• Teenagers’ mental health is being damaged by heavy social media use, a report has found.
• Research from the Education Policy Institute and The Prince’s Trust said wellbeing and self-esteem were similar in all children of primary school age.
• Boys and girls’ wellbeing is affected at the age of 14, but girls’ mental health drops more after that, it found.
• A lack of exercise is another contributing factor – exacerbated by the pandemic, the study said.
• According to the research:
  • One in three girls was unhappy with their personal appearance by the age of 14, compared with one in seven at the end of primary school 
  • The number of young people with probable mental illness has risen to one in six, up from one in nine in 2017
  • Boys in the bottom set at primary school had lower self-esteem at 14 than their peers

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• One in six households is struggling to afford broadband during the current UK lockdowns, according to a survey by Citizens Advice.
• The charity warned that the poorest people were effectively being “locked out” of access to key services.
• Only three of the 13 largest broadband providers offer affordable tariffs for those on low-income benefits, it said.
• It is calling on the government to force providers to offer cheaper plans to people struggling financially.
• Citizens Advice also wants the telecoms regulator Ofcom to take action.
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• Police have seized thousands of computers running one of the most dangerous hacking networks worldwide
• The Emotet network obtains access to victims’ computers, via malicious email attachments, then sells it to criminals who install more dangerous malware
• Police from the UK, EU, US and Canada worked together to “disrupt” Emotet
• Europol called it “one of most significant botnets of the past decade” and one of the main “door openers” for computer systems worldwide
• “Once this unauthorised access was established, these were sold to other top-level criminal groups to deploy further illicit activities such as data theft and extortion through ransomware,” it said
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• Social workers are braced for a “tsunami of needs” as the UK recovers from the pandemic, a union has warned
• The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) expects workloads to increase as restrictions are lifted
• One worker described a “big surge” in referrals after the first lockdown and the fears of missing something that is wrong
• Officials in all four nations praised the efforts of social workers and highlighted schemes to help vulnerable children that had been established during  the pandemic
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