What we've been reading

This week in Internet Safety

It’s almost all internet this week. The EU has begun investigating Meta over concerns that its social media platforms are creating addictive behavior among children, a potential infringement of the Union’s landmark Digital Services Act.?

The US doesn’t have a landmark act about online safety - lobbying pays! A few states have tried but Federal judges have pushed back because of children’s free speech rights, among others - which makes us think some of our children may have a future in Law. What the US does have, however, is a billionaire building a social movement to? acquire?TikTok and put people in control of their data and digital identity.??

Among the bid’s supporters are Jonathan Haidt, recent author of the popular Anxious Generation (albeit with some pushback) and of Why the Last 10 years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid. This, at least, most people might agree on.?

(On the topic of teen mental health, check out the work of WhiteLabel client Promly!)

This week in the impact of the digital economy on housing

It’s not just mental health - tech giants are also affecting the housing market. New York lawmakers feel let down by Google’s unfulfilled promise to build 500 affordable housing units alongside its new West Side headquarters. 10 years on, only 175 were built. “So, what happened?” So what happened to the rest of the apartments? Ultimately, the developers had no obligation to build them.”“The community board basically got scammed,” Bergman said. “For a lot of people, what sold them on the zoning change was the affordable housing.”?

Austin is also feeling the pain. Oracle is moving to Nashville; Tesla is reducing headcount. Austin has the “third-largest office-vacancy rate among major US metro areas, behind Dallas and Houston.” The verdict? “Austin’s pandemic growth ultimately played a large role in its undoing, as soaring real-estate prices forced many out of the market, and unlike coastal cities, the Texas capital had neither the jobs nor the weather to persuade them to pay up and stay.”?

This week in AI further transforming society

Eric Schmidt writes that America needs an Apollo program for the age of AI. The federal government backed the most important technological breakthroughs of the last century. It should do the same for current challenges, from developing advanced material to ensuring cybersecurity.?

Also, we've pointed this out before, but AI is consuming so much energy that it puts tech companies' Net Zero goals further out of reach. Microsoft’s president says the good AI can do for the world will outweigh its environmental impact. Concerns abound.

(Related to both topics, perhaps: another sector requiring public intervention is EV charging).?

This week in more books about the Internet

For a lighter read about the digital revolution, try Kara Swisher’s Burn Book, a satisfying, sometimes vitriolic, sometimes self-serving front row seat memoir of the Silicon Valley revolution, which we might summarize as: “Steve Jobs good, Mark Zuckerberg bad, and we have learned nothing.”

This week in things ain’t what they used to be

Speaking of books,? students don’t like reading, read less, and struggle to understand what they read,, the chronicle of Higher Education reports. One Prof “has long followed the mantra “meet your students where they are.” But she says if she meets them any further down, she’ll feel like a cruise director organizing games of shuffleboard.”

This is making the whole idea of educating harder. Students feel overwhelmed, don’t want to put in too much work,? can’t synthesize complex information, struggle to organize their notes, are scattered, can’t write more than a few hundred words, and so on. The culprits? Testing culture, the pandemic fallout, problematic reading instruction strategies, parents failing to model good reading habits, dull college PowerPoints. And of course, smart phones and social media.?

"As for why they may not show up for class or do the work, [one observer] thinks it’s part social anxiety and part cynicism. “I think they see school very transactionally,” he says. “Schools also see students more transactionally than they did in the past. It’s not the deep relationship educators want it to be.”

Profs are trying to figure out solutions, like more group work, less passive learning, or structured reading classes.

Still, says another observer “the change in media environments, where we’re entering into a hybrid oral-written culture, is a much longer-term change that is in some ways more important than any change brought about by the pandemic or testing culture, we need to prepare ourselves for a drastically different future.”

This week in not being idle

The New York Times tries to figure out the best time of day for physical exercise. The short answer is that there isn’t a single answer, rather it depends on things like health goals, what shape one is in, and things like individual preferences. A personal favorite among research studies is the one saying the best workout comes after an afternoon nap. Still, we wonder about the one-dimensional obsession: might the Times, and scientists, commit as much energy to figuring it out when is the best time to practice the piano or, you know, the best time to... read?

WhiteLabel is a growth and transformation firm, partnering with mission-driven enterprises to do the world’s most important work. Find us at [email protected]