Podbit · This Week in Tech (Audio)
Australia passed a social media ban for under-16s. A University of Newcastle study found 80% of them are still using social media anyway. Now Norway and the UK plan to follow suit — apparently to get the same result. As Harper Reid warned when the law passed: you're just teaching kids to be hackers.
Where this was said
At 2:14:35 · chapter starts 2:13:10
Leo moves through a series of interrelated stories about technology and trust. The Flock camera backlash is spreading as communities learn these automated license plate readers are capturing Bluetooth device identifiers in addition to plates. Peter Diamandis's provocative post arguing that trillion-sensor ubiquitous surveillance is positive because humans behave better when watched sparks a debate about the panopticon and whether safety benefits justify total observation. NHTSA's proposal to eliminate foot-operated brake pedals from autonomous vehicles — citing them as a barrier to innovation — strikes the panel as alarming, with Leo noting the obvious connection to Tesla's political influence. Ford's public admission is the segment's most telling story: the company fired its vehicle hardware engineering team in the belief that AI could do their jobs, then was forced to rehire them after automated systems produced too many errors. VP Charles Poon publicly said they mistakenly thought AI plus adjusted design requirements would produce quality products.
A Russian cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover was so severe it forced a month-long shutdown and required a £2 billion UK government bailout.
A University of Newcastle study found that 4 out of 5 under-16s in Australia are still using social media despite the country's ban.
Ford fired engineers to let AI handle vehicle hardware design. The AI made too many mistakes. Ford had to call the engineers back. The VP publicly admitted they 'mistakenly thought' AI could replace the work — a rare moment of corporate honesty about AI's real-world limits.
Ford fired engineers expecting AI to replace them in vehicle hardware design, then had to rehire them after automated systems produced too many errors.
Social media feeds men and women the absolute worst caricatures of each other while stripping away the everyday, imperfect relationships that would calibrate their expectations. Combine that with smaller families and fewer cross-sex friendships, and you get a generation that talks about the opposite sex constantly but almost never to them.
The 'would you rather be alone with a man or a bear' debate went viral not because men are objectively more dangerous than ever, but because an entire fear industrial complex of influencers and safety products had already primed women to feel that way. Once the algorithm identifies you as worried about personal safety, the content and the scrunchie drink-covers never stop.
Women feel less safe not because danger has increased, but because trust in institutions — police, churches, schools — that used to enforce safety norms has collapsed. Young women are far less likely than older women to believe those institutions will handle sexual assault responsibly, leaving them with only individual self-protection as a fallback.
Even self-identified feminist women consistently told Daniel Cox in interviews and surveys that they want men to open doors, pay for dates, and show demonstrable care. The internet noise around 'benevolent sexism' drowns out this widespread, quietly held preference.
In focus groups in Philadelphia and Raleigh, every single hand went up when participants were asked if parents discussed financial stability and education. Zero hands went up for marriage or parenthood. Parents are shaping their children's ambitions with total silence on the experiences that matter most.
American families are smaller than ever, with roughly 1 in 5 children now growing up as only children. Without the daily friction of siblings — shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, resolving disagreements — young people enter adult relationships without the negotiation muscles relationships require.
Online dating optimises for your existing preferences rather than expanding your horizons. People who meet online give bad first dates almost no second chances; people who meet through mutual friends are far more forgiving. The disembodied, checklist-driven nature of apps removes all the social cues that actually reveal character.
A split-sample survey found that men judge male and female cheating identically harshly, and women judge male cheating the same way men do. The outlier: young women are dramatically less likely to call female infidelity morally wrong, suggesting shared-fate thinking and personal experience of being cheated on are reshaping the moral calculus.
The monk mode trend encourages men to withdraw from social life to work on themselves — but this is precisely backwards. The research is clear: close friendships are the single most powerful predictor of whether a man dates, commits, and becomes his best self. Self-improvement without social reintegration is just sophisticated avoidance.
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