The swift rise of sextortion in the past year has put teens at a severe disadvantage against bad actors determined to blackmail them for money. On Thursday, Instagram responded to the ongoing crisis by launching a major campaign designed to prevent and thwart sextortion. The crime typically takes place on social media platforms, when an…
Day after day of nothing to do other than scroll — on Insta, on TikTok, on YouTube. This was the reality for the teens of Social Studies, the FX docuseries that chronicled their lives as they slowly returned to the normalcy shattered by COVID. Esteemed photographer and documentarian Lauren Greenfield (THIN, The Queen of Versailles,…
What do you do when people aren’t taking the climate crisis seriously? You make them part of the problem. That’s the narrative-altering tack taken by Act of Man, a new nonpartisan climate coalition and social activation that’s shifting the vocabulary around so-called “natural” disasters to center the increasingly essential role of human climate change in…
BlueSky isn’t trying to replace Twitter, all of a sudden. Instead, it’s making a pitch to replace Threads, Meta’s Twitter alternative. The social media platform created an account on Threads this week and immediately began pitching itself as an alternative to the site. Threads has come under fire lately for its haphazard content moderation and…
Social media has been a part of Americans’ lives for well over a decade and, in part because of its newness, some people argue that there is a dearth of research about its effect on us — particularly its effect on young people. For the first time ever, the Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk…
Save $75: Walmart’s 10-foot-tall skeleton named Steve is on sale for $174, down from its typical list price of $249. It might just be the next best thing to Home Depot’s viral, sold-out giant skeleton. Opens in a new window Credit: Walmart Steve the Poseable 10′ Skeleton $174.00 at Walmart $249.00 Save $75.00 Get Deal…
Lydia Bach, a 15-year-old sophomore living in New York City, has a message for adults who think teens can’t possibly experience burnout. “If people want to find out what teens are burnt out about, they have to just take a look at the world,” Bach says, rattling off stressors like gun violence and global conflict,…
Listen up, losers: We can tell when your posts are made with an audience in mind and we don’t like it. It sounds like ChatGPT, it is the lowest possible denominator of posting, and, worst of all, it’s boring. I come to you with a solution: Delete your drafts. It’s a strategy I learned with…
Another powerful hurricane is barreling towards Florida directly on the heels of the devastation wrought across multiple states by Hurricane Helene. Hurricane Milton has strengthened into a Category 5 storm that is all but certain to make landfall in Florida as soon as Wednesday. Mashable has the info on the latest projections for where and…
Reddit is changing its rules in a way that may ensure its mods never go rogue again. On Monday, Reddit’s VP of community, Laura Nestler, announced in a post on the platform’s r/modnews subreddit that the company was changing Community Type settings rules. Going forward, moderators will be required to submit a request to Reddit…