Leaps of faith: does jumping up and down 50 times in the morning really boost your physical and mental health?

TikTok says it’s the ultimate wake-up call. But does the fitness craze have any downsides – apart from waking up the neighbours?

If you’re an avid viewer of online fitness content (or live below someone who is) you’re probably familiar with TikTok’s 50 jumps challenge. The basic premise is simple: you jump 50 times as soon as you wake up, for 30 days straight. Reach the end of the month and you’re supposedly in for a world of benefits.

The jumps, reassuringly, don’t need to be too extreme. Think gentle bouncing with a soft knee bend, rather than tuck jumps. Some content creators show themselves with arms by their sides, swaying their hips as they go; others have their arms crossed over their chests and maintain a strict up-and-down momentum. Some would find their natural home in a moshpit, others at a dance party. Nobody, yet, seems to have purchased a bedside trampoline.

Published: February 1, 2026, 2:00 pm

PMDD is ruining my life. What can I do?

You’re already doing all the right things for your premenstrual dysphoric disorder, but perhaps it’s time to ask others for more help

I’m 32, and was recently diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), though I suspect I have had it for around five years. It severely affects every area of my life.

For 10 days every month I become irritable and impatient, and have debilitating brain fog. At my worst, I am depressed, with uncontrollable crying and suicidal ideation. I go to weekly therapy sessions, take a variety of supplements, and live a healthy lifestyle – exercise, minimal alcohol, eating well, etc, but all these habits become almost impossible during my luteal phase after ovulation and I feel as though I am completely stuck.

Published: February 1, 2026, 6:00 am

‘The best movement is the next movement’: how to really look after your lower back

An estimated 80% of the population will suffer from lower back pain at some point. The good news is that preventing it is a lot easier than treating it

• Read more in The way you move series

Getting out of bed. Picking up a coffee mug. Waving at a friend. Bending down to pat a dog. Turning to flush the toilet.

Many who have experienced “doing their back in” have been baffled by the discrepancy between the mildness of the precipitating action and the severity of the resulting pain. How could such a small, innocent movement trigger such paralysing pain that lasts for weeks, months, years or, in some cases, decades?

Published: January 31, 2026, 7:00 pm

Why TikTok’s first week of American ownership was a disaster

App endured a major outage and user backlash over perceived censorship. Now it’s facing an inquiry by the California governor and an ascendant competitor

A little more than one week ago, TikTok stepped on to US shores as a naturalized citizen. Ever since, the video app has been fighting for its life.

TikTok’s calamitous emigration began on 22 January when its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, finalized a deal to sell the app to a group of US investors, among them the business software giant Oracle. The app’s time under Chinese ownership had been marked by a meteoric ascent to more than a billion users, which left incumbents such as Instagram looking like the next Myspace. But TikTok’s short new life in the US has been less than auspicious.

Published: February 1, 2026, 11:00 am

US authorities reportedly investigate claims that Meta can read encrypted WhatsApp messages

A lawsuit filed last week alleges tech firm ‘can access virtually all’ private communications, a claim the company has denied

US authorities have reportedly investigated claims that Meta can read users’ encrypted chats on the WhatsApp messaging platform, which it owns.

The reports follow a lawsuit filed last week, which claimed Meta “can access virtually all of WhatsApp users’ purportedly ‘private’ communications”.

Published: January 31, 2026, 1:01 pm

How the left can win back the internet – and rise again | Robert Topinka

In the final part of this series, we look at how infighting has ripped the left apart online while the right has flourished – and how some progressives are turning the tide

• Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

• Part one: How liberals lost the internet

• Part two: How the right won the internet

There is politics before the internet, and politics after the internet. Liberals are floundering, the right are flourishing, and what of the left? Well, it’s in a dire state. This is despite the fact that the key political problems of the last decade – rising inequality and a cost of living crisis – are problems leftists claim they can solve. The trouble is, reactionaries and rightwingers steal their thunder online, quickly spreading messaging that blames scapegoats for structural problems. One reason for this is that platforms originally built to connect us with friends and followers now funnel us content designed to provoke emotional engagement.

Back when Twitter was still the “town square” and Facebook a humble “social network”, progressives had an advantage: from the Arab spring to Occupy Wall Street, voices excluded from mainstream media and politics could leverage online social networks and turn them into real-life ones, which at their most potent became street-level protests that toppled regimes and held capitalism to account. It seemed as though the scattered masses would become a networked collective empowered to rise up against the powerful.

Robert Topinka is a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London

Published: February 1, 2026, 8:00 am

Can you guess our screen time? A priest, pensioner, tech CEO and teenager reveal all

From the person who scrolls on the toilet to the one without any social media, what do their digital habits tell us?

• Will Storr: we have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones – can we get it back?

Dayeon, 16: the teenager who spends less than an hour a day on screens

Published: January 31, 2026, 6:00 am

Urban Outfitters, Dreams and Royal Parks cafes criticised for use of gig economy app

TUC urges ministers to bring forward changes to protect workers amid concerns over apps such as Temper

The fashion retailer Urban Outfitters, the bed specialist Dreams and the operator of several Royal Parks cafes have been criticised for the use of the gig economy app Temper to take on staff – some of whom can end up earning below minimum wage.

The TUC is urging the government to bring forward promised reforms to protect gig economy workers amid concerns that those hired by apps such as Temper are missing out on significant employment rights including sick pay, rest breaks, holiday pay and a minimum hourly rate.

Published: January 31, 2026, 11:00 am

What to know about the jury trials of Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube

Hundreds of parents, teens and school districts have claimed social media is intentionally addictive and harmful

Social media companies will have to answer to a jury – for the first time – for allegations that their products are intentionally addictive and harmful to young users’ mental health. Hundreds of parents, teens and school districts sued Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube, leading to a series of landmark trials that began this week. Jury selection in the first case started on Tuesday in Los Angeles court.

Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is among the big tech CEOs who are expected to testify. Both sides are likely to bring in experts to hash out the science behind alleged addiction to social media.

Published: January 31, 2026, 10:00 am

‘Menopause gold rush’? Experts warn of brands cashing in on women’s symptoms

As apps and gadgets capitalise on loss of stigma, consumers are advised to look for evidence-based solutions

For any bodily function you want to measure these days there is a gadget – a wristband for step-counting, a watch to track your heart rate or a ring for measuring sleep.

Now the march of wearable tech is coming to the aid of what some say is a long underserved market: menopausal women.

Published: February 1, 2026, 10:00 am

Electric ​cars ​go ​mainstream as ​adoption ​surges ​across ​rich and ​developing ​nations

A wave of affordable Chinese-made EVs is accelerating the shift away from petrol cars, challenging long‑held assumptions about how transport decarbonisation unfolds

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Last year, almost every new car sold in Norway, the nature-loving country flush with oil wealth, was fully electric. In prosperous Denmark, which was all-in on petrol and diesel cars until just before Covid, sales of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) reached a share of 68%. In California, the share of zero-emissions vehicles hit 20%. And at least every third new car now bought by the Dutch, Finns, Belgians and Swedes burns no fuel.

These figures, which would have felt fanciful just five years ago, show the rich world leading the shift away from cars that pump out toxic gas and planet-heating pollutants. But a more startling trend is that electric car sales are also racing ahead in many developing countries. While China is known for its embrace of electric vehicles (EVs), demand has also soared in emerging markets from South America to south-east Asia. BEV sales in Turkey have caught up with the EU’s, data published this week shows.

The Fukushima towns frozen in time: nature has thrived since the nuclear disaster but what happens if humans return?

The UK government didn’t want you to see this report on ecosystem collapse. I’m not surprised

The 16-month battle to reveal the truth about Sydney Water’s poo balls

Powering up: how Ethiopia is becoming an unlikely leader in the electric vehicle revolution

‘My Tesla has become ordinary’: Turkey catches up with EU in electric car sales

The electric vehicle revolution is still on course – don’t let your loathing of Elon Musk stop you joining up

Published: January 31, 2026, 7:00 am

We have lost so much of ourselves to smartphones: can we get it back?

My use of mobile phones has been compulsive – has it been for better or for worse?

• From a priest to a pensioner, a teenager to a tech CEO: can you guess our screen time?

In 2003, the Stanford social scientist BJ Fogg published an extraordinarily prescient book. Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do predicted a future in which a student “sits in a college library and removes an electronic device from her purse”. It serves as her “mobile phone, information portal, entertainment platform, and personal organiser. She takes this device almost everywhere and feels lost without it.”

Such devices, Fogg argued, would be “persuasive technology systems … the device can suggest, encourage, and reward.” Those rewards could have a powerful effect on our relationship with these devices, akin to gamblers pumping quarters into slot machines.

Published: January 31, 2026, 6:00 am

Six great reads: ‘Fafo’ parenting, what tech does to us, and Patrick Bateman’s legacy

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Published: January 31, 2026, 6:00 am

Mass grave in Jordan sheds new light on world’s earliest recorded pandemic

Researchers tell ‘human story’ about crisis during plague of Justinian, which killed millions in Byzantine empire

A US-led research team has verified the first Mediterranean mass grave of the world’s earliest recorded pandemic, providing stark new details about the plague of Justinian that killed millions of people in the Byzantine empire between the sixth and eighth centuries.

The findings, published in February’s Journal of Archaeological Science, offer what researchers say is a rare empirical window into the mobility, urban life and vulnerability of citizens affected by the pestilence.

Published: January 31, 2026, 11:00 am

Ex-British army chief calls on ministers to back MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans

Nick Carter says easing controls on MDMA will allow drug to be used as alternative treatment for those with PTSD

A former head of the British military is calling for the government to ease restrictions on the party drug MDMA so that it can be tested more cheaply as a treatment for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Sir Nick Carter, who was chief of the defence staff until 2021, said existing regulations meant a single gram of “medical grade” MDMA cost about £10,000 compared with a street price of about £40, inflating the cost of trials.

Published: February 1, 2026, 7:00 am

Madeline Horwath on the mistakes of evolution – cartoon

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Published: January 31, 2026, 11:00 am