Prime minister wants young people to be shielded from ‘power of the algorithm’ Norway is to enforce a strict minimum age limit on social media of 15 as the government ramped up its campaign against tech companies it says are “pitted against small children’s brains”. The Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, conceded it would be “an uphill battle” but said politicians must intervene to protect children from the “power of the algorithms”. Continue reading...

Using World of Warcraft-style animation, this documentary tells the story of Mats Steen, a boy with muscular dystrophy whose online popularity was only revealed after his death It’s probably just an accident of scheduling, but this deeply affecting documentary is arriving just when there’s a debate raging at the school gates about children’s use of smartphones and social media. So while it’s undoubtedly troubling how tech platforms set out to addict and exploit young minds, The Remarkable Life of Ibelin provides a fascinating counterargument about how online gaming at least can be a lifeline for some individuals who find themselves isolated in the real world, or IRL as the kids like to say. Born in 1989, Mats Steen started out like many other Norwegian children of his generation: energetic, sweet-natured, unusually pale. However, his parents Robert and Trude soon discovered that he had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic condition that eroded his ability to move and breathe and which would eventually kill him at the age of 25. By that point in 2014, Robert, Trude and Mats’ sister Mia knew that Mats spent hours of his life online playing World of Warcraft using special equipment to accommodate his disability and had been publishing a blog about his life. Continue reading...

Nordic country, paradoxically a major oil producer, has set target for all new cars sold to be zero emission Electric cars now outnumber petrol cars in Norway for the first time, an industry organisation has said, a world first that puts the country on track towards taking fossil fuel vehicles off the road. Of the 2.8m private cars registered in the Nordic country, 754,303 are all-electric, against 753,905 that run on petrol, the Norwegian road federation (OFV) said in a statement. Continue reading...