So, you’ve got your insight (yay!). But now you need to articulate it in a way that’s both sharp and sticky (gah!). Alex Mason has shared her 7 thoughtstarters for this bit of lexical lassoing:
“What’s the most extreme version of this? What am I too afraid to say out loud? What’s the rudest way to say this? What’s a metaphor for this? How would a 5 year old say this? What if I personified this? What’s the enemy?”
The UK has followed Australia in announcing a ban on social media for children under 16. And I’d bet you my last Jammie Dodger that other countries will do the same.
But will the ban work? Phil Agnew of the Nudge podcast has been rummaging through the literature to find out:
“It won't stop every single child from accessing social media, but it will dramatically reduce the numbers of children endlessly doom scrolling. Many children will feel at first that temptation to circumvent the ban, but as time goes on, that desire will lessen. And perhaps most importantly [...] it fundamentally changes the product. With no British children on social media, the actual content on social media will get significantly worse.”
Related, Ofcom ran passive monitoring to understand how 8-14 year olds in the UK use the internet. Apparently 58% of them are on Roblox. *Googles 'what is Roblox'. Feels 100 years old.*
Speaking of feeling old, perhaps Vogue’s TikTok trend tracker will stop me fossilising completely, or at least slow the petrification. No surprise what’s been big this month ⚽⚽⚽
Tom Goodwin has once again been talking the mother, father and extended family of all sense. This time on ‘doing things from the heart, not the .xls’
“Every retailer is a self checkout [...] The British Airways lounge has glasses so small, it's like being in a bed and breakfast in 1980 when Orange juice was expensive [...] In a world of efficiency we get more, a lot more, but also we kinda lose everything. We strip out humanity, we strip out care, craft, passion, pride, joy [...] Everything becomes fast, optimized, cheaper, abundant and at the same time, perhaps, in ways we don't yet realize, totally empty.”
David Rumsey’s collection of 149,677 maps, now with an AI Search Assist. Run, don’t walk.
78 free MIT courses to try, courtesy of Kel Rakowski.
Fancy a change of view? Take a peek through someone else's window.
Bon weekend,
Fran