This study examines how this generation of young heterosexual men—who have come of age in the “age of consent”—emotionally experience sex. We thematically analyzed 31 in-depth interviews with men aged 18 to 32 years. The most striking finding is how rarely these men described enjoying sex. Three themes emerged. First, anxiety and vigilance accompanied sexual encounters. Second, there was a moral concern about causing harm to a sexual partner. Third, shame arose not only from accusations by others, but also from self-criticism. The themes overlap substantially, suggesting aspects of a complex, sometimes contradictory experience. The defining feature is an inward turn: a cultural suspicion of men appears to have been internalized by some young men. For these men, the question when navigating consent is often not only “does she want this?” but “am I the kind of man who could get this wrong?” Sex, as one participant put it, is “like you’re trying to defuse a bomb.” These young men have come to approach sex as a hazard to manage rather than a relational experience to share. They attributed this wariness to the cultural climate that surrounds consent.

A diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is more common among kids from socioeconomically disadvantaged and immigrant families, according to a Canadian study of over 2.3 million children born between 2002 and 2020. The study found that rates of ASD were highest in kids from the most socioeconomically deprived, lowest-income neighbourhoods and born to immigrant mothers, and these differences worsened over time. Kids from these areas were also more likely to have been exposed to diabetes during their mother's pregnancy, as well as severe pregnancy complications and prematurity, which the authors say may have contributed to these differences.

Matt Fillingim, Etienne Vachon-Presseau, and colleagues analysed self-reported pain data collected between 1990 and 2025 from 6,125,459 people aged 5 to over 100 years, across 118 countries and territories. Pain prevalence ranged from around 2% for facial pain to 40% for back pain. Pain was higher in women than men across all 11 body areas studied, with the largest differences seen for facial pain, headaches, and stomach or abdominal pain.

Across all body areas pain prevalence rose most sharply before age 55, although patterns differed by body area: headaches and abdominal pain peaked earlier in life, while back, hip, and knee pain continued to increase with age. From age 40, pain anywhere in the body, joint, and back pain increased more rapidly in countries with lower Human Development Index (HDI) values. By age 80 or older, the prevalence of any bodily pain was around 31 percentage points higher in countries with lower HDI values than in those with higher HDI values, and low back pain was nearly twice as common. Known risk factors, including smoking, obesity and low income, explained less of the pain burden in lower-development settings; the reasons for these higher levels of pain are unclear.