Interviewer: Jillian York

Jacob Mchangama is a Danish lawyer, human-rights advocate, and public commentator. He is the founder and director of Justitia, a Copenhagen-based think tank focusing on human rights, freedom of speech, and the rule of law. His new book with Jeff Kosseff, The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom, comes out on April 7th.

Jillian York: Welcome, Jacob. I'm just going to kick off with a question that I ask everyone, which is: what does free speech mean to you?

Jacob Mchangama: I like to use the definition that Spinoza, the famous Dutch renegade philosopher, used. He said something along the lines, and I'm paraphrasing here, that free speech is the right of everyone to think what they want and say what they think, or the freedom to think what they want and say what they think. I think that's a pretty neat definition, even though it may not be fully exhaustive from sort of a legal perspective, I like that. 

JY: Excellent. I really like that. I'd like to know what personally shaped your views and also what brought you to doing this work for a living. 

JM: I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, which is a very liberal, progressive, secular country. And for most of my youth and sort of young adulthood, I did not think much about free speech. It was like breathing the air. It was essentially a value that had already been won. This was up until sort of the mid-naughties. I think everyone was sort of surfing the wave of optimism about freedom and democracy at that time. 

And then Denmark became sort of the epicenter of a global battle of values over religion, the relationship between free speech and religion with the whole cartoon affair. And that's really what I think made me think deep and hard about that, that suddenly people were willing to respond to cartoonists using crayons with AK-47s and killings, but also that a lot of people within Denmark suddenly said, “Well, maybe free speech doesn't include the right to offend, and maybe you're punching down on a vulnerable minority,” which I found to be quite an unpersuasive argument for restricting free speech. 

But what's also interesting was that you saw sort of how positions on free speech shifted. So initially, people on the left were quite apprehensive about free speech because they perceived it to be about an attack on minorities, in this case, Muslim immigrants in Denmark. Then the center right government came into power in Denmark, and then the narrative quickly became, well, we need to restrict certain rights of hate preachers and others in order to defend freedom and democracy. And then suddenly, people on the right who had been free speech absolutists during the cartoon affair were willing to compromise on it, and people on the left who had been sort of, well, “maybe free speech has been taken too far” were suddenly adamant that this was going way too far, and unfortunately, that is very much with us to this day. It's difficult to find a principled, consistent constituency for free speech. 

JY: That's a great way of putting it. I feel like, with obvious differences from country to country, it feels like that kind of polarization is true everywhere, including the bit about flipping sides. I guess my next question, then, is: what do you feel like most people get wrong about free speech?

JM: I think there's a tendency—and I'm talking especially in the West, in the traditional free and open democracies—I think there's a huge tendency to take all the benefits of free speech for granted and focus myopically on the harms, real and perceived, of speech. I mean, just the fact that you and I can sit here, you know, I don't know where you are in the world, but you and I can have a direct, live, uncensored conversation…that is something that you know was unimaginable not that long ago, and we just take that for granted. We take it for granted that we can have access to all the information in the world that would previously have required someone to spend years in libraries, traveling the world, finding rare manuscripts.

We take it for granted, but this is the difference between us and say dissidents in Iran or Russia or Venezuela. We take it for granted that we can go online and vent against our governments and say things, and we can also vent things on social issues that might be deeply offensive to other people, but generally we don't face the risk of being imprisoned or tortured. But that's just not the case in many other countries. 

So, I think those benefits, and also, I would say, when you look at the historical angle, every persecuted or discriminated against group that has sought and achieved a higher degree of equal dignity, equal protection under the law, has relied on speech. First they relied on speech, then they could rely on free speech at some point, but initially they didn't have free speech right? So whether it's abolitionist the civil rights movement in the United States, you know my good friend Jonathan Rauch, who was sort of at the forefront of of securing same sex marriage in the United States, knows that was a fight that very much relied on speech. And women's rights…fierce women, who would protest outside the White House and burn in effigy figures of the President, would go to prison. Women didn't have political power. They didn't have guns. They didn't have economic power, they had speech, and that's what you need, to petition the government, to shine a light on abuse, to rally other allies and so on. And I think unfortunately, we've unlearned those hugely important precedents for why we have free speech today. 

JY: I’m definitely going to come back to that. But first I want to ask you about the new book you have coming out with Jeff Kosseff, The Future of Free Speech: Reversing the Global Decline of Democracy's Most Essential Freedom. I'm very excited, I’ve pre-ordered it. 

So, in light of that, I’ve got a two part question: First, what are some of the trends that concern you the most about what’s going on today? And then, what do you think we need to do to ensure that there is a future for free speech?

JM: So first of all, I was thrilled to be able to write it with Jeff, because Jeff is such an authority on First Amendment section 230 issues. But from the personal perspective, you could say that this book sort of continues where my previous book on the history of free speech finishes.

And so, based on the idea that we are living through a free speech recession that has become particularly acute in this digital age, where we see what I term as various waves of elite panic that lead to attempts to impose sort of top down controls on online speech in particular—and this is not only in the countries where you'd expect it, like China and Russia and Iran, but increasingly also in open democracies that used to be the heartland of free speech—there's a tendency, I think, in democracies, to view free speech no longer as sort of a competitive advantage against authoritarian states, or a right that would undermine authoritarians, but as sort of a Trojan horse which allows the enemies of democracies, both at home and abroad, to weaponize free speech against democracy, and so that's why the overwhelming

legislative initiatives and framing of free speech is often “this is a danger.” This is something we need to do something about. We need to do something about disinformation. We need to do something about hate speech. We need to do something about extremism. We need to do something about, you know, we need to have child safety laws. We need age verification. And you know, you know the list all too well. 

JY: I do, absolutely.

JM: Where I think where free speech advocates often fall short, is that we're very good at sort of talking about the slippery slope and John Stuart Mill and all these things, and that's important, but very often we don't have compelling proposals to sell to people who are not sort of civil libertarians at heart, and who are generally in favor of free speech, but who are frightened about particular developments at particular manifestations of speech that they think have become so dangerous to you know, freedom, democracy, whatever interest that they're willing to compromise free speech. 

And so we try to point to some concrete examples of—giving life to the old cliché—fighting bad speech with better speech. So some of those examples are counter speech. There are some great examples. One of them is from Brazil, where there was a black weather woman who was the first black weather woman to be sort of on a prominent TV channel, and she was met with brutal racism. So, you know, what should have been a happy moment for her became quite devastating. And so there was this NGO that printed billboards of these very nasty racist comments, blurred the identity of the user who had said it, but then put them in the neighborhoods where these people lived. So that was a very powerful way to confront Brazilians with the fact that, you know, racism is alive. It's right here in your neighborhood. And you know they used the N word and everything, and nothing was censored in terms of this racism, which was put right in front of it of everyone, and it actually led to a lot of people sort of deleting their comments and someone apologizing, and led to, I think, a fruitful debate in Brazilian society. 

Then you have other types of counter speech. One of them is a Swedish journalist called Mina Dennert. She started the “I am here” movement. So it's a counter speech movement, which I think spans 150,000 volunteers across 15 countries. And they use counter speech online, typically on Meta platforms, I think, where they essentially gather together and push back against hate speech, not necessarily to convince the speaker that they're wrong, but to give support to those who are the victims, but also to essentially convince what is often termed the movable middle, to show them that there are people who disagree with racist hate speech, and there's actually empirical data to suggest that these can be effective strategies. You can also use humor. 

Daryl Davis is a very extreme example. He's a black jazz musician who has made it his life mission to befriend members of the KKK. And he has converted around 200 members of the KKK, to essentially leave it and he does that by just having a conversation. Because if your worldview is that blacks are inferior and should not enjoy equal rights, and you have a conversation with someone in a way where it becomes impossible for you to uphold that worldview, because the person in front of you is clearly someone who's intelligent, articulate, who can counter all your your preconceived notions, then it becomes very difficult to uphold that worldview right? And you can imagine that those members who leave the KKK then become agents of change within their former communities. 

So there are various counter speech strategies that have shown a promise, and at the Future of Free Speech [think tank] that I direct, we've developed these toolkits, and we do teachings around the world, I think we've translated them into nine or ten languages. So it's not a panacea, obviously, to everything that's going on, but it's something quite practical, I think. And the good thing about it is also that it doesn't depend on an official definition of hate speech. If you're concerned about a particular type of speech, you can use counter speech to counter it. But you're not engaging in censorship, and we don't have to agree on what the definition of hate speech is. In that way, it’s hopefully an empowering tool. 

And another example: we talk about how Taiwan has been quite an inspiring case for using crowd sourced fact checking, for using sort of a bottom up approach to fighting disinformation from China, but also around Covid, so zero lockdowns and no centralized censorship, and they’re doing better than a lot of Western democracies that use more illiberal methods and the crowd sourced fact checking pioneered in Taiwan is what inspired Bird Watch on Twitter prior to its being taking over by Elon Musk, and which is now community notes on X, which I actually think for all the things you might dislike about X, is a feature that is quite promising. 

JY: Definitely.  I absolutely agree with that, and I'm really glad you mentioned your previous book, which I loved, and the idea of a free speech recession. 

You’ve done so much of this work all over the world, and have learned from people in different places and tried to understand the challenges they’re facing in terms of free speech. We actually started this project, Speaking Freely, primarily to share those different perspectives and to bring them to our readership, the majority of which comes from the U.S. What I’d like to ask you, then, is what do you feel that we in the “West” or in more open societies have to learn from free speech activists in the rest of the world?

JM: Just…the bravery of say, Iranians who now face complete—and this was even before the attacks by the US and Israel—complete internet bans. But who have also relied on social media platforms and digital creativity to circumvent official propaganda and censorship. I think those types of societies provide sort of a real time experiment, right? You know, okay, we have we have social media, and it's messy, and sometimes it's ugly, and sometimes some of these tech companies do things that we disapprove of, but you know the cure in terms of further government control, for instance, let's say, getting rid of section 230, adding age verification laws, trying to create exceptions to the First Amendment in cyberspace…we have societies where that is happening, albeit, of course, at a very extreme scale. But would you really trade the freedoms, however messy they are, for that kind of society? 

And then, I also worry a lot about the state of affairs in Europe, where I'm from, where it's not unusual if you're in Germany, to have the police show up at your door if you've insulted a powerful politician. For the book, I interviewed an Israeli, Jewish woman who lives in Berlin. She's on the far left and very opposed to to Israel's policies, and she's been arrested four times for for protesting with a plaque that says, “as an Israeli Jew, stop the genocide in Gaza.” And again, you can agree or disagree whether there's a genocide, but that's just political speech. Yet the optics of a Jew—an Israeli, Jewish woman—being arrested by German police in Berlin in the name of fighting antisemitism is, I think, absurd, right? 

JY: I’m laughing only because I think I’ve said that exact sentence in an interview with the German press.

JM: But this is the reality right now. And I think it's also a good example of the fact that there have been people on the left in Europe who have said, well, we need to do something about the far right. And therefore it's okay to crack down, you know, use hate speech laws and so on. And then October 7 happened, and suddenly you see a lot of minorities and people on the left who are becoming the targets of laws against hate speech or glorification of terrorism and so on and so forth. And I think that's a powerful case for why you want a pretty hard nosed principle of consistent protection of free speech, also online. And, given the priorities of the current administration in the United States, I think that if the First Amendment and section 230 were not in place in the United States, the kind of laws that you have in Europe would be very moldable for the current administration to go after. I mean, it’s already going after its enemies, real and perceived, but it often loses in court exactly because of constitutional protections, including the First Amendment. But if that protection wasn't there, they would be much more successful, I think, in going after speech that they don't like.

JY: That’s such a fantastic answer, and I’m in total agreement. I was actually living in Berlin until quite recently and saw quite a bit of that firsthand. It’s really troubling. 

I want to shift course for a moment. We hopefully have some young people reading this as well, and I think right now in this moment where age verification proposals are happening everywhere—which we at EFF are really concerned about—it’s important to speak to them as well. What advice would you give to young readers who are coming of age around the topic of free speech and who are interested in doing this sort of work?

JM: I think young people are obviously immersed in the digital age, and some of them may never have opened a physical book. I don't know. Maybe it's a Boomer prejudice when I say that, but, but, I don't think it's a stretch to imagine that the vast majority of speech and expression that they're confronted with is through devices of a sort. I think it's crucial to understand that, you know, the system of free speech was developed before that, and so not to focus solely on thinking about free speech only through the lens of the digital age. What came before it is really important to give you some perspective.

So that’s one thing, but I also have two kids, aged 13 and 16, so I’ve thought a lot and fought a lot about some of these issues. I understand where some of the age verification concerns come from. I have parental controls on my children's phones and devices, and try to control it as best as possible, because I do think there can be harms if you spend too much time. But on the other hand, I would also say—and this goes back to the harms and benefits—sometimes there's this analogy that people want to make that social media is like tobacco, which I think is such a poor comparison, because, you know, no one in the world would disagree that tobacco is extremely harmful, right? It's cancerous and all kinds of other things. There are no benefits to tobacco, but social media access, I think, is very different. For instance, I moved to the United States with my family three years ago. My children had no problem speaking English, doing well in school because of YouTube. They could speak almost with the accent, they were immersed into cultural idioms, and they could learn stuff. And also in terms of connections, they have friends back home, it would be very difficult for them to stay in touch the same way that they can now and have connections, if it wasn't due to technology. And so I think that social media for minors also has benefits that make it very, very different from the tobacco analogy. 

Plus, I also think, and here I'm pointing my finger at Jonathan Haidt, that some of the evidence that is being pushed for these kinds of bans seem not to reflect scientific consensus, and that there's a lot of subject matter experts who actually think that the case is much more muddled than than the message that he has pushed in his best selling book, but which is now going the rounds. 

But it amazed me to look at. First of all, let me say I've admired Jonathan Haidt for a long time. I loved his previous work, but I just feel like his crusade on social media for minors and age verification is…in a certain sense, he's gone down some of the roads that he warned against in some of his previous books, in terms of motivated reasoning and confirmation bias and so on. But I saw Jonathan Haidt praise the Minister of Digital Affairs for Indonesia for their age verification bill that is supposed to come into effect now. Indonesia is a country that right now, I think, has a bill in place that will give further powers to the government to ban LGBT content, and what’s the justification? Protecting children. It is a country where someone uploaded a Tiktok video where they said an Islamic prayer before eating pork…two years in prison, right? So it's a country that is in the lower half of Freedom House's Freedom on the Net rankings. So it's amazing to me that a good liberal Democrat like Jonathan Haidt would essentially lend his legitimacy to a country like Indonesia when no one, no serious person, can be in doubt that these kinds of laws will be used and abused by a country like Indonesia to crack down on religious and political, sexual minorities and dissent in general.

JY: Absolutely. And that actually fits really well with something that I've been thinking a lot about too. I know you've written a lot about the Brussels effect and I'm trying to look at the ways in which a similar effect—not necessarily coming from Brussels, of course—is shaping internet regulation in different directions, in terms of laws influencing other laws.

Now, in terms of laws influencing other laws, age verification is, I think, one of the big ones. I mean, seeing these laws modeled after things that the UK or Australia or the U.S. has proposed, and then, just being made so much worse, and then sometimes echoing back here as well. And I think Indonesia is such a great example of that.

JM: Yeah. I mean, Australia sort of opened the Pandora’s box, and everyone is rushing in now, and I think the consequences are likely to be grave, and I think it fits into another issue which I think is even more concerning, that is this rehabilitation or of the concept of digital sovereignty. If you went back 10 years ago and talked about digital sovereignty, you would say, “Well, this is something that they do in China or Russia,” but now digital sovereignty is shouted from the rooftops in Brussels and democracies. 

And you know, I could maybe understand, if digital sovereignty meant, yes, we're going to protect our critical infrastructure, or we don't want to be overly reliant on American tech platforms, given the Trump administration's hostility towards Europe. But digital sovereignty now essentially means a concept of sovereignty which asserts that governments and institutions like the European Union have powers to determine what types of information and ideas their citizens should be confronted with. Now look up Article 19 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, what does it say? Everyone has the right to free expression, which includes, and I'm paraphrasing here, the right to share and impart ideas across frontiers, regardless of media, right? You know this. So now we're reverting back to an idea of free expression, which says that the government can now control what type of information that…if a foreign government or information that purports to undermine democratic values in a society, then the government has a right to censor it or require that an intermediary take mitigating steps towards it. I mean, I think that is really a recipe for disaster.

JY: I’m so glad you talked about that. I don’t even think everyone talking about digital sovereignty is working with the same definition. 

JM: No no, digital sovereignty can mean a lot of things. But there’s no doubt that it’s now being stretched to also include pure information and ideas rather than critical infrastructure or industrial policy where it may have a more benign role to play.

JY: Absolutely. Well, we’ve covered a lot of territory, so I’m going to ask you my favorite question, the one we ask everyone: Who is your free speech hero?

JM: I think my free speech hero would be Frederick Douglass. To me, he’s just someone who epitomizes not only being a principled defender of free speech, but someone who did free speech in practice. In his autobiography—he wrote three, I think—but in one of them there’s a foreword by the great abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, and he describes watching and listening to Frederick Douglass give one of his first public speeches in Nantucket in 1841 and Garrison describes the impact that Douglass had on this crowd and he says something along the lines of: “I think I never hated slavery so much as in that very moment.” So you can almost feel the impact of Douglass’s speech, and that’s the gold standard, right, for what speech can do and why it should be free.

JY: Such a great answer. Thank you.

JM: Thank you.

This is the first installment of a blog series reflecting on the global digital legacy of the 2011 Arab uprisings.

A new generation of protesters, raised on social media and often fluent in the tools of digital dissent, has taken to the streets in recent months and years. In Bangladesh, Iran, Togo, France, Uganda, Nepal, and more than a dozen other countries, young people have harnessed digital tools to mobilize at scale, shape political narratives, and sustain movements that might once have been easier to ignore or suppress.

The tools at their disposal are vast, allowing them to coordinate quickly and turn local grievances into visible, transnational moments of dissent. But each new tactic is met in turn: governments now implement draconian regulations and deploy sophisticated surveillance systems, content manipulation, and automated censorship to pre-empt, predict, and punish collective action. 

This cycle of digital empowerment and repression is not new. In many ways, its roots can be traced to the 2011 uprisings that rippled across the Middle East and North Africa. Often referred to as the “Arab Spring,” these movements didn’t just reshape politics…they transformed how we talk about the internet, and how governments respond in times of protest, crisis, and conflict. Fifteen years later, the legacy of that moment still defines the terms of resistance and control in the digital age.

At the time, we were sold the comforting narrative that the internet would help bring about democracy, that connectivity itself was revolutionary, and that Silicon Valley’s products—particularly social media platforms—were aligned with the people. It was a narrative that tech executives were sometimes happy to amplify and certain Western governments were happy to believe. 

But the same networks that helped protesters to organize and broadcast their demands beyond their own borders laid the groundwork for new forms of repression. Over the years, the same tools that were once celebrated as tools of dissent have become instruments for tracking, harassing, and prosecuting dissenters.

This series examines the digital legacy of the 2011 uprisings that shook the region: how governments refined censorship and surveillance after 2011, how platforms alternately resisted and enabled those efforts, and how a new generation of civil society has pushed back.

"Over the years, the same tools that were once celebrated as tools of dissent have become instruments for tracking, harassing, and prosecuting dissenters."

When Tunisian fruit vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on December 17, 2010, after repeated harassment by local officials, he could not have known the chain reaction his act would spark. After nearly twenty-three years in power, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali faced a public fed up with repression. Protests spread across Tunisia, ultimately forcing him to flee.

In his final speech, Ben Ali promised reforms: a freer press and fewer internet restrictions. He left before either materialized. For Tunisians, who had lived for years under normalized censorship both online and off, the promises rang hollow.

At the time, Tunisia’s internet controls were among the most restrictive in the world. Reporting by the exiled outlet Nawaat documented a sophisticated filtering regime: DNS tampering, URL blocking, IP filtering, keyword censorship. Yet despite that machinery, Tunisians built a resilient blogging culture, often relying on circumvention tools to push information beyond their borders. When protests began—and before international media caught up—they were ready.

Eleven days after Ben Ali fled, Egyptians took to the streets. International headlines rushed to label it a “Twitter revolution,” mistaking a tool for a movement. Egypt’s government drew a similar conclusion. On January 26, authorities blocked Twitter and Facebook. The next day, they shut down the internet almost entirely, a foreshadowing of what we’d see fifteen years later in Iran.

As Egyptians fought to free their country from President Hosni Mubarak’s autocratic rule, protests swept across the region to Bahrain, where demonstrators gathered at the Pearl Roundabout before facing a brutal crackdown; to Syria, where early calls for reform spiraled into one of the most devastating conflicts of the century; to Morocco, where the February 20 Movement pushed for constitutional change. Outside of the region, movements took shape in Spain, Greece, Portugal, Iceland, the United States, and beyond.

In each context, digital platforms helped circulate images, testimonies, and tactics across borders. They created visibility—and, in turn, inspired a playbook. Governments watched not only their own populations but one another, quickly learning how to disrupt networks, identify organizers, and seize back control of the narrative.

Cause and Effect

To be clear, the internet didn’t create these movements. Decades of repression, corruption, labor organizing, and grassroots activism did. Later research confirmed what many in the region already understood: digital tools helped people share information and coordinate action, but they were neither the spark nor the engine of revolt.

But regardless, the myth of the “Twitter revolution” had consequences. The breathless coverage, and rapid policy reactions that followed shaped state strategy around the world. Governments across the region and well beyond invested heavily in surveillance technologies, developed new legal mechanisms, increased their own social media presence, and found ways to influence platforms. Internet blackouts, once rare, became a normalized tool of crisis response. And companies were forced into increasingly public decisions about whether to resist state pressure or comply.

When it comes to the internet, the legacy of the 2011 uprisings that swept the region and beyond is a story about power: how states moved to consolidate control online, how platforms—often under pressure—have narrowed the space for dissent, and how civil society has been forced to evolve to defend it.

This five-part series will take a deeper look at how the internet as a space for dissent and for hope has changed over the past fifteen years throughout the region and well beyond.  

Sen. Ron Wyden is warning us of an abuse of Section 702:

Wyden took to the Senate floor to deliver a lengthy speech, ostensibly about the since approved (with support of many Democrats) nomination of Joshua Rudd to lead the NSA. Wyden was protesting that nomination, but in the context of Rudd being unwilling to agree to basic constitutional limitations on NSA surveillance. But that’s just a jumping off point ahead of Section 702’s upcoming reauthorization deadline. Buried in the speech is a passage that should set off every alarm bell:

There’s another example of secret law related to Section 702, one that directly affects the privacy rights of Americans. For years, I have asked various administrations to declassify this matter. Thus far they have all refused, although I am still waiting for a response from DNI Gabbard. I strongly believe that this matter can and should be declassified and that Congress needs to debate it openly before Section 702 is reauthorized. In fact, ...

The court found three legal challenges from Maryland cities and one county against oil companies are "far afield" from matters of local or state law.

Climate expert, speaker and author Kate Marvel cited "uncertainty" about NASA climate research as President Donald Trump cuts programs and cancels a lease.

State officials have pledged expedited permitting for the project, which has come under fire from environmentalists.

State legislation would assess insurance policies covering fossil fuel infrastructure and fund projects to improve climate resilience.

Gov. Josh Green called it the state's most serious flooding since 2004.

The number of people displaced from their homes in flooding that started earlier in March has now reached over 34,000, the Interior Ministry said.

Dan Jørgensen said Europe should never again buy "one molecule" of Russian gas.

More coal use now will slow and possibly undermine long-term efforts to phase out coal-fired power in the region.

QS World University Rankings has placed MIT in the No. 1 spot in 12 subject areas for 2026, the organization announced today.

The Institute received a No. 1 ranking in the following QS subject areas: Chemical Engineering; Chemistry; Civil and Structural Engineering; Computer Science and Information Systems; Data Science and Artificial Intelligence; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Engineering and Technology; Linguistics; Materials Science; Mechanical, Aeronautical, and Manufacturing Engineering; Mathematics; and Physics and Astronomy.

MIT also placed second in seven subject areas: Architecture/Built Environment; History of Art; Biological Sciences; Economics and Econometrics; Marketing; Natural Sciences; and Statistics and Operational Research.

For 2026, universities were evaluated in 55 specific subjects and five broader subject areas.

Quacquarelli Symonds Limited subject rankings, published annually, are designed to help prospective students find the leading schools in their field of interest. Rankings are based on research quality and accomplishments, academic reputation, and graduate employment.

MIT has been ranked as the No. 1 university in the world by QS World University Rankings for 14 straight years.

The next time you’re scrolling your phone, take a moment to appreciate the feat: The seemingly mundane act is possible thanks to the coordination of 34 muscles, 27 joints, and over 100 tendons and ligaments in your hand. Indeed, our hands are the most nimble parts of our bodies. Mimicking their many nuanced gestures has been a longstanding challenge in robotics and virtual reality.

Now, MIT engineers have designed an ultrasound wristband that precisely tracks a wearer’s hand movements in real-time. The wristband produces ultrasound images of the wrist’s muscles, tendons, and ligaments as the hand moves, and is paired with an artificial intelligence algorithm that continuously translates the images into the corresponding positions of the five fingers and palm.

The researchers can train the wristband to learn a wearer’s hand motions, which the device can communicate in real-time to a robot or a virtual environment.

In demonstrations, the team has shown that a person wearing the wristband can wirelessly control a robotic hand. As the person gestures or points, the robot does the same. In a sort of wireless marionette interaction, the wearer can manipulate the robot to play a simple tune on the piano and shoot a small basketball into a desktop hoop. With the same wristband, a wearer can also manipulate objects on a computer screen, for instance pinching their fingers together to enlarge and minimize a virtual object.

The team is using the wristband to gather hand motion data from many more users with different hand sizes, finger shapes, and gestures. They envision building a large dataset of hand motions that can be plumbed, for instance, to train humanoid robots in dexterity tasks, such as performing certain surgical procedures. The ultrasound band could also be used to grasp, manipulate, and interact with objects in video games, design applications, or other virtual settings.

“We think this work has immediate impact in potentially replacing hand tracking techniques with wearable ultrasound bands in virtual and augmented reality,” says Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. “It could also provide huge amounts of training data for dexterous humanoid robots.”

Zhao, Gengxi Lu, and their colleagues present the wristband’s new design in a paper appearing today in Nature Electronics. Their MIT co-authors are former postdocs Xiaoyu Chen, Shucong Li, and Bolei Deng; graduate students SeongHyeon Kim and Dian Li; postdocs Shu Wang and Runze Li; and Anantha Chandrakasan, MIT provost and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Other co-authors are graduate students Yushun Zheng and Junhang Zhang, Baoqiang Liu, Chen Gong, and Professor Qifa Zhou from the University of Southern California.

Seeing strings

There are currently a number of approaches to capturing and mimicking human hand dexterity in robots. Some approaches use cameras to record a person’s hand movements as they manipulate objects or perform tasks. Others involve having a person wear a glove with sensors, which records the person’s hand movements and transmits the data to a receiving robot. But erecting a complex camera system for different applications is impractical and prone to visual obstacles. And sensor-laden gloves could limit a person’s natural hand motions and sensations.

A third approach uses the electrical signals from muscles in the wrist or forearm that scientists then correlate with specific hand movements. Researchers have made significant advances in this approach, however these signals are easily affected by noise in the environment. They are also not sensitive enough to distinguish subtle changes in movements. For instance, they may discern whether a thumb and index finger are pinched together or pulled apart, but not much of the in-between path.

Zhao’s team wondered whether ultrasound imaging might capture more dexterous and continuous hand movements. His group has been developing various forms of ultrasound stickers — miniaturized versions of the transducers used in doctor’s offices that are paired with hydrogel material that can safely stick to skin.

In their new study, the team incorporated the ultrasound sticker design into a wearable wristband to continuously image the muscles and tendons in the wrist.

“The tendons and muscles in your wrist are like strings pulling on puppets, which are your fingers,” Lu says. “So the idea is: Each time you take a picture of the state of the strings, you’ll know the state of the hand.”

Mapping manipulation

The team designed a wristband with an ultrasound sticker that is the size of a smartwatch, and added onboard electronics that are about as small as a cellphone. They attached the wristband to a volunteer’s wrist and confirmed that the device produced clear and continuous images of the wrist as the volunteer moved their fingers in various gestures.

The challenge then was to relate the black and white ultrasound images of the wrist to specific positions of the hand. As it turns out, the fingers and thumb are capable of 22 degrees of freedom, or different ways of extending or angling. The researchers found that they could identify specific regions in their ultrasound images of the wrist that correlate to each of these 22 degrees of freedom. For instance, changes in one region relate to thumb extension, while changes in another region correlate with movements of the index finger.

To establish these connections, a volunteer wearing the wristband would move their hand in various positions while the researchers recorded the gestures with multiple cameras surrounding the volunteer. By matching changes in certain regions of the ultrasound images with hand positions recorded by the cameras, the team could label wrist image regions with the corresponding degree of freedom in the hand. But to do this translation continuously, and in real-time, would be an impossible task for humans.

So, the team turned to artificial intelligence. They used an AI algorithm that can be trained to recognize image patterns and correlate them with specific labels and, in this case, the hand’s various degrees of freedom. The researchers trained the algorithm with ultrasound images that they meticulously labeled, annotating the image regions associated with a specific degree of freedom. They tested the algorithm on a new set of ultrasound images and found it correctly predicted the corresponding hand gestures.

Once the researchers successfully paired the AI algorithm with the wristband, they tested the device on more volunteers. For the new study, eight volunteers with different hand and wrist sizes wore the wristband while they formed various hand gestures and grasps, including making the signs for all 26 letters in American Sign Language. They also held objects such as a tennis ball, a plastic bottle, a pair of scissors, and a pencil. In each case, the wristband precisely tracked and predicted the position of the hand.

To demonstrate potential applications, the team developed a simple computer program that they wirelessly paired with the wristband. As a wearer went through the motions of pinching and grasping, the gestures corresponded to zooming in and out on an object on the computer screen, and virtually moving and manipulating it in a smooth and continuous fashion.

The researchers also tested the wristband as a wireless controller of a simple commercial robotic hand. While wearing the wristband, a volunteer went through the motions of playing a keyboard. The robot in turn mimicked the motions in real-time to play a simple tune on a piano. The same robot was also able to mimic a person’s finger taps to play a desktop basketball game.

Zhao is planning to further miniaturize the wristband’s hardware, as well as train the AI software on many more gestures and movements from volunteers with wider ranging hand sizes and shapes. Ultimately, the team is building toward a wearable hand tracker that can be worn by anyone, to wirelessly manipulate humanoid robots or virtual objects with high dexterity.

“We believe this is the most advanced way to track dexterous hand motion, through wearable imaging of the wrist,” Zhao says. “We think these wearable ultrasound bands can provide intuitive and versatile controls for virtual reality and robotic hands.”

This research was supported, in part, by MIT, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Singapore National Research Foundation through the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology.

Alex Tang’s dream of becoming a physician started in grade school when he read Lisa Sanders’ “Diagnosis” column in The New York Times Magazine. Although he often encountered unfamiliar medical terms, Tang was captivated by the magic of medicine, as Sanders described how physicians turned puzzling sets of symptoms into concrete diagnoses and treatment plans for patients.

A decade later, Tang is one step closer to achieving his dream. The MIT senior has challenged himself academically, dual-majoring in chemistry and biology and minoring in biomedical engineering. “All of the courses have encouraged me to think about problems through different lenses,” he says.

Tang has also challenged himself as the editor-in-chief of MIT’s student newspaper, The Tech, and as a competitive triathlete. In the fall, he will begin medical school, where he hopes to develop clinical skills and continue honing his scientific abilities. Ultimately, he aspires to pursue a career as a physician-scientist, focusing on how cancers respond to and resist treatment. He wants to help convert those insights into novel therapies that can be tailored to individual cancer patients.

“I want to advance precision oncology, ensuring that each patient receives the most effective, personalized treatment possible,” he says.

Thriving in the lab

Originally from Massachusetts, Tang was eager to make the most of his MIT experience, especially because of its extensive research opportunities. “Both my parents worked in the Cambridge biotech space, and being able to contribute to innovative science here has been a priority,” he says.

Early on, Tang gravitated toward oncology after joining the Nir Hacohen Lab at the Broad Institute, an interest cemented after taking 7.45 (Cancer Biology), which was taught by professors Tyler Jacks and Michael Hemann. Fascinated by how new cancer therapies were changing patients’ lives, he joined a project with implications for patients with difficult prognoses: For the last three-and-half years, Tang has been studying the effects of combined immunotherapy and targeted molecular therapy on tumors in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer.

“I hope my work can provide clarity for patients and physicians, and empower them to be confident in their options for care,” Tang says.

Last year, Tang was awarded a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, which supports undergraduates who go on to become leading scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in their respective fields.

In addition to gaining technical skills, Tang has found working in the Hacohen Lab to be enriching in other important ways.

“What’s been great about research is learning from experts in the field who become your role models,” he says, “They are at the frontiers of investigating the most challenging questions in the field, and iterating through the scientific process with them is such a joy.”

Looking forward to medical school, he hopes to complement his basic science research with work that is more clinically involved.

“I want to bridge the gap between fundamental discoveries and tangible improvements in patient care,” Tang says. He has already set out on this mission, recently leading the development of a prognostic assay in lung cancer.

Breaking news

After stopping by the booth for MIT’s student newspaper, The Tech, during Campus Preview Weekend, Tang knew he wanted to join and contribute to a publication that has long chronicled MIT’s history and culture. Starting as a news writer and later serving as editor-in-chief, he learned how to write under pressure, reported on major campus events, and balanced leadership with collaboration.

“It’s been such an honor and pleasure to document people across the diverse MIT community who are all contributing to the character of the Institute in different ways,” he says.

It’s an activity he’ll drop everything for.

“When we have things come up and we have to do a breaking news story or we have some editorial thing that needs to be managed, I’ll just stop working to sort out whatever’s happening,” he says. “I think that’s what passion really is about.”

His journey with The Tech has not always been easy. In the summer between his first and second year, he found himself solely responsible for producing the paper’s news content amidst a staff shortage while the paper was facing financial difficulties.

“Coming into sophomore fall, I focused on recruiting more staff and seeking out ways to get more funding,” Tang says. “The paper wouldn’t be here without the people, both students and faculty advisors alike, who bought into The Tech’s mission.”

Though he hopes to pursue a career in medicine, Tang has found journalism to be integral in shaping how he will connect and communicate with patients and colleagues.

“You are responsible for taking someone’s story, breaking it down, and retelling it in your own words in a way that you feel would resonate with the audience and serve the community,” he says.

An outlet through triathlon

Despite his busy schedule, Tang prioritizes staying active and maintaining fitness. A former competitive swimmer in high school and now a triathlete, he still finds himself drawn back to the water when everything around him feels fast-paced.

“Swimming, biking, and running are good ways to de-stress,” Tang says. “It’s therapeutic in the sense that you can just let go. The race is just that culmination of letting it go at a more elevated level.”

He credits MIT’s infrastructure for helping him stay committed to training. “My dorm is steps away from the pool and the track,” he says. “The convenience is superb.”

Tang has found success in competitions, most recently placing third in his age group at the 2025 Boston Triathlon. In fact, it is the feeling of accomplishment that pushes him every day.

“There are many days when you want to take it easy, but you have to remember the joy waiting for you at the end of the race when you’ve put in the work,” he says. “It motivates me to be conscious and aware of what I’m doing in practice.”

During the summer, Tang and his younger brother go out for long runs in the Boston suburbs. “It is great to have my brother push me every day,” Tang says. “There has been no one more supportive of me than my family.”

Ozer, With Decades of Experience in Technology and Civil Liberties Law, Will Succeed Cindy Cohn as Organization’s Leader

SAN FRANCISCO – Nicole Ozer has been appointed as executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation effective June 1. 

Ozer is a legal expert on privacy and surveillance, artificial intelligence, and digital speech. She currently serves as the inaugural executive director of the Center for Constitutional Democracy at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. From 2004-2025, she was founding director of the Technology and Civil Liberties Program at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. Ozer will succeed Cindy Cohn, who has been with EFF for more than 25 years and served as its executive director since 2015. 

EFF champions user privacy, free expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and technology development, with a mission to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world. The organization celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2025. 

"I am honored to lead EFF forward in these critical times. EFF’s global work to defend and advance rights, justice, and democracy in the digital age is fundamental to the future of our countries, our livelihoods, and literally our lives,” Ozer said. “I am ready to hit the ground running with EFF’s exceptional staff, board, and broad base of supporters and ensure that EFF is stronger than ever. Together, we can meet this moment and build a future where technology works for the people.”  

“I couldn’t be happier to pass EFF’s reins over to Nicole,” Cohn said. “She has been our stalwart partner for many years in standing up for privacy, free speech and innovation online. I’m confident that she understands both the strong heart and the future potential of EFF especially as our work is more critical than ever.”   

“Nicole Ozer is the ideal person to lead EFF during this unprecedented time in our nation’s history,” said EFF Board Chair Gigi Sohn. “She possesses all of the qualities necessary to lead the organization: great vision, strong management skills and deep substantive knowledge. The fact that she has worked alongside EFF for over two decades is icing on the cake. The EFF Board is excited to welcome Nicole and begin a new chapter in our history.” 

Over her more than two decades leading public interest technology work, Ozer: 

• spearheaded passage of the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act – the nation’s strongest electronic surveillance law, requiring a warrant for government access to electronic information;
• modernized California law to protect reading records in the digital age by helping to craft the Reader Privacy Act requiring a “super warrant” for government access;
• created a groundbreaking model law for local democratic oversight of surveillance systems which inspired 25 laws across the country that help safeguard the rights and safety of more than 17 million people;
• litigated civil liberties cases and drafted influential amicus briefs on technology issues at all levels of state and federal court, including the U.S. Supreme Court and California Supreme Court; and
• developed multi-year campaigns to strengthen the anti-surveillance policies related to social media surveillance and face recognition of major technology companies and foster stronger privacy and free expression protection for billions of people worldwide. 

Ozer is a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law; was a 2024-2025 technology and human rights fellow with the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School; and in 2019 was a visiting researcher at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology and a non-residential fellow with the Digital Civil Society Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.  

Ozer's work has earned accolades including the Fearless Advocate Award from the American Constitution Society Bay Area, the James Madison Freedom of Information Award from the Society of Professional Journalists of Northern California, and a 2025 California Senate Members resolution commending her “unwavering dedication to defending and promoting civil liberties in the digital world.” Her writings on privacy and constitutional law have been published widely, and she regularly provides expert testimony for government proceedings, offers commentary in the press, speaks at academic conferences, and presents at national and global forums including South by Southwest and the Centre for European Policy Studies. She holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a bachelor’s in American Studies from Amherst College. 

"It is incredibly exciting to welcome Nicole Ozer as our new leader at EFF at a time when the organization's mission couldn't be more essential,” said entrepreneur, activist, writer, and EFF Board member Anil Dash. "Nicole's unique skills promise to build on the foundation that Cindy Cohn established as Executive Director, preparing EFF to serve an even more vital role in protecting privacy and innovation." 

Cohn first became involved with EFF in 1993 when EFF asked her to serve as the outside lead attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the U.S. export restrictions on cryptography. She served as EFF’s legal director and general counsel from 2000 through 2015, and as executive director since then. She also co-hosted EFF’s award-winning “How to Fix the Internet” podcast. Her memoir, Privacy’s Defender: My Thirty-Year Fight Against Digital Surveillance, was published March 10 by MIT Press, and she is now conducting a national book tour. 

EFF's Board of Directors last year assembled a committee which undertook a wide search for Cohn’s successor with assistance from leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates. 

Contact: press@eff.org

Active Surfaces, a startup based on solar-energy technologies rooted in MIT research, is well on its way to developing what co-founder Richard Swartwout SM ’18, PhD ’21 calls “solar 2.0.” The company’s technology is in response to a need Swartwout recognized while observing energy challenges in India during an MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) fellowship.

Within the last two years, the company has raised more than $10 million in venture capital, corporate investment, and state grants, most recently announcing in October an investment from the Tokyo-based electric utility Electric Power Development Co. Active Surfaces also opened their current manufacturing development site — a 5,000-square-foot facility — in 2024 in Woburn, Massachusetts, that is now filled with industrial roll-to-roll printers and other equipment being cost-optimized before the equipment is scaled up for a first-of-its-kind commercial-scale manufacturing plant.

Based on more than 10 years of MIT research and resulting patents — three held by Swartwout — collaborators at Active Surfaces have developed a novel approach to solar. Instead of silicon, the “solar 1.0” technology that dominates today, their solar cells are made of perovskite, a class of materials that are cheap, abundant, lightweight, flexible, and highly efficient at absorbing and emitting light.

“We need to start thinking about more and more places to put solar,” Swartwout says, “and we need to dramatically cut the cost of manufacturing and installing it.” Active Surfaces is now designing the solar technology that can meet those goals.

In recent years, homeowners, electric utilities, and others have adopted silicon-based systems, and in 2024 installed solar capacity worldwide exceeded 2 terawatts. However, some experts believe that by 2050 the world will need 20 terawatts of installed solar capacity in order to meet rapidly increasing demand for electricity while also reducing carbon emissions.

A long-standing target

Silicon technology was fine for its original purpose — generating electricity for NASA’s early spacecraft — and later for utility setups in remote locations. No matter that the silicon solar cells are brittle and require heavy racks to support them. Swartwout first became aware of the limitations of silicon solar during a trip he took to India to observe energy challenges encountered by people in remote areas in 2016 as part of his fellowship from MITEI’s Tata Center for Technology and Design. In talking with residents, Swartwout heard repeatedly that people didn’t trust solar sources of electricity because the brittle panels “fail very prematurely in those sorts of locations.”

Motivated by that early experience, plus the need for rapid worldwide growth in solar generation, Swartwout and Shiv Bhakta MBA ’24, SM ’24 co-founded Active Surfaces in 2022. The pair provides an unusual blend of expertise: Bhakta, the CEO and former civil and environmental engineering and business student through the Leaders for Global Operations program, offers strong strategic market experience, while Swartwout, the CTO and a former student in electrical engineering and computer science, spent a decade at MIT working on solar R&D and printed electronics innovation.

Other research groups have worked with perovskites, but the most promising compositions and manufacturing techniques were toxic, and managing their toxicity made large-scale manufacturing impractical. The Active Surfaces process instead uses a novel perovskite ink consisting entirely of nontoxic components. Layers of electronic material are deposited onto a thin substrate, and an electrode is deposited onto the surface to make a module. The solar modules are then protected from the environment using an epoxy that dries within seconds under an ultraviolet lamp. The module, now as thin as 15 microns thick, can readily be attached to any surface.

The finished solar film generates as much electricity as an equivalent surface area of silicon cell, and the confirmed durability under realistic temperatures and humidity exceeds 10 years. The lightweight, mechanically robust solar film is easy to install — an advantage that brings the overall cost way down compared to the cost of silicon solar. For a conventional rooftop silicon system, as much as half of the total cost is often for installation. “That’s because those panels are not designed to be easily deployed through general construction,” says Swartwout. “A flexible solar panel is much more in line with how we do construction. To put it on your roof, you would just unroll it like you would unroll an asphalt shingle or a roofing membrane.”

In addition, the flexible films can be fabricated by a cost-effective mass-production method called roll-to-roll manufacturing, in which material is continuously unrolled from one spool and rewound onto another. The machines operate at high speed, and the capital investment required is low. As a result, says Swartwout, “there isn’t much benefit to having centralized manufacturing, so you can think about a distributed manufacturing model.” That solves another problem with the current silicon solar technology: China now manufactures almost all solar cells, and, notes Swartwout, “many countries don’t want to have their energy supply chains totally dependent on China. With our technology, you can have regionalized manufacturing locally … more like today’s auto market.”

Growing up but not cutting ties

While Active Surfaces’ films are not yet full-sized, they have been growing rapidly, Swartwout says. “Within three months, our product went from lab-scale to 6 inches by 6 inches, and then within another four months or so, it went from that size to 6 inches by 2 feet — the biggest size that our current machines can process.” But, he adds, the 6x6 sample is “representative of what a minimum viable manufacturing process would be.”

The company continues to maintain its close ties to MIT. Several MIT professors are among the startup’s advisors. And the company is located just 15 miles from MIT, so staff members are frequently at MIT.nano, especially to make use of inspection tools like scanning electron microscopes and occasionally to use fabrication facilities not available at their own lab. In addition, the startup sometimes sponsors work at MIT.nano, in particular when they need a next-generation extension on one of the MIT patents. Swartwout calls the startup–MIT relationship a “good synergy,” and comments that they set up Active Surfaces “with that in mind.”

Swartwout is optimistic about what’s ahead for Active Surfaces. “We think that we have a really huge market. So the upfront capital that our investors are committing is worth the end-stage growth of what [our technology] could actually do for the future energy landscape as a whole.”

“Guys, have the buzzers been tested?”

On Saturday, Feb. 21, volunteers for the 2026 MIT Science Bowl High School Regional hustled around the spacious auditorium, setting up chairs and buzzers and laying out sharpened pencils. The room slowly quieted as all high schoolers filed in, dressed in matching, dark green Science Bowl T-shirts.

By late afternoon, after rounds and rounds of fast-paced questioning, the auditorium pulsed with tension and anxiously bouncing knees as the final seconds of the competition ticked down.

“Patients with Tay–Sachs disease —” began the moderator, Gideon Tzafriri, president of the Science Bowl and a senior at MIT.

A buzzer cut him off.

“Interrupt,” Tzafriri announced.

The entire audience seemed to hold their breath. A student from Lexington High School Team 1 offered their answer: “lysosome.”

“Correct.”

Moments later, the Lexington, Massachusetts, team sealed the match. The room erupted into cheers, with students vaulting from their seats and rushing down to hug and congratulate their teammates. The final score of the 2026 MIT Science Bowl was 148 to 52, with Lexington High School Team 1 winning against Philips Exeter Team 1.

“I think I can speak for all of us when I say we feel ecstatic,” said Jerry Xu, one of the members of the winning team. “It’s been a long-term collaborative effort, we’ve been practicing for many years. We’ve worked together as a team for so long, it’s just such a great feeling to be here with my friends.”

Around Xu, the rest of his teammates proudly nodded.

The 2026 MIT High School Regional Science Bowl marked the Institute’s first time hosting a regional competition, expanding its long-running involvement with the national tournament. While MIT has hosted the national high school competition for eight years, this regional event created a new qualifying pathway for New England schools vying for a place at the National Science Bowl in Washington.

The competition involves round-robin style questions on complex biology, chemistry, and physics questions, and some topics lie well beyond the scope of regular high school classes. In a long day of tough science questions and rapidly beeping buzzers, the event had brought together 26 teams from 14 schools across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.

“The whole team put immense effort into learning about science, enjoying themselves, having fun, and trusting the process,” said Nicholas Gould, the Lexington High School team’s coach and their physics teacher. “It’s not about the win, it’s the process of getting there, the experiences they take with them and what they learn about themselves and each other.”

For many competitors, the draw wasn’t just the chance to win a medal, but to further their knowledge.

“I came here because I wanted to be on a science team just because I like science, and my experience has been pretty amazing,” said Vritti Mehra, a student at Portsmouth High School in New Hampshire.

Others spoke of the importance of representation.

“I’m proud to be a girl in this tournament because as you can see, there are not a lot of females here. But I’m very glad that I’m part of this community because of the friendliness, the competition, and this fostered a love for science for me,” said Katherine Wang, from Lexington High School Team 3, who has been competing since sixth grade. “My mom has a PhD, so she really inspires me to become the best.”

The regional marked a beginning to MIT, and an end for many graduating seniors, both competitors and volunteers.

“Most of us have been doing Science Bowl since middle school, so this feels like a culmination of everything we’ve done,” said William Jung, another member of the winning team.

For Tzafriri, the president of the bowl, the event carried a similar resonance, since he also competed in the event himself when he was in high school.

“It’s nice to finally finish off something that I started in high school,” said Tzafriri.

As the event came to an end, the winning team lined up at the front of the auditorium, with proud grins and the golden medals around their necks glistening under fluorescent lights. Cameras flashed in quick succession as the event’s organizers and volunteers watched proudly from either side.

“I get to help kids have fun with science and actively participate in science,” said Jiaxing Wang, one of the event’s organizers. “The Science Bowl is something I discovered in my junior year of high school: It was very late in the cycle, so I want to be able to help kids like me to compete and have the experience they deserve and desire.”

For Lexington’s seniors, this event sends them to Washington. For MIT, it signals something larger: a continuous investment into young scientists, encouraging a future full of possibility.

The UK is moving forward with its efforts to ban social media for young people. Ahead of this week’s House of Lords debate on the topic, we’re getting you situated with a primer on what’s been happening and what it all means.

What was the last vote about? 

On 9 March, the House of Commons discussed amendments tabled by the House of Lords in the government’s flagship legislation, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. 

The House of Lords previously tabled an amendment to “prevent children under the age of 16 from becoming or being users” of “all regulated user-to-user services,” to be implemented by “highly-effective age assurance measures,” which effectively banned under-16s from social media. When this proposal came before the House of Commons, MPs defeated it by 307 votes to 173. 

Instead, the Commons proposed its own amendment: enabling the Secretary of State to introduce provisions “requiring providers of specified internet services” to prevent access by children, under age 18 rather than 16, to specified internet services or to specified features; and to restrict access by children to specified internet services which ministers provide. 

Who does this give powers to?

The Commons proposal redirects power from the UK Parliament and the UK’s independent telecom regulator Ofcom to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, currently Liz Kendall, who will be able to restrict internet access for young people and determine what content is considered harmful…just because she can. The amendment also empowers the Secretary of State to limit VPN use for under 18s, as well as restrict access to addictive features and change the age of digital consent in the country; for example, preventing under-18s from playing games online after a certain time.  

Why is this a problem? 

This process is devoid of checks or accountability mechanisms as ministers will not be required to demonstrate specific harms to young people, which essentially unravels years-long efforts by Ofcom to assess online services according to their risks. And given the moment the UK is currently in, such as refusing to protect trans and LGBTQ+ communities and flaming hostile and racist discourses, it is not unlikely that we’ll see ministers start restricting content that they ideologically or morally feel opposed to, rather than because the content is harmful based, as established by evidence and assessed pursuant to established human rights principles. 

We know from other jurisdictions like the United States that legislation seeking to protect young people typically sweeps up a slew of broadly-defined topics. Some block access to websites that contain some “sexual material harmful to minors,” which has historically meant explicit sexual content. But some states are now defining the term more broadly so that “sexual material harmful to minors” could encompass anything like sex education; others simply list a variety of vaguely-defined harms. In either instance, this bill would enable ministers to target LGBTQ+ content online by pushing this behind an under-18s age gate, and this risk is especially clear given what we already know about platform content policies. 

How will this impact young people? 

The internet is an essential resource for young people (and adults) to access information, explore community, and find themselves. Beyond being spaces where people can share funny videos and engage with enjoyable content, social media enables young people to engage with the world in a way that transcends their in-person realm, as well as find information they may not feel safe to access offline, such as about family abuse or their sexuality. In severing this connection to people and information by banning social media, politicians are forcing millions of young people into a dark and censored world. 

How did each party vote? 

The initial push to ban under-16s from social media came from the Conservative Party, who have since accused the UK’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer of “dither and delay” for not committing to the ban. The Liberal Democrats have also called this “not good enough.” The Labour Party itself is split, with 107 Labour Party MPs abstaining in the vote on the House of Lords amendment. 

But we know that the issue of young people’s online safety is a polarizing topic that politicians have—and will continue to—weaponize for public support, regardless of their actual intentions. This is why we will continue to urge policymakers and regulators to protect people’s rights and freedoms online at all moments, and not just take the easy route for a quick boost in the polls.

How does this bill connect to the Online Safety Act?

The draft Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill that came from the Lords provided that any regulation pertaining to the well-being of young people on social media “must be treated as an enforceable requirement” with the Online Safety Act. The Commons amendment, however, starts out by inserting a new clause that amends the Online Safety Act. 

For more than six years, we’ve been calling on the UK government to pass better legislation around regulating the internet, and when the Online Safety Act passed we continued to advocate for the rights of people on the internet—including young people—as Ofcom implemented the legislation. This has been a protracted effort by civil society groups, technologists, tech companies, and others participating in Ofcom's consultation process and urging the regulator to protect internet users in the UK.

The MPs amendment essentially rips this up. Technology Secretary Liz Kendall recently said that ministers intended to go further than the existing Online Safety Act because it was “never meant to be the end point, and we know parents still have serious concerns. That is why I am prepared to take further action.” But when this further action is empowering herself to make arbitrary decisions on content and access, and banning under-18s from social media, this causes much more harm than it solves. 

Is the UK alone in pushing legislation like this? 

Sadly, no. Calls to ban social media access for young people have gained traction since Australia became the first country in the world to enforce one back in December. On 5 March, Indonesia announced a ban on social media and other “high-risk” online platforms for users under 16. A few days later, new measures came into effect in Brazil that restricts social media access for under-16s, who must now have their accounts linked to a legal guardian. Other countries like Spain and the Philippines have this year announced plans to ban social media for under-16s, with legislation currently pending to implement this.

What are the next steps?

The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill returns to the House of Lords on 25 March for consideration of the new Commons amendments. The bill will only become law if both Houses agree to the final draft. 

We will continue to stand up against these proposals—not only to young people’ free expression rights, but also to safeguard the free flow of information that is vital to a democratic society. The issue of online safety is not solved through technology alone, especially not through a ban, and young people deserve a more intentional approach to protecting their safety and privacy online, not this lazy strategy that causes more harm than it solves. 

We encourage politicians in the UK to look into what is best, not what is easy, and explore less invasive approaches to protect all people from online harms. 

Japan’s election last month and the rise of the country’s newest and most innovative political party, Team Mirai, illustrates the viability of a different way to do politics.

In this model, technology is used to make democratic processes stronger, instead of undermining them. It is harnessed to root out corruption, instead of serving as a cash cow for campaign donations.

Imagine an election where every voter has the opportunity to opine directly to politicians on precisely the issues they care about. They’re not expected to spend hours becoming policy experts. Instead, an ...

The country’s largest offshore wind farm started generating electricity Monday as another developer accepted nearly $1 billion to ditch two planned projects.