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Despite years of congressional hearings, lawsuits, academic research, whistleblowers and testimony from parents and teenagers about the dangers of Instagram, Meta’s wildly popular app has failed to protect children from harm, with “woefully ineffective” safety measures, according to a new report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Bejar and four nonprofit groups. Meta’s efforts at addressing teen safety and mental health on its platforms have long been met with criticism that the changes don’t go far enough. Now, the report published Thursday, from Bejar, the Cybersecurity For Democracy at New York University and Northeastern University, the Molly Rose Found…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman issued a housing market warning during a speech at the Kentucky Bankers Association Annual Convention in Asheville, North Carolina on September 23. Bowman noted that housing activity has slowed significantly, with declines in single-family construction and sales coinciding with rising inventories and falling house prices in many markets. “Declines in housing activity, including single-family home construction and sales, have been accompanied by higher inventories of homes for sale and falling house prices,…

Wholesale Produce Supply, a food supplier based in Minneapolis, has recalled more than two dozen varieties of its fresh cut and processed cantaloupe products due to a risk of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced. According to a notice posted by the FDA on Monday, September 29, no illnesses have been reported to date, but Listeria has the potential to cause serious infections. Here’s what to know: Which products are affected by the recall? Wholesale Produce Supply fresh cut cantaloupe was sold to distributors in Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wisconsin, who may have distributed the product to other states.…

Pepsi has a new challenge: keeping products like Gatorade and Cheetos vivid and colorful without the artificial dyes that U.S. consumers are increasingly rejecting. PepsiCo, which also makes Doritos, Cap’n Crunch cereal, Funyuns and Mountain Dew, announced in April that it would accelerate a planned shift to using natural colors in its foods and beverages. Around 40% of its U.S. products now contain synthetic dyes, according to the company. But just as it took decades for artificial colors to seep into PepsiCo’s products, removing them is likely to be a multi-year process. The company said it’s still finding new ingredients, testing consumers’ responses and waiting for …

Last month, more than 450 artists designed a custom sticker to support Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign—and, pretty soon, you’re going to be seeing the winning design everywhere. On September 25, Mamdani’s campaign announced through an Instagram video that it would be hosting a sticker design contest to get New Yorkers registered to vote before the October 25 deadline. The competition gave followers just 36 hours to submit their designs, during which hundreds of pieces of art flooded the campaigns’ submission portal. Now that a winner has been selected, anyone who is registered can submit a form on Mamdani’s website and pick up the sticker at one of Mam…

When Scott Belsky talks about creativity, he uses words like “output” and “production.” “Creativity is the source, with the problem of mining,” says the founder, author, and early stage investor. “It requires machinery and practice and discipline and whatever else.” Belsky joined A24 as the head of A24 Labs in early 2025. Before that, he founded Behance, a global portfolio site that he sold to Adobe in late 2012. He had a long run at Adobe, serving as its chief product officer and later chief strategy officer. This month he became the newest member of the Cornell Tech Council, and has written books like The Messy Middle and Making Ideas Happen. Belsky sits at the int…

Across the U.S., more schools are implementing policies restricting cellphones as concerns about digital distraction, mental health, and academic performance rise. The scale of the issue is significant. According to a 2023 report from Common Sense Media, 97% of students between the ages of 11 and 17 use their cellphones at least once during the school day. These students spend a median of 43 minutes online each day during school hours. Social media, YouTube, and gaming were the students’ top cellphone uses. Schools have already begun taking action. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics published in 2025 shows that 77% of public schools ban cellpho…

It’s the life of a saleswoman. Taylor Swift’s 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” sold 2.7 million copies in traditional album sales — which include physical and digital formats — in its first day in the U.S. That’s according to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company. The album was released Friday. The sales are impressive for a number of reasons. Swift has broken her record for most first-week sales… in one day. Her last album, 2024’s “The Tortured Poets Department,” amassed 2.61 million equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week. “The Life of a Showgirl” has also become the second-largest sales week for any album in the modern er…

Libbie Bischoff didn’t set out to reinvent the signature. Really, she was just flipping through a vintage knitting magazine from the 1950s. The Minneapolis-based type designer collects the mags, partly because her grandmother taught her to knit, and partly because she finds incredible typography hidden within their pages. It was in one of these magazines that she found the casual, flowing script that would become one of Docusign’s new signature styles. Together with Lynne Yun—a New York-based type designer, calligrapher, and founder of the studio Space Type—Bischoff is responsible for the first major update to the platform’s signature options in more than 20 year…

If every afternoon, like clockwork, you find yourself at the vending machine punching in the code for your daily Diet Coke, you may want to rethink your selection. According to a newly released study, the popular drink may be doing damage to one of your body’s most important organs. The study, which was recently presented at the 2025 United European Gastroenterology Week conference in Berlin, involved tracking the beverage consumption habits of 123,788 participants. It found that just nine ounces of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), such as soda, can increase the risk of liver disease known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) by about …

Hours after Princess Diana gave birth, she walked out onto the steps of the Lindo Wing, the private maternity ward of St. Mary’s Hospital in London, where she was met with photographers from around the world. As she introduced Prince William, then a couple years later, Prince Harry, she looked radiant, with flawless makeup and flowing gowns. It was a portrait of maternal serenity. It’s a beautiful image, one that captures many magical aspects the hours after giving birth. But it is far from the full picture for the roughly 140 million women who enter postpartum every year. It likely did not even capture what Diana herself was feeling on those steps. “There’s a duality…

Yet another food retailer has joined the growing list of companies that have recalled pasta-related products over the last few weeks. Sprouts Farmers Market, a supermarket chain headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, with stores across more than two dozen states, has voluntarily recalled select lots of Sprouts Smoked Mozzarella Pasta Salad due to a risk of contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. On October 9, a recall notice was published to the website of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). To date, no illnesses have been reported in connection with this recalled product. According to the notice, the recall is in response to Sprouts being alerted by…

Connecting with Gen Z is crucial for brands, especially as teens and twenty-somethings gain spending power and influence. But doing so can be a bit of an art. That’s why a new crop of companies are offering “translation” services for brands that want to speak Gen Z’s language and, as they say, get “locked in.” While many Gen Z translation businesses are still in their infancy, the Wall Street Journal reported that it already represents a multi-million-dollar industry. Some analysts estimate that Gen Z’s spending power is set to grow to $12.6 trillion by 2030, up from $9.8 trillion in 2024, according to the Journal. At the same time, Gen Z is far more digitally n…

Are you human? A new game wants you to prove it. I’m Not a Robot is a fun spin on the popular CAPTCHA game synonymous with using the internet. Except it’s not just one game, but 48 increasingly absurd puzzles designed to help you prove you have a soul—and the patience to parallel park a Waymo using your arrow keys. The game begins as you’d expect. Level 1 asks you to check a box to prove you’re not a robot. Level 3 prompts you to decipher text wiggling on the screen. But the more you progress, the whackier it all becomes. Level 11 asks you to find Waldo on a crowded beach. Level 17 wants you to use your mouse to draw a circle that is 94% accurate (it’s not as easy…