Author: Reporter

The U.S. surgeon general is calling for tech companies and lawmakers to take “immediate action” to protect kids’ and adolescents’ mental health from a profound risk of harm by social media platforms. But after years of insufficient action by both social media platforms and policymakers, parents and young people still bear most of the burden in navigating the fast-changing, often harmful world of secretive algorithms, addictive apps and extreme and inappropriate content found on platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat. So what can parents and young people do now? Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has some tips. “Our children...

Emily Reed lost her younger sister Jessica more than 10 years ago. For much of the last decade, she has visited Jessica’s Twitter page to help “keep her memory alive.” Twitter became one of the places where Emily processed her grief and reconnected with a sister she describes as almost like a twin. But Jessica’s account is now gone. Last week, owner Elon Musk announced Twitter would be purging accounts that have had no activity for several years. That decision has been met by an outcry from those who have lost, or who fear losing the thoughts and words...

Anyone in the U.S. who has had a Facebook account at any time since May 24, 2007, can now apply for their share of a $725 million privacy settlement that parent company Meta has agreed to pay. Meta is paying to settle a lawsuit alleging the world’s largest social media platform allowed millions of its users’ personal information to be fed to Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. It is not clear how much money individual users will receive. The larger the number of people submitting valid claims, the smaller each payment will be...

Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature voted on June 16 to end funding for a pandemic-era child care subsidy program over the objections of Democrats and child care providers who argued that the move would be devastating for needy families and the state’s economy. The GOP-controlled Joint Finance Committee, which writes the state budget, voted to kill funding around 2:30 a.m. after the start of its meeting was delayed more than 10 hours. The Child Care Counts program handed out nearly $600 million to more than 4,900 child care providers from March 2020 through March 2023, according to the...

Moments after Donald Trump pleaded not guilty to federal charges that he hoarded classified documents and then conspired to obstruct an investigation about it, the Republicans in Congress defended his alleged criminal actions. Speaker Kevin McCarthy dashed off a fundraising email decrying the “witch hunt” against the former president and urging donors to sign up and “stand with Trump.” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell steered clear of criticizing the former president, refusing to engage in questions about the unprecedented indictment. And at a public meeting in the Capitol basement, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene compared the case against Trump to...