New laws coming into force this week aim to streamline age checks although old-style plastic IDs will still be allowed

Younger drinkers in England and Wales will be able to prove their age with a digital ID starting this week as new laws give pubs, off-licences, nightclubs and restaurants the right to use biometric scanning technology to check customers are over 18.

Customers will be able to download software that scans their faces into their own phone to generate a QR code proving their age based on a stored proof of age. Other tech under consideration as part of the government push to digitise age verification for alcohol sales include a device which scans the veins in a drinker’s finger to verify their age. That system has not yet been approved for use.

It was the fastest-growing emoji in 2025 – but if you’re older than 16, it has probably passed you by. Now, just as twentysomethings are catching up, it’s over

In the 2025 hit Netflix show Adolescence, DI Luke Bascombe’s 13-year-old son, Adam, has to explain to his father the way his generation use heart emojis. “Red means love, purple: horny, yellow: ‘I’m interested, are you interested?’, pink: ‘I’m interested but not in sex,’ orange: ‘You’re going to be fine,’” he explains. “It all has a meaning. Everything has a meaning.”

And those meanings are constantly evolving. Take the skull (), for example, which has come to be used as a reaction for finding something funny – a visual shorthand for the slang phrase: “I’m dead.” Or the wilting rose () which was, according to Google data analysed by the New York Times, the fastest-growing emoji in terms of popularity in 2025 – and was the 93rd most used. That the previously obscure wilting rose is now in the top 100 emojis is thanks to generation Alpha (those born between 2010 and 2024), who use it in place of the broken heart emoji () to signify sadness, or ironically, to suggest mock-heartbreak.

Humans will have to compete with AI-powered virtual employees in the near future. Here are our tips for the last human holdouts

Futureproofing your career with an AI-resistant degree is a tough ask, says Charlie Ball, an expert on graduate employment for Jisc, the UK’s higher education digital, data and technology agency.

“What you’re trying to do is futureproof a 45-year career in a time of rapid technological change – and that’s really quite hard to do. What’s likely is that jobs that hinge a lot on human, face-to-face interaction are unlikely to be replaced.”

If you’re called by an unidentified number, the advice is to remain silent until you’re sure there’s a human being on the line. Is this the end of an era?

Name: Hello.

Age: 200 years old.

Psychologist Candice Odgers has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years. She fears the current debate around smartphones obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregivers

The quickest way to make being online safer for children and teens would be to kick all adult men off the internet, the Canadian psychologist Candice Odgers believes. Men are the biggest perpetrators of sextortion and most likely to spread misinformation, she says.

Odgers is not recommending this as a policy for governments to adopt: “That would be crazy, right? It would be unfair.” But she is on a drive to puncture the prevailing narrative that the best way to address online harms is a social media ban for teenagers.

All the young people the Guardian spoke to disagreed with aspects of the government’s proposed block

Sixteen- and 17-year-olds in Britain are to be encouraged to observe a midnight to 6am social media curfew but will be able to opt out by changing their account settings.

From next spring, they will be urged to refrain from using certain apps, with the block being switched on by default. But the curfew will not be mandatory and can be overridden.

Sean Thomas says his 20 year-old daughter can't find a job – any job, stacking shelves, washing pots – because all the work has gone to migrants at a shocking ratio of 27 to one.

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