This morning, over coffee and a croissant, Erin Houchin told me about her daughter.
Her biggest concern at 13 years old wasn&#8217;t a pop quiz or whether her crush liked her back. It was a stranger — or strangers — on the other side of a screen, circling closer.
That&#8217;s the childhood these kids have. That&#8217;s the world we handed them on a silver, gold, or rose-gold platter. 
I am a social media influencer. I post for part of my living. My entire career is built on these platforms. And I am here to tell you, with zero ambiguity, that social media is a loaded weapon in the hands of a child, and we have spent the better part of a decade handing it to them and acting surprised when someone gets hurt.
Representative Erin Houchin (IN-9) is one of the only lawmakers in Washington actually trying to drag Big Tech and the rest of Congress into the 21st century on this catastrophe. While everyone else is riveted to AI doomsday headlines and the latest geopolitical chaos, have you checked in with your kid lately? Have you actually hung out with a teenager? These kids are a mess. Zoned out, anxious, depressed, and eerily indistinguishable from one another because they all think, talk, TikTok, and dress the same way.
The algorithm is the new parent, and it is doing a spectacularly terrible job.
Houchin can&#8217;t keep playing the lone wolf here, fighting the woke Left and Big Tech. Their reasons for keeping your 13-year-old scrolling are not benign. They are mercenary. Maybe I&#8217;m just an old-fashioned woman stuck in a 24-year-old&#8217;s body, but I say we make June &#8220;Put Down the Phone and Go Outside Month.&#8221; Celebrate touching grass. Riding bikes. Reading books. Let&#8217;s give kids a few more years of actual childhood before the algorithm owns their developing prefrontal cortex, because once you&#8217;re on social media, the psychological grip is almost impossible to break.
What Houchin is doing makes total sense, and the fact that it&#8217;s stalling is concerning.
She’s a mom of three from Indiana who has watched this wreckage up close. The current federal rule, straight out of 1998&#8217;s <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa">COPPA</a>, sets a laughably inadequate minimum age of 13 for social media.
Thirteen. That’s when you can get on KiK and get sent <a href="http://dailywire.com/news/see-it-graham-platner-has-active-profile-on-predators-paradise-messaging-app">messages by Graham Platner.</a>
The legislation governing your child&#8217;s digital life predates the iPhone by nearly a decade. Houchin&#8217;s flagship RESET Act (H.R. 6488) would raise that floor to 16, force platforms to default to safer settings for minors, kill the dopamine-engineered algorithmic feeds, and give parents real, functional oversight. She introduced it in December <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6488">2025</a>.
It&#8217;s stalled, sitting in committee.
She co-led the bipartisan <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6333">Parents Over Platforms Act</a>, which closes the loopholes that kids, including her own daughter, exploit to bypass controls. It squeaked through the subcommittee. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) authored the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/text">KIDS</a> Act, which includes Houchin&#8217;s two bills — AWARE and SAFEBOTs — that require warnings on AI chatbots and protect kids from deceptive bots. It cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee in <a href="http://houchin.house.gov/media/press-releases/houchin-bills-protect-children-ai-dangers-pass-energy-commerce-committee">March 2026</a>.
Progress? Sure. But none of this is law yet. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6488">RESET</a> hasn’t moved an inch. Congress is too busy grandstanding while kids’ brains quietly melt. 
And we don&#8217;t have to speculate about the damage anymore. The CDC&#8217;s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/pdfs/su7304a9-H.pdf">40</a>% of high schoolers reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness. Twenty percent seriously considered suicide. Nine percent attempted it. Young girls are disproportionately devastated. More than three hours a day on social media doubles the risk of depression and <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html">anxiety</a>. Suicide rates for teens exploded alongside smartphones, up over <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm">57</a>% from 2007 to 2017. An estimated 500,000 active predators are online daily. Forty percent of children have been approached by strangers attempting to groom <a href="https://childsafety.losangelescriminallawyer.pro/children-and-grooming-online-predators.html">them</a>. One in seven minors has been solicited for explicit images. The victims are overwhelmingly young <a href="https://ourrescue.org/resources/child-exploitation/online-exploitation/how-online-grooming-impacts-child-exploitation">girls</a>. 
 
Where is the outrage? I thought the Left hated child predators? Or do they only care when the predator&#8217;s name is Jeffrey and selectively ignore when the predator is from below the southern border or on a platform run by Big Tech? 
To be clear, no one is yanking your child’s phone out of their hand and burning it in the street. Free speech is freer than ever. Parents who decide their kid is mature enough can still grant permission. That&#8217;s the entire point of parental oversight. But the inconvenient truth is that these kids are sophisticated and sneaky little operators. They are running circles around their parents through loopholes, secondary accounts, VPNs, and borrowed devices, and hurting themselves in the process.
The law isn&#8217;t there to replace parenting. It&#8217;s there because platforms have deliberately engineered their products to circumvent it.
The ugliest dimension of this fight is that a sizable portion of the Left wants to keep that access age low precisely because they want the indoctrination pipeline wide open. Online furry spaces, LGBTABCDEFG+ echo chambers, and trans-activist corners thrive on vulnerable preteens. 
Imagine if the 16-year-old, transgender, Denver, Colorado shooter was restricted in his online access during those earlier ages and wasn’t exposed to all of that hatred and indoctrination at such an early age? Maybe things would be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_School_Highlands_Ranch_shooting">different</a>. 
We know that algorithms push division, rage, and identity crises that turn confused kids into activists, or worse, isolated and radicalized. Social media is not neutral; it’s a culture-war supercharger creating echo chambers that breed anxiety, self-harm, and societal fractures. Some on the Left are perfectly comfortable with platforms functioning as unregulated youth indoctrination zones.
They call it inclusion. It’s not; it’s reckless exploitation with better marketing.
And to Big Tech: I genuinely wish you the best in the A.I. arms race against China. I mean it. Build great things and make America more awesome. I’m a big fan.
But your social media business model for children runs on addiction, dopamine manipulation, and harvesting data from developing brains. For children, this part is simply not a public good.
Apple, Meta, Google: build real parental controls, default them to “on,” and keep the predators and the algorithmic psychological warfare away from kids who can&#8217;t yet drive a car, sign a contract, or vote.
I vividly remember getting my iPhone 5C in fifth grade at 11 years old. This was life-changing in the best way. I could text my friends, call them, and make plans. But social media came later, so despite the phone, I still ran around outside, read actual books, had awkward face-to-face conversations with acne all over my face, and no beauty filter in sight. I experienced the profound indignity of a middle school crush who did not reciprocate. I wasn&#8217;t addicted. I was a kid. My self-worth wasn&#8217;t being quantified in likes. My sense of beauty wasn&#8217;t being calibrated against an algorithm&#8217;s highlight reel. I had the extraordinary, irreplaceable gift of boredom, and it made me interesting and interested.
We owe the next generation that same fighting chance.
Erin Houchin is in that fight. The rest of us, parents, lawmakers, social media users who know better, and yes, even the self-proclaimed &#8220;pro-children&#8221; Left, need to show up.
June is here. Be proud of your low screen time. Put the phones down. Go outside.
Your kids are waiting.

Social Media

Don’t Let The AI Algorithm Parent Your Kids

Big Tech

Children's Health

DW Opinion

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has spent years being treated by mainstream media as the go-to expert on hate groups and extremism. Now it is facing an 11-count federal indictment for wire fraud, lying to a bank, and money laundering.
As Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto recently put it, the SPLC does not act like a neutral watchdog. It behaves more like a competitor to real journalism, with every incentive to hype threats because “hate pays.”
The real test is whether the institutions that have propped it up will finally take these charges seriously. So far, the response has been disappointing. The indictment claims the SPLC secretly funneled millions of dollars to leaders of the very white-supremacist groups it claims to track, including more than $270,000 to an organizer of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. That rally gained instant notoriety, and it became prime fodder for left-leaning media that endlessly replayed former President Joe Biden’s misleading claim about Trump saying there were “very fine people on both sides.”
Three of the Big Four news apps — Google, Yahoo, and MSN — completely ignored the April 21 indictment. Apple News featured just two stories on the scandal, both from left-leaning outlets. As for the other three apps, the story did not crack their top 20 headlines in the days after it broke. Wikipedia went even further than ignoring it. Editors buried the indictment deep in the SPLC’s page, 65 paragraphs down under a mild “criticism” heading. Efforts to move it higher, including into the lead section, were quickly shot down. One editor said it had “no place so far up.” Key details, like the payments to the Unite the Right organizer, were stripped out as “UNDUE.”
They also removed references to the indictment from the Unite the Right rally page itself, despite the obvious connection, and blocked it from the list of groups the SPLC labels as hate groups. This protective editing stands in sharp contrast to how quickly Wikipedia highlights indictments against Republicans and conservatives.
It is not just dishonest coverage. Wikipedia still treats the SPLC as a “generally reliable” source, letting editors cite it over 7,000 times. Meanwhile, right-leaning outlets like Breitbart, Fox News, the New York Post, and The Daily Wire are heavily restricted or blacklisted. After the indictment, editors shut down debates about the SPLC’s special status and even topic-banned a dissenting editor.
The bias runs deep. The SPLC’s “extremist” files and hate lists still get prominent placement on pages about conservatives like Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh, Jack Posobiec, Moms for Liberty, and the Alliance Defending Freedom. At the same time, the SPLC is accused of quietly paying an Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America and a leader of the National Socialist Party of America while publicly condemning them.
Wikipedia matters because it dominates Google search results and AI summaries. Google has given millions to the Wikimedia Foundation, and tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft partner with it. When these platforms downplay damaging news about a favored group while keeping its power to label enemies intact, tens of millions of people get a distorted picture every day.
This fits a broader pattern tracked by the Media Research Center’s Free Speech America project. Our monitoring of the Big Four news apps shows consistent favoritism toward liberal sources. Paired with Wikipedia’s practices, it shows how big tech amplifies left-leaning gatekeepers and sidelines stories that do not fit the narrative. In short, major news aggregators and Wikipedia have buried the SPLC indictment. They have protected one of the Left’s most powerful smear machines from real accountability while it keeps attacking conservatives online.
When the information gatekeepers suppress a major federal corruption case against an organization that shapes so much of our public debate, they erode trust across the board. Millions of Americans end up seeing a cleaned-up version of reality that serves the SPLC’s defenders, not the truth.
***
David Bozell is president of the Media Research Center.

Wikipedia

How The SPLC Gets Big Time Protection From Big Tech — And Why It Matters

Media Bias

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

There is a current tendency to blame free markets and technology for dyspepsia with the economy, as if there is a nefarious group of people destroying your way of life.
People are literally trying to attack data centers.
As David Friedberg noted on the “<a href="https://x.com/theallinpod/status/2046280245758787914">All-In Podcast</a>”:
<blockquote>Most people in America are starting to really hate rich people. And there&#8217;s no physical space that better represents the wealth in America, the wealth creation that&#8217;s happened that a lot of people feel left behind from, than the data center. It is the temple of the wealthy. It is the way that the rich, elite, tech, kind of political, connected billionaires that we&#8217;re obviously all attached to are taking from the poor, getting themselves ahead, shooting themselves to space, leaving everyone else behind, and the data center, I think, is the representation of their progress. And it is a representation of the progress that others don&#8217;t feel.
For a consumer&#8217;s life to actually be altered in a meaningfully positive way, most people don&#8217;t feel that yet. The best thing they see is some medical advice they&#8217;re getting on ChatGPT or something, and that&#8217;s kind of the end of it for them. So I think there&#8217;s a lot of this populism that&#8217;s swollen and that&#8217;s taken over, not just the US, but probably a good chunk of the West. And the data center is the target.</blockquote>
David Friedberg&#8217;s explanation is exactly right. This is the way that economic populists have been pushing.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-ep-2410?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
Let’s differentiate between moral and economic populism. Moral populism was exemplified by William F. Buckley back in the 1960s when he stated that he would trust the first 100 names in the Harvard phone book on matters of public policy more than he would trust 100 Harvard professors.
The idea was that the common man in the United States — shaped as he or she was by the institutions of church and family and community — had a better moral compass, on average, than the elites.
I totally agree with that, because elites very often believe that they have been freed from these systems of morality.
However, when it comes to the economy, economic populism is virtually the inverse. Economic populism assumes that there should be some sort of centralized control placed into the hands of that central power by “the people,” and centralized control should overwhelm the disseminated knowledge that is implicit in free markets and capital markets.
The basic principle of capitalism is that disparate views on things lead to better outcomes, that differential knowledge and the diffusion of knowledge are actually significantly more effective than one guy at the top with a stick beating people into submission.
But economic populism says that free markets are bad if the product of the free market is something I don&#8217;t like, therefore, we should take power away from the free market to destroy it.
Whenever there is economic unease, people tend to attack free market capitalism, or what they see as the symbols of free market capitalism, and they tend to blame people who are wealthy.
The great lie is that people in the United States are wealthy because they&#8217;re stealing from the poor. It is a full-scale lie. It is not true.
The only places in the world where people are rich because they steal from the poor are communist countries and other forms of tyranny. The reason people get rich in a free market economy is because they are providing products and services at a price people are willing to pay. People want that product or service.
But if you can somehow recast the economy of the United States as “rigged” on behalf of the wealthy and go after the means of production, you target data centers.
What you are going to end up doing, in this view, is overthrow the capitalist system.
The outcome of that will be quite dire.
There is a grievance-based, horseshoe-theory economic Right that is also wildly upset about artificial intelligence data centers because they&#8217;re big and ugly.
You know what else is big and ugly? Walmart — but it’s wonderful for the vast majority of consumers.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman&#8217;s home was allegedly targeted in the second attack in just two days; a shot was even fired. This is part and parcel of a broader movement that is targeting technology more generally, including technologies that are required for the United States to win wars.
City Journal <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/palantir-protests-ice-national-security?utm_source=virtuous&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=cjdaily">reported</a> there is a campaign against the military contractor Palantir — which generates extraordinary technologies in terms of intelligence gathering, capacity to target, and much of the actual technology that goes into the machines that we use.
This crosses paths with all of America&#8217;s enemies. America&#8217;s enemies are delighted to watch us destroy ourselves by taking down the technologies that allow us to win.
If you buy into this entire shtick — the idea that AI as a technology must be destroyed — it won&#8217;t be destroyed.
We&#8217;ll just lose.
If you think that China is going to forgo AI, you&#8217;re a fool. They won’t.
If the United States were to heavily restrict AI, not just in terms of preventing its gravest harms, but restricting the development of AI, or if there were to be a political party that attempts to prevent the building of data centers, not for any sort of understandable economic reason — like, for example, make the data centers pay their fair share of electricity production, which I think is a fair argument — if there&#8217;s a broad scale movement to destroy the AI industry out of either misplaced agrarianism or a deep and abiding hatred for capitalism or the generalized belief that capitalism rots the human soul, we will lose.
If the United States heavily restricts AI, not just by preventing its gravest harms but by restricting its development, we will lose. If a political party tries to stop the construction of data centers, we will lose. That is different from making data centers pay their fair share for electricity production, which I think is a fair argument. But if there is a broad-based movement to destroy the AI industry out of misplaced agrarianism, a deep and abiding hatred of capitalism, or a generalized belief that capitalism rots the human soul, we will lose.
China wins.
This is not a vacuum. It is not as though if the United States forgoes AI magically, we would continue to have a burgeoning, wealthy economy, and China goes weapons down.
When it comes to AI, indeed, there are problems, there are dangers — and we should all recognize those dangers, not whistling past the graveyard — but at the same time, it is a tremendous opportunity.
A China in a dominant AI position means a China in a dominant military position. The amount of AI that is being used right now by the United States military in the conflict in Iran and in the operation in Venezuela is tremendous and growing.
If China outpaces us in AI development, that means their military is now superior to ours. If their military is superior to ours, that means they can not only effectuate change in their region, it means they can also spread that technology throughout the world and make other countries dependent on the receipt of that technology.
It means that many, many other countries all over planet Earth would suddenly become dependent on China.
That is a huge problem, and it also leaves China in a dominant economic position, because AI means more productivity. If productivity goes up for China but remains stagnant for the United States, they will outcompete us. If they outcompete us, one of two things happens: Either we block off our economy and become backward and protectionist — meaning we don&#8217;t have any of the best goods and products and services at the best price, we&#8217;re all poorer and we slide into poverty and stagnation — or we have to be dependent on Chinese products, our kids work for Chinese companies, and China is able to spread its influence.
When it comes to the game of economics, you must win.
When it comes to the game of military dominance, you must win.
And when it comes to the technological game, you must win.
The economic populism that&#8217;s been rising says that we ought to tariff our way out of all our problems, that we ought to attack technological development, that it would be great to have an economy based on t-shirts — none of this is going to solve the bigger problem.
Attacking tech CEOs or healthcare CEOs or burning up Teslas and attacking Tesla showrooms or shooting Charlie Kirk or attempting to shoot President Trump — all of these are the most extreme manifestations of an ideology.
That ideology says that you are a victim of American society and therefore you get to do bad things. On a broader political level, you are a victim of American society, and therefore you ought to get together with the other victims, take over the government, and use centralized, tyrannical power r to cram down your view of the world.

Working robots

Populist Rage And AI: National Surrender

Anti-capitalist

Artificial Intelligence

Ben Shapiro

Capitalism

China

Data Centers

Economy

Opinion

Populism

Technology

President Donald Trump said his first interaction with outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook came during his first term when the tech mogul called to get his help with a &#8220;fairly large problem.&#8221;
“I have always been a big fan of Tim Cook, and likewise, Steve Jobs, but if Steve was not taken from the Planet Earth so young, and ran the company instead of Tim, the company would have done well, but nowhere near as well as it has under Tim,” Trump said in a lengthy Truth Social post on Tuesday.
The post came a day after Apple announced that Cook would be leaving the company in September after 15 years leading it. Trump said Cook called him at the beginning of his first term asking for his help with a problem.
“He had a fairly large problem that only I, as President, could fix. Most people would have paid millions of dollars to a consultant, who I probably would not have known, but who would say that he knew me well,” Trump said. “The fees would be paid but the job would not have gotten done. When I got the call I said, wow, it’s Tim Apple (Cook!) calling, how big is that? I was very impressed with myself to have the head of Apple calling to ‘kiss my ass.’”
Trump said he thought that Cook was right and got the problem “taken care” of “quickly and effectively.”
“That was the beginning of a long and very nice relationship. During my five years as President, Tim would call me, but never too much, and I would help him where I could,” Trump said, saying he helped Cook three or four times with big issues.
“He makes these calls to me, I help him out (but not always, because he will, on occasion, be too aggressive in his ask!), and he gets the job done, QUICKLY, without a dime being given to those very expensive (millions of dollars!) consultants around town who sometimes get it done, and sometimes don’t,” Trump said. “Anyway, Tim Cook had an AMAZING career, almost incomparable, and will go on and continue to do great work for Apple, and whatever else he chooses to work on. Quite simply, Tim Cook is an incredible guy!!!”
In August 2025, Cook joined Trump at the White House to announced $100 billion in investments in the United States. Cook gifted Trump an Apple logo nameplate with gold base during the meeting.
Under Cook&#8217;s leadership, Apple became a $4 trillion company. He will be replaced by John Ternus, currently the senior vice president of hardware engineering.

President Trump Makes An Announcement In The Oval Office

Trump Remembers Time Apple’s Tim Cook Called To ‘Kiss My Ass’

Apple

Donald Trump

Politics

Tim Cook

Google has its hands on nearly everything you do online: the websites you visit, the news you see, the ads you’re forced to watch, and all your valuable personal data. Now Google has another target in its sights — your TV — where you and your family likely spend <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/36f6fa92fbe58e28519436bac4c2bac4c4bed36e?u=11850803">at least</a> a few hours a day.
Google has ramped up its efforts to dominate television with YouTube TV by replicating its monopolistic ad practices — practices that should be considered violations of antitrust laws.
YouTube TV has become synonymous with television for millions of Americans who subscribe to its streaming service, and its dominance is indisputable. In 2025, YouTube TV became the nation’s most popular TV streaming platform, controlling <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/4abcd631a3bd6a089766f2a3c81ac9850067a4df?u=11850803">13.4% of viewership</a> and 10 million <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/7d516b3972943b1c13aa133eec581810275587b3?u=11850803">subscribers</a>, according to Nielsen market data.
While Google does not break out YouTube TV’s financials, the media research firm MoffettNathanson <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/819162f55fac52e605f8b7935f702820a73b9283?u=11850803">predicted</a> in 2024 that YouTube TV would generate $200 million in operating profit that year. That may pale in comparison to its streaming rivals&#8217; offerings for now, but Google is already using its monopoly playbook to squeeze both cable providers and on-demand competitors like Netflix and Hulu.
When Google’s streaming TV platform <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/1fe1252f59f7e73fa0f6f1b3c48dc6b2ee86cf3e?u=11850803">launched in 2017</a>, it debuted with programming from Disney, 21st Century Fox, CBS, and NBCUniversal.
Its proposition at the time seemed simple: it had the eyeballs, but networks had the content. YouTube’s user base has for years <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/05201e983409cfe509b71ea13229d1439fc1fd1b?u=11850803">been dominated</a> by Millennials and Gen Zers, demographics that carriers desired but were losing to widespread cord-cutting. By entering the streaming market, YouTube TV could apply the ad model it had already used to great success with user-generated content to a new library of long-form premium shows.
Those streaming agreements quickly deteriorated. By 2025, YouTube TV <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/5e415872841eefb6987822f37680c93302531a4b?u=11850803">had increased</a> its subscription costs fivefold and was raking in billions of dollars in advertising revenue, thanks to sophisticated ad-targeting technology that enabled it to promote content that kept users on its platform longer.
When it came time to renegotiate its licensing contracts, YouTube TV sought to gain even more market share. Rather than “integrating” content, which had prompted viewers to leave the app to access third-party programming, YouTube TV demanded the right to “ingest” content and make it streamable directly from its own platform.
YouTube TV’s network partners, who operated rival streaming apps, accused the company of using its market power to squash their services, even as it relied on their content. In 2025, carriage disputes erupted between YouTube TV and Disney, NBCUniversal, Fox Corp, Paramount, and Univision over these terms. YouTube TV reached “eleventh-hour agreements” with all but <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/3dba9ea993f31f4e1600efaa1c17a3cf2ee866ef?u=11850803">Univision</a> and <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/1d57520ab6efb7bb5dcc1796d715b548bde38456?u=11850803">Disney</a>, whose programming went dark on the platform in September and October that year after failing to meet YouTube TV’s new conditions. Disney executives <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/4d257407bed1e9bd59c206146ae1960e9d7432b8?u=11850803">alleged</a> that Google and YouTube TV wanted to “use their power and extraordinary resources to eliminate competition and devalue the very content that helped them build their service.” Univision <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/dce2a2c7f0a09891dbe9ca14c7d1567be4bdb5f8?u=11850803">argued</a> that YouTube TV’s actions had stripped “millions of Hispanic viewers of the Spanish-language news, sports, and entertainment they rely on every day.”
In response, YouTube TV <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/fe9065b47ae3e0b2eac5cfd71a78a48106e587cc?u=11850803">called</a> its partners’ protests “unnecessarily aggressive and assertive” and framed its demands as a win for consumers seeking simpler ways to access streaming content. After weeks of negotiation, Disney, Universal, and Univision agreed to terms that restored their programming on YouTube TV’s platform, <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/cb6c5d2be9e47ed466311b3610fdfead779ee018?u=11850803">including</a> a form of content ingestion.
This is a classic play from the Google playbook, which has built a multitrillion-dollar corporation on the idea of building a better mousetrap. What began as an index of the open web has evolved into the world’s most profitable advertising machine. Today, <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/c284b8cbb9abf1f819d944fecccca82fa88efac6?u=11850803">more than half</a> of the company’s revenue comes from user data-driven search ad targeting. The arrangement allows businesses to surface their products on Google’s platforms but also funnels a mountain of consumer data back to Google, which then uses it to cannibalize page views in favor of its own properties.
As a result, Google now sits between those businesses and their traffic. In the same way that Google has robbed news sites of clicks through products like its <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/a7397bb8da1aa2c314a98b457a3d283670e1178e?u=11850803">AI Overviews feature</a>, YouTube TV has absorbed television carrier audiences and ad revenue by bundling its content into its data-optimized platform. YouTube TV can now monetize its shows within Google Ads, the <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/2eeab0a2cafa10b372f77e36dd68e943a52b90cd?u=11850803">lucrative</a> ecosystem through which its parent service, YouTube, generated $11.4 billion in revenue last year. It has also positioned itself as a competitor to carriers’ direct-to-consumer platforms, making it harder for these partners to grow their own streaming services.
Google’s monopolistic playbook has not gone unchallenged, however. In August 2024, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta found that Google <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/9fa0394886ab4cf853555beb92e8d716f858f14a?u=11850803">illegally monopolized</a> online search by paying to have its search engine power browsers like Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox. The landmark case, which spanned nearly five years, determined that Google’s search engine accounted for 90% of web queries, a foothold it gained through these exclusive contracts.
The Department of Justice <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/75b9e3b0642b8d01d8662f9f10b4036520b6c47f?u=11850803">filed a notice</a> this year that it will appeal antitrust remedies ordered by Judge Mehta, suggesting it may revisit a proposal to force Google to sell off properties such as its Chrome browser or end its browser deal with Apple.
Google was hit with another major antitrust ruling last April when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema found that it had <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/a8f28745be6b825a440c1da9b7b4e9d5a1614764?u=11850803">violated the law</a> “by willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power” over parts of the digital ad market. Brinkema noted that a series of acquisitions Google had made over the past 15 years allowed it to control the levers for buying, selling, and displaying online ads. The European Union followed suit and <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/f28baea870371768b1e4726d2f72031f6b2f80e7?u=11850803">fined Google</a> $3.5 billion for similar anti-competitive practices.
These rulings, combined with Google’s ongoing attempts to devour the television industry, should serve as a call to action for lawmakers to scrutinize the company’s latest target. Already, YouTube TV has leveraged its strengths to land high-profile <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/3944b87701f6421e69fcbd305f0c0a2c4f58acbf?u=11850803">ad partners</a> and even secure a <a href="https://l.gourl.es/l/b5b801ca8418e2a982e2baf98c4c8e0357f566ec?u=11850803">commercial spot</a> during this year’s Super Bowl. 
There’s still time to stop Google from using the same old playbook to get away with it again.
***
Joel Thayer is president of the Digital Progress Institute and an attorney based in Washington, D.C.

A woman is holding a remote control of a smart TV in his hand. In the background you can see the television screen with streaming entertainment apps for video on demand.

Google Is Using Its Monopolistic Playbook To Take Over Your TV

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is in active negotiations with several of the world’s largest advertising firms to resolve an investigation into whether the companies illegally coordinated boycotts against social media platforms, most notably Elon Musk’s X.
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According to a report from <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/media/ftc-in-settlement-talks-with-ad-companies-in-boycott-probe-99f687e9?mod=media_news_article_pos3">The Wall Street Journal</a>, the probe involves industry giants including WPP, Publicis Groupe, Dentsu, Havas, and Horizon Media. The inquiry, which began last year, centers on allegations that these firms engaged in anticompetitive behavior by collectively steering advertising dollars away from specific platforms based on political or ideological content.
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Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the advertising firms would commit to a &#8220;neutral&#8221; approach, agreeing not to direct client budgets away from media platforms solely because of the political viewpoints hosted on those sites. While the firms would be barred from coordinated efforts to withhold funds, the settlement would preserve the right of individual advertisers to make their own independent decisions about where their ads appear.
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The tension between advertisers and tech platforms is rooted in &#8220;brand safety&#8221;—a decade-old practice intended to prevent corporate ads from appearing alongside offensive or controversial content. However, the FTC is investigating whether this practice crossed the line into a violation of federal antitrust laws. The government is looking for evidence of whether these firms worked in tandem with advocacy groups to systematically starve certain platforms of revenue.
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The investigation gained momentum following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) in 2022. Shortly after the takeover, many major brands paused their spending due to concerns over loosened content moderation. While X attempted to fight back through the legal system—suing an ad trade group and companies like Mars and CVS for an &#8220;illegal boycott&#8221;—those efforts have faced hurdles. Just last month, U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharyfolk/2026/03/26/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-from-elon-musks-x-accusing-advertisers-of-boycott-conspiracy/">dismissed</a> X’s antitrust lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers, ruling that the platform failed to prove an illegal conspiracy. The judge concluded that while advertisers collectively shifted budgets elsewhere, this reflected market choice rather than a violation of competition laws intended to restrain trade.
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A potential agreement with the FTC would likely mirror a deal struck last year with Omnicom Group, which barred the company from coordinating with others to boycott publishers based on ideological grounds. <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2510049omnicomdecisionorder.pdf">Key provisions</a> included that Omnicom could not agree with competitors to steer ad spend away from specific platforms due to their content’s politics; could not use or solicit shared lists that blackball publishers for ideological reasons; and that individual advertisers could still request custom exclusion lists for their own brands, but Omnicom could not share these lists with other clients.
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While talks are ongoing, a final deal is not guaranteed. If reached, the settlement would mark a significant intervention by the federal government into the relationship between the gatekeepers of digital advertising and the platforms that rely on their revenue to survive.
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forbidden sign on Open hand, NO Boycott sign painted

Who Controls Your Feed? Why The FTC’s Fight Against Ad Boycotts Matters For Your Online Freedom

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U.S.

We’ve come a long way since Ann Landers. The prim and proper lady doling out advice via her newspaper column couldn’t have foreseen the 21st century. After all, aren’t we in the Golden Age of technology that will give us the answers to all we seek, diagnose our every ill, and pair us with the perfect mate, thus completing life without the trappings of the search for answers?
Not quite.
Since Landers (the pen name of columnist Ruth Crowley starting in 1947 and later Esther Lederer starting in 1955) got her start, Americans have entered the nuclear age, hit a golf ball on the moon, invented meatless meat, and popularized cat memes. Clearly, we are advancing at a spectacular rate and using technology in ever more innovative ways to advance civilization.
Which brings us to our relationships with each other, specifically men and women.
After we acknowledge that young men and women aren’t exactly living their best lives in the relationship sphere — with only 31% of the rising generation actively dating, according to a comprehensive <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/state-of-our-unions-2026-the-dating-recession">report</a> from the Institute for Family Studies released in February — the next question is: why?
Ann Landers might say there isn’t enough good old-fashioned guidance out there: Who is helping these youngsters find their true love? Who is giving them confidence and fine-tuning the skills necessary to both present oneself to the opposite sex and to realize what qualities and character a young man, let’s say, is looking for in a girlfriend and, hopefully, someday, a wife?
Fear not! The answer is on any laptop or cellphone, in the very doomscrolling that is preventing people from going on actual dates in the first place. Wait, what?
Men are being catfished into dubious relationship advice by AI slop bots.
There is a burgeoning industry lurking in young men’s social media algorithms, promising relationship advice that will lead to the perfect woman. All that’s needed is a credit card and internet access. Instagram and Facebook (both Meta products) have pages devoted to “relationship coaches” geared toward young men stuck in singledom. The pitch from these relationship gurus is eerily similar, as is the aesthetic of these so-called “experts.” You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, with slight variations for the sake of the proprietary nature of the advice. Long, slightly tousled hair, a sculpted nose, pursed and plumped lips, unblinking eyes, and tops cut to be professional yet provocative, showing off and enhancing bronzed, uplifting orbital assets. Remember, these are pages designed to bait young and lonely men. They consist of talking points that sound more like a cross between a low-rent Kahlil Gibran, Rumi, and Stuart Smalley. The pages offer clips that draw men in by massaging their disaffection and assuring them that it’s not their fault they’re single; it’s that the women are no good!
One alluring young woman is <a href="https://www.instagram.com/sterling_georgia?igsh=MTh6eWozdnY0eXY4ZQ==">Georgia Sterling</a>, who offers this golden nugget of truth: “The same woman who holds the power to elevate your life or completely destroy it is the one you are told you cannot evaluate. And the moment you do, the labels come back at you and suddenly you are called sexist just for thinking critically. This is not random; it is a strategy designed to weaken men’s ability to think clearly and make strong decisions. Because a man without critical thinking becomes easier to control and easier to manipulate and much easier to silence. So men, do not lose your masculinity and do not allow anyone to take away your voice or your right to choose wisely, you are the pillar of society … I offer private, personalized analysis. Link in bio.”
That’s a lot of weighty word salad offering little more than a nod to the Little Rascals’ He-Man Woman Haters Club. Make sure your Venmo information is available.
These relationship-advice experts, who all appear on various unnamed podcasts, have no online record of being podcast guests. They link back to Facebook or personal Linktree pages. When I sent an inquiry to the intriguing <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DW4TIBeE8pV/?igsh=NWFxb2ZoOWk3ZG03">Ivanka</a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVtoLh4jmqc/?igsh=MWRjY2g3d2V4aDFxdw==">Hilton</a>, there was no response. Shortly after my Direct Message, Ivanka (who, unsurprisingly, sported long blonde hair and plenty of gaudy jewelry) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/itsivankahilton?igsh=MTk3bDdjMmJ6OGVlZA==">disappeared</a>. In a subsequent search, other Ivanka Hiltons popped up, but with no activity — yet.
All of this could be dismissed as the growing prevalence of benign AI slop if it weren’t for the disturbing trend of young people struggling to pair up and using these AI “experts” as crutches to nurse their grievances and find excuses to stay home and remain perpetually online. It can be hard to search for a mate when a loud segment of the culture looks down on healthy, monogamous relationships, marriage, and having kids. It’s hard to be vulnerable and risk being hurt or rejected. The easy thing is to stay home, stay online, and listen to the first “girl” who reassures young men that this is okay! You just have high standards! Besides, women either don’t understand your particular masculine needs or they’re going to deceive or cheat on you anyway! (That’ll be $29.99, please.)
Worse, these AI models are perpetuating isolating behaviors, rather than offering a way into a relationship for young men who already tend to avoid “real-life” relationships and are looking for reassurance that that lifestyle is perfectly acceptable.
A March <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec8352">study</a> published in Science examined the sycophantic behavior of AI models in response to people seeking advice on interpersonal and social dilemmas. Stanford University computer scientists showed that AI large language models (LLMs) are overly sycophantic when users solicit advice. <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2026/03/ai-advice-sycophantic-models-research">According</a> to the Stanford report, “By default, AI advice does not tell people that they’re wrong nor give them ‘tough love,’” said Myra Cheng, the study’s lead author and a computer science PhD candidate. “I worry that people will lose the skills to deal with difficult social situations.” Further, the reinforcing responses were deemed “more trustworthy and indicated they were more likely to return to the sycophant AI for similar questions, the researchers found. When discussing their conflicts with the sycophant, they also grew more convinced they were in the right.”
These young men are being drawn into a world where they can be comforted by a fake beauty who tells them what they want to hear, reinforces their antisocial tendencies, and alienates real women, who are actually the thing these men need most to find purpose, fulfillment, and a life outside the unblinking eye of the virtual world.
What would Ann Landers say about that? You can ask her. She’s now set up as an LLM, trained on her 47 years of advice and published columns. On second thought, go out for coffee and think about it. You might meet someone.

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Young Men Are Getting Suckered By AI Relationship Advice

AI Slop

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Meta has begun scrubbing ads offering legal help for damages related to social media addiction and the associated harmful behaviors.
According to a <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/04/09/meta-social-media-addiction-ads">report</a> from Axios on Thursday, Meta has begun pulling ads — from both Facebook and Instagram — that provide users with information about getting legal advice or taking legal action against social media platforms.
Axios quoted an example of one of the ads that was pulled: &#8220;Anxiety. Depression. Withdrawal. Self-harm. These aren&#8217;t just teenage phases — they&#8217;re symptoms linked to social media addiction in children. Platforms knew this and kept targeting kids anyway.&#8221;
Meta has acknowledged that some ads are being removed from the social media platforms, saying that the law firms placing such ads should not be allowed to benefit from the use of Meta&#8217;s platforms while claiming at the same time that Meta was responsible for creating addicts and causing mental health problems.
&#8220;We&#8217;re actively defending ourselves against these lawsuits and are removing ads that attempt to recruit plaintiffs for them. We will not allow trial lawyers to profit from our platforms while simultaneously claiming they are harmful,&#8221; a Meta spokesperson told the outlet.
The report comes just two weeks after a California jury found that both <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/verdict-reached-in-landmark-social-media-media-addiction-trial">Meta</a> and YouTube had contributed to a number of mental health problems — including addiction and related behavior — in a landmark case before the California Superior Court.
A Meta spokesperson protested the verdict, saying at the time, &#8220;We respectfully disagree with the verdict and will appeal. We work hard to keep people safe on our platforms and are clear about the challenges of identifying and removing bad actors or harmful content. We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online.&#8221;
As The Daily Wire previously reported, social media platforms — including Meta and YouTube — have often touted online safety features in recent years, such as Instagram’s “Teen Accounts” and YouTube “Kids,” which are meant to create safer and more controlled experiences for children. Critics argue that kids — sometimes with willing parents or other adults helping them — are able to bypass those controls and gain access to the full platforms anyway.

Meta Shuts Down Ads From ‘Trial Lawyers’ Targeting Social Platform Over Addiction

Meta Doesn't Want Users To Know They May Be Able To Sue For Social Media Harm

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Young woman with mobile phone in hand. Internet addiction

Social Media Companies Harm Young People — Here’s The Evidence

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A legislative package that promises to be the largest overhaul of kids&#8217; online safety regulation in decades was advanced last month by the House Energy &amp; Commerce Committee. A good sign of a bill&#8217;s efficacy, however, is how strongly the industry it aims to regulate opposes it.
So far, most of the package — including the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/text">Kids Internet and Digital Safety (KIDS) Act</a> and the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/836/text">Children’s Online Privacy Protection</a> (COPPA 2.0) Act — has not drawn serious opposition from Big Tech. What gives?
On balance, Silicon Valley has much to gain if these laws pass as drafted.
For starters, the Senate version of COPPA 2.0 doubles down on the existing age of internet adulthood being 13, thus maintaining the industry-preferred status quo. This ignores the harms social media can cause teens well after 13, such as fueling depression, social isolation, or worse. David Molak, to offer just one heartbreaking example, was <a href="https://www.today.com/parents/cliff-molak-petitions-against-cyberbullies-after-teen-brother-s-suicide-t66591">driven by online cyberbullying</a> to commit suicide at 16 years old. That’s why eminent figures like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/06/well/family/jean-twenge-social-media-screens-teens.html">Jean Twenge</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interactive/2025/jun/07/jonathan-haidt-anxious-generation-smartphones">Jonathan Haidt</a> call for raising the age of social media eligibility to 16, and others <a href="https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/01/sen-bernie-moreno-says-social-media-worse-than-cigarettes-for-youths-urges-complete-ban.html">call for 18</a>.
This is bad, but perhaps the legislation’s biggest gift to Big Tech is its numerous provisions to preempt or block a growing crop of state laws designed to hold these companies accountable. A look at the finer details of the legislation reveal that Congress would replace robust state regulation with a far lighter “federal standard,” setting a very low ceiling for kids&#8217; online safety at the state level.
Republican sponsors, of course, frame things differently.
In the Washington Post, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/03/09/congress-tech-online-safefy-social-media/">Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), E&amp;C Committee Chair</a> and lead sponsor of the KIDS Act, described the package in adversarial terms, as Congress moving to correct Big Tech’s egregious failure to “self-regulate.” Guthrie is doubtless correct about Big Tech’s shortcomings. But this only makes it more noteworthy that the tech industry does not oppose this legislation.
Big Tech hasn’t been silent about every bill in the package. The App Store Accountability Act, which has been enacted in four states (thus far), has received significant pushback. The Apple-backed App Association <a href="https://actonline.org/2026/03/03/the-fly-in-the-ai-package-ointment-why-asaa-doesnt-belong/">decried</a> the bill as a “poison pill” that would stifle “innovation,” explicitly calling it a “fly in the AI package ointment.”
By openly referring to the child safety package as “the AI package,” the App Association gives away the game. Insiders in Washington regularly admit that they are using the child safety package to mollify the concerns of parents and child safety advocates to pave the way for Congress to pass — <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/12/eliminating-state-law-obstruction-of-national-artificial-intelligence-policy/">what the White House calls</a> — a “minimally burdensome” federal AI standard. In an unguarded interview, Amy Bos, vice president of governmental affairs for industry group NetChoice, <a href="https://rollcall.com/2026/03/03/what-to-watch-from-trumps-national-ai-standard/">speaks of</a> “leveraging, or using, possibly, a kid’s package … to get AI across the finish line.”
Big Tech is only interested in kids’ safety if it comes with a much bigger payoff: a federal law that would stop states from enforcing tougher AI regulations. In fact, with help from Republican leadership, Big Tech has already tried twice — and failed twice — to get Congress to do exactly that.
According to a recent <a href="https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/03/12/congress/cruz-seeks-to-advance-senate-kids-privacy-proposals-in-next-six-weeks-00825098">announcement</a> by Senator Ted Cruz, one of Big Tech’s key Congressional allies, it looks like Silicon Valley is gearing up for a third attempt. And it seems they’ll have the buy-in to try again. As <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/inside-congress/2026/03/12/house-revolt-ahead-for-housing-bill-00824588">Politico recently reported</a>, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that a federal AI standard is “a ‘big priority’ for the Trump administration, and [he] said a potential bill could be folded into a larger package with other proposals like a kids’ online safety bill.”
But the American people see things differently. Weakening kids&#8217; online safety legislation by tying it to a sweeping “AI package” is a non-starter for American families. Parents nationwide have heard the terrifying story of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/technology/chatgpt-openai-suicide.html">Adam Raine</a>, a 16-year-old boy who was goaded into taking his own life by ChatGPT. They fear that their child might be next. It’s no surprise, then, why, according to a <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/americans-want-ai-safeguards-by-a-9-to-1-margin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">national poll</a> by the Institute for Family Studies, American voters want Congress to prioritize kids&#8217; online safety over industry carveouts by a margin of nine to one.
Robust online safety for kids is a winning electoral strategy, but tying it to deregulation of AI is a political loser. As a second <a href="https://ifstudies.org/report-brief/the-artificial-politics-of-artificial-intelligence">national Institute for Family Studies poll found</a>, Republican voters in red states support Congressional candidates who protect children from AI harms and oppose those who push preemption. For a party expected to face serious challenges during midterms, it would seem that Republican leadership would be eager to champion the desires of its voters.
Congress should, like countless state legislatures, side with voters and not protect Big Tech companies from responsibility. We have had enough of that.
Ultimately, Rep. Guthrie is right: American families “deserve more than gestures and idle promises. They deserve laws that work.” That includes his.
* * *
Jared Hayden is a policy analyst at the Institute for Family Studies’ Family First Technology Initiative. 
Michael Toscano is the director of the Family First Technology Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

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Big Tech Is Making Its Play And Your Kids Could Be Caught In The Middle

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There is a not-so-secret war being waged for control of your kid&#8217;s mind.
Who owns your child&#8217;s mind? Social media companies? The government?
Or is it you?
A landmark lawsuit that just sent a gigantic shockwave through Silicon Valley. Meta (Facebook) and YouTube (Google) were found negligent in facilitating social media addiction.
Let’s break down the case that could upend Big Tech, reshape AI regulation, and force a national reckoning over parenting power and responsibility.
The legal case found both companies were negligent in facilitating social media addiction. According to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/social-media-trial-verdict.html">The New York Times</a>:
<blockquote>The bellwether case, which was brought by a now 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M., had accused social media companies of creating products as addictive as cigarettes or digital casinos. Citing features like infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations, K.G.M. sued Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, and Google’s YouTube, claiming they led to anxiety and depression. &#8230; 
K.G.M., whose first name is Kaley, filed her lawsuit in 2023 against Meta, Snap, YouTube and TikTok. Kaley, who lives in Chico, Calif., said she had begun using social media at age 6 and claimed the sites caused personal injury, including body dysmorphia and thoughts of self harm. </blockquote>
Variety said that the verdict was rooted in an argument around cigarette addiction. Back in the 1990s, there were settlements with the big tobacco companies where it was found that the tobacco companies fraudulently marketed products they knew were addictive as non-addictive, and that drew millions of people into serious health risks like lung cancer.
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2396-sub?elementPosition=1&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-974957 aligncenter" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp" alt="DailyWire+" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1024x171.webp 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-300x50.webp 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-768x128.webp 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-1536x256.webp 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/511983dad25841c8b1ec058d75769bbe-2048x341.webp 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
That doesn&#8217;t seem like a crazy take. We were told originally that social media would be a gigantic benefit for all of us. It would open “new vistas.” We&#8217;d all experience “new worlds.” We&#8217;d have “so many friends.” (Yeah, they&#8217;d be Facebook friends, but they were still friends.) We&#8217;d never have to go outside again. We&#8217;d all live in the metaverse, etc.
All of that was untrue. All of these social media companies are clickbait machines. That is what they are designed to do, in Pavlovian style.
Stanford psychiatrist Anna Lembke, who wrote a book called “Dopamine Nation,” speaks about this. She writes:
<blockquote>We&#8217;re wired to connect. It&#8217;s kept us alive for millions of years in a world of scarcity and ever-present danger. Moving in tribes safeguards against predators optimizes scarce resources and facilitates pair bonding.
Our brains release dopamine when we make human connections, and that incentivizes us to do it again. Social connection has now become drugified by social media apps, making us vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption. These apps can cause the release of large amounts of dopamine into our brains’ reward pathway all at once, like heroin. meth or alcohol. They do that by amplifying the feel-good properties that attract humans to each other in the first place.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s not just the social connection. It&#8217;s also because when you scroll on X, it&#8217;s literally designed to provide a brief dopamine rush. That&#8217;s why there&#8217;s that little sound effect. It&#8217;s almost a literal Pavlovian response. A Pavlovian response was established when you rang a bell in front of a dog and fed it a piece of meat at the same time. Eventually, when you rang the bell, the dog would start to salivate even if the meat wasn&#8217;t there because the brain had now been trained: Bell means meat, so bell causes salivation.
Social media companies do that too. This is why when you scroll, there&#8217;s a little sound effect. You&#8217;re going to get a dopamine hit, even if nothing new appears, just because you hear that little sound effect. 
Social media companies are arguing that they&#8217;re not the ones who are actually causing the addiction to really serious stuff. They say, “Sure, our algorithms are designed to make you click, but it&#8217;s the videos themselves that are responsible for the harm, not the design of the product.” 
In other words, if you were watching lots of cooking videos on social media and it fed you an infinite loop of cooking videos and not skinny influencers, you&#8217;d be totally fine. You&#8217;re the one who decides whether you are clicking on skinny influencers or whether you&#8217;re clicking on cooking videos. And what&#8217;s more, it turns out, these social media companies aren&#8217;t the ones who are actually making the content. The social media companies say, &#8220;We&#8217;re a platform, like a phone line.&#8221;
Yes, they make money by featuring viral content, but the consumer picks which content to actually watch. The person posting the content is actually responsible for the content, unless it&#8217;s an AI or a bot these days.
Until now, social media companies have been avoiding legal culpability by citing Section 230. Section 230 says that if you&#8217;re a platform and your website has a comment section, you&#8217;re not responsible for what&#8217;s in the comments.
If you&#8217;re YouTube, you&#8217;re not responsible for the content of the videos that are on YouTube because you&#8217;re just providing the platform on which others can post.
Section 230 says that all of these platforms ought not be held liable for content produced by others.
But that&#8217;s not on point.
The actual argument here is that these social media sites are, by their very nature, addictive, and that almost no matter what the content is, the medium is damaging to kids.
This raises a broader question for parents. Are you responsible for your children and their social media use?
The answer here should be yes.
My kids aren&#8217;t on social media because they are banned from using social media. Kids who are addicted to TV also don&#8217;t have great lives, but we don&#8217;t actually hold TV companies responsible for that fact. Nobody&#8217;s suing Apple because your kid is watching Apple TV all day.
That&#8217;s a point made yesterday by Meta&#8217;s president, Dina Powell McCormick, who said, “You know, as a mom, this is really important to me and very personal. I see firsthand just how hard the company is trying to ensure that there&#8217;s not harmful content, to ensure that we are empowering parents to the best of our ability. And it&#8217;s something that I watch being focused on every single day. We respectfully disagree with that decision, and we&#8217;re appealing.”
She&#8217;s not totally wrong here. The fact is that as a parent of four kids, going on five, I&#8217;m all over what my kids are consuming. I decide what movies they watch. I decide what TV shows they watch. They&#8217;re not allowed on social media. They do not have interactive capability on social media, anything like that.
This issue is kind of a sticky wicket, as social media companies are responsible for part of the problem because of the dopamine response. And yes, parents are also responsible for the problem.
Here&#8217;s the actual solution: not gigantic lawsuits. The answer is governmental legislation banning social media for kids under 18. Period.
That is what we should be doing. It&#8217;s what a lot of countries are doing right now — and they are correct to do so.
Users should have to register as over 18. Companies that don&#8217;t do it should be held legally accountable.
If we&#8217;re going to actually carry this analogy all the way through, if we&#8217;re going to treat social media like tobacco or alcohol, then the answer historically wasn&#8217;t to sue tobacco companies for kids smoking, it was to ban kids from smoking. The same is true for alcohol.
The reason I&#8217;m a little bit averse to lawsuits like these is because I think it will be extended to adults. I think what&#8217;s going to happen is that this will be used as a broader argument, not just against social media, where I’m relatively indifferent, but to actual useful technologies like AI, because this is a big societal question: Should we blame technology for our own failures as adults?
Kids are a different story. The reason that this particular lawsuit is emotionally appealing is because it&#8217;s about a kid who got addicted. And kids do get addicted. And honestly, I blame the parents as the primary source.
I don&#8217;t let my kids get addicted to things. It&#8217;s my job to prevent that. I don&#8217;t give my kids candy bars even though they want candy bars every single day, all the time. And if I decide to feed that to them, and they get Type 2 diabetes. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s on the candy company. I think it&#8217;s on me.
My biggest problem here is that we start blaming technologies for our failures as adults.
We have to look to ourselves to solve some of these problems.

Meta And Youtube Found Liable In Social Media Addiction Lawsuit

Did Social Media Destroy The Kids?

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OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it plans to shut down the video creation platform Sora, which launched in 2024. The company did not give a reason for their decision.
“We’re saying goodbye to Sora. To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you. What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing,” OpenAI’s Sora team said in a <a href="https://x.com/soraofficialapp/status/2036532795984715896">statement</a> shared on social media.
&#8220;We’ll share more soon, including timelines for the app and API and details on preserving your work.”
This news comes on the heels of Disney announcing a major $1 billion partnership agreement with the tech company, which would have allowed OpenAI to use characters from Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel franchises in its Sora video generator.
Much ado was made about users having the opportunity to create “fan-inspired” videos with Disney’s licensed characters, like Mickey Mouse, with Disney+ adding some of those Sora-generated videos as part of the exclusive deal.
But that’s all reportedly off the table now as Disney ends its partnership with OpenAI.
“As the nascent AI field advances rapidly, we respect OpenAI’s decision to exit the video generation business and to shift its priorities elsewhere,” Disney <a href="https://variety.com/2026/digital/news/openai-shutting-down-sora-video-disney-1236698277/">said</a> in a statement, per Variety. “We appreciate the constructive collaboration between our teams and what we learned from it, and we will continue to engage with AI platforms to find new ways to meet fans where they are while responsibly embracing new technologies that respect IP and the rights of creators.”
Hollywood was up in arms over the newest release of the second-generation Sora model in September, with many critics saying the realistic videos posed a threat to human talent and opened the floodgates for massive copyright infringement and deepfakes.
Now social media users are weighing in on the abrupt closure, speculating that Sora could be facing a massive lawsuit. That rumor has not been confirmed by the company. 
OpenAI, led by CEO Sam Altman, will not give up AI video generation completely. They are just abandoning the standalone Sora app for reasons that are yet to be revealed.

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