A social psychologist known for bashing trigger warnings and safe spaces is back with another controversial take on what’s ailing today’s youth that’s got everyone talking about whether phones need to be kept on a shelf too high for kids to reach.

In his new book, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, NYU business school professor Jonathan Haidt argues that the replacement of “play-based childhood” with “phone-based childhood” is the major cause of rising rates of adolescent mental illness around the world.

There’s no doubt that the world is in the midst of a youth mental health crisis, but the book has sparked a debate over something you may remember from Intro to Psychology: correlation vs. causation.

Haidt says…people born around the turn of this century (aka Gen Z) are the first humans to have grown up with smartphones, which caused this generation to develop depression and anxiety disorders in way higher numbers than older generations. He says his book cites several experimental studies that allow researchers “to infer causality” and 64 studies that show “significant correlations” between phone usage and poor mental health.

But his critics say that inference might be too big a leap.

• There’s evidence showing correlation between rising rates of smartphone usage and youth mental illness, but nothing to prove that one causes the other, psychologist Candice L. Odgers wrote in her review of the book for Nature. (You can read Haidt’s response here.)
• Judith Warner’s review for the Washington Post argues that Haidt “minimizes” the psychological impact of growing up in the fallout of 9/11, economic turmoil, school shootings, the climate crisis, and a far-too-long list of other stressors.
• Openness to mental health counseling has also increased as reported rates of anxiety have increased, Yale finance professor Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham pointed out on X.

Big picture: Everybody pretty much agrees that cutting down screen time and subbing in more exercise, socializing, and sunshine are good ideas.—ML

Venture capitalists know how difficult it is to spot promising early investment opportunities, and the story of the Ring doorbell is the perfect example.

Even the all-knowing Sharks from Shark Tank declined the offer to buy 10% of Ring for $700,000, and now the company has blown up (acquired by Amazon for $1b)—all thanks to retail distribution.

Next, let’s turn our attention to RYSE, the brand positioned to follow a similar trajectory. The founder pitched on Canada’s version of Shark Tank, Dragons’ Den, received two offers, and now their patented smart shades tech is currently sold in over 100 Best Buy stores.

Here’s how you can follow the Dragons’ lead and become an early investor in RYSE.

Top Iranian general believed to be killed in Israeli airstrike. Iran said yesterday that an Israeli missile destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus and killed Gen. Ali Reza Zahdi, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps., his deputy, and five other officers. The incident represents an escalation in the shadow war between Israel and Iran, which has been heating up amid Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. Iran vowed to retaliate.

Google will destroy billions of records to settle a privacy lawsuit. The search giant has agreed to wipe data on millions of users’ browsing histories as part of a settlement resolving a class action filed in 2020 that claimed Chrome’s Incognito mode wasn’t nearly as incognito as users were led to believe. Google will also update its disclosures about what it tracks and let Incognito users block third-party cookies. The deal, which still requires a judge’s approval, doesn’t include damages for individual users, but attorneys who brought the case say it could be worth as much as $7.8 billion—and the settlement permits individuals to sue for their own damages.

Florida’s top court will allow six-week abortion ban. The state’s Supreme Court handed down two decisions on abortion yesterday. One found that the state constitution’s privacy protections don’t cover abortion, overturning years of precedent and clearing the way for a recently passed ban on the procedure after six weeks to take effect. But the other will give voters a say: The court approved a proposed constitutional amendment expanding abortion access to go on the ballot in November. So far, abortion rights have won every time they’ve been put to voters since Roe v. Wade was struck down.

Of all the decisions that 18-year-olds can make about their future, one is becoming more popular: going to trade school.

The increasing appeal of skilled trade work is throwing a wrench in the enrollment levels of pricey four-year institutions as more young people opt out of traditional college and opt into vocational programs that offer good pay and stability, per the Wall Street Journal.

• The number of students enrolled in vocational-focused community colleges increased 16% from 2022 to 2023, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse.
• The number of students studying construction at two-year undergraduate programs rose ~12% since 2021.

Why? Four-year schools used to seem like the most straightforward path to a high salary, but with their costs going up, they also lead to a lot of debt. Meanwhile, a shortage in skilled workers has driven up workers’ earnings: Median pay for construction workers rose more than 5% last year to $48,089, compared to $39,520 for new hires in professional services (like accountants and IT workers), according to payroll provider ADP.

Plus…software can’t repair a leak in your roof (yet). In a recent survey, the majority of young people said blue-collar jobs seemed more secure than white-collar ones amid developments in generative AI technology that could render some jobs obsolete.—CC

Can I get AI with that? Miso Robotics’ AI-powered robot, Flippy, could soon be cooking up your fries. Backed by 153k+ hours of training data, Flippy’s AI does the repetitive jobs fast-food chains struggle to fill. Flippy’s already cooked 2m baskets for top brands like White Castle. Now you can invest in Miso as they scale up in the $1t fast-food industry.

The man who murdered Lin Qi, one of the producers of Netflix’s hit sci-fi series 3 Body Problem, was recently sentenced to death by a Chinese court. The judgment brings some closure to a heinous crime that has rattled the Chinese tech industry and brought a dark undercurrent to the buzzy streaming show.

Chilling case

Chinese gaming billionaire Lin Qi was fatally poisoned in 2020 by his colleague, a lawyer named Xu Yao, the court found. According to the court, Xu’s decision to kill the 39-year-old star entertainment executive was motivated by workplace jealousy and resentment.

Lin hired Xu in 2017 to help fulfill his dream of making one of China’s landmark literary exports, Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, bingeable for audiences globally. Xu was tasked with heading The Three Body Universe, a subsidiary of Lin’s company, Yoozoo, which hoovered up various IP rights related to the trilogy. But after the company inked the big Netflix deal, Xu was sidelined, reportedly prompting him to meticulously plot his boss’s murder.

Inspired by the TV series Breaking Bad, Xu tested poisons that he bought on the dark web on small animals, per the Chinese business magazine Caixin. He gave Lin probiotic pills that contained a fatal substance, which killed him 10 days later. Four other colleagues were also poisoned but survived.

As for 3 Body Problem...the Netflix series has been met with general approval from critics, but hasn’t entirely lived up to the books’ acclaim. Lin is credited posthumously as an executive producer.—SK

Stat: If your job would baffle your great-grandmother, you’re not alone. About six out of every 10 jobs people do today didn’t exist in 1940, according to a new analysis of US census data from 1940 to 2018 led by an MIT economist. While many of those jobs were created by new technologies, some came from changing consumer needs. And while in the first 40 years of that nearly 80-year period most of the new jobs, which included many manufacturing and clerical positions, were scooped up by the middle class, the more recent jobs have tended to be either highly paid white-collar roles or lower-wage service jobs.

Quote: “Bhargava behaved more like a gangster than a trusted business partner.”

Sports Illustrated’s owner, Authentic Brands Group, came out swinging yesterday in a $49 million lawsuit against 5-Hour Energy founder Manoj Bhargava, claiming his company Arena Group, which licensed the rights to publish the magazine, stopped paying its bills in hopes of getting a sweeter deal. In case you missed the chaos, the legal action comes after Arena laid off most of the publication’s staff and lost its license to publish the magazine (which has since been given to a new partner). The suit alleges that Bhargava and his company “tried to weaponize their obstinance” and owe damages on top of the missed payments.

Read: Why did this guy put a song about me on Spotify? How one man games the way we find music. (New York Times)