We lived, without knowing it then, on the other side of the digital chasm. I know the first time I heard the word “internet”: on a trek through Ness Woods in Northern Ireland. My father, self-taught and insatiably curious, told …
Labour has broken Gen Z’s heart
Summer has finally arrived in London. Beer gardens are packed, Lime bikes whizz through disgruntled traffic. There is a quiet optimism: the election is soon. For the first time that we can remember, we might not have a Tory government. …
The Republican’s foolish war on the ICC
It’s not hard to understand why the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, took the unprecedented decision to seek an indictment of Israel’s prime minister and defence minister. To borrow from Bob Dylan, the times have changed, and sometimes …
Inside the Gen Z sex war
Women to the Left, men to the Right. And heaven forbid there is any crossover. These days, young people are floundering in their sex-based political silos wanting different things: girls are still seeking equality and boys miss being the good …
How TikTok is erasing girlhood
A few weeks ago, I saw my two nephews. My mum keeps a big box of our old toys, and the three-year-old loves the kitchen set: he delights in plonking radioactive-looking broccoli florets on plates or, learning from trips to …
The curse of Valentine’s Day
How St Valentine came to be associated with romance is disputed. Some suggest the third-century martyr’s feast “Christianised” a Roman fertility festival — but the first mention of his day in connection with love comes more than 1,000 years after …
Who will fight for Britain?
The year I was born, one of the most famous New Wave songs of all time was released: Elvis Costello’s “Oliver’s Army”. It was written after Costello visited Northern Ireland during the Troubles. There, he described seeing “mere boys walking …
Gen Z’s radical race politics
It’s a dreary day in a provincial English town. A tracksuit-wearing teenage boy affecting an exaggerated version of the “Jafaican”, which has replaced Cockney as the capital’s working-class dialect, asks a similarly dressed individual: “What nationality is the best to …
Why Snoop Dogg should quit weed
Last week, the world awoke to a new status quo, a shifted paradigm, the end of an era. Where getting high was concerned, the Pope had just given up on Catholicism: Snoop Dogg had retired from the smoke. Leaderless, rudderless …
How did Oxford become so lame?
When I was 17, the schoolmaster tasked with overseeing my moral development frowned at my show of indecision about the future direction of my education and, as if letting me into a trade secret, carefully explained: “Look, clever people go …
How not to have sex
The Zoomer Generation is notoriously uninterested in the risk-taking behaviours that were once a rite of passage to adulthood. They don’t drink, they don’t smoke, and they’re indifferent to sex — not just to having it, but even, according to …
Gen Z has an Israel problem
It’s almost like a religious ritual. Every Saturday since 7 October, central London has swollen with protestors waving the Palestinian flag and chanting “From the River to the Sea”. For the impartial and curious observer, two facts are immediately striking. …
The real chaos of the ‘new normal’
“Generation gap” is a term that trips neatly off the tongue, often used to describe banal differences between older and younger people in matters of cultural taste, approaches to work, political opinion, and myriad other features of social life. Just …
The greatest generational conflict
Ever since the phrase “the generation gap” was minted — by a headline writer at Look during the youth rebellion of the Sixties — trouble has been brewing. Today, there are two generational conflicts in play around the world: one …
Why Gen Z loves Seinfeld
Long ago, in another age, young people gathered in sitting rooms to watch television. And these moments of fixed attention, and the TV shows that create them, define generations. A quarter of century ago last weekend — slacking on the …