Silicon Valley may be notorious for its boys’ club culture, but the Middle East’s start-up scene is booming thanks to the efforts of female entrepreneurs and scientists. What social and economic factors are leading these women into tech? And how can gender equality benefit their home countries?

It’s been used to fight climate change, it helped launch Lil Nas X to global fame, and now Gen Zers are using TikTok to address school shootings. As attention spans shorten and the penchant for online self-expression grows, the platform is helping young people share their concerns with peers.

Twitter has announced that it’s banning all political advertising from its service. As people continue to hold big tech companies accountable for online ills that could be dangerous IRL - like the proliferation of misinformation - brands such as Twitter are responding in a bid to be seen as credible.

While voter apathy is a persistent issue in many Western nations, that doesn’t mean people don’t care about politics. In the UK, for instance, 43% of people said they were ‘quite or very interested’ in politics in 2017, up from 36% in 2015, with their individual take on current affairs influencing a significant part of their identity. Similarly, Americans are using their political affiliations as a social marker, often defining their views by a party’s ideology rather than its actual policies.