

‘I hate my phone’, ‘I think it is a bit of a burden sometimes’, or ‘I thought about getting a flip phone’ is what you hear when asking around a university campus in Oxford.

While young people value their phone’s connectivity and productivity features, they say ‘it does hinder one’s freedom’ and costs them ‘so much time that I could be spending on things that are just more enjoyable.’

Indeed, research shows that 39% of the UK’s Gen Z think that social media has done them more harm than good. And almost half of young people would rather have grown up in a world without the internet, according to a recent poll.

But: a different survey found that a majority of young adults still think that digital technologies improved their lives.

07:45 am — I’m brushing my teeth without watching a YouTube video. So boring. I’m alone with my thoughts.

Some progressives are living like this every day, without any modern technology. ‘You’re totally liberated and you never think about going back,’ said August Lamm, an anti-tech activist based in New York.

It took the 30-year-old writer three years to fully transition into her analogue life. ‘It’s just minor inconveniences or slight changes in your life because you can’t do everything. But overall, I have a much richer life. I’m much happier and more present and focused and grounded.’

08:15 am — I’m working out without listening to music or a podcast. I think I am more focused.

I wanted to scratch the surface of what Ms Lamm was describing. For my experiment, I got a Nokia. It has basic functionality and lets you play Snake. It didn’t work with my international SIM card.

Using Assistive Access, I put my iPhone into ‘dumb mode’ instead, restricting its functionality to that of the Nokia.

The self-imposed rules of my experiment still allowed me to use my laptop. However: only on the uni campus, and only for uni work.

09:00 am — I still have not checked my email and WhatsApp messages. I’m getting anxious.

Apparently, we have gotten used to numbing aversive feelings like that through technology. ‘What’s being normalised is that if people are feeling anxious, or bored, or sad, or worried, or grief, or whatever, they’re almost like: “oh, this is bad. I can’t handle this,”’ explained Dr Elaine Kasket, a chartered member of the British Psychological Society’s cyberpsychology section.

Modern technology is responding to our longings. It is ‘exploiting something that is already in us,’ said Dr Kasket.

‘Our minds are naturally very distractible. They’re very jumpy. They’re very hedonistic. They look for pleasure and distraction and avoidance of pain.’

01:00 pm — I’m having lunch without listening to a podcast. I read a magazine instead and feel cool, better than my usual weak, addicted self.

‘We end up judging ourselves as though it’s some kind of personal failing,’ said Dr Kasket. She criticises the narrative that locates the reason for our unhealthy relationship with technology in the individual.

‘You’re like a victim of gaslighting. Where you’re like: “oh, I’m the problem.”’

She described multiple influences on our smartphone usage: we are being incentivised to use them for everything, from plane tickets to government services. They follow the principle of behavioural reinforcement, instantly gratifying us. And we are influenced by the behaviour of those around us.

03:00 pm — I’m meeting my friends, without any distraction from my phone. I value their company way more than usual.

Anti-tech activist Ms Lamm said that some of her relationships had become more complicated. That is why the university students I interviewed stick to their phones: They don’t want to be ‘out of touch with my friends, not being able to communicate in the same way.’

06:30 pm — I’m at Tesco and cannot use the Clubcard and credit card in my digital wallet. Annoying. I also cannot access the group chat with my friends to see if they want to meet up.

Ms Lamm agreed that there are many advantages to modern technology. Yet: ‘at the expense of every single person’s enjoyment of life.’

However, there is an argument for differentiating between good and bad tech usage. Dr Kasket thinks that we should not blame our phones for all of our social and emotional problems. Instead, it is all about finding out which features enrich our lives and which don’t.

08:30 pm — I’m not watching Netflix, I’m not doomscrolling. Instead, I’m now addicted to the Game of Thrones books. My day feels more quiet. I’m content.

‘This is your one life, and when you think about this decision of whether to have a smartphone, you’re thinking about how much time you want to have in your life, how much control you want to have over your life,’ said Ms Lamm.

‘And I think everyone who’s considering switching to a dumb phone knows deep down that they would be better and happier and there would be less tension between the person that they want to be and the person that they are.’

I did not miss the constant content consumption, nor being reachable all the time. But I did miss my phone’s functionality and being in touch with my friends and family.

I’m torn between Ms Lamm’s utopia and Dr Kasket’s pragmatism.

I’m only sure about one thing: I deleted Instagram and never looked back.

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Though sometimes people grow out of their shell to face the real world outside, it is not as easy as it seems to be. The city that feels physically crowded. Yet, there is a specific kind of isolation that only happens in a crowd. A feeling of being surrounded by thousands of people while realising that none of them actually see you.

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The “Nicer Outfit”

When a student moves into a new place looking forward to new experiences, they are required to make a performance along as well. Thinking of it, the best coined name could be a “nicer outfit”– a rehearsed version of ourselves that we put on every morning. We dress up our exhaustion as an “intellectual rigour” and isolation as “independence.”

“It can increase the loneliness inside”, says Ms. Gisela Lockie, an Integrative Psychotherapist (UKAHPP registered) and a specialist counselor with many years of experience.

“Because you’re no longer in contact with how you’re feeling inside… it creates a sense of ‘false self’ rather than growing your genuine self.” According to Ms. Lockie, maintaining a facade isn’t just tiring – it’s a barrier to the very thing that cures loneliness: connection.

“It would affect your ability, maybe, to make friends,” she explains, “because you’re longing so much to be where you’re not.”

The so-called “Best Years”

Part of the problem is the cultural script we are handed the moment we receive our offer letters. University is marketed as the peak of our social lives – a nonstop carousel of lifelong friendships and transformative experiences.

“There is a stereotype about what one should feel at university,” Ms. Lockie notes. “It’s really hyped up to be the biggest party of your life…but actually it isn’t. For some people, it’s a struggle to be on your own or away from your family.”

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When reality fails to meet the hype, students often internalise the gap as a personal failure. If everyone else seems to be thriving the “buzz” of the city, we assume there must be something wrong with us.

The fear of displacement

For those who have travelled across oceans to be here, the loneliness is often compounded by a loss of “history.”

We start everything in a hustle or maybe with very precise planning. But, it does change. I read an online comment that said, “If you’re planning to move away, be prepared for the worst, for nobody will truly be there.” Though it sounds scary, it is the reality. We may find a sense of belonging somewhere, but the feeling of emptiness remains.

Ms. Lockie moved from Scotland to England as a student, recalls how even small sensory shifts – the sound of a specific accent or the smell of a familiar food – can trigger a profound sense of being “out of place.”

If age could solve everything, was it easy for the older?

Ajish Antony, a mature international student with a wife and child back home, describes his experience as a quiet disconnection rather than visible isolation. “It feels like being present in a place but not fully belonging to it,” he says.

His days are structured, with lectures, assignments and routines, but the absence of shared moments always linger. “There’s no one to share small things with. Even simple things like cooking or walking feel quieter than they should.”

For him, distance is not just physical. It reshapes identity. As a husband and father, being away creates what he calls a sense of “incompleteness,” which intensifies during moments that would normally be shared, such as family events or even a video call where change becomes visible in real time.

Despite this, coping becomes deliberate. Regular calls home, staying engaged with studies and maintaining routine offer some stability. But the gap remains.

It is not a “Sin”

If there is a takeaway from the clinical perspective. It is that loneliness is a biological signal, not a character flaw. It is an experience that we are meant to learn how to navigate, bit by bit, though it often throws us into the deep end without a life jacket.

“It’s okay to feel lonely,” Ms. Lockie emphasises. “That’s not a sin. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to be a success. We all feel lonely at times.”

Perhaps the first step to feeling less alone in a city this full is admitting that the “Nicer Outfit” is starting to feel a little tight, a little too tight. After all, it’s hard for someone to see the real you if you’re always hiding behind a facade of being “okay”.

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In the UK there are many different types of GLP-1 drugs/weight loss medication; the main ones being semaglutide, also known as Wegovy, and Tirzepatide more commonly known as Mounjaro.

The drugs work by releasing a hormone into the body called glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), this hormone is naturally released after eating and satisfies hunger. The introduction of added amounts of this hormone, through the medication, will make those who take it feel fuller for longer, with a loss of appetite. Over time, this disinterest for food and deficit will lead to weight loss.

See video explaining a little more:

In order to legally obtain these drugs they must be prescribed, however by the NHS having a strict criteria and private healthcare being extremely expensive, limits accessibility and pushes unsafe alternatives.

However still, the popularity of these drugs has risen due to its recognised ability to lose weight quickly. A study was done by UCL university that suggests that between early 2024 and early 2025, 1.6 million adults in the UK used weight loss medication to help them achieve their weight goals. On top of that 4.9 million adults in Great Britain were interested in using the drugs in the near future.

The inequalities and access to these drugs have come to light through the ability to obtain the drugs through private healthcare, but only if you can afford them. During a labour party conference speaking on weight loss medication Wes Streeting states “The wealthy talk about how they’ve transformed their health, their confidence, their quality of life, but what about the millions who can’t afford them?” He argues people’s standard of health should not be based on wealth. The Independent estimated that about 90% of people on the medication pay privately, spending hundreds of pounds. Those who cannot afford the drug or are ineligible via the NHS, are still able to receive treatment but in an illegal, dangerous and unregulated manner.

An interview was conducted, where a young lady talks about her struggles with weight and her attempts at getting Mounjaro through the NHS. She wishes to remain anonymous but for the sake of the article we will name her Jane.

When asked if she has experienced being treated differently based on her weight, with no hesitation, “yes…Especially when it comes to attraction… you do feel very self conscious”, she speaks about the comparison to other women and that she feels other women have the bodies that men would want, and she doesn’t. Immediately we think where has society gone wrong? Why are young women comparing oneself to others and belittling themselves because of their size?

Jane mentions she has tried to lose weight before but emphasises the struggle of wanting results immediately. She explains that “as a big girl…you do feel like it’s not working a lot of the time…just get frustrated with it”.

The gym can be intimidating for people who struggle with body confidence. Jane discusses her trial at the gym and the fact she felt uncomfortable when she went, she speaks about the women who have “perfect bodies” and she shouldn’t even be at the gym; “It’s just pressure and it’s not pleasant’.

We then discussed her experience trying to access weight loss medication. She had originally heard about the jabs through a family member and thought she would try it out. However when going to her local GP it was immediately shut down. She revealed “I told them what my issues were… I wasn’t happy mentally”, they came to the conclusion her weight was a depression contender. She implies unless there is a physical issue there is no way to get these jabs on the NHS, yet those who go private and pay, have less of an issue.

She describes her experience as being “horrible. You see all these rich people that can afford it out of pocket and they don’t even necessarily need it. But they just throw it in your face”.

She believes the GP dismissed her. “Even if you are on the verge of, I don’t want to be here because of this…They still don’t do anything and just toss you aside.”

After being refused by the NHS Jane then looked for alternatives, on other websites and various places for the same thing just cheaper. She said “it would still be out of pocket.”

I had the opportunity to speak to another lady regarding her mounjaro journey, however she has the ability and fortune to be able to go private, she is the same as Jane and states “I am desperate to see results and lose weight” and she knows that “going through the NHS is a long process”. But is lucky enough to get straight into it and start the medication.

Jane was asked what she would say to those who act like it easy to lose weight and change lifestyles and she said “I would just say that you’re not very considerate of other people’s situations, home life and mentality, because those people in particular have a great mentality…they have a certain way and let’s be realistic, these people can afford to have those lifestyles, whilst for myself, like living with a family that is considered a big family. Having that lazy lifestyle, having junk food, all of that. It’s very hard to break.”

To make journeys easier, society needs to shift its mindset. Jane states “People aren’t thinking enough. And I think that’s what the issue is. Everyone just sees big and skinny.”

Jane’s story reflects society’s role in body shaming and weight discrimination, which are shaped by class and wealth. Social media promotes unrealistic beauty standards for women and in turn will go to extreme lengths to fit in. The demand for the medication shows how our current culture prioritises altering bodies over challenging dangerous ideals of beauty. It reinforces the message that if you’re wealthy, you have more advantages to healthcare and an edge over those who aren’t as fortunate.

Changing these standards and ideas around weight needs to happen. But what also needs to happen is better education on obesity and its deeper rooted causes; by addressing from the onset reduces the need for weight loss medication in the first place.

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In June 2025 I traveled through a road trip around Turkey to see my fathers hometown, Dersim. Climbing our sacred place, Duzgin Baba mountain and seeing worship places of cemevis educated me further of my religion of Alevism and how it still stands despite being marginalised.

Growing up as an Alevi Turkish/Kurdish in the UK developed identity barriers in my life. From lack of RE sessions taught about my religion in primary school, to struggling to provide a straightforward definition of what my religion is to someone in University. But this is not a form that I’m unaware of or untaught of my religion that I can’t express myself, rather Alevism is what has built me to be who I am today through its egalitarian beliefs. Alevism has always raised me to be empathetic, respectful and shaped my politics to be against racism, fascism, and always to recognise animal and human rights.

UK Alevis, especially second-generation Alevis, have struggled with their identity perspective of Alevism due to its oppression and its lack of recognition. This is rooted in the history of colonisation and massacres my ancestors in Turkey have endured, which has left an oppressed, scarring colonial mentality that Alevism should be hidden or distraught, as it’s a “negative identity” to the radical Islamist perspective. The ongoing systemic discrimination among the Alevi communities in Turkey has left an everlasting scar for the religion to be fully recognised or for Alevis worldwide to learn the culture officially.

Why is it challenging for Alevis to carry their identity? How did a historic colonisation dating back 600 years effectively damage the modern Alevis ‘ ability to learn the religion? Why is it hard for Alevis to identify themselves in the modernised world? Well, Alevis find it hard to explain their religion truly because “Alevism is a lived religion. You live Alevism… there is not a book to sit down and read” according to Lecturer and Researcher of Westminster University, who dedicated his research to Alevi community and identity issues, Dr Umit Cetin.

Persecution effects

Looking back to the era of the 1300s, since the Ottoman Empire was established in Turkey, Alevis were persecuted and punished by the Turkish government and high authorities just because they were different from Sunni Turks. A report in 2013 records that there are 82,693 mosques in Turkey, and only 937 cemevis, mainly built by Alevis with no funds for government support. Massacres were one of the most common punishments Alevis in the 20th century endured, particularly the Dersim Massacre (1937-1938), which was renamed as Tunceli, for the government to demonstrate Turkish military administration and power and that rebellion is impossible for the Alevis. According to Bianet, it was found that estimates of 20,000 to 70,000 people of Dersim were killed by bombing, poisonous gas and village raids.

Dr Cetin says the history of Alevi persecutions has left Alevis thinking of their identity as “primitive” and should be hidden due to the massacres that left a colonised mentality of fear to the Alevis. “Because you are Alevi, you are not a human being, you are not a proper individual, you are not a modern citizen…you can’t be a nice, proper human being when you are Alevi”, said Dr Cetin. The challenges of a colonised mentality in a religion have reached many effects of people not wanting to associate with the religion due to fear, such as Dr Cetin identifies, Alevi parents in fear of their children identifying as Alevi’s, as they may experience a form of hate and discrimination, which shocked him as he is openly passionate about Alevism.

I asked an Oxford Brookes University student if they know Alevism in Turkey, and Dr Cetin response whether the information online about Alevism is accurate:

Second-generation identity Crisis

After Alevi migrated from Turkey to the UK in the 1980s with now 300,000 living in the UK, the history of colonisation and persecution has caused far damaged evolvement to modern second-generation Alevi born or living in the UK. Dr. Cetin says that because Alevis hide their identity due to fear they have experienced in Turkey, the first generation that moved to the UK either perceived religion would be irrelevant in a modernised country, or failed to transfer the information about Alevism to their children. “There was a gap, and this gap caused a lot of problems. I meant it caused a lot for the Alevi second generation, and now we talk about the third generation. And some of them were killed by suicide, some of them were disoriented, they were alienated…”. The lack of identity has also led to second-generation Turkish and Kurdish Alevi young men to be involved in gangs and crime, and the rise of anomic suicide rates in the UK, a subject where Dr Cetin has expertise, researched paper among the suicide rates and the factors that may have caused the rise.

Alevi Turk, Yildiz expressed how her parents taught her the values to take in her daily life, but still struggles to embrace her identity: “I struggle with having/finding representation, and it makes it hard to relate to people due to it being a minority group….I found it difficult to find information or express it to others.”

Building through community

Despite the struggle of identity, there has been a positive witnessing shift over the years of Alevis across the UK, mainly London, slowly but swiftly building to repair the struggle of identity of historic persecution scars in the form of a strong sense of community. Charity organisations such as the British Alevi Federation, have established seventeen Alevi Cultural Centres and Cemevis that serve events and protests and support for all Alevi people in the UK. Dr Cetin states he’s seeing a positive development in terms of the second-generation starting to claim their identity and that a strong sense of community is what helped the religion “survive”. “Alevism doesn’t encourage individuals. It encourages collectivity”

What will happen to social media if nothing is done to monitor hate comments? Casual, unfiltered racism is beginning to slip through the cracks of moderation systems online. As a result, nasty discriminatory thoughts from either ignorant online accounts or ragebait bots attacking content creators. Linking this to the significant rise in the popularity and prominence of the far right political party Reform UK, discrimination online against ethnic minorities has spiked.

From April 2024 to September 2025, Reform UK had been associated with 20 incidents of racist or Islamaphobic behaviour by its members, candidates and activists observing their actions (Bear, 2025). These incidents, documented with evidence either online or in real life, displayed MPs associated with Reform UK brazenly displaying their racist and discriminatory views. An example from 29 May 2025 displays a former Reform UK councillor in Doncaster, Mark Broadhurst, posting a meme suggesting that Adolf Hitler would have been “a legend” if only he’d chosen to exterminate Muslims instead of Jews. Broadcast was later expelled due to the meme, but the simple fact that he posted it displays the acceptance of fascist views in the party.

Discrimination online isn’t new. “Trolls have existed for years and there can’t be a social media post without one or two hate comments. But what happens when an epidemic of right wing views become normalised by political parties, in a society that uses social media to appeal to the public? How far will online discrimination go?

“The only thing that I would really get slightly irritated at is if I click on the profile and like some actual person and you can tell he has friends and stuff, so actual people believe that.”

I recently conducted an interview with Testimony Adegbite, a black content creator in Scotland, who posts on both Instagram and Tiktok. His TikTok content, which usually reaches younger people, aged 12-late 20s on TikTok, seems to have a more tighter grip on moderation than Instagram, which reaches out to a broader age demographic - 40-50 year olds. As of January 2026, 19% of voters aged 25-49 intended their vote for Reform UK. This links racist comments posted on Instagram to Reform UK supporters who have an online presence on Instagram.

Testimony tends to notice that on Instagram, discriminatory comments against black people are more prominent and unmoderated than on TikTok. “TikTok naturally folds or doesn’t allow comments that are bigoted, I suppose. The main difference in it is Instagram, as a whole could be more negative on the comments than TikTok, which is a lot more friendly.”

The lack of comment moderation on Instagram could lead to even more bigoted viewpoints being distributed online. Individuals who have seen discriminatory remarks said by political figures such as Broadhurst leads to lack of shame and a falsified “community viewpoint” leading to far right views being shared more openly. Alongside Instagram’s lack of moderation for these comments, discrimination becomes more frequent, with little to no way of hiding or deleting them for other eyes to see.

Throughout the past two years, social media users have observed that there has been a significant rise in the number of hateful comments.

Philia Okorie, a student at Oxford Brookes has observed that there has been a rise in hateful comments in the past two years.

“I’ve been on social media for 8 years now, the content I’ve seen is a mix of positive and negative. Sometimes I’ll see a positive video, but when I see the comments they are very negative.”

From Testimony’s own personal experiences and perspectives, discrimination against black people stands out the most to him. Examples of the racism observed by him online are Saka’s missed penalty in the Euro 2020 final defeat to Italy, and more recently, the attacks on black people around the UK as a result of the EDL (English Defence League) riots.

In regards to his personal emotions regarding hate online, Testimony feels desensitised to it.

“For me, it’s not real, but for other people, that might not work as it obviously can be real, and it can feel real. I think it’s a journey that everyone goes on by themselves in a sense of how they deal with it.

Like, I’ve said it’s not real. I think making sure you take a certain distance from the common section is important in general.”

“The only thing that I would really get slightly irritated at is if I click on the profile and like some actual person and you can tell he has friends and stuff, so actual people believe that.”

Catherine Rahman, a 21 year old South Asian student also commonly distinguishes bots and humans on social media.

“I’m on Instagram almost every day. When I scroll on instagram the thing I notice the most is very racist comments. And you can’t tell if they’re made by bots or people”.

The use of bots on social media further adds to the divisions online. Social media bots are automated software programs that simulate human behavior - liking, posting, and following - on platforms like Instagram. These bots are often used primarily to boost the apparent popularity of other accounts, to create false personas to spread a narrative.

Bots on social media that have been paid for by far right political groups aim to distribute negative viewpoints that aren’t actually shared by real people.

These bots assist with the rise of these hateful comments as they distribute a negative viewpoint about black people that isn’t real.

The rise of discrimination as a result of political groups and their use of bots will rise if instagram does not take accountability for the moderation of their content. When will they take accountability? How can we continue to use social media if it continues to grow into a far right wasteland?

From Gladiators to hunting to animal shows, animals have been used for human entertainment for thousands of years. In 2026, it’s estimated there are over 10,000 zoos and aquariums worldwide, holding millions of wild animals in captivity for public entertainment and commercial exploitation.

Animal activists and members of the Oxfordshire Coalition of Animal Advocacy, Tobias Brown and Linda Newbery, share their insights on these damaging tourist traps and how the public can advocate against this unethical entertainment. Student marine biologist Phoebe Maxwell-Heron raises awareness about the alarming conditions in which sea creatures are kept.

The first zoo was established in Vienna, Austria, in 1714, and as the tourism sector grew, the number of animals held in captivity increased. Animal tourism grew in popularity between the 1800s and 1900s as travel became more accessible. Tourists flocked to Africa to see the big five in action, from game rides to safaris to mammal hunting, animal freedom was sacrificed for public entertainment.

Portable entertainment

Tobias Brown, a member of Oxfordshire Coalition of Animal advocates and ally to many NGO’s, groups and individual charities, is doing what he can to fight for animal rights. When asked about animal tourism, Tobias shared that he used to live in Greece and saw horse and cart rides regularly. “A really romantic thing for people, but for the horses - it’s 40 degrees, and they’re often standing there in the heat waiting for people. It’s awful to see, and they sometimes collapse.”

Tobias adds that tourist traps like “ elephant rides, whale watching and safaris […] have positives and negatives […] damaging for the animals, supposedly positive for the humans. Tourists are the ones who are paying for it, and therefore they have a demand for it.”

Thailand is a hotspot for animal cruelty, from elephant rides to performances, and most tourists are unaware of the abuse the animals face behind the curtain. From chains and shackles to whipping and beating, they receive relentless abuse. On stages, pedestals or simply in their enclosures, they face a lifetime of exploitation.

From land to sea, animals cannot escape the abuse of the human race’s entitlement to entertainment. The animal kingdom is confined and dwindling. Thousands of endangered species are dying each year in zoos, although claiming to protect them, zoos seem to be failing the animals.

Tobias explains that “when people go to aquariums to see the killer whales or the dolphins or the seals doing their little tricks, they don’t even consider the animals”. This reinforces the fact that ignorance is killing animals too; public action is needed to protect animals’ futures.

Take action

When asked about what obstacles we face in stopping animal tourism, Tobias said: “The biggest obstacle is entitlement, human entitlement… [is] the biggest drive when it comes to tourism and animal tourism”

Another problem Tobias highlighted was: “ignorance and education… and ignorance not in a negative way, just ignorance with regards to the information out there.” Online misinformation is damaging to animals, with tourist traps posing as ethical establishments and animal sanctuaries. Tourists are led to believe that what they are doing is okay.

Tobias shared that by: “abstaining from doing things is actually really powerful, I think we have more influence than we think […] So talking about one’s beliefs openly is a really powerful thing.”

Spreading awareness is a way that members of the public can advocate for animals, along with signing petitions and educating others on pressing matters. Being conscious of what is going on throughout animal tourism is the first step to helping abolish it.

Boycotting companies that are still promoting forced animal entertainment further supports this cause by stopping the demand, as the supply will disperse. World Animal Protection has created a petition to stop TUI Group’s dolphin cruelty. Sign this petition to free the animals and stop the misery.

PETA UK

Linda Newbery, an animal activist and member of Oxfordshire Coalition of Animal Advocates, said: “PETA has proved to be quite effective in campaigning against Sea World […] the list of companies that have now pledged not to promote this is growing […] I think people have become more aware that it is very harmful to those animals”

In March 2026, PETA UK went to parliament with other animal protection groups to fully implement the 2023 Animals (Low Welfare activities abroad) Act, but UK companies like TUI are still promoting.

PETA is currently “calling on TUI to join every other major travel provider in the UK and stop selling tickets to marine parks, which cram orcas and other dolphins into tiny tanks in the name of ‘entertainment’.”

“They do nothing but swim in circles and fend off attacks from their stressed tank mates”. With over 500,000 PETA entities around the world urging TUI to stop profiting from animal cruelty.

Tanked Lives

Over 40 orcas have died at SeaWorld, caused by their harsh living conditions. Imprisoned by glass walls, these captive sea creatures develop health problems from being forced to entertain. If not physical abuse, the confined spaces cause psychological distress.

Robbed of real life, Duncan the Dolphin died at SeaWorld at just 16 years old. From tank to tank, Duncan was transported half a dozen times to perform across various parks. Dying of chronic pneumonia, death set him free from the years of abuse, confinement and exploitation.

Student marine biologist Phoebe Maxwell-Heron shares the damaging effects aquariums and marine attractions have on sea life. She said: “They massively alter natural behaviour. Things like feeding, migration, and social interactions just aren’t the same in captivity.”

“The limited space, artificial environments, and stress can lead to poor health or abnormal behaviours. Captive cetaceans, especially orcas’ social structures and spatial needs, are so complex that captivity just doesn’t replicate anything close to their natural environment.”

To find out more about abusive, unethical marine parks, read: The cruel captivity of cetaceans by Daniela Hernandez.

This Author

Giorgia Tambascia is a student journalist passionate about animal rights and wildlife preservation.

“The way we work now requires that you toggle between different screens and inputs between 1200 and 3000 times each day,” says Liane Davey, an Organisational Psychologist and author of Thoughtload. “Each time, you lose two seconds to make the physical switch and significantly more to make the mental switch. Even if you only lose two seconds, you’re doing nothing but toggling for more than three hours a week.”

Three hours is more than a dent in productivity; it is a stolen afternoon, a missed gym session, or the difference between a frantic evening and a calm one. It is the “toggling tax” paid by modern workers, often without realizing the cost is their mental health.

As the UK enters April 2026, the government is attempting to reclaim that time through The Employment Rights Act 2025, which introduces a statutory “Right to Switch Off.” On paper, it is a milestone policy designed to protect workers from after-hours emails, Slack messages, and Teams notifications. Yet its success depends on a deeper question: is the “24/7 Prison” imposed by employers, or have we internalised it so deeply that we now sustain it ourselves?

The Architecture of the Always-On Brain

The consequences extend far beyond interrupted evenings. According to 2025 data from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), work-related stress, depression, and anxiety account for 52% of all workplace ill-health cases. This reflects a broader cognitive strain driven by what many describe as “notification anxiety” - a persistent, low-level anticipation of digital interruption.

Not everyone, however, sees workers purely as victims of technology. Occupational psychologist Dr Myers argues that the idea of “recovery” is more nuanced and often tied to workplace dynamics. “While notification anxiety may reflect genuine stress, it can also function as a way of managing expectations about availability,” he suggests. From this perspective, the need to “switch off” may signal deeper structural issues. If recovery is necessary, it may indicate that work itself, not just its timing, is the problem.

For Dr Myers, the solution isn’t necessarily found in the statute books, but in the “psychological contract”, an unwritten understanding about expectation. “The most effective approach is often a local agreement between an employer and employee… an unwritten understanding about expectations that complements the formal contract.”

The Dual Threat: Culture and Complicity

According to Davey, the law faces a cultural barrier: the unspoken reward system that governs career growth. She warns that as long as 24/7 responsiveness is the metric for success, employees will be hesitant to log off. This creates a “visibility trap” where the pressure to be constantly reachable outweighs the objective results of the job, effectively punishing those who exercise their right to rest.

The second threat is more subtle: our own behaviour. Many of us have grown uncomfortable with silence. Smartphones act as a buffer against boredom, making it difficult to tolerate even brief moments without stimulation. “I worry about us behaving badly, too,” Davey notes. “Our need for input has reached a point where we can’t go seconds without it ... Our right to disconnect is not going to mean anything because our ability to disconnect isn’t there.”

In this context, the right to disconnect may exist in theory but fail in practice. If we lack the capacity to disengage, the law alone cannot restore balance.

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The Science of Silence

True high performance depends not only on constant activity but also on rhythm – periods of intense focus followed by deliberate recovery. The brain requires downtime for cognitive consolidation, the process through which it integrates information, forms insights, and supports creativity.

Without this, we remain in a state of shallow processing, moving information around without fully absorbing it. “High performance comes from toggling between being on, sprinting, working hard, and rest and reflection,” Davey explains. “When we take that out... we get poor quality work, less innovation, and more default behaviours.”

Reframing disconnection as a productivity tool may be key. A worker who spends an hour walking without their phone – allowing their mind to process the day – is far more valuable than one who spends that hour sending tired, receiving emails. In this sense, a dark screen is not a sign of disagreement but an investment in better productivity.

The Fuzzy Boundary

The challenge, however, is that not all workers experience boundaries in the same way. Dr Myers distinguishes between those who prefer a clear separation and those who blend their worlds. “For some people, there is no clear line between work and home life, while others keep the two more separate,” he explains. “Many experience a mix, with boundaries that are often fuzzy and shaped by individual preferences, personality, and cultural expectations.”

A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach may therefore create friction for those who value flexibility. This is why Myers emphasises the importance of the psychological contract over blanket legislation. Effective solutions, he argues, emerge from local agreements tailored to individual need and organisational contexts.

A New Kind of Right

As the ‘Right to Switch Off’ comes into force, the conversation is expanding towards cognitive liberty: the ability to control one’s own attention. Do we want employees who are always available, acting as responsive nodes in a network? Or do we want individuals capable of deep thought and meaningful problem-solving?

The answer will determine whether the legislation succeeds. Policies alone cannot dismantle the 24/7 culture if both the organisation and individuals actively reinforce it. Real change requires a shift in how we define productivity – not as constant availability, but as the ability to think relatively well.

Breaking out of the “24/7 Prison” will not be easy. It is a comfortable cage, reinforced by convenience and the small rewards of digital interaction. Leaving it behind requires both structural change and personal discipline: employers must trust that rest improves productivity, and workers must relearn how to be offline.

Ultimately, the most important work often happens away from the screen—in moments of quiet reflection, when the mind has space to connect ideas and generate something new. The challenge is not just to claim the right to disconnect, but to rediscover the value of doing so.

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Collage, original image by Heather Behenna

The manosphere. An online, interconnected network of communities that promote extreme misogyny and male supremacy. It certainly has become a hot topic of discussion within the media, with authorities and feminists raising their concerns about the damaging effect this online hostility has on women. Television coverage like the 2025 crime show ‘Adolescene’ and the recent documentary ‘Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere’ have also aided in raising awareness to the impact of content spread by the manosphere on women.

Yet, how and why has this dangerous world and its harmful ideologies sprung into mainstream attention? Gaming. From the simplification of relationships, to how online spaces like Discord and Twitch have become entry points into the manosphere, the influence and impact of gaming offers an explanation.

Video gaming has inflated massively over the last few decades and is a digital universe that is constantly expanding and drawing more users in. Around 69% of males play online games in England and 93% of children in the UK play video games according to The Children’s Commissioner for England, meaning that a huge proportion of the population are engaging with these online spaces.

It is becoming increasingly clear that online platforms and gaming communities like Discord and Twitch do pose a risk of exposure to extremism. There are currently “90m+ daily active users” and “90% play video games” on Discord, making it one of the biggest online gaming platforms. Whilst initially appearing innocent, many servers on this platform feature ‘self-improvement’ or ‘dating’ forums. Here men are able to discuss personal issues like relationship problems or loneliness, where they can supposedly gain support and advice about how to become a ‘better version’ of themselves. Yet, when unmasked, these spaces are revealed as hosting extreme misogyny and aggressive views on women. In particular, manosphere-related groups of incels (involuntary celibates) and pick-up artists, who are heterosexual men that use a ‘game’ tactic to seduce women.

Man gaming, image courtesy of Ella Don, Unsplash, Nov 9 2021

In order to understand how easily accessible misogynistic content is on these platforms I conducted my own experiment. 4 minutes 59 seconds. That is how long it took me to come across a channel promoting hostility towards women on Discord. As a new user, if I am able to encounter this so easily, then your son, friend or partner seeking dating advice certainly will too. In fact, the Welsh Women’s Aid have found that 45% of young men regularly encounter misogynistic content online.

Dr Ben Rich, Senior Lecturer in International Relations and History at Curtin University and Director of the Curtin Extremism Research Network explains this connection further:

“When you look at the sort of case studies of people that get pulled into this, they’re often quite isolated. They often live very digital lives and don’t necessarily have a big circle of connections to the real world.”

“Young men in particular are so vulnerable to those types of approaches because they are now socialising more and more in those spaces”

“The real world, actually engaging with it, it’s slow, it takes time, it takes discipline or you can jump on your phone and be a part of an almost alternative reality world, which is very exciting.”

A study has found that two thirds of men feel that “no one really knows me”. The ‘easier’ option to find out what kind of man they ‘should become’ is turning to online gaming platforms where they can enter an alternate ‘game’ world where misogynistic influencers give them a clear set of rules to follow to achieve success. Having grown up in the digital age, for many young people an online route is less intimidating, yet there is little governance regarding where they receive this ‘life’ advice.

Manosphere influencers capitalise upon these gaming structures, enticing their audience with a framework that they are familiar with. Controversial figures like Andrew Tate and Myron Gaines (Fresh & Fit) consistently emphasise to their online audiences that women can be acquired and manipulated, leaving the man completely in power, much like the way in which a gamer may control a character. They suggest that behaviour can be reduced down into game-like rules and formulas, suggesting that there is a ‘cheat code’ to becoming the ideal man. By adhering to these ‘rules’ you will level up and receive your ‘reward’, like a relationship or a better physical appearance.

Dr Rich suggests that these influencers and their followers adopt the mindset of “how am I going to maximise my returns in that relationship?

How can i create “simplified ways of understanding everything up to, you know, basic human interactions”

“How do you gamify it?”

Game controllers, original Image by Heather Behenna

It can be argued as well that the reinforcement of rigid representations of gender within video games highly influence the views reproduced in the manosphere. Male characters are illustrated as strong, aggressive and dominant, whilst female characters take on supporting roles and are often highly sexualised. This means that from a young age men are being encouraged to view women as inferior.

Connor, an avid gamer and UAL student, however disagrees:

“I think maybe in the past they did reinforce gender roles but with society evolving, games have had to evolve and if anything games these days break the gender norms. Strong female protagonists are more normalised and character creations in certain games allow for you to select more genders or more options that they used to.”

Maybe the games themselves aren’t the problem, but it is undeniable that the manosphere has adopted the framework of games to radicalise their audiences. The question is what are spaces like Discord and Twitch going to do to reduce the accessible spread of misogynistic content on their platforms?

Credit: Mali Carlsen

There are many factors that can impact an individual in the workplace from the bereavement of the loss of a loved one to financial pressures and anxieties in a cost of living crisis era.

However, where the gap truly lies is in the lack of understanding and training of line managers that are welcoming a new generation of young workers that have different needs than previous generations.

Significant spikes in the increase of young people suffering from mental health conditions, experiencing suicidal thoughts and engaging in self harm were identified through results from the adult psychiatry morbidity survey highlighting what could be described as a mental health crisis in England and Wales. The key findings were:

• The proportion of 16 to 24 year olds with a common mental health condition increased from 17.6% in 2007 and 18.9% in 2014, to 22.6% in 2023/24. The proportion was higher in women than men at each point.

• Lifetime non-suicidal self-harm was reported by 3.8% of 16 to 74 year olds in 2007, rising to 6.4% in 2014 and 10.3% in 2023/24.

• The proportion of adults screening positive rose for ADHD from 8.2% in 2007 and 9.7% in 2014, to 13.9% 2023/24.

The state of the nation’s mental health having reached an all time crisis forces us to look at the drivers of an issue that has reached such a global scale.

New research from the Youth Futures Foundation in their 2025 report on the key drivers behind the youth mental crisis also identified four pinnacle causes for the crisis:

• Employment precarity and affordability pressures.

• Declining sleep quality.

• Social media and smartphone use.

• Reduced children and youth services.

Importantly, we must investigate these drivers and take action in the form of improving the infrastructure of the system we operate underneath.

When consulting young people about how they felt employers dealt with mental health in the workplace, Jude Long, a 19 year old working in the finance sector, said; “It’s a very chaotic and constant work space which means that taking a break can be difficult.” He also shared that he feels that “men’s mental health is often neglected,” in his experience highlighting an undeniable lack of support for young professionals in the UK.

When asked about what he felt employers could be doing to better support young people’s mental health, Jude said; “I feel like they could do more to make us feel like we can talk openly about our mental health without pressuring us to always be performing at our absolute best.”

00In this vein we must look to the workplace as an environment that is impacting the mental health of young people significantly. Whether it be financial struggles, toxic colleagues or an overwhelming and unrealistic workload, young people are entering the workplace ultimately unprepared to adequately tackle these issues.

Myra May, Digital Marketing Executive at St Michaels Hospice described her own experience as a young person entering a working environment. Myra told us; “from my experience in the UK job market, I would say there’s definitely more awareness around mental health and neurodiversity which is a positive shift, but also, on the other hand I do think that there’s still a gap between awareness and actual understanding in practice.”

Credit: Myra May, Digital Marketing Executive, St Michaels Hospice

This identified gap in comprehension and action from employers has led to young people feeling misunderstood and unsupported and as Myra stated “you can’t be in an environment where you feel like people aren’t aware about how you actually work with things.”

Recent findings from the CIPD People Management Organisation also found this to be an issue, revealing new statistics that a third of workers say line managers lack training to assist neurodivergent colleagues, with some staff waiting more than three months for reasonable adjustments.

Credit: Unsplash

Identifying that this will inevitably “strain mental health in the long term.” Myra discusses the importance of training for employers so that they can be adequately prepared to handle and respond to the requirements of their employees. Discussing her own experience within the hospice, Myra explained that they had to undergo training in autism and how to respond appropriately to the demands of neurodiverse colleagues and clients, an approach that may prove beneficial for other establishments to adopt.

When in conversation with Myra May on this issue, she described her own experiences with seeking support for her own mental health at work and said; “I actually had to go quite far out to actually reach out for this but I looked for an employment specialist and I feel that there’s not enough awareness on this being an option but what an employment specialist does is they represent you on your behalf.”

Credit: Myra May, Digital Marketing Executive, St Michaels Hospice

There is no one size fits all type of support, but equipping young people with the ability to put such things in place is crucial moving forward and is something that Myra feels “will make such a difference not just to productivity but also to your confidence because no one tells you how to navigate your mental health and how to fit it into the job market when you graduate.”

Last week, three journalists were killed in Gaza and Lebanon, bringing the total number of press casualties to 260. In light of the deaths of journalists at the hands of Israeli Defense Forces, the Committee to Protect Journalists, an entity responsible for recording press casualties since 1992, has called for international action. These figures reinforce what was confirmed at the end of 2024: The war is the most lethal suffered by journalists. More journalists and media workers have been killed in the Israel-Hamas war than in World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the US-Vietnam War, the US war in Afghanistan, and the Russia-Ukraine war combined.

The media has been in the crosshairs since the spark of the war in October 2023. Restrictions on international media were imposed by Israel, with foreign reporters being banned from entering Gaza. Rather than relying on their own reporting, international news outlets have had to base their reporting on statements shared by international organisations, such as the Red Crescent or the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as well as statistics published by the Israeli government and Hamas, often contested and significantly biased.

This is why Palestinian journalists and sources on the ground have been the eyes and ears of world-leading broadcasters. ‘Despite the fact that foreign journalists were not allowed in, Palestinian journalists were able to convey the message,’ explains Yousef Alhelou. He is a Gaza-born journalist and political analyst based in London, who reported on the 2008-2009 war from the ground, and has covered the latest war remotely as a freelance journalist. Using Instagram as his main distribution channel, he has built a base of over 1 million followers.

Local journalists on the ground have not had it easy either, operating under harsh and hostile conditions, and most of them are unpaid for their work. The price of having a voice in Gaza is high: the killing and wounding of media workers have been part of Israel’s campaign to silence the press, with the IDF deliberately targeting media offices and satellite media trucks to damage production equipment. Alhelou knows the story and struggles of many who have remained reporting on the frontline. ‘They want to show the world what is going on, but it isn’t easy, because it isn’t safe,’ explains Alhelou. Threats and harassment are used to instil fear and influence journalists’ reporting. ‘Even if you are wearing a vest or a helmet, you will be targeted.’

Movement constraints have also been imposed on journalists as part of Israel’s strategy to enforce what Alhelou labels a ‘full media blackout’ in the region. The freedom of movement of media workers has been significantly restricted, preventing them from reaching areas near the border. Solar panels have been targeted by air strikes, significantly damaging the Gaza communications and internet network, which limits the reach of journalists’ content. Alhelou explains how many colleagues had to climb high buildings and rely on e-SIM cards sent from abroad to share their gathered footage.

And yet from a distance, Alhelou has experienced media censorship firsthand. Since the beginning of the war, he has covered the conflict as a freelance reporter. ‘I wanted to help my peers on the ground, because I felt the world had abandoned us’, he explains. Alhelou gathered footage and information delivered by his colleagues, often overlooked by mainstream media, and, after meticulous verification, shared it in English so it reached Western audiences.

Alhelou lost his Instagram account for five months, a consequence of what he names, a strategy to ‘intimidate and scare’ professionals reporting about events in the Strip. Alhelou’s account has been repeatedly shadowbanned, with users often having to scroll down extensively when searching for his profile via the search tool. ‘At some point, they banned me from going live,’ he explains. ‘These companies have a way to reduce your reach,’ he claims, referring to Meta and X.

Media silencing as a weapon of war is nothing new. It has been used in other conflicts, particularly over the last two decades, ranging from the Assad regime in Syria to the United States and the Islamic State. Journalists have repeatedly been subjects of physical and verbal threats in war zones. However, the record-breaking journalist casualties in Gaza raised concerns about the driving motives behind such repression. Faisal Hanif, media analyst for the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), argues that Israel aims to ‘minimise coverage and shape the overall information environment of the conflict.’

‘International audiences are already angry from the reports coming from Palestinian journalists,’ claims Alhelou. ‘Imagine if these reports came from journalists from their own countries,’ he adds. The limited verifiable sources that international reporters rely on are often ‘delegitimised because they happen to be non-Western,’ explains Hanif.

Israel’s roadblock on the media in the general public has an immeasurable impact that seems intangible, yet profound. These ‘shape how the conflict is understood, influencing which narratives gain prominence, how credibility is assigned, and how audiences interpret allegations of serious violations of international law’, claims Hanif. ‘Israel does not want its genocide to be broadcast.’

‘Palestinian journalists are exhausted,’ states Alhelou. ‘The world is busy, and Gaza is no longer in the front line.’ Although many journalists took their press vests off after the signing of the ‘ceasefire’ in October 2025, there is something that brings Alhelou a flicker of faith: the new generation. ‘They aspire to become journalists because they want to speak to the world.’

The cycle is ongoing, Alhelou believes. Reporting will continue, despite the setbacks, and journalists will carry on fighting to amplify their voices – even if major powers want them silent.

(Source: Ella Squires)

Using social media platforms to speak up on less-discussed political topics is effective at spreading awareness, promoting fundraising and organising campaigns. Despite this concept elevating social justice, fighting for change through a screen can have a mental health cost, especially for students often already at risk of high stress. From emotional burnout, pressure to interact and cancel-culture, a progressive concept can soon generate negative backlash for its advocates.

Insight from Head of Student Wellbeing, Counselling and Engagement at Oxford Brookes, Becca Howard Burrell, helps to explain how we can protect mental health while keeping activism prominent through social media.

The Impact of Social Media

80% of the UK’s population classed themselves as active social media users at the end of 2025. These statistics reflect the impact that social media has on our everyday lives, including our mental health, with 62% of users aged 16-24 years stating that they felt social media impacted their mental health, with 17.3% sharing that this impact happened often.

Student at Oxford Brookes campus, Rebecca Wallace, told me that she comes across political and activist content on social media everyday. ‘Mostly, the political content makes me feel more negative emotions and have negative connotations’, she says.

(Source: Unsplash, 2026)

Echo Chambers

This effect, particularly on young people, is elevated negatively through constant exposure to distressing content online. Becca explains ‘it can become an echo chamber’...‘because of the way algorithms work, once you start following one protest group, you then get an enormous amount of very similar content.’ An echo chamber is defined, much like an actual echo, as encountering and subsequently reinforcing the same beliefs, or in this context the same type of content.

Shock Factor

As much as it is important to stay informed on political topics, when you’re constantly engaging with them on social media, the quickly-manipulated algorithm can create your feed to be seeing more and more of this, often distressing content. ‘As human beings we have a negative bias’, says Becca, ‘We are drawn to things that tend to be negative and sensationalist and we click on it. Then we click on more’.

When your social media is constantly revolving around distressing content, it’s bound to affect your mental health. ‘I think 2 things can happen. We get overloaded or we become desensitised’, says Becca.

Overwhelm, Stress and Anxiety

These feelings of overwhelm can create a cycle of negative mental health, causing you to feel more stressed in your everyday life and increasing anxiety levels. A study in Pakistan showed that out of 23 individuals who were politically active on social media, 62% were stressed out and 34.7% were not, showing a significant association between stress and online political content.

Information from mental health charity, Change Mental Health, explains that the ‘human brain is wired to react to threats and the news, which frequently focuses on problems and crises’, which can ‘trigger a prolonged stress response’.

With constant access to our phones, it can be easier said than done to simply switch off from this content. ‘There is an endless stream’, Becca says. ‘Your phone can ping all day long, and then this causes lots of micro-stressers. One micro-stresser won’t make much difference, but 10 or 20 can quickly build up, and up comes your anxiety’.

How to protect your peace while engaging with activist content online

So, what can we actually do to combat these issues? As much as activist content engagement can have a negative mental health impact, staying up-to-date with political content is important, and a key part of many people’s lives. Let’s look at how to stay informed strategically, with your mental health in mind.

Human Interaction

Just because social media has become a convenient go-to for publishing activist content, it’s not the only option. Why not join or start a local in-person protest? Or meet up with a friend to discuss your latest political views and opinions? Rebecca explains, ‘going on a march, joining a group, doing something, helps to alleviate some of that huge anxiety.’

(Source: Unsplash, 2026)

Stay True to You

It’s easy to compare yourself to others on social media, but you don’t have to follow the crowd. If something doesn’t feel natural to you, take a step back and assess if it aligns with your morals and values. ‘One of the key things is having a sense of sticking to your own core beliefs, your ethics, and using your voice in whatever way is authentic for you’, Rebecca says.

Think Critically

Having the ability to continue thinking critically in a world of AI, and being able to differentiate between fake or overly exaggerated news and truthful content is an important skill to practice and essential for protecting your mental health in regards to political content. ‘Having a healthy dose of cynicism and critical thinking is always helpful’, says Rebecca. ‘Asking yourself questions like ‘Why am I being shown this? Why am I being

encouraged to engage with this material?’ is extremely helpful for determining whether content is worth your mental energy.

Take Breaks

You don’t always need to be scrolling when you find yourself with free time. Take some time to take a walk, either with friends or as a form of self-care. Spending time outdoors is so important for your general wellbeing and often does a great job at regaining your focus and energy!

So, the key takeaways for protecting your mental health while still staying informed with important topics are: stay true to your morals and values, don’t neglect in-person connections and interaction, and think critically.

Remember, scrolling for justice doesn’t need to be a full-time job.

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2026 is the UK’s National Year of Reading, a campaign designed by the Department for Education and National Literacy to get the country back into good reading habits and to address declining literacy levels.

The campaign advocates going ‘all in’, and reading more about topics you’re already interested in, whether that’s football, gaming or TV. This initiative is important, but it does raise questions about the individuals across the country who have very low levels of literacy, those who can’t or really struggle to read.

Source: Image created by Millie Flanagan

In England, 18% of adults aged 16 to 65 are described as having “very poor literacy skills” by the National Literacy Trust, accounting for 6.6 million people. Nicky Bhatoey-Turnbull, an Employment and Skills Programme Manager, explains that individuals with this level of reading ability have “primary school levels of literacy”; they can understand familiar, everyday texts without help, but often struggle and need support when reading new or unfamiliar topics.

Julia Hanson-Abbott is the acting team leader of Read Easy Oxford, “a small voluntary group who coach adults who want to learn to read”. The organisation was founded in 2011 by Ginny Williams-Ellis after working at Dorchester prison. “She saw the power of offering one-on-one reading support to prisoners, and realised that actually there were adults who [were] not in prison, who also struggle with literacy”. Since then, Read Easy has grown into a national organisation with over 100 volunteer teams across the country.

The volunteers work with their readers biweekly, receive official coach training provided by Read Easy UK, and follow the Turning Pages program created by the Shannon Trust, a registered charity that operates in prisons across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“Read Easy doesn’t define literacy in terms of exams or government levels. We see it simply as the ability to read confidently enough to manage your everyday life.” - Julia Hanson-Abbott

Source: Image created by Millie Flanagan

The impact that low literacy has on an individual’s life is vast and all-encompassing, as Julia points out, “millions of people are struggling to read in a way that people with literacy just take for granted, and that can be everything from sort of reading a text message, to understanding a GP letter, to filling in an application form for a job”.

While Nicky explains, “I had a cohort of around about 50 caseloads, [...] I would say a good 85% of that cohort needed support with application forms, Housing, Council Tax…”

Adult learning services, such as those provided by Read Easy and the Shannon Trust, have a life-changing impact. Dani Tucker, Communications and Marketing Lead at Shannon Trust, says that, “Improving literacy and numeracy skills has a huge impact – not just on the person learning, but on everyone around them”.

The opportunity to develop literacy skills shouldn’t be a privilege, but for some people it is, and for those who gain access to these services in adulthood, it can entirely alter their social situation and quality of life.

Reading provides the confidence and independence that adults need to take control of their lives, thereby improving access to essential services, such as benefits or housing, required for healthy, functional, and safe living. As well as improved economic opportunity, the ability to secure employment, seek education or pursue occupational training.

Alongside these effects, individuals struggling with their literacy skills also experience significant emotional impacts. “We know that the challenges are practical, but also deeply personal. So it’s really about, [...] taking part in everyday life without fear of exposure”, says Julia.

Illiteracy is isolating, and adults have reported feeling vulnerable because they are unable to read, and the stigma associated with low literacy creates additional barriers, making asking for help and support incredibly difficult. With the fear of being exposed and their secret revealed, contributing to anxiety, further isolation and low self-esteem.

“Most people who can’t read have spent years hiding it from employers, friends, and even from their own family” - Julia Hanson-Abbott

So, how does adult illiteracy continue to persist in educated societies? “Unfortunately, not being able to read as an adult is still a taboo”, says Julia, “we find that people have developed quite sophisticated ways of managing those situations”, from forgetting their glasses, to reordering the same thing at every cafe visit, taking forms or documents away, non-readers live in fear of being discovered. Nicky says, “In terms of getting friends and family to help, some do have a network that can support, but they don’t”.

When it comes to adult illiteracy, there are two layers of stigma, both an internalised and externalised level, shame associated with their personal situation and the externalised judgement on intelligence. The first step is taking away personal blame, “it’s not the individual’s fault that they have come through school and not been able to read, it’s a society issue”, says Julia. Not being able to read is not a personal failing, a lack in that individual, or a matter of demographics; it is circumstantial and environmental.

When people reach adulthood without developing reading skills, it is often because of something that happened to them, leaving society’s systems to let them down and allowing them to fall through the cracks. “Many people in prison who can’t or struggle to read have experienced trauma or barriers to accessing mainstream education. Some other reasons why they may struggle include a broken home environment, no access to resources of support, or learning difficulties” says Dani, “Education is a vital tool in breaking the cycle of reoffending”.

“At Shannon Trust, we work with thousands of learners each year. In 2025 alone, over 11,000 learners worked with one of our programmes” - Dani Tucker

Charities such as Read Easy UK and Shannon Trust, along with support and community outreach staff like Nicky, are working tirelessly to address these issues, devoting their time, energy, and resources to underserved communities and individuals, but more is still needed. Volunteers, corporate sponsorships, and even spreading the word about the work these organisations are doing are invaluable.

These adults are the result of children who have fallen through the cracks of education and society and have been ignored for far too long. It’s high time we pulled back the curtain and shed some light on this social issue. So that we can finally tackle illiteracy among children and adults and give back to our communities.

“If we can remove the shame, fix the gaps in education, invest in adult learning and make support visible and welcoming, then we’ll unlock the potential of millions of people who’ve been held back for far too long.” - Julia Hanson-Abbott

Source: Collage created by Millie Flanagan

Protest still has a place in public life in Britain. Marches, rallies, and campaigns still draw crowds. Young people follow politics closely, and many talk about war, migration, housing, and rights every day. They care about public life, but many stay cautious. The gap between interest and action sits at the centre of this feature.

Ryan is a third-year law and criminology student at Oxford Brookes University. He went to a protest in Epping, where he lives, after seeing crowds gather outside the Bell Hotel. He lives less than a minute away, so the event felt close and immediate. He first went out to see what was happening. The protest then gave him a direct view of how tense public action can feel.

This article asks a simple question. Do young people still believe protest works? It answers that question through Ryan’s account and his views on fear, division, and public pressure. His comments show a generation that pays attention to politics but often hesitates to step forward.

“A lot of people are centrist… because they’re too scared to take a side,” Ryan says.

That fear matters. It shapes how young people speak, post, and protest. A clear opinion can now bring instant judgment from strangers, friends, employers, or cameras in the street. Ryan links that fear to a wider split in politics, where public debate often feels harsh and unforgiving.

“I personally think that more people are divided… It’s like either you’re left or right,” he says.

His words point to a sharp political mood. Public life now feels more fixed around sides, labels, and conflict. That pressure can make a protest feel risky, even for people who care deeply about an issue. Ryan still believes public action matters, but his account shows that fear now stands beside political engagement.

“People are scared in the sense of it affecting them in the long run,” Ryan says.

Such fear affects the behaviour of youth in society. Young individuals tend to consider the future impact of joining protests. Most companies look into an employee’s social media account before hiring them. Videos from such protests circulate rapidly online. Ryan experienced this effect firsthand. He laughed with his friends about being featured on television; however, the reality was different. A demonstration can become part of one’s permanent history. As such, attending such rallies may become counterproductive for a young person’s future. Fear will not deter youth from political interests. Instead, it deters them from taking action towards their causes.

“Social media shows the bad… it rarely highlights the good in what protesting does,” he says.

Content on various digital platforms shapes perceptions of protest activities. Social media posts emphasise conflicts, arrests, and other forms of tension between protesters and authorities. The viral nature of such content means that it reaches millions of viewers within minutes. The positive outcomes of the protest remain unnoticed. Therefore, there is a negative perception of such movements. Ryan attributes this to the exaggeration and distortion of events on digital platforms. Individuals may post videos of demonstrations in a misleading manner.

”People now are more engaged in politics,” Ryan claims.

Youth are exposed to political content daily. News, video clips, and opinions are available on social media, covering the world. It ensures people stay up-to-date on any issues. There are discussions and sharing on these platforms between friends. Such activities demonstrate the engagement of people. Nonetheless, being interested in something may not translate into doing something. Thus, Ryan’s opinion implies that people have the needed awareness but lack the confidence to act.

“I’d say it’s quite effective, actually,” he continues.

Protest remains powerful. Numerous participants ensure their presence is noticed and reported by the media. Independent recording of events by the public increases information circulation. As Ryan himself witnessed when taking part in one of the protests, it also helps in spreading footage through social media channels. Therefore, the actions of people might be useful for awareness raising and putting pressure on politicians. However, scepticism towards the effectiveness of protests prevails among many youths. This makes the role of such actions ambiguous – they happen and catch public attention; yet, changes following them might not be that significant.

Another student stated, “[protesting] doesn’t really change anything anymore.”

This perspective is shared by numerous young adults who do not believe protest can make a difference in contemporary politics. While there are others who are sceptical about the results of demonstrations, they go hand-in-hand with Ryan’s opinion on the effectiveness of public action.

“It will definitely grow… it’s going to get worse and worse,” Ryan adds.

There is no end to protest movements. Public unrest, political disagreements, and international problems contribute to the increase in protest marches. Young people, in particular, remain concerned about the state of affairs. However, whether this increase in activism is ultimately a positive or negative to society is still a widely contested idea that we may never agree on.

Claudia Lewendon-Evans, ex-professional dancer, shares her experience, and Dr Bonita Corrie-Lunn and Dr Aisling Daly, lecturers at Oxford Brookes University in Sport Sociology and Nutrition further share their knowledge on this topic.

Throughout professional settings, body shaming has sadly been an ongoing problem. Whether that be at The Royal Ballet, dance schools, or aesthetics sports, women have faced scrutiny regarding their weights.

Claudia is a strength, wellness and fitness coach who used to be a professional dancer. She started dancing when she was 3 years old, and she knew she wanted to do this on a professional level at a very young age, and therefore went on to dance college and then entered into a professional career.

When talking about the unhealthy body ideals women have to face in the dance industry, Claudia shared her experience, and how the biggest challenge was being judged on personal appearance. “In the professional dance industry you are hired for a job, you get work in the industry based on completely just how you look, which can be very difficult on your confidence, self-esteem, and it is very detrimental for a lot of women”.

Bonita further adds that this translates to media portrayal as well. “In sport, the idea that women are valued more for their looks rather than their achievements is still quite prominent within media representation and analysis”.

As mental and physical health are connected, nutrition plays a crucial part in working towards a better understanding of what the approach should be towards this topic. Instead of making women face unhealthy body ideals which then can lead to disordered eating, nutrition is a key area to focus on.

Aisling, who also used to be a gymnastics coach, shared that nutrition is key when it comes to women in professional environments. She highlighted “how important it is to fuel your body appropriately to have enough energy and do the best performance, and to support recovery”. She also believes that nutrition education should be focused on elements like energy, muscle strength and iron levels, as these “can help make the communication more practical and physical rather than emotional and related to image concerns”.

Claudia further adds how “movement is by far medicine for so many aspects. We shouldn’t be training for just aesthetics, we should be training for building bone density, muscle longevity and heart health.”

Even though this is still a problem, women are starting to speak up and therefore are continuously making a change. For example, TikTok now has separate sections titled “The Dance Industry Being Toxic” and “Toxic Sport Culture”, where women bravely share their experiences. Circling back to Alysa Liu, her story also stands as a pillar in making a change, especially in professional settings. She retired, experienced life outside of her profession, worked on her mental and physical health and got back to figure skating on her own terms, and went on to become the 2026 Olympic Champion.

Claudia now also helps women out, so that they can shift their approach to their own mental and physical health when it comes to body positivity, which, in parallel, helped her too. “Using my love for movement in and fully directing it towards mental health is what really helped shift my mindset on a personal level as well.”

Social media amplifies these unhealthy ideals women have to face, and unfortunately through this, unrealistic expectations are further created for women, which we will have to continuously advocate for. This is also what Claudia works against: “Being able to create more positive mindset through movement is always starting point and will be a positive domino effect from there”.

Hopefully, improvement will continue to be seen within society and its approach to women’s bodies. Bonita further reiterates this point: “I believe there has definitely been progress. Conversations around mental health, body positivity and athlete wellbeing are becoming more visible, and there is growing awareness of the damage caused”.

A proposal to ban social media for children and young people was defeated in parliament on 9th March 2026; though whether this is a plausible or even a definitive conclusion remains raised.

Dr Sejal Parmar Setty, a professor at the University of Surrey, claims a blanket ban would treat young people as a ‘single homogeneous group, ignoring the diversity of their experiences, needs and circumstances’.

Earlier this year, the Foreign Affairs Committee described social media as a ‘nefarious actor’ in British democracy; warning that, ‘time and again, we’ve been told that social media platforms are being weaponised to sow division and undermine trust’.

In both cases the warnings were diffused under the guise of freedom of speech and issues surrounding whether individuals will seek similar content elsewhere, potentially consuming more toxic content. Within these contradictions a paradox arises: how do we balance free speech and censorship?

The paradox of balancing free speech and censorship is highlighted through the resurgence of Commons committees. Photograph: Adobe Stock

Friederike Quint, a research associate and doctoral candidate at Technical University of Munich, who works in the “Transparency in Content Moderation” project. Highlights that, ‘In many democracies—including the UK—freedom of expression is widely seen as a core societal principle, and people tend to support it strongly when asked about it in the abstract.’

This was demonstrated by Sir John Whittingdale MP statement on 9 March 2026, at a media freedom, Foreign Affairs Committee: ‘Over the course of the inquiry, we have heard from Governments that disinformation currently represents one of the greatest threats to democracies.’

Quint argues that, ‘When the governments are confronted with concrete scenarios such as threats, harassment, or hateful speech, the way they weigh the importance of upholding or protecting this value often changes.’

Despite the arguments for censorship, Quint stresses that the amount of exposure to toxic language online is unavoidable stating, ’many users don’t necessarily condone toxic speech, but they have somewhat adapted to it or even become resigned towards it’.

Quint argues that this environment ‘creates a somewhat paradoxical dynamic’. On the one hand, the normalisation of toxicity on the other, whether platforms are actually able- or willing- to enforce their rules effectively.

Jillian York is a Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an advocacy organisation focusing on the policies and regulations of different issues relating to free expression, privacy, innovation.

Jillian York, Director for International Freedom of Expression at the EFF. Photograph: EFF Staff Profile

When asked of the risks that online speech moderation from the government may hold she says, ‘Any regulations have to be necessary. They have to be proportionate and they have to have safeguards…’

‘In the UK right now, what we’re seeing with this latest push is that they’re trying to take the minimal safeguards that exist through Ofcom, they’re already trying to pull that back and give more power to elected officials, which is really troubling. And we’ve seen how troubling that can be from other countries.’

At the same time, the opacity of platform moderation adds another layer of concern. ‘We don’t have visibility into how these systems work,” York says. ‘We don’t know what we’re not seeing’. Over the years, she adds, this has led to ‘a lot of accidental censorship’.

Responsibility, then, is diffuse. Within parliament, the role of the censor appears to fall upon the social media companies themselves.

Edward Morello MP, during a foreign affairs committee declared, ‘The underlying issue with disinformation and misinformation… to the public, social media platforms feel like cesspools of misinformation and disinformation.

‘The inherent problem is that you are an engagement-driven business, which means eyeballs and getting people to engage with and share content, so how do you offset that?’.

According to Taylor Annabell, a platform governance and digital culture researcher and Lecturer at Cardiff University, ‘it would be unreasonable and unscalable to moderate all content.’

Annabell notes a persistent confusion in public debate, ‘the discursive slippage between censorship and moderation. The DSA has been referred to as a “tool for censorship” when it does not moderate lawful content’.

If there is a consensus, for social media censorship, it is that no single actor can resolve the tension alone. Quint’s research suggests that citizens increasingly see moderation as a shared responsibility between governments, platforms and users themselves.

For York, that responsibility must be grounded in stronger safeguards and in the kind of systemic change long advocated by the EFF. ‘For me, it’s really important that we work to change those things by ensuring that companies are transparent, making sure that they’re paying a living wage and giving appropriate benefits to their staff…’ she says.

‘But also making sure that when it comes to automation, that there is transparency around that, what it looks like, how it’s being used, and making sure that there is a human involved in at least the appeal decision’.

The EFF’s work has consistently focused on these principles, holding accountability for how platforms moderate content. Their approach reflects a broader argument running through this debate that, not just whether to moderate but how to do so transparently and with meaningful human oversight.

Social media users want the freedom to speak and the protection from harm rendering the paradox unlikely to disappear. Instead, bridging the divide may mean building more systems as the EFF argues.

https://youtu.be/vkqh7N__Fz4

Back in January, like many other women, I was horrified to learn that Grok, (X’s AI ‘assistant’) had generated 3 million sexualised images in an 11-day period. With the Center for Countering Digital Hate calculating that this meant Grok was generating these at a rate of 190 per minute, the scale and prevalence of the issue of sexualised deepfake creation was then made strikingly apparent. On a personal level, as a young woman and journalist with an online presence I felt a new kind of fear, the fear that this could happen to me too. It was this feeling that got me thinking about how, whilst we now know the volume of these images, shouldn’t we also be focussing on knowing the impacts they have on victims?

Of course misogynists didn’t share my concern, with some online rhetoric in the Grok-aftermath dismissing what it had facilitated - and the actions of those who had used it - as not ‘real’ and thus harmless. Though I was disappointed at such a disregard for victims, I was not surprised; in fact, as deepfakes constitute a kind of non-contact sexual offence (NCSO), I had partly expected this. After all, a historic lack of understanding of the severity of NCSOs is in part what allowed Wayne Couzens to continue as a police officer, despite previous reports of indecent exposure involving him, a position he would later abuse to rape and murder Sarah Everard in 2021.

Though we have made progress in the UK in taking these offences more seriously, with the Angiolini Inquiry Part 2 showing some efforts made by police and government to better prevent these crimes, the Grok scandal highlights that there is still a limited understanding of how NCSOs affect victims. To find out more about these impacts, I spoke to Fiona Vera-Gray, a Professor of sexual violence who helped to develop new police guidance and training on this category of crime.

Fiona explains that historic patterns of thinking like “as long as you weren’t touched [...] then it’s not that serious”, means “we don’t see them [NCSOs] as harmful, because we still look at harm through the lens of: is there physical harm? Or, is there psychological harm?”

Specifically, Fiona says we don’t think about “freedom-based harms”. She clarifies that recent research finds that for women these offences have “significant harms in terms of restricting their freedom, feeling like they can’t go into parks, into nighttime spaces, or go walking alone”.

The research she is referring to is actually her own - co-authored by Professor Clare McGlynn, Jo Lovett and Dr Vicky Butterby - published in February. Freedom under threat reveals that considerable percentages of women are changing their behaviour both online and offline, with some of the results visualised below.

In our conversation, Fiona also discussed the rising frequency of digital NCSOs, citing the report’s finding that women under 24 are more likely to have experienced cyberflashing from the ages of 18 to 24 than women over 60 are likely to have experienced indecent exposure in their entire lives. With the prevalence of digital offences like cyberflashing, Fiona says that this is significantly impacting young women’s ability “to participate in online life”.

Lucy Wynne, a secondary school teacher from Buckinghamshire, similarly shared her concerns about the impacts of deepfakes, saying “as a teacher and as a parent, and as a generally concerned citizen, I do worry about how deepfakes could potentially impact young girls, and young women both in school and out of school. I think that with the easy availability of really excellent quality AI it’s likely that this is only going to get worse”.

Already, we see an increase in ‘revenge porn’ incidents in the last decade, shown in the number of cases handled by the Revenge Porn Helpline, shown below:

Whilst AI generated sexualised deepfakes on this scale are a relatively recent phenomenon, we see that image-based abuse is not new. In fact, the delayed recognition of how technology can threaten women’s safety is reflected in UK legislative history, detailed in the video below:

Fiona highlighted that one of the things her fellow advocate - and Glamour ‘stop image based abuse’ campaigner - Professor Clare McGlynn argues is that “we need to start future-proofing our law”.

She clarifies that Clare has been advocating for “an overarching law” which covers all kinds of image-based abuse, rather than individually legislating for cyberflashing, deepfake porn or revenge porn - but that hasn’t happened yet.

Though legislative future-proofing plays a role in preventing future NCSO, Fiona emphasises that improving cultural understanding is even more important:

“The biggest thing I think that would make a real difference is for the recognition of harm to really be understood.”

“What we still don’t understand is harms that aren’t necessarily psychological harms. They aren’t physical harms, but they’re harms to you, your freedom, they’re harms to your ability to take up your right to participation, your freedom of movement, your bodily autonomy, those things we still as a society haven’t quite got our heads around.”

“They constrain the space of women and girls, the online space, but also the offline space. And once we understand that as an injury, as a harm, as serious in and of itself, I think that will then start to create the cultural change and then the change within the criminal justice system that we need for these kinds of offences.”

Ultimately, with the recent prevalence of digital sexual offences and the harms we know NCSO causes its victims, the overhaul of attitudes which have previously minimised these offences is more vital now than ever.

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The outbreak of meningitis quickly spread through the University of Kent and unfortunately 2 lives were lost. Their deaths caused a rapid promotion of leaflets and campaigns surrounding spotting the symptoms and receiving emergency help if you think you have contracted the illness. These campaigns were directed towards university students, who are more at risk.

This sudden wave of cases triggered an emergency response from the Government and health officials, however could this outbreak have been prevented? More awareness and more information could have been given before it had taken lives.

The Importance of Vaccines

According to the NHS, vaccines are the most important prevention against dangerous diseases. They teach your immune system to create the relevant antibodies that protect you from the particular illness.

Receiving a vaccine also helps you protect friends and family and even strangers through “herd immunity”. If enough people get vaccinated then there is less of a chance for a disease to spread. This also helps people who cannot receive or don’t have access to the specific vaccine.

Although there has been large speculation surrounding vaccines, they have been thoroughly tested to make sure that they cause no harm to adults or children.

The NHS also states that, once a vaccine has been finalised for usage throughout the UK, it is monitored for any rare side effects by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). This is really important with older vaccines as they can check that they are still effective.

In the UK vaccines are offered to babies and young children to prevent diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella. However since January 2026 UKHSA data shows a total of 371 confirmed cases, with 90 cases in the past 4 weeks. With a disease such as measles still being present within the 21st century, there is a creeping sense that communities are losing trust in our healthcare systems and are losing a sense of security.

Other diseases such as smallpox, polio and tetanus, which used to be life debilitating or even caused death, have significantly reduced throughout the UK due to the introduction of vaccines.

University Perspective

Miss Chatelle who studies at Oxford Brookes University shared her opinion on why some students are reluctant to accept vaccinations. She stated: “It would most likely be from misinformation”. With the UK being an extremely developed country, it poses the question as to why people are losing their lives to diseases that can be prevented?

Miss Chatelle continues and states that, “It could also be because of the fear of side effects, for example for COVID, a lot of people said “oh my God, but I’ve heard that someone didn’t have their period for like 3 months, which honestly is a bit scary”.

Chatelle’s own opinion as a university student highlights that her fears are quite common throughout other students.

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Chatelle is a psychology student and she also stated that, “If you have a fear of needles, then that might make an impact on why people don’t get vaccinated”. This is in connection to an Oxford University study which argued that if the UK treated needle fears then there would be a decrease of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy. Their website claims that, “injection fears partially account for higher rates of vaccine hesitancy.”

Young people attend university not only for a degree but also to socialise, go clubbing and experience independence. This is why they are at a higher risk of contracting meningitis, because of their higher levels of socialising.

Dr Sherine Thomas, Infectious Diseases Consultant at UKHSA, said:

“Although the risk to the wider population remains low, it is still really important that people know the symptoms of invasive meningococcal disease and seek immediate medical attention if they or anyone they know develops them. UKHSA continues to work with partners to identify contacts and offer necessary treatment.”

UKHSA’s website states, “As of 12:30pm on Friday 20 March, 4,500 vaccinations have been given and over 10,500 doses of antibiotics have been administered.” This highlights the rapid response of healthcare professionals as well as Kent University itself.

When questioned if the outbreak could have been prevented a Kent resident stated, “Yes I think it would’ve been better if initially there was more awareness of exactly how it spread as this would’ve highlighted where the main risks are.”

Although the rapid response of vaccines and antibiotics offer some security, they do not bring back the lives that were taken last month. This injustice asks the question that if university students are more at risk of contracting the life threatening disease, why are they not offered the vaccine for this particular strain, like all other vaccines?

The importance of communication and trust

The short term effect of the recent meningitis outbreak is that if you suspect you or someone else has symptoms of meningitis then you must get emergency medical help. Even though there may be speculation on social media and other websites, it is vital to always get your health and welfare information from a trusted medical website, such as the NHS or the World Health Organisation (WHO).

If there was more awareness of meningitis throughout universities then there could have been a chance that the recent outbreak in Kent could have been prevented. The recent outbreak has been a wakeup call for the UK Government and other higher health officials to look after our young people and students. This wasn’t just an outbreak of meningitis but one of neglect as well.

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