00:01:29.000I mean, to be fair, the Beijing Olympics a few years back kind of looked like that, but with humans, because again, the Chinese government would prefer automatons.
00:01:39.000Now, again, some of these robots are not that scary because they're falling over.
00:01:43.000There are some funny moments in which these robots did not look like they were doing an amazing job and proceeded to sort of crash into each other.
00:01:49.000One robot fought another robot and then broke out into a victory dance.
00:03:22.000Sometimes we ought to burn technology with fire.
00:03:24.000Well, today, Facebook signed a gigantic settlement with some 29 states to put some new restrictions on the use of its technology for children.
00:03:42.000In much the same way that nicotine is addictive, it turns out that actually social media is addictive.
00:03:47.000You have hacked your brain, and now you have basically found dopamine release features that allow you to directly access the dopamine release with a few easy hand motions.
00:03:57.000And kids pick up on this stuff so fast.
00:03:58.000If you ever leave a small child in proximity of an iPad, I'm talking like two years old.
00:04:03.000That kid will find it, start manipulating it, and become addicted to it.
00:04:06.000Their eyes glaze over, they turn into little zombies.
00:04:10.000And again, there's a lot of brain studies to demonstrate this.
00:04:13.000There's one study from the Curious Journal, 2025, called Modern Day High, the neurocognitive impact of social media usage.
00:04:21.000They found, quote, Social media engages in brain reward pathways akin to those seen in addictive behavior, with extended beta and gamma activity having the potential to interfere with emotional regulation and attention.
00:04:32.000These neurophysiological consequences, especially delayed alpha recovery and increased delta activity.
00:04:38.000Could bring to the fore new concerns regarding digital fatigue and mental health.
00:04:41.000The research indicates the importance of platform design interventions and additional longitudinal investigations.
00:04:46.000So, in other words, a lot of this stuff was designed to do it.
00:04:50.000If you have ever scrolled X, doom scrolled X, the reason it's designed the way it originally was with Twitter, where you'd scroll with your thumb and then you'd hear a little noise, is it was literally training you in Pavlovian fashion to get that small dopamine release so that you'd want to do it again.
00:05:05.000And again, there are lots of studies along these lines.
00:05:07.000There's one study from the Children's Health Council that's funded by the NIH.
00:05:12.000And it found that children who spend more than seven hours a day of screen time may experience premature thinning of the part of the brain that processes sensory information.
00:05:20.000That data comes from a $300 million research funded by the National Institutes of Health, following 11,000 kids aged nine to 10.
00:05:28.000It turns out heavy screen time has negative implications for kids' emotional, psychological, and cognitive development.
00:05:35.000And kids with more screen time have premature thinning of the brain cortex.
00:05:38.000That's the part that's responsible for interpreting information from the physical world.1.00
00:05:41.000So, again, This stuff is making you stupid.1.00
00:05:43.000And it was designed to make you stupid because it was designed to be addictive.1.00
00:05:47.000It was designed to make you want to watch more of it.0.99
00:05:48.000Well, now, Meta has been sued in a wide variety of states over its design, and they reached a $17 billion settlement.
00:05:56.000Now, to be fair, Meta is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:05:59.000So this is not remotely the value of the company, but it's a pretty major settlement nonetheless.
00:06:04.000According to CNBC, Meta and a coalition of state attorneys general have settled a major federal case centering on allegations the social media giant misrepresented the extent of child mental health harms caused by apps like Facebook and Instagram.
00:06:17.000The settlement was revealed in a court filing released Wednesday that details several requirements Meta has to make to ATAPS as part of a proposed consent judgment.
00:06:24.000So, it's not just they're paying the states a bunch of money, they are, but also they are including a bunch of new changes in the app.
00:06:33.000So, those changes apparently include daily usage limits and also nighttime blocks for teenagers who use Insta and also Facebook.
00:06:40.000Also, enhanced age assurance measures to prevent kids from ending around the security features and the creation of some additional tools for parents and guardians.
00:06:49.000Some states are clearing a couple of billion dollars.
00:06:53.000Other states didn't join in on the settlement.
00:06:55.000So, Texas didn't join in on the settlement, Florida did not join in on the settlement.
00:07:00.000Rob Bonta, who is the AG for California, said today, we have secured a settlement with Meta that will make social media less dangerous for our kids and make a world of difference for children and their families.
00:07:09.000Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that reduce the risk of harm from its platforms and will do it within months.
00:07:13.000So, what are some of the things that have been put in place?
00:07:18.000The majority of the terms are required to remain in place for some 10 years and they automatically apply to everyone under the age of 18 on Instagram and Facebook.
00:07:26.000So, time limits a default two hour daily time limit that teens can only turn off with a parent's permission.
00:07:31.000Now, again, The devil is in the details.
00:07:34.000How do you assure that it's not just the kid logging on to mom and dad's account and then turning it off themselves?
00:07:39.000Very difficult to actually assure that's what happens.
00:07:43.000Night mode, a default block from the apps between midnight and 6 a.m., which again, that is not a particularly huge restriction considering that the vast majority, vast bulk of time that young people would spend on Facebook and Instagram, presumably, is not between midnight and 6 a.m., which is when they're sleeping.
00:08:00.000Notifications are muted by default between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.
00:08:04.000Now, again, muted by default means theoretically you could unmute by not default.
00:08:09.000Teens will also receive prompts after every 15 minutes of continuous screen time on either Facebook or Instagram.
00:08:14.000And they will receive prompts when their daily total usage hits 60 minutes and 90 minutes.
00:08:20.000Teens will be able to choose a non-algorithmic feed as their default.
00:08:24.000Now, again, that should be the default.
00:08:26.000The default should be non-algorithmic.
00:09:15.000Again, kids who are seeking that echo chamber, kids who want people to give them the likes and the clicks, if they can't see that, that is useful.
00:09:25.000They're also getting rid of, apparently, teens being able to use cosmetic surgery filters and extreme makeup filters.
00:09:33.000So, again, why that was ever in place in the first place is insane to me, especially for young girls where social contagion is a real thing.
00:09:39.000Huge mistake to have them capable of accessing all of these filters and make their face look different.0.82
00:09:48.000So they're investing in stronger technology to proactively catch accounts that belong to under 13s and strengthening the technology to identify accounts that are between the ages of 13 and 17.
00:09:59.000App stores have to provide developers with age information that is verified.
00:10:02.000So they're saying it's not just us, it's also the app store that has to make sure this is the case.
00:10:07.000In a second, we'll get to more on everything going on with social media.0.99
00:10:10.000As I'm saying, your kids have been accessing a lot of crap information.0.93
00:10:13.000That's also true for pretty much everybody who's accessing legacy media.0.94
00:10:17.000The New York Times readership among young Americans has totally cratered, but it's not as though that is being replaced by better information unless you are making Prager U available to your kids.
00:10:27.000Prager U is the rising generation's last best hope.
00:10:30.000Millions of students log on every day for five minute videos on economics, history, faith, and freedom that teach the truth, not what CNN and others want young people to believe.
00:10:38.000Prager U has no paywall, no smirking newscasters, no bias dressed up as objectivity, just the facts presented in an age appropriate, wholesome, all American way.
00:11:00.000I have a bunch of videos myself with PragerU.
00:11:02.000They're informing literally millions of young people every single day, but in the right way with good information, not the algorithmic slop they're getting everywhere else.
00:12:01.000We should be moving toward more of this.
00:12:03.000I think, frankly, that there should be heavy handed regulation on social media and you should be banned from social media completely until you are of age.
00:12:12.000I do not think minors need or have the right to social media.
00:13:09.000So, one of the weirdnesses of the current way that people perceive technology is that they're actually warmer toward, for example, Facebook, Instagram, than they are toward actual technologies that are going to transform the American economy.
00:13:21.000So, fascinating poll demonstrates that most Americans actually like, for example, the big tech platforms.
00:13:30.000They think they're good, which again, I'm going to go no on that.
00:13:36.000So, for example, this is a survey from the argument of 3,008 registered voters, and it finds that on Google, 29% of people are very favorable, 35% of people are somewhat favorable.
00:14:46.000If you use ChatGPT, the amount of time it would take me, for example, just in my job, to research particular data questions.
00:14:52.000And again, we go through, we check the data.
00:14:55.000But the amount of time it would take me, de novo, to research a particular multi part complicated question is so much larger through things like Google use than it would be simply by using ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity.
00:15:14.000To synthesize information using AI than it is to do it using the old fashioned way of just Googling things.
00:15:21.000And this is true in a wide variety of arenas.
00:15:23.000The uses for AI are legion, and very often they're excellent, like really, really good.
00:15:29.000The AIs are really good, which is why, according to the Dallas Federal Reserve, quoting Goldman Sachs, you could see a massive boost in American productivity, somewhere between 0.3 and 3.0 percentage points a year over the next decade, with a median estimate of 1.5 percentage points in productivity increased.
00:15:48.000As the Dallas Federal Reserve says, if that happened, it would make a remarkable impact.
00:15:53.000Do this the next time you're shopping.
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00:16:24.000Phytonutrients, by the way, are simply the naturally occurring plant nutrients, the compounds that contribute the color, taste, smell of fruits, veggies, spices, other plant foods.
00:16:33.000You know, when I eat, I want to understand what I'm putting into my body without somebody needing to stand next to me and translate it for me.
00:16:39.000I don't want to use AI to figure out what I'm eating.
00:16:42.000If that is appealing to you to just, you know, have the ingredients in front of you, the clean stuff, the stuff you need, go to balanceofnature.com today, receive an additional 10% off when you subscribe to any of their subscriptions.
00:17:22.000Now, listen, it's really easy to get one.0.99
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00:17:31.000Helix gets rid of all the awkwardness and the guesswork.
00:17:33.000Their quick sleep quiz considers your sleep position, comfort preferences, support needs, and then matches you with one of more than 20 mattress models, which is how my wife and I got the Helix sleep mattress that is breathable, but firm, which is the thing, right?
00:17:44.000Helix ships your mattress directly to your door for free.
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00:18:03.000And yet, at the same time, you have a lot of people, mainly people who are catastrophists about technology and who are very often in favor of centralized control, saying they want centralized control.
00:18:13.000So I'm amused to see so many people who are on the right who hate Bill Gates for a variety of reasons, including, for example, his devotion to the idea of big government redistributionism and also his love for global warming.
00:18:25.000Now, Bill Gates is out there ripping on AI and suggesting that mass numbers of jobs will be wiped out.
00:18:32.000Now, again, we have not seen mass numbers of jobs being wiped out.
00:18:36.000And my suspicion is that you will see jobs that are lost, but you will also see an enormous number of jobs that are gained.
00:18:44.000I think that this technology will bleed into the public gradually, a little bit slower than people think it's going to.
00:18:51.000That's sort of the vast unemployment wave that Bill Gates is predicting here is exaggerated.
00:18:58.000He said in an interview with Semaphore that, quote, the technology has crossed dangerous thresholds in biology, cybersecurity, white collar work, and human relationships.
00:19:07.000Originally, three years ago, he said that the coming bumpy AI job disruption would lead to a manageable transition and the technology would help people work efficiently.
00:19:15.000Now he says it will wreak economic catastrophe with far fewer jobs than exist today, thanks to the speed of AI advancements and what he calls a non existent response from government and tech leaders.
00:19:25.000So he's afraid, he says, that if AI continues unchecked, society will turn against it entirely.
00:19:32.000He says, What is the backlash going to be as these jobs go away?
00:19:35.000It'll make the data center thing look like nothing.
00:19:38.000Now, again, Bill Gates has spent his career basically since founding Microsoft, dooming and glooming it up.
00:19:46.000It took him years to acknowledge that his sort of doomsday view of global warming was unrealistic.
00:19:50.000He wrote an entire book, which is not very good, I've read it, about how to defeat global warming.
00:19:55.000And the answer is global redistributionism, of course.
00:19:58.000And of course, he's involved in a wide variety of truly globalist institutions.
00:20:02.000And it took him a while to realize that actually all of that was nonsense.
00:20:05.000Here he was last year saying the Paris climate goals were unrealistic.
00:20:10.000That was a key milestone because the countries of the world said, hey, this is a mutual problem.
00:20:16.000The temperature rise, the entire world will experience a temperature rise from the emissions from all these countries.
00:20:24.000So getting countries to commit was very, very important.
00:20:29.000The one thing about that accord that turned out not to be realistic was the ambitious goal of staying to 1.5 degrees.
00:21:00.000Well, first of all, we should acknowledge there are a bunch of people in the AI space, these so called AI doomers.
00:21:06.000Many of them are leading AI companies.
00:21:07.000And what they really, really want is the government to step in and heavily regulate AI so that they have market capture.
00:21:14.000One of the things to be wary of when it comes to artificial intelligence regulation is the idea that the people who have the biggest companies want to write the rules.
00:21:21.000So, Dario Amodi, who is the founder of Anthropic, he wrote a 20,000 word opus on his website back in January about AI.
00:21:29.000And he acknowledges that the most obvious effect of AI is to greatly increase economic growth, which, by the way, again, that is not an anodyne question.
00:21:36.000When the economic growth increases, that means you live better.
00:21:55.000He suggested as much as a 10 to 20% sustained annual GDP growth rate, which again, I think is overstated, but would be magic.
00:22:04.000But what he actually wants is massive tax redistributionism and regulation.
00:22:09.000So the effect of all this is that people get freaked out because you have the heads of these AI companies telling you to be doomers, freaking out, worrying.
00:22:17.000And then you have a bunch of politicians who are going around catering to the freaked out rather than trying to explain what exactly is happening.
00:22:23.000And so you end up right now in politics with this bizarre increase in hatred for AI.
00:22:43.000And again, Americans are kind of fine with big buildings that do things.
00:22:47.000They just don't seem to like the data centers very much.
00:22:49.000So, for example, there's an Echelon insights voter poll that was taken in June.
00:22:57.000It found that 68% of Americans Would support an Amazon distribution center being built in their area, but only 27% would support versus 62% oppose a data center to power artificial intelligence.
00:23:31.000Like there's a lot less sort of threat to communal way of life, a big building that's just kind of standing there and the employees go in and out.
00:23:37.000Okay, but because people are afraid of AI, they are afraid of the data centers.
00:23:42.000And because politicians are afraid of the people, they are now responding to that by cracking down on the data centers.0.97
00:23:46.000Now, there's smart ways to sort of play this politically and stupid ways.
00:23:51.000Greg Abbott in Texas is trying to cater to people who are concerned about the data centers while simultaneously not killing the thing that is going to actually generate economic growth.0.96
00:24:02.000City Journal has a really good piece on this.
00:24:04.000Pointing out that basically Texas, which has more planned data center capacity than any other state by far, is forcing ERCOT, which is the regional grid operator, to overhaul its review processes for large new connections.
00:24:22.000So they've created a streamlined process to group the first wave of projects together so regulators can assess them more efficiently.
00:24:27.000So basically, make sure there's enough power to power the data centers.
00:24:30.000Pennsylvania, under Josh Shapiro, the governor over there, is doing something different.
00:24:33.000They've basically made it very, very difficult to build data centers.
00:24:49.000The promises of social media were basically a giant lie.
00:24:52.000They promised more friendship, they delivered far more antipathy, they promised more information, and they delivered a bunch of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and slop.
00:25:02.000They promised connection, and instead, they often delivered addiction.
00:25:05.000And now kids have been feeling the consequences of this for a decade and a half, and it's been a disaster.
00:25:11.000But I don't think that that's true of AI.
00:25:15.000If we would like to destroy ourselves, what we should do is free up social media and restrict AI.
00:25:20.000And it seems like, you know, there's still a great tendency to do that.
00:25:24.000What we actually should be doing is we should be cracking down on social media for the sake of particularly young people who are vulnerable to the addictive qualities.
00:25:32.000And we should be ensuring, obviously, the worst excesses of AI are avoided.0.98
00:25:36.000But we should not be attempting to hamstring AI so we actually lose to the Chinese.0.98
00:25:43.000Because if you fall behind our enemies, they are not stopping.0.98
00:25:45.000They're not going to stop at all, not for a moment.
00:25:49.000AI can work for us in ways that really help all of us.
00:25:53.000I don't think that's true of social media.
00:25:55.000What an amazing video you just watched.
00:25:58.000Well, you know, if you think so, head on over to dailywire.comslash subscribe to watch the full show ad free or check out this crazy story here.