If before it was the people who went looking for the news, now it is the news that goes looking for the people. It is one of the effects of scrolling, the action of swiping the mobile screen to continue consuming more and more content. This gesture –often unconscious– has spread to the functioning of the main social networks and describes the routine of a large part of the population, such as 21-year-old Arnau, who spends “three hours a day” on it, he says, surprised by himself. The pioneering application of this new paradigm is TikTok, which began by spreading dances or viral challenges, but which now, with billions of downloads around the world, already offers videos on current political affairs. In just three years, the number of young people between 18 and 24 years old who prefer this platform to get information about politics has quadrupled to 23% in Catalonia, according to the political opinion barometer of the CEO this October, to the detriment of Instagram and X (Twitter), which have fallen by 7 points. But this phenomenon is not exclusive to the youngest: one in three Catalans gets informed via social networks, through creators like Jordi Wild, Vito Quiles, and Inés Hernand.

An investigation published in the State has shown that the social network TikTok is full of pedophilic material and that the platform does not prevent its dissemination. According to information published by the outlet Maldita.es, in little more than a month more than 200 profiles have been identified that were publishing explicit images of child sexual abuse, accessible to all users. Faced with this news, the Ministry of Youth and Children has sent a written request to the Public Prosecutor's Office to "adopt the necessary measures" to ensure the protection of children, and states that it is considering the option of halting the social network's services in Spain "if deemed appropriate".

New push by the EU against TikTok. Brussels suspects that the platform's algorithm infringes the Digital Services Act (DSA) because it traps users in a bottomless pit from which it is very difficult to escape. It considers that its content personalization design drags users into a spiral of harmful content that can damage their mental health and even encourage eating disorders. For this reason, it threatens the company with a multi-million euro fine if it does not remedy it.

It is not yet known who is behind Saturday's riots and looting in Barcelona, but experts are already talking about a "method" that originates on social media and quickly moves to the streets. It begins with a call to mobilize that is shared by various anonymous TikTok users. They publish posters made with artificial intelligence that aim to stimulate citizen unrest and encourage protests. They are designed to grab attention and attract the largest number of people possible. Interested users are redirected to Telegram and WhatsApp groups, where hundreds of people gather, and it is from these groups that they organize with speed. But their goal is no longer to demonstrate, but to paralyze the city and loot: the members know where they have to go, at what time, and even how they should be dressed.

It was during the pandemic that Núria Casas installed the TikTok app and dared to make videos caricaturing different types of mothers, teachers, or comparisons about how school was a few years ago and how it is now. A direct and realistic format that has connected enormously with the public and has become her current job as a content creator.

Summer has traditionally been synonymous with disconnection, rest, and time to regain strength. However, in the midst of the digital age, this notion seems to have changed. Nowadays, free time has become a showcase where it seems essential to demonstrate that constant experiences are being lived. If summer was once an opportunity to slow down, now many people feel they have to fill each day with activities, getaways, or trips that are worth sharing on social media. When this doesn't happen, an uncomfortable feeling arises: that of wasting vacation time.

New crusade by European consumers against tech giants. This Thursday, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC, for its English acronym), together with 29 associations from the 27 member states of the European Union, has denounced Meta (the parent company of Facebook, TikTok and Google) to the European Commission and national authorities. The reason is having allowed the proliferation of fraudulent financial advertisements on its platforms and having ignored calls to remove them, contravening the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA, for its English acronym). contravening the Digital Services Act (DSA, for its English acronym) of the Union.

Cory Doctorow (Toronto, 1971) is one of the most lucid voices for discussing power and technology. Aware of the importance of words –he is a novelist and journalist–, he invented a concept at the end of 2022 to define, avoiding technicalities, the process that platforms were experiencing: emmerdification. A concept that has become popular and gives its name to his latest book, which has been translated into Spanish by Capitán Swing.

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.

Last Tuesday, the Council of Ministers decided enough was enough: after months of watching how the artificial intelligence tools of big tech companies became automatic generators of child pornography, the Spanish government has ordered the State Attorney General's Office to investigate X, Meta, and TikTok for possible crimes of sexual abuse of minors. Let no one say they weren't warned: when users of Grok, Elon Musk's AI, created 3 million sexualized images in 11 days – 23,000 of which showed minors – perhaps someone in Silicon Valley could have suspected that things weren't going well.

Pedro Sánchez is not backing down and is taking another step in the crusade against Big Tech. The Spanish government on Tuesday asked the Public Prosecutor's Office to investigate X, Meta (which includes Facebook and Instagram), and TikTok for the sexual violence crimes they may be committing in the creation and distribution of child pornography using their artificial intelligence (AI) tools. "These platforms are threatening the mental health, dignity, and rights of our sons and daughters. The State cannot allow this. The impunity of these giants must end," Sánchez himself stated early in the morning in a message published on X.

Following a discreet pilot program in the UK, TikTok has announced it will implement a new age verification system in Europe to keep users under 13 off the app, as demanded by the EU. The algorithm will consider a range of factors related to account activity—such as the type of content viewed or posted—and in case of suspicion, a human expert will decide whether the account is deleted or remains on the service. In the UK, this methodology has already resulted in the removal of several thousand user profiles belonging to users under 13. Deletion will not be automatic, and users will have the right to attempt to prove they are over the age limit with a credit card, facial recognition analysis, or presentation of their ID. The company Yoti will act as an intermediary in these cases. The system will begin to be rolled out asymmetrically across different countries, and the news comes just as an awareness campaign is underway in Australia demanding that users under 16 be barred from the platform. The UK is also considering a similar ban. Until now, signing up for TikTok as a minor was as easy as entering a fake birthdate. The EU has long been calling for more effective filters. ByteDance, the Chinese company behind TikTok, has also explained that it plans additional measures for teenagers over the age of 13. It explained that those under 16 will not be able to send direct messages and that those under 18 will have a one-hour daily limit on their use of the short-video app.

Catalan content creators have often explained that every time they upload a video they receive insulting comments, photos, or who asks them to switch to SpanishNow, a counter-narrative has emerged. It involves a character named Montserrat Pujol who, in recent weeks, has been making her presence felt on the accounts of many Spanish-speaking influencers. She charmingly and enthusiastically asks them to make videos in Catalan. "Could you do it in Catalan? Thank you." Or: "If you spoke Catalan, you would win many hearts here." And also: "It would be even more charming in Catalan."

ByteDance, owner of the short-video platform TikTok, has agreed to sell its US operations to a conglomerate led by American investors. This follows Trump's demands, who, citing security concerns and the risk of espionage, insisted that the app be divested of Chinese ownership to continue operating legally. After months of negotiations—and extensions to the ultimatums—the parent company has announced it will relinquish its assets in the country.

What should we do with the social media profiles of someone who has died? And with all the other accounts where they stored photos, emails, and contacts? How can we ensure that our online usernames will disappear with us or that they will continue to be managed as we would have liked? Among the legal experts consulted, there are different opinions on whether or not it is necessary for social media to be part of a will, but they agree that it is an option that will most likely gain significant popularity in the coming decades. The reason? That more and more people are living completely digital lives, many of whom own social media profiles with thousands of followers, or whose social media accounts are a source of income, such as those from the United States. influencers.

The philosopher Martin Heidegger produced a very fruitful distinction between fear and anxiety that is still fully relevant. Fear always has a concrete object that threatens the realization of our projects (and here "projects" can simply mean staying alive); on the other hand, anxiety has no concrete object, because it is precisely the impossibility of becoming emotionally involved in any project, the unease that manifests when we realize there is no ultimate foundation behind anything and we are alone before the precipice of free choice. What is more characteristic of the internet: fear or anxiety?

In Jairon Orellana's most viral video, you can see how his boss speaks to him in Spanish at the construction site ("Jairon, are you done there or not?") and he answers him in Catalan ("We brought 20, 25 tiles more or less") and the man automatically speaks to him in Catalan. A sarcastic voice-over comments: "See? I made him speak Catalan."

The construction of a data center to serve TikTok has raised many eyebrows in Finland. In recent years, the construction of this type of infrastructure, which is key to the functioning of the internet, has boomed in the Nordic country, thanks to access to low-cost electricity, good connectivity, and a cold climate that allows servers to be cooled. However, data centers also raise important questions about the security of the data they store, their energy consumption, and the low economic impact they generate for the site that hosts them.

Our teenagers are hooked, above all, on the Chinese platform TikTok from a very early age. Their digital lives are very active on this and other social networks, giving them access to everything, with few barriers. They are also on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter, although these networks, also popular, appeal more to adults. Is it necessary to limit minors' access to this digital ocean? How? Who should do it? To what extent? These are questions that concern families, governments, the educational community, and mental health experts. There are, indeed, reasons for concern. But the answers are not so obvious.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) has fined TikTok €530 million for transferring European users' personal data to China. The Irish body announced in a statement on its website that the video platform, owned by Chinese company ByteDance, violated EU regulations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing to verify that this data received the same level of protection on servers in China as it did in the European Union (EU). Furthermore, the DPC has required the app to adapt its data processing systems to EU regulations within six months. Failing that, TikTok must suspend the transfer of this data to China.