Digital platform significantly reduces distress among children of divorce

A digital solution developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen improves the mental health of children and young people after their parents’ divorce, according to a new study.

University of Copenhagen

FacebookX

BlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

Every year, thousands of Danish children experience their parents splitting up. For many, this is a major upheaval that can leave lasting marks on their wellbeing and daily lives.

A new study conducted in collaboration with 21 Danish municipalities and the Danish Agency of Family Law shows that a digital tool developed by researchers at the University of Copenhagen can make a real difference. The tool helps children understand their emotions, put them into words and make tangible changes that improve their everyday life.

“When parents divorce, it is often the first major negative life event a child experiences. Some children struggle psychologically or develop school refusal, and many need support to get back on track,” says Gert Martin Hald, psychologist and professor at the Department of Public Health and co-founder of the digital platform SES NXT.

Digital support designed for children

SES NXT is a digital intervention for children aged 3 to 17. It consists of a series of modules that children work through at their own pace, tailored to their age and individual needs.

The modules include videos and exercises on topics such as coping when parents argue, understanding one’s emotions, blended families and living in two homes. Children also hear other children share their own experiences of divorce.

The content is age-specific. The younger the child, the more the platform involves parents, helping to strengthen communication within the family.

“Children experience that their feelings are normalised. It is okay to feel sad or scared. At the same time, the exercises are very concrete, which many children need. They provide clear suggestions, for example about what children can say to their parents when conflicts arise,” says Gert Martin Hald.

The platform builds on research into divorce and child wellbeing. It is also informed by input from social workers and psychologists who work daily with children affected by parental conflict. This ensures that the solution addresses real needs and challenges.

Fewer problems and better social relationships

The study included 866 children and young people aged 3 to 17. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups where one group received access to SES NXT, while the control group only gained access after the study ended. Researchers measured wellbeing at the start of the study and again after 4 and 12 weeks.

After 12 weeks, children who used the digital self-help tool were doing significantly better than those in the control group. They reported fewer emotional problems such as sadness and worry, fewer behavioural difficulties, better social relationships, improved concentration and more prosocial behaviour.

Almost half of the children using SES NXT moved from poor wellbeing to normal levels. In the control group, this applied to only around one in ten children. Such results are unusually strong for psychological interventions.

“They experience fewer problems in their daily lives, and those problems affect them less,” says Gert Martin Hald.

Children who completed more modules saw greater improvements.

The findings are supported by a separate recent study showing that SES NXT also reduces conflict between parents after divorce.

“In divorce research, parental conflict is the holy grail. We know that it is the single most important factor in whether families go on to thrive. That is why solutions that reduce conflict between former partners are so important,” says Gert Martin Hald.

Municipality: A highly useful tool

SES NXT is already in use in 16 Danish municipalities. Municipalities in Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland have also adopted the platform.

In Næstved Municipality, SES NXT is used both in group-based work with children of divorce and as an individual offer.

“It is a highly useful tool,” says Niels Rask, who works with divorce support for children in Næstved Municipality.

“The modules focus on children’s emotions, and we find that children and parents develop a shared language that makes it easier to talk about difficult issues.”

For the municipality, a key advantage is that the platform makes it possible to reach many children, including those who might not otherwise receive support.

“Our schools and childcare institutions are the first to notice when divorce affects children socially, psychologically or academically. With this tool, we can intervene quickly with support that we know improves wellbeing,” says Niels Rask.

Despite the positive results, Gert Martin Hald emphasises that digital solutions cannot stand alone in all cases but can serve as an important supplement to existing services.

“It is not some magic pill that works for everyone. Digital solutions can reach many children and reduce the need for further follow-up, but some children and families need more intensive, personal support,” he says.

 

About SES NXT

• SES NXT is a platform designed to help children and parents better manage divorce.
• It was developed by SES Family, a company originating from a PhD project by Søren Sander at the Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with Gert Martin Hald.
• SES Family received the University of Copenhagen Innovation Award in 2019.
• SES NXT is used in 16 municipalities in Denmark and 111 municipalities across Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland.
• Around 1,700 children in Denmark have used SES NXT.

---

Journal

npj Digital Medicine

DOI

10.1038/s41746-026-02638-x 

Article Title

Effects of the SES NXT intervention on mental health and well-being for children of divorce

Article Publication Date

21-Apr-2026

COI Statement

For transparency and due diligence, we declare that two of the co-authors (Gert Martin Hald and Søren Sander) hold the commercial license and intellectual property rights to the platform under investigation, through SES Family ApS. To avoid any potential conflict of interest, they have not been involved in the management or analysis of the data. All data handling and statistical analyses were conducted independently by the other researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Daniel Bach Johnsen, Theis Lange, Andreas Nielsen Hald, and Camilla Stine Øverup declare no competing interests.

 

Climate change is destroying Arctic cultural heritage sites

17th-century whalers’ burial site in Svalbard has undergone significant destruction over the past 30 years

PLOS

Facebook

XLinkedInWeChat
WhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

Textile preservation in Phase III burials from Field area B. Phase III burials from Field area B show markedly better textile preservation than Phase II, reflecting more stable burial conditions and reduced environmental disturbance. The figure illustrates Grave 1 (A, D–F), Grave 66 (B, G–I), and Grave 78 (C). Preserved textiles include a woollen jacket (E); finely felted woollen stockings (F); a very finely woven pair of woollen trousers (H); fragmentary remains of a blue-striped linen shirt (I); and a blue silk neck scarf (G, cravat). Overall, the textile assemblage from Phase III is broadly comparable to that of Phase I in terms of preservation quality, although the garments are generally in poorer structural condition. Grave 78 yielded only a single preserved garment, a woollen cap. Photos and orthomosaics (A-C) by Lise Loktu, the Governor of Svalbard and NIKU.

view more 

Credit: Loktu, Brødholt, 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Climate change is rapidly destroying cultural heritage sites across the Arctic, as exemplified in a 17th century “whalers’ graveyard” which provides invaluable insights into early whalers’ way of life, according to a study published May 20, 2026 in the open-access journal PLOS One by Lise Loktu of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and Elin Therese Brødholt of Oslo University Hospital, Norway.

In our changing climate, the Arctic is warming faster than the global average. Rising temperatures and sea levels are linked to rapidly thawing permafrost and increased coastal erosion, which pose a danger to Arctic archaeological sites, threatening both scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. However, climate-driven risks to these sites have not been thoroughly examined.

In this study, researchers explored preservation patterns at the 17th-century whaling site of Likneset in the Svalbard archipelago. Comparing the results of excavations from the 1980s to those from the 2010s, the team observed a significant increase in erosional damage to grave sites along the coastline. The most dramatic decline was seen in textiles, which were found to be well-preserved in the 1980s excavations, but were almost completely degraded by the 2010s. This study also confirmed that graves at Likneset preserve detailed information about the illnesses, mortality, and working conditions of early Arctic whalers. For example, the skeletal remains, which composed mostly of young adult men, revealed extensive physical stresses and malnutrition, and it was likely this that caused the whalers’ deaths, rather than any specific trauma.

These results reveal rapid, climate-driven degradation of a valuable archaeological site in Svalbard, similar to trends observed in other Arctic regions. Altogether, these data suggest that current Arctic cultural management practices, which prioritize a limited selection of heritage sites, will not be able to keep up with the pace of climate impacts. The authors acknowledge the limited sample size used for the study and hope that future research will compare other burial sites in the region. They suggest that Arctic cultural heritage policies should be revised with special attention to these highly threatened archaeological assets.

The authors add: “These skeletons show us the human cost of Europe’s first oil industry. As permafrost thaws and coastal erosion accelerates, we are losing entire archives of human lives that can never be replaced. We are not only losing landscapes, but also the human stories preserved within them.”

“What we are seeing in these skeletons is the physical imprint of one of Europe’s first global industries. We can see how labour, diet, disease, and mobility left physical traces in the people who took part in early Arctic whaling. Many of these men died very young, yet already show clear signs of heavy physical strain, disease, and nutritional stress.”

  

 

Video interview:

Full version with captions: https://plos.io/4npyVp7

Full version without captions: https://plos.io/4nlVI5f

Short version with captions: https://plos.io/4uAIDaA

Short version without captions: https://plos.io/48XEqWf

Transcript: https://plos.io/4ufsOGU

Video interview caption: An archive on the brink: Lise Lotku reveals what a 16th century whalers' burial site can teach us about working-class life in Europe's first oil industry, and gives a stark warning about the threat climate change poses to this unique cultural heritage treasure.

Video interview credit: Anthony Lewis (www.anthony-lewis.com), PLOS, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS One: https://plos.io/3R629NP

Citation: Loktu L, Brødholt ET (2026) Skeletons in the permafrost: Exploring climate-driven heritage loss and occupational health at the early modern whaling burial site of Likneset, Svalbard. PLoS One 21(5): e0347033. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0347033

Author countries: Norway.

Funding: Lise Loktu received funding (NOK 550,000; grant 23/33) from the Svalbard Environmental Protection Fund to conduct new osteological analyses of skeletons from the whaling period (17th–18th century), excavated at the Likneset burial ground (ID 93705) in Smeerenburgfjorden during the 1985–1990 field campaigns (https://www.miljovernfondet.no/en/front-page/).

 

Dental wear and pathology in the Likneset assemblage. Examples of dental wear, pathology, and non-masticatory tooth use observed in individuals from Likneset. Panels A–H illustrate anterior tooth wear and characteristic bilateral notches between incisors, canines, and premolars consistent with habitual clay pipe smoking, recorded in 79% of individuals. Several individuals also exhibit pronounced anterior wear exceeding posterior wear, suggesting non-masticatory use of the teeth in work-related activities. Additional features include dental caries, periapical lesions, and alveolar bone changes indicative of inflammatory processes (e.g., panels C, F). Enamel hypoplasia, reflecting episodes of childhood physiological stress, is visible on multiple teeth in 63% of the individuals (e.g., panels B, E). Figure by Lise Loktu, NIKU. Photos by Lise Loktu, Elin T. Brødholt, and Carina V.S. Knudsen, the Governor of Svalbard and NIKU.

Credit

Loktu, Brødholt, 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

 

Textile preservation in Phase I burials from Field area A.In Phase I, textile preservation is generally exceptionally good where present, although substantial variability is observed. The figure illustrates examples of some of the best-preserved garments from (A) and (F) Grave 222; (B) and (G) Grave 216B; (C) and (D) Grave 218; and (E) and (H) Grave 216A. Preserved garments include woollen caps, jackets, trousers, knitted stockings, and bedding elements, reflecting favourable preservation conditions in several Phase I burials despite erosion exposure. The preserved textiles consist mainly of wool, with occasional remains of degraded linen shirts and trousers (likely undergarments), as well as silk scarves (cravats) recovered from the neck area in two graves (Graves 216A and 216B). Photos by Dag Nævestad, Tromsø Museum (A-B) and Lise Loktu, NIKU (C-H). 

Credit

Loktu, Brødholt, 2026, PLOS One, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Video interview with Lise Lotku (short version, no captions) [VIDEO] 

SHORT VERSION OF INTERVIEW - PLEASE SEE PRESS RELEASE FOR FULL VERSION

An archive on the brink: Lise Lotku reveals what a 16th century whalers' burial site can teach us about working-class life in Europe's first oil industry, and gives a stark warning about the threat climate change poses to this unique cultural heritage treasure.

Credit

Anthony Lewis (www.anthony-lewis.com), PLOS, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Video interview with Lise Loktu (short version, captioned) (VIDEO)

Journal

PLOS One

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0347033 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Skeletons in the permafrost: Exploring climate-driven heritage loss and occupational health at the early modern whaling burial site of Likneset, Svalbard

Article Publication Date

20-May-2026

Australian court upholds $465,000 fine against Elon Musk’s X


ByAFP

May 20, 2026


eSafety approached what was then Twitter in February 2023, demanding the company explain how it was tackling the spread of child sexual abuse content - Copyright AFP/File

 Justin TALLIS

An Australian federal court upheld on Thursday a fine against Elon Musk’s X for failing to comply with child internet safety regulations, capping a three year legal fight between the tech giant and Canberra.

Under Australian law, internet regulator eSafety can fine firms that do not respond to demands for detailed information on how they are keeping children safe online.

eSafety approached what was then Twitter in February 2023, demanding the company explain how it was tackling the spread of child sexual abuse content.

The following month Twitter was merged into Musk’s newly formed X Corp, which was eventually fined for “incomplete” responses to the commission’s repeated requests.

A federal court ruled in October 2024 that X was required to respond to the notice and on Thursday the social media giant was ordered to pay a fine of AU$650,000 (US$464,900).

“A penalty near the maximum is appropriate in the case of the respondent, which is a substantial corporation so that it operates as a real deterrent and is not simply a cost of doing business,” federal Justice Michael Wheelahan said.

The Australian government has been at the forefront of global efforts to rein in big tech, including with world-first laws imposed last year banning under-16s from accessing social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.

A raft of nations are now reportedly mulling a similar social media crackdown, with documents obtained by AFP showing that Israel, the United Kingdom, Norway and New Zealand met with Canberra officials after expressing an “interest” in the ban.

“Meaningful transparency is critical to holding technology companies to account,” eSafety head Julie Inman Grant said in response to Thursday’s federal court ruling.

“This is not only a key part of our work as Australia’s online safety regulator, it also provides the Australian public with important information about how these companies are tackling the worst-of-the-worst content on their platforms,” she added.

The Immigration Debate Starts Too Late

Rory Bahadur

 May 18, 2026

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

Image Miko Guziuk.

One of the great evasions in American immigration politics is that the story begins at the border. The uncomfortable truth is that it begins decades earlier, in countries where the United States undermined democracy, protected corporate interests of influential Americans, funded violent regimes producing the instability that now sends desperate people north. Only by erasing that history can we turn migrants into criminals and ourselves into victims. That history matters because it changes the moral meaning of the border because if we believe migrants are simply arriving from failed countries, then enforcement can look like national self-defense. But if some are fleeing instability that American power produced, then the border becomes the place where the United States immorally converts its own history into someone else’s criminality.

That is the part we are trained not to see, because seeing it would make the flag feel less like a symbol of innocence and more like evidence requiring historical accounting. We tell ourselves the United States is democracy’s guardian, freedom’s defender, the country that protects the right of people to choose their own leaders. But in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Chile and elsewhere, the United States repeatedly undermined or helped destroy democratic movements when democracy threatened corporate profit, Cold War strategy or American dominance. (JUAN GONZALEZ, HARVEST OF EMPIRE 152-154 (2d ed. 2022)). Then, after helping make lawful life impossible in some of those places, we meet the survivors at the border with raids, detention centers, deportations and speeches about law and order.

That is not just a minor contradiction at the margins of American politics, but it is the great evasion in the immigration debate: we destroyed countries then criminalized many of the people fleeing the wreckage and taught ourselves to call that border security.

Donald Trump made this evasion brutally plain when he reportedly referred to non-European nations as “shithole countries” while contrasting them with places like Norway. The insult was obscene, but the deeper obscenity was the historical amnesia underneath it. The phrase invited Americans to look down at broken places without asking who helped break them, to treat migrants as evidence of other nations’ failures rather than as witnesses to our own, and to convert poverty, violence and political collapse into proof that desperate people deserve exclusion instead of recognition.

Consider Guatemala. In 1954, the United States helped overthrow Jacobo Árbenz, a democratically elected president whose land reforms threatened the interests of the United Fruit Company. The CIA backed the coup. The government that followed unleashed decades of terror. Democracy was shattered, unions were suppressed, land was returned to corporate power and tens of thousands died. Generations later, when Guatemalans fled poverty, violence and political instability, Americans were told they were the problem.

Honduras tells a similar story. During the Cold War, the United States treated the country as a staging ground for anti-communist operations, poured military aid into the region, supported violent forces and tolerated or enabled regimes that kidnapped, tortured and killed in the name of fighting communism. Later, when Hondurans fled instability, corruption and violence, the United States did not say, “Some of this is the predictable result of our own imperial conduct.” It said, “Secure the border.”

El Salvador tells it even more brutally. During its civil war, the United States funded and trained forces responsible for extraordinary violence, including the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion that carried out the El Mozote massacre, where civilians were tortured, raped and executed and children were killed. Yet when Salvadorans flee the consequences of that history, they are treated as trespassers rather than as human beings escaping a fire we helped light.

This is the buried truth of the immigration debate: many migrants are not coming from “failed” countries in some morally neutral sense. They are coming from countries that powerful nations, including the United States, helped fail. It is much easier to relegate that truth to the realm of irrelevance, not because we consciously choose denial, but because our minds reflexively protect the stories that make our world feel coherent, pushing aside the intolerable contradiction between America’s democratic self-image and its recurring willingness to undermine democracy abroad when power, profit or strategic advantage require it, and returning us instead to the comforting image of the flag as an unassailable symbol of democracy, freedom and national virtue. (RORY BAHADUR, A CRITICAL RACE APPROACH TO SYSTEMIC INEQUITY, 191-212 (2025)

That truth destroys the moral architecture of the border debate. If immigrants are criminals, invaders or parasites, then cruelty becomes defense. But if many immigrants are people fleeing instability we helped create, then cruelty becomes denial, historical laundering and the punishment of victims for surviving the consequences of our power.

That is why the myth of immigrant criminality matters so much. It does not merely mislead people; it performs moral work. It allows Americans to replace history with fear.

We see this most clearly in the fentanyl narrative. Politicians constantly imply that undocumented migrants are bringing fentanyl across the border and killing American children.

The claim is emotionally potent because it fuses parental terror, racial suspicion and national boundary-making into one story. But the data do not support the narrative. Fentanyl is overwhelmingly seized at legal ports of entry and interior checkpoints, not on illegal migration routes. U.S. citizens are heavily represented among convicted fentanyl traffickers. Border Patrol arrests of people crossing illegally almost never involve fentanyl possession.

Yet the lie survives because it feels right to people who have already been taught to associate brown migrants with danger. The immigrant becomes a container for everything Americans fear: drugs, crime, disorder, demographic change, economic insecurity and national decline. Once that association takes hold, facts become almost irrelevant because evidence does not merely fail to persuade. It feels like an attack on common sense.

The same thing happens with crime. Studies repeatedly show that undocumented immigration is not associated with increased crime, and some research suggests that undocumented immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. But one horrific crime committed by an immigrant can become a national morality play in which the individual disappears into the category and immigration itself becomes criminal.

White Americans enjoy a privilege denied to migrants and racial outsiders: individuality. When a white man murders, bombs, shoots or terrorizes, he is usually treated as an individual failure, a loner, a troubled man, a monster, a mental-health case or an exception. His race does not become an indictment of the group. His citizenship does not become evidence that citizens are dangerous. No one says that because another white male has committed mass murder, we must close the suburbs. (RORY BAHADUR, A CRITICAL RACE APPROACH TO SYSTEMIC INEQUITY, 116-119 (2025)).

But when the perpetrator is an immigrant, Muslim, Black, Latino or otherwise outside the dominant national imagination, the crime becomes collective. The group is put on trial. The border becomes the solution. Deportation becomes justice. Exclusion becomes common sense. (RORY BAHADUR, A CRITICAL RACE APPROACH TO SYSTEMIC INEQUITY, 116-119 (2025)). The genius of anti-immigrant politics is that it converts American responsibility into American innocence. First, the United States helps destabilize countries through coups, military aid, corporate protection, anti-communist violence, economic pressure or selective indifference. Then, when people flee the resulting instability, American politicians describe their arrival as an invasion. The arsonist becomes the homeowner. The displaced become the threat. The powerful become the victims.

This is why “law and order” language is so morally deceptive in the immigration context. It begins the story at the border, as though the only relevant question is whether a person crossed legally. But history did not begin at the border. It began in boardrooms, embassies, plantations, military training facilities, covert operations and Cold War calculations, when American power decided that democracy in Latin America was acceptable only when it did not interfere with American interests.

To say this is not to claim that every migrant has a legal right to remain in the United States, to deny that governments have borders or to pretend that immigration systems require no rules. It is to insist that rules without history become instruments of moral evasion. A country cannot break societies and then treat the people fleeing those societies as though their suffering is self-created.

The cruelest thing about American immigration politics is not only that it lies about immigrants. It lies about America. It tells us we are merely defending ourselves from foreign disorder, when we have often exported disorder and then punished the people who tried to escape it. It tells us migrants are coming because they disrespect our laws, when many are coming because our power helped make lawful life impossible where they were born.

So perhaps the more honest question is not why people are coming here. It is what we did there.

And perhaps the most honest answer is that America did not merely discover broken countries. In too many places, it helped produce them, profited from them, militarized them, destabilized them, abandoned them and then criminalized the people who ran from the wreckage.

That is not border security. It is empire with a clean conscience.

Rory Bahadur is the author of A Critical Race Approach to Systemic Inequity and the James R. Ahrens Professor of Law at Washburn University School of Law but his views are his own and do not represent those of Washburn University.