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French lawmakers approved a bill banning social media for children under 15, paving the way for the measure to enter into force at the start of the next school year in September, as the idea of setting a minimum age for use of the platforms gains momentum across Europe. The bill, which also bans the use of mobile phones in high schools, was adopted by a 130-21 vote late Monday. French President Emmanuel Macron has requested that the legislation be fast-tracked and it will now be discussed by the Senate in the coming weeks. “Banning social media for those under 15: this is what scientists recommend, and this is what the French people are overwhelmingly calling for,” Macr…

Nike isn’t the only household corporate name to announce significant layoffs this week. Just a day after the sporting goods giant announced layoffs, citing a further embrace of automation, social media giant Pinterest has announced it will cut jobs. The driving factor here? Artificial intelligence. Here’s what you need to know about the Pinterest layoffs. What’s happened? On Tuesday, the image-sharing social media platform Pinterest announced it plans to lay off around 15% of its workforce. The company made the announcement in a Form 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In that filing, Pinterest said that its board of director…

The oil tycoon J. Paul Getty was rumoured to have said that his three rules for how to become rich were: Rise early. Work hard. Strike oil. It’s one of those eminently quotable remarks because it captures something we all know to be true, that luck and chance have as much to do with success as anything else. Yet we don’t value people for their luck. We don’t exalt those who win the lottery or walk away from a roulette table flush with cash. Instead, we praise talent, skill, and dedication. And that creates tension, because although luck plays a big role in outcomes, it is only the effort we put into developing our abilities that we can control. That is the nature…

The greatest financial danger in retirement isn’t always the stock market. It’s the constant, nagging fear of running out of money. This anxiety causes many people to underspend and worry, even when their finances are sound. Here are eight ways to replace that worry with lasting security. Determine your spending baseline Worry often starts with the vague question, “Am I spending too much?” Instead of operating on gut feeling, work with an advisor to determine your personal sustainable withdrawal rate (often between 3% and 5%). Once you know your lifestyle is covered by a responsible withdrawal rate, you can stop guessing and start living confidently. Make adjus…

If you have ever lifted a weight, you know the routine: challenge the muscle, give it rest, feed it, and repeat. Over time, it grows stronger. Of course, muscles only grow when the challenge increases over time. Continually lifting the same weight the same way stops working. It might come as a surprise to learn that the brain responds to training in much the same way as our muscles, even though most of us never think about it that way. Clear thinking, focus, creativity, and good judgment are built through challenge, when the brain is asked to stretch beyond routine rather than run on autopilot. That slight mental discomfort is often the sign that the brain is actu…

Sales reps, business owners and recruiters are documenting their cold calls online and cashing in on the viral content. Cold calling has existed as long as the telephone: It’s a sales technique where a representative for a company calls an individual unsolicited to attempt to hook them with their sales pitch in the first 30 seconds or less. Some say cold calling is dead in 2026, as people pick up the phone less and less due to the increase in spam and AI bots on the other end of the line. But these days, if your phone incessantly buzzes with endless sales calls, answer at your own risk—you might end up going viral on TikTok. Across the social media platform…

When Stephen Smith started NOCD 11 years ago, he wanted to build an app for people like himself—one of the nearly 3 million Americans with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)—to track their symptoms and time their therapy exercises. Since 2018, NOCD (pronounced “No-CD”) has provided virtual appointments with therapists specializing in OCD-focused exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy. With more than 140 million people able to access NOCD through their insurance, the company currently provides at least 1 million therapy sessions annually. Now, NOCD—last valued at nearly $270 million in 2024, according to PitchBook—is making an acquisition and forming a par…

For decades, the discussion around organic farming has centered on important tenets of sustainability, environmental health, animal welfare, and a vision for food that heals rather than harms. But in America’s fields today, a different conversation is taking root and is grounded in profits. With new economic data and over 40 years of side-by-side comparisons between organic and conventional systems, we can now confidently say that organic is no longer just a values-driven choice; it’s the most profitable model available to U.S. farmers. At Rodale Institute, the latest Economics of Organic report examines farm-level data across crops, regions, and production systems. T…

TikTok agreed to settle a landmark social media addiction lawsuit just before the trial kicked off, the plaintiff’s attorneys confirmed. The social video platform was one of three companies — along with Meta’s Instagram and Google’s YouTube — facing claims that their platforms deliberately addict and harm children. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., settled the case last week for an undisclosed sum. Details of the settlement with TikTok were not disclosed, and the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. At the core of the case is a 19-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose case could d…

Amazon will double down on the Whole Foods brand, killing two of its own physical retail experiments in the process. The online retail giant said Tuesday that it will close all of its Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar grocery stores. In total, around 70 locations across the two sub-brands will close starting at the beginning of February, with some to later reopen under the Whole Foods brand. Amazon Fresh stores served as a physical counterpart to Amazon’s online grocery delivery service by the same name while Amazon Go stores offered convenience store staples with a high-tech checkout twist. “After a careful evaluation of the busin…

Downloads of UpScrolled, a new short-form video app, are surging after TikTok’s recent change to U.S. ownership. Developed by Palestinian-Australian Issam Hijazi, the social media app currently ranks #2 in the U.S. in the Apple store among free apps, following ChatGPT, and markets itself as a place “where every voice gets equal power.” “No shadowbans . . . No pay-to-play favoritism. Just authentic connection where your content reaches the people who matter most,” reads UpScrolled’s website. Last week, Chinese-owned TikTok closed a $14 billion deal, brokered by the The President administration, to avoid a ban in the U.S., creating an American subsidiary with ne…

You know the ancient proverb: Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. For leaders, first-generation AI tools are like giving employees fish. Agentic AI, on the other hand, teaches them how to fish—truly empowering, and that empowerment lifts the entire organization. According to recent findings from McKinsey, nearly eight in ten companies report using gen AI, yet about the same number report no bottom-line impact. Agentic AI can help organizations achieve meaningful results. AI agents are highly capable assistants with the ability to execute tasks independently. Equipped with artificial intelligence that…

“Snow Will Fall Too Fast for Plows,” “ICE STORM APOCALYPSE,” and “Another Big Storm May Be Coming …” were all headlines posted on YouTube this past weekend as the biggest snowstorm in years hit New York City. These videos, each with tens or hundreds of thousands of views, are part of an increasingly popular genre of “weather influencers,” as Americans increasingly turn to social media for news and weather updates. People pay more attention to influencers on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok than to journalists or mainstream media, a study by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford found in 2024. In the U.S., social media is how 20% of adults get their ne…

Generative artificial intelligence technology is rapidly reshaping education in unprecedented ways. With its potential benefits and risks, K-12 schools are actively trying to adapt teaching and learning. But as schools seek to navigate into the age of generative AI, there’s a challenge: Schools are operating in a policy vacuum. While a number of states offer guidance on AI, only a couple of states require local schools to form specific policies, even as teachers, students, and school leaders continue to use generative AI in countless new ways. As a policymaker noted in a survey, “You have policy and what’s actually happening in the classrooms—those are two very differ…

When one of the founders of modern AI walks away from one of the world’s most powerful tech companies to start something new, the industry should pay attention. Yann LeCun’s departure from Meta after more than a decade shaping its AI research is not just another leadership change. It highlights a deep intellectual rift about the future of artificial intelligence: whether we should continue scaling large language models (LLMs) or pursue systems that understand the world, not merely echo it. Who Yann LeCun is, and why it matters LeCun is a French American computer scientist widely acknowledged as one of the “Godfathers of AI.” Alongside Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshu…

TikTok’s U.S. operations are now managed by a new American joint venture, ending a long-standing debate over whether the app would be permanently banned in the United States. The good news for TikTok users is that this deal guarantees that the app will continue to operate within America’s borders. But there’s some bad news, too. Successive U.S. administrations—both Biden’s and The President’s—argued that TikTok posed a national security threat to America and its citizens, partly because of the data the app collected about them. While all social media apps collect data about their users, officials argued that TikTok’s data collection was a danger (while, say, Face…

Kim (not her real name) is a scientist and tenured faculty member at a high-profile university. For years, she steadily moved up the hierarchy, yet no one could point to what she accomplished. She kept transferring from role to role, not because she succeeded. In fact, it was the opposite. Kim wasn’t delivering measurable results, and no one liked working with her. She occupied an uncomfortable middle ground: not unsuccessful enough for the university to dismiss her, but no longer effective enough to stay. They transferred her to a newly created role. It came with bigger, but opaque responsibilities. The result looked like a promotion, but functioned as avoidance.…