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Title Story

JUNK FOOD FOR THE BRAIN

I came of age in a time when silence was not an emergency. If a conversation stalled, no one reached for anything. There was nothing to reach for. We sat with the pause until it filled itself—often awkwardly, sometimes brilliantly—with gossip, speculation, or the kind of half-formed dreams that only sound plausible when spoken aloud among friends. We met at malls and on street corners and in basements that smelled faintly of soda and rebellion. We were unsupervised, occasionally bored, and fully present.

Today, silence has become intolerable. The briefest lull in conversation is enough to summon a phone from a pocket, as if on reflex. Heads bow. Eyes glaze. What might have become connection is swallowed instead by a feed designed to erase the very sensation of being alone with one’s thoughts. For teenagers, this ritual has become so normalized that the absence of a screen now feels abnormal, even threatening.

Australia Pulls the Plug

Which is why Australia’s recent decision to ban social media for children under sixteen feels less like a regulatory tweak and more like a cultural rupture.

Beginning this week, platforms including Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Reddit, and X are legally required to block users under sixteen or face substantial fines. The burden of enforcement falls not on children or parents but squarely on the companies themselves, many of which have spent years insisting that their existing safeguards were sufficient.

The stated rationale is familiar: social media has been linked to rising rates of anxiety, depression, body-image distortion, bullying, sexual exploitation, and criminal extortion among adolescents. What’s new is the willingness of a government to treat these harms not as unfortunate side effects of innovation but as predictable outcomes of an often malicious algorithm.

Critics have raised objections that sound, by now, almost ritualistic. Free speech concerns. Privacy concerns. Lawsuits filed by teenagers who argue that their political expression is being curtailed. Tech companies warning that age verification technologies are imperfect, intrusive, or easily circumvented. All of which may be true, and all of which feel curiously bloodless when weighed against the mental-health data accumulating over the past decade.

The Great Rewiring of Childhood

Jonathan Haidt, in his recent book The Anxious Generation, describes what he calls the “great rewiring” of childhood. For most of human history, children learned to regulate fear, build confidence, and negotiate social hierarchies through unstructured play. Then, between 2010 and 2015, that model collapsed with startling speed. The play-based childhood was replaced by a phone-based one, mediated by platforms that reward comparison, performance, and perpetual self-surveillance.

The timing is difficult to ignore. Prior to 2010, rates of adolescent anxiety and depression were relatively stable. Afterward, they surged. By 2019, one in four American undergraduates reported struggling with anxiety or depression. Among teenage girls, rates climbed even higher, with nearly a third reporting that they had seriously considered suicide within the past year. Similar patterns have appeared across the United Kingdom, Australia, and much of Northern Europe, suggesting that culture alone cannot explain what is happening.

What social media offers young users is not, as advertised, connection, but something closer to a hall of mirrors. Every post becomes a referendum. Every image invites comparison. Every silence feels like exclusion. The algorithms, exquisitely tuned, deliver what keeps users scrolling rather than what might help them grow. It is junk food for the brain: instantly gratifying, nutritionally empty, and difficult to stop consuming once the habit is formed.

“Everyone Else Has One”

Parents are acutely aware of this, and yet many feel trapped by what economists would call a collective-action problem. When every other child appears to be online, withholding access can feel like a social punishment rather than a protective measure. Australia’s ban, whatever its imperfections, breaks that trap by resetting the default. When no one under sixteen is allowed in, the pressure to join evaporates.

Could This Happen Here?

Whether such a policy could take hold in the United States remains an open question. Federal action seems unlikely in the near term, hampered by political gridlock and formidable lobbying from the technology sector. Yet state-level restrictions are proliferating, and courts have already shown a willingness to uphold age-based limits in other online contexts. Even the platforms themselves appear to be preparing, quietly developing age-estimation tools that suggest an awareness that the ground beneath them is shifting.

For a generation raised to believe that connection is something delivered through glass, Australia has proposed a radical idea—that perhaps it is something best learned face to face, in moments of boredom, silence, and imperfect human company. Whether the rest of the world is prepared to follow may determine what childhood looks like in the decades to come.

Cybersecurity Breach of the Week

Russia’s Cyberwar Against Germany

Germany has accused Russian military intelligence of conducting a cyberattack against its air traffic control systems and attempting to interfere in its federal elections—an escalation that underscores how cyber operations are now being used as instruments of state power.

German officials say the GRU-linked hacking group Fancy Bear breached internal communications at the country’s air navigation service provider in August 2024. Flights were not disrupted, but the target matters: air traffic control is critical infrastructure. At the same time, Germany alleges Russia ran a coordinated disinformation campaign, Storm 1516, aimed at destabilizing the February election, including fake videos claiming ballot manipulation and attacks on senior political leaders.

Berlin has summoned the Russian ambassador and vowed coordinated countermeasures with European allies. Moscow has denied the allegations, as it routinely does.

This case highlights an uncomfortable reality Western governments must confront: cyberattacks by nation-state actors, especially against critical infrastructure, should be treated as acts of war. The same seriousness reserved for kinetic attacks must apply in cyberspace.

The United States should lead by establishing a mutually assured destruction deterrence model for cyber warfare, similar to the nuclear Cold War. Until adversaries fear overwhelming consequences, cyberattacks like this will continue—quietly, cheaply, and dangerously.

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Cybersecurity Tip of the Week

The FBI has confirmed that hundreds of millions of stolen passwords were recently recovered from cybercriminals, underscoring just how fragile our online defenses remain. Cybercriminals collect and trade these credentials on underground forums and use them to break into accounts across the internet.

Here’s what you should do right now:

1. Check if your email or passwords have been exposed.

Use the trusted Have I Been Pwned service to see whether your email address (or individual passwords) has shown up in known breaches. This tool lets you check safely without sending your full password to anyone.

2. Change compromised passwords immediately.

If a check shows your login details have been leaked, change that password right away—and don’t reuse it on any other site. Credential stuffing attacks let hackers take one leaked password and try it on dozens of other services.

3. Use unique, strong passwords everywhere.

Password reuse is one of the biggest risks you face. A strong password manager can generate and store complex, unique passwords so you don’t have to memorize them.

4. Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

Even the best password can be stolen. Turning on 2FA adds an extra step—typically a code from an app or SMS—that keeps attackers out even if they have your password. This is the single, most important action you can take to secure your accounts.

Coming Soon!

I recently sat down with A-list actor, producer, and director Ryan Phillippe for a conversation that revolved around a single question he once asked me during a break in filming Breach: what, exactly, does a Hollywood actor have in common with an undercover operative? The answer turned out to be more revealing than either of us expected. The interview will premiere exclusively here for subscribers on January 6—so make sure you’re subscribed. You won’t want to miss it.

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