Social media

Must we live in perpetual fear of being named and shamed?

6 January 2024 9:00 am

Current wars, Brexit and Trumpism have sucked us into a vortex of outrage and disgrace, says David Keen – while advertisers make us feel guilty for being too fat or just poor

Are smartphones making us care less about humanity?

11 November 2023 9:00 am

Generation Z were the first to grow up attached to smartphones. They spent their adolescence bathed in screen-light and now…

‘Childhood has been rewired’: Professor Jonathan Haidt on how smartphones are damaging a generation

4 November 2023 9:00 am

Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In Britain, the US, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be…

Cancelled Kanye West buys cancelled free speech platform Parler

18 October 2022 4:20 am

Hear Ye Hear Ye! The news today has broken that Kanye West – who calls himself Ye – has bought Parler, the…

Dear Mary: Why aren’t I getting more Instagram ‘likes’?

8 October 2022 9:00 am

Q. As a novice user of Instagram I was flattered at how quickly I gathered followers – 200 already. Many…

I’m a one-woman man

10 September 2022 9:00 am

Gstaad There’s a fin de saison feeling around here, but the restaurants are still full and the sons of the…

Why I don’t do WhatsApp

11 June 2022 9:00 am

If I could ban one question ever being asked of me again it would be: ‘Are you on WhatsApp?’ I…

Can Elon Musk take on the tech censors?

30 April 2022 9:00 am

Is Elon Musk a match for the tech censors?

The algorithm myth: why the bots won't take over

19 February 2022 9:00 am

The psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer on how to stay ahead of the algorithms

What really happened to Politics For All

22 January 2022 9:00 am

Why was Politics For All shut down?

My strange encounter with foot fetishists

15 January 2022 9:00 am

My strange encounter with the foot fetishists

I’m sharing my boyfriend with 60,000 other people

15 January 2022 9:00 am

The trouble with dating a social media star

Marjorie Taylor Greene's Twitter ban is nothing to celebrate

7 January 2022 1:14 am

Marjorie Taylor Greene is nuttier than M&M World. Not your garden-variety conservative, or even a conservative at all, but a…

Am I being impersonated by an actor from Colorado or a mining company?

18 December 2021 9:00 am

Someone else with my name is wreaking havoc with my attempts to control the Twitter account I don’t want. Obviously,…

The good and bad news about the Online Safety Bill

14 December 2021 10:01 pm

If you care about free speech, the just-published report of the Joint Committee on the Online Safety Bill – a…

I’ve been back one week and the good old US of A has never seemed more depressing

13 November 2021 9:00 am

New York Don’t let anyone tell you the Bagel is worse off than Kabul, where three people were recently shot…

Letters: The contentious issues of religious conversion

30 October 2021 9:00 am

Hard to reconcile Sir: Although not an Anglican, I appreciate Michael Nazir-Ali’s dilemma (‘A change of mind and heart’, 23…

Why I say no to apps

30 October 2021 9:00 am

‘My phone says I can’t go out until Tuesday, so I can’t come and meet you,’ said my friend. And…

The problem with ‘David’s law’

23 October 2021 9:00 am

Two members of parliament have been killed in the past five and a half years. This, one long-serving MP laments,…

The Facebook empire is beginning to crumble

6 October 2021 6:43 pm

When empires crumble they slide slowly at first, then the temple walls come crashing down. Facebook is not quite at…

I miss life before Big Tech

2 October 2021 9:00 am

Do any of you remember the time when everything took place on the terraces and in outdoor cafés? Before everyone…

Blue-tick Twitter is spoiling Emma Raducanu's victory

13 September 2021 7:10 am

How do you take the pleasure out of something so marvellous and joyful as Emma Raducanu’s US open victory last…

Technology is robbing us of the power to forget

4 September 2021 9:00 am

Technology is robbing us of the power to forget

I was held to ransom by hackers

7 August 2021 9:00 am

I was held to ransom by hackers

Mesmerising and monstrous: @zola reviewed

7 August 2021 9:00 am

The distinction between on and offline life blurred long ago. The greatest spats, sexual self-fashionings and mad soliloquies now unfurl…