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Surgeon General delivers a stark warning on social media...
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Morning Brew

Cariuma

Good morning. One of the things they don’t tell you about professional life is that when you excel at your job, you get promoted and become a manager of people…which is an entirely different job than the one you were doing before. And it turns out being a good boss requires more than just leaning on someone’s desk and asking, “How was your weekend, champ?”

To help you upgrade your manager skills, we’re running a Leadership Accelerator starting on May 29. It’s an eight-week virtual course designed to help you become the boss people fear how much they love.

Today is your last chance to apply, and when you do, use code MAY200 to get $200 off.

Cassandra Cassidy, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Neal Freyman

MARKETS

Nasdaq

12,560.25

S&P

4,145.58

Dow

33,055.51

10-Year

3.700%

Bitcoin

$27,205.21

Yelp

$34.38

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 3:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

  • Markets: Stocks sagged as investors wondered whether those “productive” debt-ceiling meetings would actually lead to the production of a deal to raise the borrowing cap. The “X-date” by which the US would default on its debts could arrive in eight days.
  • Stock spotlight: Yelp shares popped after an activist investment firm called on the review app to explore strategic alternatives, including a sale, the WSJ reported. The activist investor believes that Yelp could fetch a price that’s more than double its current value.
 

HEALTH

Surgeon General issues SOS on kids and social media

Surgeon General issues SOS on kids and social media Photo Illustration: Hannah Minn

The kids are not all right, and the US Surgeon General believes social media is to blame.

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy issued a powerful public advisory yesterday warning of the considerable risks that social media poses to young people’s mental health. “Nearly every teenager in America uses social media, and yet we do not have enough evidence to conclude that it is sufficiently safe for them,” Murthy wrote. He argued that kids have “become unknowing participants in a decades-long experiment.”

The surgeon general’s report focuses on the impacts of social media on teens and kids—both positive and negative—and the attendant health risks. The report outlines two types of dangers associated with social networks: content-related problems, such as negative self-image or bullying, and use-related problems, such as poor sleep and addiction.

What we know about social media and kids’ mental health

By all accounts, America’s youth are currently experiencing a mental health crisis.

  • The number of teens and young adults with clinical depression doubled between 2011 and 2021, according to San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge.
  • In 2021, the CDC found that nearly 25% of teenage girls had made a suicide plan.

Many experts have pointed to social media as a potential cause since the deterioration of kids’ mental health has coincided with the rise of social media platforms over the last decade.

Still, the effect of likes, retweets, and TikTok comments on kids’ brains remains more or less a mystery. We know that social media use affects adolescents and that teens show alarming rates of anxiety and depression. But studies that have attempted to determine whether social media is a direct cause of worsening mental health have been inconclusive. Plus, not all kids are impacted by social media similarly: Some—adolescent girls, for instance—appear to be more at risk than others.

Big picture: While researchers search for answers, some lawmakers are pushing ahead with restrictions on teens’ use of social media. In March, Utah became the first state to establish a curfew for teens on social media apps and mandate that parents have access to their children’s accounts. Other states are considering similar measures.—CC

     

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Tour de headlines

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Ron DeSantis will announce he’s running for president on Twitter Spaces. True story. Tonight at 6pm ET, the Florida governor, a Republican, will launch his White House run in a conversation with Twitter CEO Elon Musk on the platform’s live audio feature. The chat will be moderated by David Sacks, a tech entrepreneur who supports DeSantis and is pals with Musk. Meanwhile, the man whom DeSantis will be chasing for the GOP nomination, Donald Trump, found out that the trial for his criminal hush-money payment case will begin on March 25.

You can no longer mooch off your friend’s Netflix account for free. In a long-awaited move, Netflix announced that it’s cracking down on password sharing in the US. If you’ve got Netflix’s standard account, you can add someone to your account outside of your house for an extra $7.99/month. Netflix Premium subscribers can add two additional members, while subscribers to the cheapest two tiers can’t share their account. Execs are banking on the password-sharing crackdown to boost revenue, estimating last year that 100 million households were watching Netflix through an account that wasn’t theirs.

Meta offloads Giphy for peanuts. The tech giant sold the GIF platform it had recently bought at a steep loss after the UK’s competition regulator demanded it unwind its acquisition over antitrust concerns. Meta had acquired Giphy in 2020 for $400 million, and yesterday it sold the company to Shutterstock for nearly $350 million less than that—$53 million. Meta must have caught UK regulators in a bad mood: This was the first instance of British authorities dismantling a Big Tech deal that had already closed.

TECH

Don’t sleep on Claude

Human connecting with nodes representing AI Anthropic

“No AI revolution without a constitution!” That’s the rallying cry of generative AI startup Anthropic, which makes constitutionally governed AI tech like Claude, a chatbot rival of ChatGPT.

Anthropic announced yesterday that it raised $450 million in a mammoth round led by Google and Salesforce. This infusion puts Anthropic behind only ChatGPT-creator OpenAI among AI startups in total funding, per Crunchbase.

What’s with the whole constitution thing?

It’s not a bit. Anthropic was founded in 2021 as a public benefit corporation by former OpenAI employees who sought to prioritize AI safety. With that in mind, they designed their AI chatbot, Claude, to adhere to values expressed in a constitution. It doesn’t start with “We the algorithms…” but instead gets inspiration from documents like the UN Universal Charter of Human Rights and Apple’s Terms of Service.

According to the constitution, Claude must avoid stereotyping groups of people, spreading misinformation, and offending non-Western audiences, among other toxic chatbot behaviors.

Looking ahead...Claude is already integrated into Slack, and it’ll soon be chatting up Zoom users. Anthropic says it plans to add new products, make its algorithms more powerful, and carry on with AI safety research.—SK

     

TRANSPORTATION

LA gets shade—just not the kind it wanted

New La sombrita structure at LA bus stop. LADOT/Twitter

Sometimes the most hated person on social media can be a metal structure just trying its best.

In this case, the structure is La Sombrita, the Los Angeles Transportation Department’s latest attempt to shield riders from the bright SoCal sun and provide light for night commuters. But instead of welcoming La Sombrita onto their sidewalks, LA residents asked “For real?” when they saw the structure introduced last week.

One look at La Sombrita and you can understand the skepticism. These sorta-shelters, which are attached to a bus-stop pole and resemble an oversized fly swatter, can provide shade for maybe two people—if they are in a passionate embrace.

La Sombrita is a Band-Aid on a third-degree sunburn, but its creators say the structure is the best they could do amid cumbersome government regulations. Los Angeles has a 16-step process that involves getting approvals from at least eight separate city departments to install a traditional bus shelter. Meanwhile, La Sombrita’s minimal footprint means it can skirt all that red tape.

Big picture: Its designers stress this is just a pilot program and isn’t meant to meet all of the city’s bus-stop shade needs. But La Sombrita’s many critics still say, “Do better.”—MM

     

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GRAB BAG

Key performance indicators

Airbus A319-111, from Air France company, taking off from the Barcelona airport, in Barcelona on 26th May 2022. Urbanandsport/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Stat: You know those flights where you take off, chug one ginger ale, and then prepare for landing? France is outlawing them. A rule that bans short-haul domestic flights on routes that would take less than 2.5 hours to travel by train went into effect yesterday. The goal is to reduce CO2 emissions from aircraft (which account for 2% of all global emissions), though critics call the move mostly symbolic. By our estimates, here in the US, a similar law would essentially ban flights between NYC and Philly (and probably a few more).

Quote: “Go to hell, Shell, and don’t you come back no more.”

Shell’s annual shareholders meeting in London devolved into a circus as climate protesters jeered executives with their take on “Hit the Road Jack” and attempted to rush the stage, forcing security personnel to form a chain and protect the oil giant’s C-suite. But it’s not just protesters cussing out Shell—the company is being pressured by activist shareholders to slash absolute carbon emissions by 2030. Shell’s CEO Wael Sawan claimed after the meeting that “the silent majority” was on board with its goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Read: A UX analysis of the Ticketmaster app. (Built for Mars)

NEWS

What else is brewing

  • Peloton, in a new marketing campaign, is trying to rebrand itself as a fitness company for everyone rather than a fancy in-home bikemaker. It also refreshed its app and introduced new pricing tiers, including a free option.
  • Target is pulling some LGBTQ merchandise from its Pride Collection, citing backlash from customers and the need to protect the safety of its employees.
  • Apple inked a megadeal with the tech manufacturing giant Broadcom to make 5G radio components in the US.
  • “She-cession” no more: US companies employ more women now than at any point in history.
  • Photoshop + generative AI = .

RECS

Wednesday to-do list

Dan Toomey asks: Should we just ban meetings forever?

Track sharks: This site lets you follow tagged sharks around the ocean to promote “facts over fear.”

Bathrooms, rated: One TikToker rates her No. 2’s in various bathrooms, including a Cartier store.

Password in the danger zone? Get a new one using this Kenny Loggins password generator.

Webinar: Learn how you can build a modern data architecture with unified governance and seamless data movement without giving up performance and compliance. Register now.*

*This is sponsored advertising content.

GAMES

The puzzle section

Word Search: How well do you know your First Ladies of the US? Find out in today’s Word Search.

Bros being bros

On Brother’s Day (today), we’ll give you the first names of some brothers, and you have to determine their last names.

  1. Stephen and Seth
  2. Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon, and Michael
  3. Owen and Luke
  4. Wilhelm and Jacob
  5. Ari, Rahm, and Zeke
  6. Liam and Noel

AROUND THE BREW

Doctor’s orders: Grab this report

Doctor’s orders: Grab this report

Healthcare Brew’s new State of the Industry Report dives into Big Tech’s impact on hospitals. Snag it here.

Need post-Vanderpump Rules plans? Check out our one-week sprint, Quarterly Planning. Clarify your strategy for Q3 to focus on what matters.

So you launched a startup…now what? At our Startup Sanity Check virtual event, we spoke with a VC and an entrepreneur about raising money in these uncertain times.

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ANSWER

1. Curry

2. That’s the Jackson 5.

3. Wilson

4. They’re the Brothers Grimm.

5. Emanuel

6. Gallagher (of Oasis)

         

Written by Neal Freyman, Cassandra Cassidy, Matty Merritt, and Sam Klebanov

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