Testosterone replacement therapy comes with serious and potentially irreversible health risks including infertility and early heart disease

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Are you tired? Feeling flat and irritable? Finding it difficult to concentrate? Maybe you’re experiencing the seemingly ubiquitous symptoms of modern life. Or, if you’re a man, you may have been told by countless uncredentialed online influencers that you’re probably suffering from “low T”.

For decades, testosterone has been marketed to men as a means to maximise virility. But in recent years, social media has fuelled the “T-maxxing” trend, in which men are encouraged to maximise their testosterone levels through either natural or artificial means.

The infamous Japanese noise artist has a vast and forbidding catalogue that commands a cult fandom. Sam Andrews, 18, is vlogging his way through the lot – and taking a stand for deep listening

An Instagram Reel that looks like an 80s coming-of-age movie pops up on your feed. It’s four teenage boys in an American-style basement – comfy sofas, guitars, ping pong table – jeering and laughing. But they aren’t secretly drinking beer or planning on sneaking out. They’re brandishing a vinyl copy of Pulse Demon, the most popular album from the cult Japanese noise artist Merzbow, and subjecting themselves to its brutally harsh sound in full, for fun. “I think this is the Book of Revelation: The Soundtrack,” one guy blurts out, a vague look of fear in his eyes.

Merzbow, real name Masami Akita, is the world’s most renowned noise artist. Since 1979, Akita has released more than 400 recordings, which range from a 10-hour long album misleadingly titled Merzbient (it’s anything but ambient) to a free-noise supergroup called Flying Testicle. Since February, Sam Andrews, the video’s 18-year-old creator, has been attempting to listen to every one, and is documenting his progress online each day. “I think of my day in album-size chunks,” he says, laughing. “It’s like, get up at seven, get breakfast and then headphones in: noise.”

Youth club closures, unaffordable housing and social media cited as factors contributing to a sharp decline in wellbeing

The number of young people with no close friends has risen fivefold since 2014 as a result of growing up in a “bleak world” dominated by austerity, the pandemic and social media.

New research paints a sobering picture of how 11- to 24-year-olds in England are increasingly lonely, isolated and “disconnected” from themselves, peers and wider society.