Social Media Addiction, Jury Duty & The Needle We Can’t Move

1. Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat  If you liked the first season of Jury Duty, the new one is equally ridiculous. Same absurd premise, different setting. Instead of a courtroom, the show drops one unsuspecting guy into a fake company retreat for a made-up hot sauce business. It’s clever and weirdly wholesome, and provides just the right amount of silliness that feels much needed at the moment. Streaming on Prime. Trailer here.

2. Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case

— A jury found Meta and YouTube liable in a major social media addiction case involving a young woman’s mental health harms. We’ll see what happens on appeal, but it feels like a significant moment in the broader conversation about what these platforms are doing to kids and teens.  

3. A thought-provoking New York Times piece — “Dad, how can you simultaneously rail about the dangers of AI and also use it more than anyone I know?” Fair point from one of my kids. BUT, this piece by Ezra Klein does a nice job of capturing that tension. And it digs into why I’m more worried about how it’s impacting our kids’ yet-to-be-developed brains. A few insightful excerpts:

What makes A.I. truly persuasive isn’t that it praises our ideas or insights, it’s that it restates and extends them in a more compelling form than we initially offered, and does so while reflecting a polished image of ourselves back at us. . . .

But what would it mean to grow up with that kind of companion? What would it mean to have your every adolescent intuition turned into persuasive prose? What is lost in not having to do the work to build out our intuitions ourselves?

“Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded.” — Jess Lair

“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” — James Baldwin

The Needle We Can’t Move

Watching five kids grow up gives you a perspective that’s hard to come by with one or two. You get to watch a full cast of characters emerge.

Some could ride a bike at four; others were still on training wheels at almost eight. One likes to stay home in pajamas most of the day; another leaves at sunrise and comes home at dark. One is always buried in a book; another only reads if it’s an ESPN article. One who purposely lets one rip when everyone gets in the car, one who would be absolutely mortified. I could list fifty more examples just like these.

After a while, a humbling truth becomes impossible to ignore: when it comes to the deep-down stuff (personal temperament, natural posture, proclivities, ambition, initiative), kids come in largely pre-wired. The more I parent, the more I believe there’s probably very little we can do to move that needle.

This is where parenting gets hard, especially if you only have one child. An introvert born to two extroverts. An artsy free spirit in a house full of academics. When your kid doesn’t reflect you back at yourself, it’s easy to wonder what you’re doing wrong. The answer, more often than not, is probably nothing. That’s just who they are.

It’s even tougher if you’re the competitive type: the parent who quietly measures their child’s achievements against some invisible scoreboard, who wants not just to be proud, but to be seen as having done something right. If I’m honest, dis me sometimes.

So where can we move the needle? I think you can have real, lasting impact on the things that are actually moldable. You can instill a value set. You can create a deep sense of belonging and unconditional love. You can build a climate that gives your child the room to become the fullest version of who they already are rather than who you imagined they’d be. You can show them what’s possible and provide opportunities.

That climate matters more than most parents realize. It doesn’t mean you abandon expectations or bend to every whim. Hold the bar high on effort and character and attitude. Set standards. But make peace with the fact that you may raise a kid who makes you genuinely wonder if he’s your progeny . . . and love him completely anyway.

That’s the job.