The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a challenge to its contacts with social media platforms to combat what administration officials said was misinformation. The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged the contacts had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them…
Amy Conroy sat alone in a veterinary exam room, hands clutching a water bottle, eyes blinking back tears. Her 16-year-old cat, Leisel, had been having trouble breathing. Now, she was waiting for an update. The door opened, and Laurie Maxwell came in. Ms. Maxwell works for MedVet, a 24-hour emergency veterinary hospital in Chicago. But…
When the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he was planning to push for a mental health warning label on social media platforms, he was met with cheers from many parents and teachers, who described a long, lonely struggle to wrench children away from a habit that was hurting them. He…
The U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he would push for a warning label on social media sites that says the platforms can harm the mental health of young people. When she heard the news, Jean Twenge, a research psychologist who has spent years warning about the risks of social media,…
The United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he would push for a warning label on social media platforms advising parents that using the platforms might damage adolescents’ mental health. Warning labels — like those that appear on tobacco and alcohol products — are one of the most powerful tools available…
At Yale College, a Jewish junior said she was discouraged from joining a secret society she had been admitted to when members began to suspect she was a Zionist after she mentioned attending an event at the Slifka Center, Yale’s main hub for Jewish life. The student, who asked to remain anonymous because she feared…
Ahead of the U.S. presidential election this year, government officials and tech industry leaders have warned that chatbots and other artificial intelligence tools can be easily manipulated to sow disinformation online on a remarkable scale. To understand how worrisome the threat is, we customized our own chatbots, feeding them millions of publicly available social media…
Alice McDermott, 70, writer There are three kinds of novels I’ve never taken to heart: science fiction, murder mysteries and novels about novelists. So I’ve decided to try my hand at each. If I fail, they’re probably not books I’d want to read anyway. Thurston Moore, 65, musician and author I’m putting the final touches…
After former President Donald J. Trump was kicked off Twitter in 2021, conservative entrepreneurs rushed to promote social media alternatives tailored to him and his supporters. There were Parler and Gab, Twitter-like sites popular among the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Then came Gettr, a social media app created by one…
Last spring, Tia Washington, 52, a mother of three in Dublin, Calif., received a stern warning from her doctor: If she didn’t quickly gain control of her high blood pressure, she was likely to end up in the emergency room. He wrote a prescription for blood pressure medication and urged her to see a health…
