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Mark Zuckerberg Personally Rejected Meta’s Proposals to Improve Teen Mental Health, Court Documents Allege + More
Mark Zuckerberg Personally Rejected Meta’s Proposals to Improve Teen Mental Health, Court Documents Allege
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally and repeatedly thwarted initiatives meant to improve the well-being of teens on Facebook and Instagram, at times directly overruling some of his most senior lieutenants, according to internal communications made public as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the company.
The newly unsealed communications in the lawsuit — filed originally by Massachusetts last month in a state court — allegedly show how Zuckerberg ignored or shut down top executives, including Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg, who had asked Zuckerberg to do more to protect the more than 30 million teens who use Instagram in the United States.
The disclosures highlight Zuckerberg’s sway over decisions at Meta that can affect billions of users. And they also shed light on tensions that have occasionally arisen between Zuckerberg and other Meta officials who have pushed to enhance user well-being.
Other newly unveiled allegations in the complaint accuse Meta of exploiting the psychology of adolescent brains and that Zuckerberg personally established goals for the company to increase the amount of time users spend on Instagram.
“These unreacted documents prove that Mark Zuckerberg is not interested in protecting anyone’s privacy or safety. The rot goes all the way to the top,” said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project.
COVID Lockdowns Increased ADHD Risk Among 10-Year-Old Children, New Study Finds
The COVID-19 lockdowns had a widespread impact on children’s mental health, many studies have shown — and now new research highlights how those lockdowns impacted ADHD diagnoses in 10-year-old children.
A study by the University of Copenhagen in Denmark determined that kids in this age group who already had a genetic risk of developing attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder saw a “significant increase” in diagnoses after the pandemic. Children assessed after the lockdown who had polygenic risk scores (PRS) for behavior and attention problems had a large increase in ADHD diagnoses after the lockdown, researchers found.
Dr. Marc Siegel, a clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, was not involved in the study but said the results align with what he would have expected.
“This showed what we already know from previous studies, but affirmed and added to it,” he told Fox News Digital. “Lockdowns and restrictions worsened kids’ ability to focus and worsened ADHD symptoms, as well as anxiety and depression,” he said.
The Future of Airport Security Is Facial Recognition
Though the airport screening technologies used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) have evolved over the past 20 years, one highly visible objective has remained the same: focusing on stopping prohibited items from entering the sterile (secure) side of airports. Even passengers enrolled in TSA PreCheck require some physical screening at airports, classified as expedited screening.
The one area that has undergone significant changes in recent years is identity verification. The TSA has upgraded Credential Authentication Technology (CAT) (labelled CAT-2 to include biometric facial recognition, which effectively becomes your form of identification). This is the future for airport security, as biometric technology and artificial intelligence become more ubiquitous in airport security checkpoint operations.
CLEAR uses biometrics (fingerprints and iris scans) to validate a person’s identity. They charge customers as much as $189 annually for membership, which allows such passengers to move ahead of those waiting for the TSA to manually check their ID. CLEAR customers must still undergo physical screening, either in PreCheck lanes or standard lanes.
EU Asks TikTok and YouTube for More Info on How They’re Safeguarding Kids
The European Commission has sent another couple of formal requests for information to major platforms subject to the bloc’s rebooted online governance and content moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA). The latest requests, which are focused on child safety, have been sent to TikTok and YouTube.
“The Commission is requesting the companies to provide more information on the measures they have taken to comply with their obligations related to the protection of minors under the DSA, including the obligations related to risk assessments and mitigation measures to protect minors online, in particular with regard to the risks to mental health and physical health, and on the use of their services by minors,” the Commission wrote in a press release.
The EU has given the companies until November 30 to respond with the data. Regulators will then assess the next steps — which could include opening formal investigations.
The regulation also explicitly bans targeted advertising on minors.
How India Tamed Twitter and Set a Global Standard for Online Censorship
For years, a committee of executives from U.S. technology companies and Indian officials convened every two weeks in a government office to negotiate what could — and could not — be said on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
At the “69A meetings,” as the secretive gatherings were informally called, officials from India’s information, technology, security and intelligence agencies presented social media posts they wanted removed, citing threats to India’s sovereignty and national security, executives and officials who were present recalled. The tech representatives sometimes pushed back in the name of free speech. One company resisted the most: Twitter.
But two years ago, these interactions took a fateful turn. Where officials had once asked for a handful of tweets to be removed at each meeting, they now insisted that entire accounts be taken down, and numbers were running in the hundreds. Executives who refused the government’s demands could now be jailed, their companies expelled from the Indian market.
This escalating censorship in the world’s largest democracy is part of a wider campaign by Modi and his Hindu nationalist allies to monopolize public discourse: tightening their grip on power, advancing their Hindu-first ideology and squeezing out critical and dissenting voices. American technology companies have increasingly fallen in line, fearing for their employees’ security and their profits.
“The [stuff] that they’re doing in India should be freaking everybody out,” said a former U.S. Twitter policy staffer.
Digital and human rights advocates warn that India has perfected the use of regulations to stifle online dissent and already inspired governments in countries as varied as Nigeria and Myanmar to craft similar legal frameworks, at times with near-identical language. India’s success in taming internet companies has set off “regulatory contagion” across the world, according to Prateek Waghre, a policy director at India’s Internet Freedom Foundation.
Keep Scrolling: Social Media Detox May Not Improve Mental Health
Social media might be addictive, but it turns out quitting is complicated. A study out Wednesday from the U.K.’s Durham University asked 51 moderate to heavy social media users to stay off the apps for one week. Participants had a decrease in negative emotions and feelings including boredom, but they reported a drop in positive feelings as well. It adds to a growing body of evidence that there may be no easy fix for my specific personal problems.
Social media is often compared to alcohol or other addictive substances, and that’s as true in academic circles as it is in popular culture. Accordingly, the researchers expected that abstinence would come with withdrawal symptoms. That’s not what happened: not only were the emotional changes a mixed bag, but going cold turkey didn’t lead to the cravings you’d expect from other more established chemical or behavioral addictions.
The researchers hypothesized this might be because the effects of social media are nuanced. As the study points out, content on social media can trigger feelings like fear of missing out or comparing yourself to other people who seem to be doing better, but it can also lead to feelings of social approval.
Humane Officially Launches the AI Pin, Its OpenAI-Powered Wearable
On Thursday, after months of demos and hints about what the AI-powered future of gadgets might look like, Humane finally took the wraps off of its first device: the AI Pin.
The device, as we revealed yesterday, is a $699 wearable in two parts: a square device and a battery pack that magnetically attaches to your clothes or other surfaces. In addition to that price, there’s also the $24 monthly fee for a Humane subscription, which gets you a phone number and data coverage through T-Mobile’s network. The company told Wired the device will start shipping in early 2024 and that preorders begin November 16th.
The AI Pin is powered by a Snapdragon processor — though it’s not clear which one — and you control it with a combination of voice control, a camera, gestures, and a small built-in projector. The Pin itself weighs about 34 grams, and the “battery booster” adds another 20. The built-in camera takes 13-megapixel photos and will capture video as well after a software update.
Bay Area Reinstates COVID Mask Orders in Healthcare Settings. Will L.A. Follow? + More
Bay Area Reinstates COVID Mask Orders in Healthcare Settings. Will L.A. Follow?
Most San Francisco Bay Area counties are reinstituting mask requirements among workers in healthcare settings, timed to coincide with the arrival of the annual respiratory illness season and an expected late-year resurgence of COVID-19.
To this point, however, Los Angeles County has not taken that same step. Rather, the county Department of Public Health issued a health order in September requiring healthcare workers to either get both the flu and updated COVID-19 vaccines or mask up when working in patient care areas.
COVID-19 conditions would have to substantially worsen for L.A. County to consider bringing back a more widespread mask mandate in healthcare settings, according to county health officer Dr. Muntu Davis.
When asked at a Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday why L.A. County was not adopting universal masking policies in healthcare settings, Davis noted that COVID levels are still low, and both health officials and hospitals want to encourage healthcare workers to get their updated COVID-19 vaccination this autumn.
DC Students Will No Longer Need to Vaccinate Against Coronavirus
The DC Council voted Tuesday to repeal its coronavirus vaccine mandate for the city’s schoolchildren, a measure that was controversial when it passed in 2021 and was never enforced.
The vote ends a long-running debate over whether DC should require students over the age of 12 to get vaccinated against the coronavirus as a condition for attendance. Lawmakers added the vaccine to the city’s list of required immunizations in hopes of curbing the virus in schools, but thousands of families failed to meet deadlines.
Members reversed the measure unanimously and without any debate. Councilmember Christina Henderson (I-At Large), who co-introduced the law that mandated the vaccine, noted that no child had been excluded from school this year because the measure was a “requirement that hasn’t been in place” for this school year.
The vaccine requirement was initially supposed to go into effect at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year. The city was also preparing to impose a long-standing — but rarely enforced — law that requires students to get routine shots against illnesses such as measles, polio and whooping cough.
But families were slow to get their children immunized against the coronavirus. The city hosted dozens of pop-up vaccine booths and mobile health clinics. It even enticed students with college scholarships and gift cards.
U.S. Consumer Watchdog Proposes Rules for Big Tech Payments, Digital Wallets
The top U.S. consumer financial watchdog on Tuesday proposed to regulate tech giants‘ digital payments and smartphone wallet services, saying they rival traditional payment methods in scale and scope but lack consumer safeguards.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) proposal would subject companies like Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Apple (AAPL.O), PayPal (PYPL.O) and Block’s CashApp (SQ.N) to bank-like supervision, with CFPB examiners inspecting their privacy protections, executives’ conduct and compliance with laws barring unfair and deceptive practices.
If finalized, the proposal would cover about 17 companies that together send more than 13 billion payments annually, according to a CFPB official. The agency declined to name the other platforms that would be covered beyond GooglePay, ApplePay, PayPal and CashApp.
The proposal marks a long-anticipated and ambitious move by CFPB Director Rohit Chopra to assert the agency’s full authority over Big Tech, a sector he has frequently criticized for privacy and competition issues.
In a speech last month, Chopra said CFPB research had found tech giants collected vast amounts of consumer payment data with few limits, scant transparency and confusing corporate policies, putting consumers at risk of Chinese-style surveillance by the companies.
Exclusive Interview: Amazon Unveils One Medical Benefit for Prime Members
Amazon (AMZN) has built a vast empire, from e-commerce and streaming to groceries and electronics, off of its network of Prime shoppers. It’s betting that its next big push, healthcare, will cement the company’s place as an integral part of consumers’ lives.
On Wednesday, the tech giant unveiled a new Prime benefit — a discounted One Medical membership. It’s the latest move in offering more health services to Prime members, as it looks to further its position in the entrenched industry.
Prime members will have access to One Medical’s on-demand virtual care and in-person primary care appointments for $9 a month, or $99 annually, and be able to add family members for $66 each annually. The family rate represents a 67% discount from the current rate.
Amazon Dedicates Team to Train Ambitious AI Model Codenamed ‘Olympus’ — Sources
Amazon (AMZN.O) is investing millions in training an ambitious large language model (LLMs), hoping it could rival top models from OpenAI and Alphabet (GOOGL.O), two people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The model, codenamed “Olympus,” has 2 trillion parameters, the people said, which could make it one of the largest models being trained. OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, one of the best models available, is reported to have one trillion parameters.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the details of the project were not yet public. Amazon declined to comment. The Information reported on the project name on Tuesday.
The team is spearheaded by Rohit Prasad, former head of Alexa, who now reports directly to CEO Andy Jassy. As head scientist of artificial general intelligence (AGI) at Amazon, Prasad brought in researchers who had been working on Alexa AI and the Amazon science team to work on training models, uniting AI efforts across the company with dedicated resources.
‘Vaccine Passports’ Effective in Boosting COVID Vaccine Uptake: Study
A report in the journal Health Affairs has found that proof-of-vaccine mandates may be an effective way to increase vaccination uptake across certain age groups, after studying the policy enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fall 2021, proof of COVID-19 vaccination was mandated for all non-essential businesses and venues across 10 Canadian provinces.
A group of researchers said the announcement increased first-dose uptake by 290,168 people or 17.5%, but the numbers stopped climbing within six weeks.
“These behavioral changes were short-lived,” the study read. “Uptake returned to preannouncement levels — or lower — in all age groups within six weeks, despite mandates remaining in place for at least four months.” The study said the decline happened early and was more prevalent among people ages 12 to 17.
AI Isn’t Dangerous —Yet
AI is remarkable. It can sift through terabytes of data in seconds, perform tasks at scale, and improve through learning algorithms. It can analyze faster and more comprehensively than any human. But it’s not a matter of humans vs. machines; it’s humans and machines. They are, in essence, extensions of our minds; tools that can help us realize visions that are larger than ourselves.
However, these tools don’t have our human essence. They don’t understand beauty, they can’t contemplate morality, and they’ll never experience love. As AI evolves, we might be tempted to delegate more to these entities — but that’s dangerous territory if we neglect to recognize that they don’t share our value systems. Without human ethics and a framework of responsibility, AI isn’t a technological marvel; it’s a loaded gun.
It’s time for action, and we need to move fast. We simply don’t have time to wait to regulate AI. We must set ethical boundaries now to ensure AI serves humanity, not vice versa. Governance isn’t a roadblock to innovation; it’s the framework that ensures innovation serves us all.
BMJ Report Warns Gates Foundation’s Foray Into ‘AI for Global Health’ Will Produce Far More Harm Than Good + More
BMJ Report Warns the Gates Foundation’s Foray Into ‘AI for Global Health’ Will Produce Far More Harm Than Good
The Gates Foundation’s “AI initiative” is getting scrutinized, and criticized, from a variety of points of view. And now a trio of academics has offered their take on the controversial push into using AI to supposedly advance “global health.”
What seems to have prompted this particular reaction — authored by researchers from the University of Vermont, Oxford University, and the University of Cape Town — was an announcement in early August.
The Gates Foundation at that time let the world know that it was in for a new scheme, worth $5 million, set to bankroll 48 projects whose task was to implement AI large language models (LLM) “in low-income and middle-income countries to improve the livelihood and well-being of communities globally.”
Every time — and it’s been many times now — that the Foundation chooses to present itself as the “benefactor” of “low or middle-income countries” (i.e., undeveloped ones with little recourse to protect themselves from many things, including Bill Gates’ apparent “savior” complex) — it leaves observers critical of the organization and its founder’s “experiments” — and feeling somewhat, if not a lot, ill at ease.
You wouldn’t necessarily expect scientists to cut this deep, but here they are: “At the end of the day, the hard, sharp edges of capital, command and control are in the hands of a very few entities and individuals, notably including the conflictingly interested Microsoft corporation itself, which has invested more than U.S. $10 billion in OpenAI.”
Meta Failed to Act to Protect Teens, Second Whistleblower Testifies
A second Meta whistleblower testified before a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, this time describing his fruitless efforts to flag the extent of harmful effects its platforms could have on teens to top leadership at the company.
Arturo Bejar, a former Facebook engineering director from 2009 to 2015, who later worked as a consultant at Instagram from 2019 to 2021, testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and Law that top Meta officials did not do enough to stem harm to its youngest users experienced on the platforms.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle blamed tech lobbying for Congress’ failure to pass laws protecting kids online. Despite broad support within Senate committees of bills that aim to protect kids on the internet, they have ultimately sat dormant, waiting for a vote on the Senate floor or for action in the House.
Bejar’s appearance shows the frustration among lawmakers who believe large tech companies operate with largely unchecked power. Meta leadership was aware of prevalent harms to its youngest users but declined to take adequate action to address it, Bejar told lawmakers on Tuesday.
‘Secret Reports’ Reveal How Government Worked to ‘Censor Americans’ Prior to 2020 Election, Jim Jordan Says
Officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assisted in the creation of a “disinformation” group at Stanford University that worked to “censor” the speech of Americans prior to the 2020 presidential election, according to a number of communications outlined in a report by the House Judiciary Committee.
Detailed in the House panel’s 103-page staff interim report, the emails and internal communications showed how the group, identified as the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), worked with DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to alert, suppress and remove certain online speech in coordination with big tech companies.
One such email — sent July 31, 2020, by a top director at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, an EIP partner — described the CISA’s role in the censorship effort.
According to the report, which Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, highlighted in a post to X, the communications showed how “the federal government and universities pressured social media companies to censor true information, jokes, and political opinions.”
Lawmakers Say FBI Can Keep Its Prized Surveillance Tool, but It’ll Need a Warrant
A rare bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has teamed up to propose major privacy reforms that could fundamentally reign in the U.S. government’s most powerful domestic surveillance tools.
If passed, the newly proposed Government Surveillance Reform Act would force law enforcement agencies to obtain a legal warrant before conducting searches as part of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
Critics say the current lack of a warrant requirement for accessing the 702 database serves as an unconditional end-run around Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections. The proposed legislation comes towards the tail end of a tense, year-long battle over the future of highly controversial surveillance, which is set to expire at the end of this year.
23andMe Data Theft Prompts DNA Testing Companies to Switch On 2FA by Default
DNA testing and genealogy companies are stepping up user account security by mandating the use of two-factor authentication, following the theft of millions of user records from DNA genetic testing giant 23andMe.
Ancestry, MyHeritage, and 23andMe have begun notifying customers that their accounts will use two-factor (2FA) by default, a security feature where users are asked to enter an additional verification code sent to a device they own to confirm that the person logging in is the true account holder.
Ancestry, MyHeritage and 23andMe account for more than 100 million users.
The move to require 2FA by default comes after 23andMe said in October it was investigating after a hacker claimed the theft of millions of 23andMe account records, including one million users of Jewish Ashkenazi descent and 100,000 Chinese users.
What Is Bone Smashing? The Dangerous TikTok Beauty Trend Surgeons Are Warning Against
The latest TikTok beauty trend encourages young people to strike themselves in the face with a blunt object to cause fractures in their face, in the hope of achieving a perfect jawline or a more physically attractive face.
Plastic and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Ben Schultz. from LifeBridge Health, said there is a false belief behind the increasingly controversial trend that when bones heal, they grow stronger. “When I heard about it, I was like ‘this is the craziest thing ever since the Tide pods,'” he said.
Instead, he says the practice could lead to serious injury or irreversible damage. A wave of videos demonstrating how to do it has amassed more than 250 million views on TikTok.
Big Tech to Face Tougher Rules on Targeted Political Ads in EU
Big Tech firms will face new European Union rules to clearly label political advertising on their platforms, who paid for it and how much and which elections are being targeted, ahead of important votes in the bloc next year.
The new political advertising rules, which were agreed upon by EU countries and European Parliament lawmakers late on Monday, will force social media groups such as Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O), and Meta Platforms to be more transparent and accountable.
Violations of the new EU can be punished with fines up to 6% of an ad provider’s annual turnover.
Big Tech Is Exploiting Kids Online. Congress Has to Step In + More
Big Tech Is Exploiting Kids Online. Congress Has to Step In
Social media platforms know the harm they do to children. Kids spend huge portions of their days in front of screens. About 40% of kids between the ages of 9 and 12 use Instagram daily, despite current law ostensibly restricting social media use for people younger than 13.
Researchers, including Big Tech‘s own internal researchers, continue to confirm what American parents already know firsthand: social media use is a key driver of the current mental health crisis among children and teenagers, including growing rates of suicidal ideation and self-harm. Over 80% of parents support strong federal measures to protect children on social media. No wonder 41 states and Washington, DC, just sued Meta (formerly Facebook) for its “scheme to exploit young users for profit.”
The problem, of course, is that reducing this harm might also reduce Big Tech’s revenues. Addressing parents’ concerns requires policy intervention, which is why Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) introduced the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). KOSA provides parents and children new tools to mitigate or avoid some of social media’s harmful features. It also creates a duty of care that legally obligates platforms to act in the best interests of the minors using them.
To meet this obligation, platforms will need to take reasonable measures against the most alarming harms caused by their products, including sexual exploitation; promotion of narcotics and alcohol; encouragement of serious mental health disorders, including eating disorders, suicidal behavior, anxiety, and depression, as defined by the best available medical evidence; and deliberate aggravation of addiction to social media itself.
The bill is also widely popular. KOSA is cosponsored by almost half of the U.S. Senate, has earned unanimous support from the Senate Commerce Committee, and has won endorsements from over 200 organizations representing everyone from the American Psychological Association to technology experts to children themselves. In the face of this popularity, Big Tech is pulling its latest ploy to stymie KOSA’s momentum: trying to convince conservatives that keeping kids safe will empower the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to censor conservative speech.
Meta Whistleblower to Testify in Senate Hearing on Child Safety, Social Media
Senators will hear testimony Tuesday from a former Facebook employee who is alleging the company failed to act on reports of harassment and harm facing teens on the platform. Arturo Bejar, a former Facebook engineering director who later worked as a company consultant, will testify before a Senate subcommittee about social media and its impact on the teen mental health crisis, the panel announced Friday.
Bejar’s allegations were revealed in a Wall Street Journal report published Friday. The former Facebook engineering director returned to the company in 2019 for a two-year consulting contract after seeing the harm his teen daughter and her friends experienced on Instagram.
During his two-year contract, Bejar and a team worked to create a questionnaire to evaluate user experience on the platform, according to the Journal. The questionnaire led to a report he sent to top Meta executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, then-Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and Instagram head Adam Mosseri, according to the Journal.
The BEEF questionnaire, short for “Bad Emotional Experience Feedback,” found that “bad experiences” were particularly common among teen users on Instagram. For example, 26% of users under 16 recalled having a bad experience in the last week due to witnessing hostility against someone based on their race, religion or identity, according to the report.
States Reconsider Religious Exemptions for Vaccinations in Childcare
Montana, like 44 other states, allows religious exemptions from immunization requirements for school-age children. If the state is successful in expanding its policy to childcare facilities, it would become the second this year to add a religious exemption to its immunization requirements for younger kids.
Mississippi began allowing such exemptions for schools and childcare centers in July following a court ruling that the state’s lack of a religious exemption violated the U.S. Constitution’s free exercise clause.
Until recently, the trend had been going the other way, with four states — California, New York, Connecticut, and Maine — removing religious exemption policies over the past decade. West Virginia has never had a religious exemption.
The Montana Religious Freedom Restoration Act prohibits the state from infringing on a person’s right to the exercise of religion. Another act bans discrimination based on vaccination status.
U.S. CDC to Expand Surveillance of Traveler Samples for Respiratory Viruses
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will expand its traveler-based surveillance program to include testing for respiratory viruses, partners Ginkgo Bioworks (DNA.N) and XWELL (XWEL.O) said on Monday. The expansion, to be launched at four of the seven participating airports, comes ahead of the fall and winter months in the United States when viruses that cause respiratory diseases such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)usually circulate more heavily.
Ginkgo and XWELL said they will monitor over 30 new viruses, bacteria, and antimicrobial resistance targets including seasonal respiratory pathogens such as influenza A and B, RSV, and SARS-CoV-2 as part of the expansion.
The expansion will launch at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport.
The surveillance program is a public-private partnership between the health agency, Ginkgo’s biosecurity and public health unit, Concentric, and XWELL’s diagnostic testing service, XpresCheck. The agency conducts voluntary nasal swabbing and airport wastewater sampling as part of the program, aimed to help with the early detection of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and other pathogens.
COVID Pandemic Has Caused ‘Collective Trauma’ Among U.S. Adults, New Poll Says
Nearly four years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. population is still experiencing “collective trauma,” a new survey suggests. The American Psychological Association (APA), headquartered in Washington, DC, has released the results of Stress in America 2023, its nationwide survey that polled more than 3,185 U.S. adults about their physical and mental well-being.
Adults between the ages of 35 and 44 reported the highest spike in chronic health conditions since the pandemic, rising from 48% in 2019 to 58% in 2023, according to an APA press release.
That age group also saw the biggest increase in mental heath illnesses, led by anxiety and depression, rising from 31% in 2019 to 45% in 2023. Even so, adults between 18 and 34 years old still had the highest rate of mental illness, at 50% in 2023.
Dr. Marc Siegel, clinical professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox News medical contributor, was not involved in the APA’s poll but said he did not find the results surprising. “The rise in chronic illness and mental illness among adults aged 35 to 44 is clearly due to the stress and anxiety provoked by lockdowns and mandates, fear of the virus and the rampant divisiveness,” he told Fox News Digital.
Teens Willing to Give Parents Control of Their Social Media
Many teens use social media to connect with their friends and the outside world, but a large number of young people now support having parental consent requirements as the dark side of social media takes a toll on their mental health.
In a new Pew Research poll of nearly 1,500 teens and parents, teens were more likely to support parental consent for minors to create social media accounts than oppose it. Roughly half, or 46% of teens aged 13 to 17 supported this measure, while only 25% opposed it. And even more teens, 56%, supported age verification to use social media platforms, which have widely been linked to mental health issues in children.
Jill Ehrenreich-May, a psychology professor at the University of Miami and expert on adolescent anxiety and depression, said the evidence is clear that social media harms teens’ mental health, with higher rates of anxiety and depression linked with increased usage.
In 2017, 85% of teens used social media daily, and in 2022, that number had reached 95%. This is in stark contrast to 2009, when only around half used it daily, according to the Pew Research Center. At the same time social media use by teens skyrocketed, teenagers found themselves at the precipice of a mental health crisis that hadn’t been observed in previous generations.
MSG’s Lawyer Ban Sparks NY Bar Push to Curb Facial Recognition
The New York State Bar Association is calling on state lawmakers to amend New York law to prohibit companies like Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. from using facial recognition technology to bar people from sports venues.
The association is throwing its support behind the legislature’s Biometric Privacy Act, which would require private companies to establish a policy and timeline for permanently destroying biometric information about people who have interacted with the company. The bill is sponsored by Sen. John Liu (D) and Assemblywoman Aileen Gunther (D).
“The larger and more powerful the corporation, the more powerful this tool can be. The more the use of facial recognition technology can insulate that corporation from opposing lawyers and lawsuits, the more access to justice for individual citizens is imperiled,” NYSBA’s report says.
The NYSBA Working Group on Facial Recognition Technology and Access to Legal Representation’s report, released Monday, focuses on MSG’s policy banning lawyers involved in litigation against the company from its venues, including the famous arena. MSG uses facial recognition technology to identify and ban so-called adverse attorneys.
AI Fake Nudes Are Booming. It’s Ruining Real Teens’ Lives.
Artificial intelligence is fueling an unprecedented boom this year in fake pornographic images and videos. It’s enabled by a rise in cheap and easy-to-use AI tools that can “undress” people in photographs — analyzing what their naked bodies would look like and imposing it into an image — or seamlessly swap a face into a pornographic video.
On the top 10 websites that host AI-generated porn photos, fake nudes have ballooned by more than 290 percent since 2018, according to Genevieve Oh, an industry analyst. These sites feature celebrities and political figures such as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez alongside ordinary teenage girls, whose likenesses have been seized by bad actors to incite shame, extort money or live out private fantasies.
Victims have little recourse. There’s no federal law governing deepfake porn, and only a handful of states have enacted regulations. President Biden’s AI executive order issued Monday recommends but does not require, companies to label AI-generated photos, videos and audio to indicate computer-generated work.
EU’s Breton Tells TikTok CEO to ‘Spare No Effort’ Against Disinformation
TikTok must “spare no effort” to counter the spread of disinformation on the short video-sharing app, EU industry chief Thierry Breton told the company’s CEO on Monday, as the European Union steps up its efforts to curb the powers of Big Tech.
Breton last month gave TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, an Oct. 25 deadline to provide information on its crisis response measures and also ordered the company to provide details by Nov. 8 on how it protects the integrity of elections and minors online on its platform.
“Because now more than ever, we must spare no effort to protect our citizens — especially children and teenagers — against illegal content and disinformation,” he said.