The title phrase is said by one of the passengers on the cruise ship MV Hondius, the one with the hantavirus, in a video that has become, precisely, one of the most viewed stories on social media this week. The passenger's name is Jake Rosmarin and he makes a call to whoever sees his video not to be forgotten. He cries as he says it, and you can see he is afraid, an objective and justified fear because he is on a ship where three people have already died. But then there is another fear that also makes him cry: that of not being able to count on the support or empathy of others, of us who are watching his video. Of becoming, as he says, a story, which in social media language is a video or an image that circulates for an ephemeral time and then simply disappears.Jake Rosmarin expresses this fear from the other side of the black mirror of the screen. He too is a social media user, like everyone else, and he too has surely seen videos similar to the one he recorded himself: people who were suffering, who found themselves in terrible, desperate situations. Surely Jake Rosmarin had looked at these videos with indifference or with a brief shiver (of compassion, of rage, of disgust: this already depends on the specific emotion that each video seeks to excite), and then had not thought about it anymore. It is, by no means, any reproach to Jake Rosmarin: it is how more or less all of us behave as users, or as consumers, of social media. What Jake Rosmarin, passenger of the hantavirus cruise, asks of us is that we do not do this to him and his unfortunate companions. That we do not pause briefly at their tears and then move on to another video, who knows, of celebrities on a red carpet, or of funny animals, or of in-laws formulating conspiracy theories.Jake Rosmarin's plea surely comes late. For a long time now we have been accustomed to contemplating people subjected to extreme pain on the screens of our mobile phones. For a long time now we have become accustomed to seeing people cry while we dine in front of the television: victims of bombings, immigrants shot down in boats, elderly women evicted by vulture funds, bodies abused or raped or blown up. Sensationalism, banality, the algorithm, and the desire to make easy money (in short, what we call technocapitlism) come together to help us become spectators — more passive, more abulic than ever — of the misfortune of others. People who suffer like flies trapped inside a glass, which is the screen.The horror is to go from being the spectator to being the fly. Jake Rosmarin rebels, with good reason, against this horror, but his tears will predictably have the same trajectory as those of so many, so many people who appear crying every day on our screens. We will be moved, of course, if in a while a film, or a series, is released narrating the ordeal of the hantavirus cruise, with the corresponding tagline: “Based on true events.”

Harassment, insults, manipulated photographs to mock, or spying on someone's phone. These are the digital violences perpetrated by Spanish youth, mostly against people of their own age, friends, or work and leisure companions, and also against their partners. A study by FAD Joventut indicates that 26% of those aged between 15 and 29 have been digital aggressors in the last 15 years, with no significant gender differences, but there are differences by age: 32% of adolescents (15-19 years old) report having engaged in cyberviolent behaviors compared to 24% of those aged 20-24 and 20% of the 24-29 age group. The victim's profile is an adolescent belonging to a vulnerable group, such as an immigrant, a member of the LGBTIQ+ community, someone with a disability, or from a socially vulnerable family.

Youth ask me, in a tricky way, why ARA doesn't release information about the Esplugues crime, and if it's because they want to hide it. "They're hiding that it's a jihadist attack," they complain. "The man said 'Allah is great,'" they tell me. "Why doesn't ARA publish the video of the man shouting 'Allah is great?'"

The far-right has been generating synergies with fake media for years to influence public opinion. But it is not an exclusive strategy of this political space, at least in Catalonia. A journalistic investigation confirms that Comuns and ERC manage and finance content platforms in web format and through social networks aimed at younger audiences. These are El Moment (ERC) and La Futura (Comuns), two digital channels that, in the eyes of the public, present themselves as media outlets, but are used as tools for disseminating the ideology of political parties. The PSC, for its part, has created Posem el focus, a podcast in which they do not explicitly state their political brand.

Several students from a high school in the north of the Netherlands, among whom there would be Catalan exchange students, were threatened with a supposed firearm, humiliated, and filmed by strangers in two incidents that took place this Monday in the municipality of Haren. According to local television RTV Noord, it was the school itself (the Harens Lyceum center) that reported the events in a letter sent to parents and guardians of the center. Sources from the Department of Education confirm that an incident has occurred and explain that the Government is already monitoring this situation in coordination with the Spanish consular authorities in the Netherlands "to have a more precise understanding of the events that may have occurred and to study the necessary actions."

Populism, as we know, is a quagmire, and for that very reason those who play in it often slip. That's what happened to Gabriel Rufián at his rally in Barcelona with Irene Montero and Xavier Domènech when he stated that he prefers “to fill TikToks than libraries”, with the argument that his son “mirrors TikTok”. Measuring public policies based on what relatives do puts us close to Rajoy and his denier cousin.In any case, Rufián's statement (which he must consider valid, as he has neither apologized nor qualified it, despite the understandable discomfort it has caused) is a mess for several reasons. The first is that it poses a false dilemma between public libraries and social networks, a choice that is not presented to anyone from the outset. On the other hand, it is true that many politicians tend to want to burden libraries, or public schools, with responsibilities they should not bear (in Palma, to mention a case right now, PP and Vox want to inspect libraries to see if they find “too many books in Catalan”).Public libraries offer a fundamental service for any society that wants to be advanced and offer equal opportunities to citizens, especially to the children of families who most certainly do not have (because they cannot) books or other means of access to culture and knowledge. They are also excellent spaces for socialization, not virtual, but in person. Their audience is usually local, but not precisely a minority, as demonstrated by the very high numbers of users and loans. Catalonia is a country with a magnificent library network and, therefore, Rufián should know all this. He should also know that what a progressive politician (any politician, but one more so than any other, and without excuse) should do is defend the public library. Not to belittle it because it does not have the audience figures of a social network with an algorithm designed to create addictive behaviors among its users.Perhaps the greatest paradox is that public libraries are one of the most important tools a society has in the fight against fascism, which is what Rufián says he cares about. Public libraries are essential for building critical thinking and more cultured societies, and more cultured means better informed: on the other hand, what is promoted from TikTok and other large social networks is precisely disinformation, or information poisoning. Rufián, I have said it before, is right when he warns that Spanish politics (and this directly affects Catalan politics) is once again clearly confrontational. But it is not clear that the way to stop the anti-democratic front is to play within its field, with its rules and its tools. More libraries, better funded and equipped, and greater recognition and prestige for the people who work there would surely help us more than a thousand viral videos of people challenging each other to idiotic stunts.

In the war for the digital narrative, the tug-of-war between the Spanish government and the PP has moved to the vertical format. The two main Spanish politicians opened accounts on TikTok almost simultaneously, although the impact they have is quite different. Alberto Núñez Feijóo was the first to land there in September 2025, just two days before the Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, did. It is the socialist leader, however, who has gotten the most out of it: Sánchez already has 764,400 followers and over nine million likes. The most striking data from the comparison is that the total number of followers of the popular leader is approximately equivalent to the volume of new users that the Spanish prime minister gains in just one week. A gap that becomes even more evident in the impact of the content: Sánchez's last ten videos have an average of 1.1 million views, thirty-six times more than Feijóo's 31,200.

What should the relationship between parents and their children be like when the latter begin to delve into the world of social media? How do the algorithms work? What security measures should families and children take? Or what red lines cannot be crossed to guarantee good management? A window in your pocket (Editorial Mediterrània) is a family story, funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, that answers all these questions. The story stems from three years of research by communication PhDs Mireia Montaña Blasco, from the UOC, and Mònika Jiménez-Morales, from the UPF, on how young people use social media. More than 1,000 teenagers between the ages of 12 and 18 participated in the research, explaining how they use platforms like TikTok and what the consequences are.

Actor Barry Keoghan, known for films like Saltburn or the more recent Peaky Blinders: The King, has denounced the harassment he has suffered on social media, which has focused mainly on criticizing his physical appearance. In an interview with the American magazine Entertainment Weekly, he detailed that this hate campaign has altered his life and his way of behaving."It has made me withdraw into myself, not want to go anywhere, not want to go out," he says.

"It distresses me greatly to lose friends. I enjoy deep conversations with my mother. I worry about not achieving what everyone expects of me. I need a hug. I need to be closer to my family. You grow old when you feel nostalgic. You grow old when you look at supermarket prices." These are just some of the reflections that can be heard in a sound installation at the exhibition. We are seventeen years old, a group portrait, which can be seen until May 17 at the CCCB. Its unique feature is that those who speak are 17-year-olds, and what they reveal is very intimate: their thoughts, their concerns, and their worries, free from the pressure of social media or the prejudices of the adult gaze.

For years, sociologist Elisa García-Mingo has immersed herself in the study of the machosphere, online communities that spread misogynistic content, whether through ridiculing comments and messages or by asking artificial intelligence to reinvent photographs of women to undress them.

Tim Berners-Lee, one of the creators of the internet, has complained about the massive use of addictive algorithms on social media: he would ban social networks and phones for anyone under 16.

I read in the NOW The conclusions of the latest Youth and Gender Barometer. It asks about partner control, and here, of course, the device called mobilewhich is the center of modern relationships. We meet because we start following each other on Instagram and break up via WhatsApp. If we look at the figures, 32% of young women say their partner has gotten angry because they didn't immediately answer messages or calls, compared to 17.5% of young men. It makes me laugh that it's emphasized that it's young women. Older women can go six months without replying, and their partner won't even notice. But here's the thing: 27% of women say they've checked their partner's phone, compared to 17% of men. 26.6% of women have told their partner who they can and can't talk to, compared to 17% of men.

It was what I expected to hear. The German teacher at the Official Language School asked us to give our opinions on Sánchez's proposal to restrict internet access for those under sixteen. The debates proposed in language classes are always equally boring: climate change, artificial intelligence, new technologies... I exhale. Then someone said it was outrageous that children grow up with direct access to pornography, recording themselves performing lewd dances on TikTok, glued to the screen and... bullying Telematics. And another replied that in his day ("in my day!") all this was already happening in other ways. It was what he expected to hear, yes, but expressed in the German we know how to speak in that classroom.

Do I agree with not giving mobile phones to children until they are 16? Generally speaking, yes, although biological age isn't necessarily the most important factor in assessing the negative impact of using these devices. Furthermore, social media has many other entry points. The policy of providing computers to all students makes access to inappropriate content widespread. And, above all, addictive practices extend to other screens available at home, such as tablets.

Young people today lack private and shared spaces where they can interact freely and independently without adult intervention. There is the space dedicated to formal education and extracurricular activities, but outside this broad range of organized time, what is left for them? In the physical, analog world, only consumption: streets full of shops and shopping malls. The available parks are designed for toddlers. In a few squares, there are still some ping-pong tables. In any case, there comes a time when children disappear from the city. If we look at the types of people we find on the street, outside of school hours, we see older people or very young children, but it would seem that teenagers don't exist. Where are they? Locked away at home, of course, and, in many cases, in their bedrooms, where all the social life they once had in person, as a real, physical being and not a digital avatar, has been displaced. The virtualization of childhood and adolescence is an unprecedented phenomenon whose long-term consequences are unknown. Currently, the data on mental health problems in this age group are so alarming that they should prompt us to reconsider this social shift, which we have neither decided upon nor thoroughly evaluated. Those of us who had children at the turn of the millennium were later told that we couldn't do anything, that we couldn't oppose the digitization and virtualization of our own offspring. To be against it is to be old-fashioned, technophobic, and practically an internet-bound Amish.

In the summer of 2023, I published the article "Screens: for all ages and without limits?", in which I posed an uncomfortable but essential question: how is it possible that we have normalized unlimited access to screens, especially during childhood and adolescence, without a deep collective debate about the consequences?

We've all been there: a loved one tells us they're going through a difficult time, and we feel compelled to react. Let's take a sadly common example: a friend tells us that they or a family member is seriously ill. Many, many of us, despite being genuinely affected by the news, simply write a WhatsAppHowever often we hear the phrase, once it's written down, it becomes a cliché: "I'm so sorry," "Cheer up!", "If you need anything, you know where to find me," "Everything will be alright."

The chaos at Renfe and Adif affects commuter rail, medium-distance trains, and increasingly, high-speed rail. This is the result of a political decision enthusiastically embraced by both the PP and the PSOE: everything on the AVE high-speed rail, and that all AVE services be for travel to and from Madrid. Thirty-four years after the first line, Madrid-Seville, they still haven't managed to connect Barcelona and Valencia.

An old adage advises joining the enemy if you cannot beat them. In terms of compolIf the enemy's values ​​are better than yours, get closer. And if your own values ​​bother you, apply them to the enemy. Thus, the classical right has sidelined its key concepts—order, property, family, etc.—in order to appropriate the term freedomAlthough for two centuries this magic word has guided all revolutions against the old regime. First, it was appropriated by the liberals, in the name of laissez faire economic. And now they're doing it. libertarians, Trump's followers, who obviously have nothing to do with old libertarian anarchism, but with hatred of the state in the face of the market, erected as guarantor of the rights of individuals.