Nearly Half of Young People Wish the Internet Had Never Been Invented
It's a common refrain these days that some specific invention was a mistake, in our age of seemingly every human innovation blowing up catastrophically in our faces.
And what better subject of our collective remorse than the advent of the entire internet, the glorious information superhighway now turned AI slop trough?
According to a new survey conducted in the UK, this appears to be the sentiment held by nearly half of young people — at least across the pond — who are mourning missing out on the diverging timeline where they aren't chronically online and wracked with brain rot.
Of the nearly 1,300 total participants between the ages of 16 to 21 years old, 68 percent said they feel worse after spending time on social media. A full 50 percent said they would support a "social media curfew" cutting off how long they could spend on these apps. And astonishingly, another 47 percent outright felt that they would prefer to be living their youth in a world without the internet at all.
The survey, conducted by the British Standards Institution, raises tough questions about how the internet affects teenage and young adult mental health, and what should be done to intervene — without being too controlling or draconian.
"That nearly half of young people would prefer to grow up without the internet should be a wake-up call for all of us," Daisy Greenwell, co-founder of Smart Phone Free Childhood, said in a statement. "We've built a world where it's normal for children to spend hours each day in digital spaces designed to keep them hooked."
The problems may start practically when the young generations are just out of the womb. Studies have shown excessive iPad use in young children, for example, to be linked with emotional and social issues as they get older.
Their online experience becomes especially fraught when they're teenagers, a point when they're exploring more of the web and begin to venture into adult spaces. This comes with excitement for youngsters, but plenty of danger, too, from being targeted by predators in video games to algorithms that draw them down an extremist pipeline.
The rise of AI has added a whole new dimension of ethical nightmares. On Futurism, we extensively covered the chatbot platform Character.AI, whose putatively kid-friendly chatbots have attempted to groom underaged users. One 14 year-old-boy even developed an unhealthy with a Character.AI chatbot before dying by suicide, resulting in an ongoing lawsuit against the company.
According to the recent survey, two-thirds of the participants said they spend more than two hours on social media every day. Among them, young women reported facing more harassment, at 37 percent, than young men, at 28 percent. Merely using social media may itself be a source of misery: a recent study which followed 12,000 preteens as they grew up to become teenagers over the course of three years, found that as their social media usage went up, so did their depression symptoms.
"Young people are now asking for boundaries — for curfews, age checks, meaningful limits, and real protection," argued Greenwell. "They are ready for change."
But it won't be that simple. "We need to make clear that a digital curfew alone is not going to protect children from the risks they face online," Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, told The Guardian. "They will be able to see all these risks at other points of the day and they will still have the same impact."
More on: US Surgeon General Warns Against 13-Year-Old Using Social Media
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
Early AI investor Elad Gil finds his next big bet: AI-powered rollups
Elad Gil started betting on AI before most of the world took notice. By the time investors began grasping the implications of ChatGPT, Gil had already written seed checks to startups like Perplexity, and Harvey. Now, as the early winners of the AI wave become clearer, the renowned 'solo' VC is increasingly focused on a fresh opportunity: using AI to reinvent traditional businesses and scale them through roll-ups. The idea is to identify opportunities to buy mature, people-intensive businesses like law firms and other professional services firms, help them scale through AI, then use the improved margins to acquire other such businesses and repeat the process. He has been at it for three years. "It just seems so obvious," said Gil over a Zoom call earlier this week. "This type of generative AI is very good at understanding language, manipulating language, manipulating text, producing text. And that's audio, that's video, that includes coding, sales outreach, and different back-office processes." If you can 'effectively transform some of those repetitive tasks into software,' he said, 'you can increase the margins dramatically and create very different types of businesses.' The math is particularly compelling if one owns the business outright, he added. 'If you own the asset, you can [transform it] much more rapidly than if you're just selling software as a vendor," Gil said. "And because you take the gross margin of a company from, say, 10% to 40%, that's a huge lift. Suddenly you can buy other companies at a higher price than anyone else because you have that increased cash flow per business; you have enormous leverage on the business on a relative basis, so you can do roll-ups in ways that others can't.' So far, Gil has backed two companies pursuing this strategy. According to The Information, one is a one-year-old company called Enam Co., focused on worker productivity, which has been valued at more than $300 million by its backers, including Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI's Startup Fund. Though Gil says he can't discuss specifics of the private deals, he suggests the approach represents something new. "There used to be these technology-enabled roll-ups 10 years ago, and most of them kind of ended up being not really that much of a user of technology,' he says. 'It was kind of like a thin veneer painted on to increase the valuation of the company. I think in the case of AI, you can actually radically change the cost structure of these things." Whether the approach proves as lucrative as some of his other bets remains to be seen. Gil has famously backed a host of big brands that have produced riches for their backers, including Airbnb and Coinbase, both of which are now publicly traded, and privately held Stripe, whose valuation has bounced around but reportedly settled in the range of $91.5 billion earlier this year, when its earlier backers bought up more of its shares. Part of the challenge with roll-ups is finding the right team composition -- ideally including a strong technologist along with someone who is 'very strong in PE' -- and 'those things don't go hand-in-hand,' Gil noted. He said he's met 'maybe two dozen of these teams' so far and mostly looked past them, not because they 'weren't amazing' but because 'they still need to sort some things out.' Gil, who has deep relationships with firms across Silicon Valley, may also find himself competing with them more aggressively on roll-ups as more outfits like Khosla Ventures weigh whether or not they should also be pursuing such deals. One senses that, either way, Gil is not in it for the money at this point if he ever was. He says his ability to spot trends earlier than most comes instead from the heart. "I love technology, and I love progress, and I love just engaging -- both with people who are working on important, interesting things, but also the technology itself." When GPT-3 launched, for example, Gil was already experimenting with its predecessor, he said. "When GPT-3 came out, it was such a big leap from GPT-2 that you could just extrapolate out the technology curve. You're like, 'Oh my gosh, if this keeps going and scaling' -- all the scaling laws were kind of evident -- 'then this is going to be transformative.'" That hands-on approach continues today with the small team Gil has assembled, including 'people with very deep engineering backgrounds' who 'periodically play around with all the AI front-end companies. One person on my team just writes a bunch of scripts and we run them, and we look at performance, and we look at tooling, and it's super hands-on." It's because of that constant tinkering that, after years of uncertainty in the AI market, Gil sees clear winners emerging. "I used to say, even six months ago, that the more I know about AI, the less I know, because the markets were so dynamic; the technologies were so dynamic," he said. "And I feel like in the last couple months — maybe the last two quarters — a subset of markets have really crystallized." In legal, 'we kind of know who the one or two main winners are probably going to be. That's true in health care. That's true in customer success and support,' said Gil, who clearly thinks these include his own portfolio companies, which he cited in our conversation. Among these bets is Harvey, which develops large language models for law firms and in-house legal teams and is reportedly in talks to raise new funding at a $5 billion valuation; Abridge, a healthcare AI company that aims to improve doctors' clinical documentation workflows (and whose $250 million Series D round was co-led by Gil back in February); and Sierra AI, co-founded by famed operator Bret Taylor, which helps companies implement AI agents for customer service. (The company was valued in the billions of dollars right out of the gate.) Still, Gil is careful not to declare the game over. "I don't mean to paint the picture that the game is over or that things are done. I think it's more that there were two dozen companies that all seemed kind of interesting, and maybe now there's three or four of them [per vertical]. The map of the likely winners is solidified." In the meantime, it's clear in conversation that this moment represents more than just another investment cycle to him. "I just think it's a really fun period of time, because so much change is happening, and so there's just a ton to do," he said. Being at the intersection of two transformations -- not just betting on the future of AI but on the future of how AI will reshape everything else -- is 'very exciting,' he added. We'll have more from our conversation with Gil -- which also touched on guardrails, gatekeeping, and how companies can most adeptly integrate the technologies that will make or break their business -- in the newest episode of the StrictlyVC Download podcast, which comes out on Tuesday. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Yahoo
How to set up an Apple legacy contact, in case you die
If you use Apple devices regularly, then your Apple account has lots of important files and data attached to it—including photos and videos of precious memories and extensive email archives that you need to hang on to. Apple gives you many ways to make sure this data is looked after, including setting up a couple of key contacts who become attached to your account: a recovery contact (who can help you get back into your account if you're locked out), and a legacy contact (who can get into your account if you die.) There are good reasons for setting up both of these contacts, and it doesn't take long to do. You can specify more than one contact in each case, and change your chosen contacts at any time. Let's start with a recovery contact, a specified person you trust and can turn to if you find yourself locked out of your account. It's one of the most reliable methods out there for restoring access to your Apple account, because it relies on an actual human being who knows you rather than passwords or authenticator apps. Apple says your recovery contact 'should be a person that you know and trust, like a family member or a close friend.' You can set up to five recovery contacts for your account. If you're using Family Sharing with your account, Apple will recommend the other people in your family as your contacts, but you're free to choose who you like. Your recovery contacts will need access to an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and their own Apple account—so you can't pick any friends and relatives who only use Android or Windows. Apple won't store any information about who your contacts are, so it's important that you remember who you've nominated (you can't recover your recovery contacts). To set up your recovery contact(s) on an iPhone or iPad, open Settings, tap on your name, pick Sign-In & Security > Recovery Contacts, then follow the instructions on screen. You can also do this from a Mac, via System Settings: Click on your name, then Sign-In & Security, then Recovery Contacts. If it's someone already in your Family Sharing group, the contact is added automatically; if not, they'll need to accept your request. If you get into trouble accessing your account, your recovery contacts can help you out. From Settings on an iPhone or iPad, or System Settings on a Mac, they need to select their name, then choose Sign-In & Security > Account Recovery. Once they select your name, they'll get a recovery code which they can pass along to you, which will help confirm your identity to Apple and get you back into your account. It's never pleasant to think about death, but your chances of escaping it are zero—so you want to make sure that getting your affairs in order is as straightforward as possible for the loved ones you leave behind. Of course, our digital legacies are becoming a bigger and bigger part of our worldly goods and possessions. Apple lets you specify what it calls a legacy contact, someone who you grant permission to access your Apple account after you're gone. This includes access to your photos, messages, notes, and files, but it doesn't cover passwords or payment information. You can specify more than one legacy contact, and the people you pick don't have to be using Apple devices or have an Apple account. On an iPhone or iPad, open up Settings, tap your name, then pick Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact to choose someone. If you're on macOS, from System Settings select your name, and then click Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact. No confirmation is required, but you will be prompted to send your chosen contacts the digital key they will need to access your account in the future. Before Apple will let these designated contacts into your account, they'll need both the digital key you gave them and a copy of your death certificate. Once the administrative work is out of the way, they'll be granted access to a special legacy contact Apple account, through which they can get to the information you've left behind. 'Your legacy contact has access to your data for a limited time—three years from when the first legacy account request is approved—after which the account is permanently deleted,' Apple says. Note that if you've specified more than one contact, they can all take action on your data and files independently of each other.
New York Post
3 days ago
- New York Post
This iPad Air is slim, smart, and on serious sale at 65% off
Discover startups, services, products and more from our partner StackCommerce. New York Post edits this content, and may be compensated and/or receive an affiliate commission if you buy through our links. TL;DR: This iPad Air can keep up with your multitasking for just $169.99 (reg. $499). Constantly multitasking? Then you need a device that can keep up with you, like the iPad Air. This lightweight device lets you browse the web, stream content, and take FaceTime calls from anywhere, all displayed beautifully on a 10.5-inch Retina screen. And right now, you can bring one home for 65% off — just $169.99 (reg. $499). If you're not an iPad devotee, it's just a matter of time until you realize how great these versatile devices can be. This Apple classic offers the portability of a smartphone with the power of a laptop, making it easy to take on the go. That 10.5″ LED-backlit display lets you enjoy it all in better detail, with True Tone technology that also reduces eye strain. This particular model is equipped with an Apple A12 Bionic processor and 3GB of RAM, so you can enjoy fast and smooth performance even with tons of tabs open. And you can download all your favorite apps thanks to the 64GB of internal storage. An 8MP main camera lets you capture memories, while a 7MP FaceTime HD camera lets you stay connected to loved ones. And you can seamlessly connect via Bluetooth 5.0 or Wi-FI wherever you end up. And you won't have to hunt down an electrical outlet — a full charge lasts 10 hours. If you're wondering how you're securing a $330 discount, it's due to this model's grade A refurbished rating. That means it will show up in neat-mint condition, while you snag it at a low price. Bring home an iPad Air for just $169.99 (reg. $499) right here for a limited time. StackSocial prices subject to change.
