BMJ

Doctors have urged the UK government to use new powers in the Tobacco and Vapes Act1 to introduce plain packaging on all vape and e-cigarette products, warning that youth vaping is normalising nicotine use.A motion at the BMA’s annual representatives meeting in Brighton described vapes and e-cigarettes as a public health “emergency” that risked causing addiction and irreversible lung damage. It called on the government to act urgently on standardised packaging and to bring forward a full ban on advertising and sponsorship of vapes and nicotine products.The Tobacco and Vapes Act, which came into force in April,2 gives ministers powers to regulate vape flavours, packaging, and displays. The government has said that the ban on …

Recent attacks on healthcare facilities in Iran and Lebanon represent an alarming escalation in violations of medical neutrality. Dozens of attacks in Iran since late February 2026 have resulted in healthcare worker deaths, hospital damage, and disrupted services, indicating a growing trend of healthcare infrastructure being targeted during armed conflict.1 Healthcare facilities are protected civilian entities under international humanitarian law—their …

Australia’s social media ban for under 16s has not curbed use among adolescents, new data indicate, with researchers concluding that the current platform age verification checks are “suboptimal.”1The finding, although preliminary, has implications for the UK, which is planning a similar blanket ban on under 16s using social media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X.2The observational study included 436 people aged 12 to 17 in New South Wales who were surveyed shortly before Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act took effect in December 2025 and again around three months later.Participants were asked about their social media habits in the past seven days and their experiences with platform verification checks and any efforts to circumvent them.More than …

Australia’s experience suggests that bans may be ineffective and let social media companies evade responsibility, writes Andy BurrowsAs a growing number of countries follow the herd to introduce an Australian-style social media ban, new research published in The BMJ suggests that this may not be the best course.1 The findings underscore that the purported benefits of bans may have been overstated, and it raises further questions about the evidence base underpinning outgoing UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s decision that the UK should follow suit.This month, the Molly Rose Foundation published research finding that almost half of girls aged 13-17 years had been exposed to high risk content about suicide, self-harm, and eating disorders on major social media sites in a week.2 The need for urgent policy interventions is clear, but responses must be well targeted …

Evidence suggests that legislation alone is not enoughGovernments globally are considering age restrictions for social media amid concerns about online harms and mental health.123 In June 2026 the UK government announced that it would bring in legislation, explicitly modelled on Australia’s approach, to ban social media platforms from offering services to under 16s, with protections expected by spring 2027.4 Yet the first prospective evaluation of a national social media age restriction has reported largely null findings, and interpreting them is not straightforward. In a linked study (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-363695), Barnes and colleagues report limited evidence of short term effects of Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age Act on adolescents’ social media use.5 The findings will inevitably shape debates in countries considering similar policies. The central question, however, is not whether the policy worked. It is whether the policy was implemented with sufficient fidelity to allow that question to be answered at all.Public health policies can fail because interventions are ineffective, but they can equally fail because implementation is incomplete, compliance is limited, or populations adapt in unexpected ways. Distinguishing between these explanations is a central interpretive challenge, given their very different implications for policy and practice.In an observational study, Barnes and colleagues followed 436 Australian adolescents aged 12 to 17, surveyed shortly before the Act took effect in December 2025 and again around three months later. The study documented striking implementation challenges. …

Public policy is one of the most powerful tools available to governments to improve public health. Australia’s social media minimum-age legislation is a policy with considerable potential for impact in Australia and internationally. It is designed to reduce (or delay) exposure to online harms and support healthier development during adolescence. The legislation requires in-scope social media platforms to take reasonable steps to prevent children younger than 16 years from creating or maintaining accounts, by implementing age verification measures. Evaluations of its impacts are being closely followed by countries considering enacting similar legislation,1 including in the UK where the government recently announced new social media regulations.2In Australia, the policy has been divisive. While there is strong support for social media reform within the community,3 an open letter to Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese signed by 140 academics and representatives of youth and child health groups expressed concerns about the effectiveness and potential unintended consequences of the ban.4 Until the evidence regarding …

Objectives To examine the early effect of a world first national policy (Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024, which established a national minimum age of 16 years for holding accounts on designated social media platforms) on adolescent social media use, and to describe adolescent use of social media platforms subject to the Act, experience of age verification strategies, any efforts to circumvent them, and any perceived behavioural substitution or displacement.Design Observational study.Setting Community based study conducted across Australia.Participants Australian adolescents aged between 12 and <17 years at the time of implementation of the age restrictions.Intervention The Australian Government’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024), which requires designated social media platforms to implement reasonable measures to prevent users under 16 years of age from holding accounts.Main outcome measures Data were collected immediately before (baseline) and approximately three months after introduction of the Act. Co-primary outcomes were adolescents’ self-reported use of social media in the previous seven days (every day versus not every day) and time spent using social media per day. A sharp regression discontinuity design was used to evaluate the impact of the Act on social media use. Differences in outcomes at each side of the age threshold were estimated using local linear regression with triangular kernel function.Results Follow-up data were available from 408 of the 436 adolescents recruited at baseline. More than 85% of participants aged under 16 years reported using social media platforms subject to the Act at follow-up, predominately via use of their own accounts (54-68%), 66% of whom reported exposure to platform age verification, most commonly self-declared age (24-39%) or uploading of a picture (“selfie”) (13-27%). Efforts to circumvent restrictions, such as use of a “fake” account (15-19%) or social media access via a private browser (6-11%) were also reported. Between baseline and follow-up, daily social media use was stable among 12-13 year olds; reduced somewhat among those aged 14-15 years (from 78% to 69%), and increased for those aged >16 years (from 80% to 89%). Time spent per day using social media was relatively stable between baseline and follow-up for 12-13 year olds and those aged >16 years but was lower at follow-up for those aged 14-15 years (from 3.40 to 3.13 units on an ordinal scale). In regression discontinuity design analyses, insufficient evidence was available to support a discontinuity in social media use on these primary outcomes (P≥0.60).Conclusions Despite the intent of the Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024 to delay access to social media platforms and reduce the potential for online harms, little evidence was found of immediate substantive reductions in reported social media use by adolescents under 16 years.Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry [ACTRN12625001056482][1].Data sharing: Use of data not covered by the current ethics approval will require additional ethics approval before the data are made available. Anyone seeking to access the data will need to contact the lead investigator, along with seeking appropriate ethics clearances. Only once those approvals are granted will de-identified data be shared via an encrypted communication channel.[1]: /lookup/external-ref?link_type=CLINTRIALGOV&access_num=ACTRN12625001056482&atom=%2Fbmj%2F393%2Fbmj-2026-363695.atom

### NHS will offer pioneering precision radiotherapyThousands of men in England with prostate cancer are to be offered high powered “precision” radiotherapy that will cut the number of treatment sessions from 20 to five. The pioneering multibeam radiotherapy, known as stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), will treat the condition far more quickly and with fewer side effects at all 48 radiotherapy providers in England. The treatment is usually delivered in five doses within a fortnight, which compares with at least 20 doses with standard (external beam) radiotherapy, significantly reducing the number of hospital visits required. (Full story doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-558418)### Nearly 3000 NHS patients a day are affectedHospitals in England cared for around 90 000 patients last month—nearly 3000 a day—in corridors or other inappropriate treatment areas, figures show. NHS England data on corridor care, published for the first time, show how far ministers are from achieving their aim of eradicating the practice, which doctors’ leaders and health analysts say has become normalised. NHS England data show that 20 trusts accounted for over half of the cases of corridor care in emergency departments, while 20 trusts also accounted for over two thirds of cases of corridor care elsewhere in hospitals. (Full story doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-887896)### Two children in England have died since JanuaryTwo children in England have died from measles so far this year, the UK …

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