James' World 2

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We see myriad examples of ambitious kids hoping not to disappoint their big-shot Ivy League parents, from the White Lotus’ Saxton, who is eagerly hoping to impress his seemingly successful Duke-grad finance dad, to the pressure facing Rory Gilmore to succeed at Yale, her grandparents’ alma mater, in Gilmore Girls. The desire to mirror parents’ success may work against some aspirational college students, churning up signs of physiological stress, according to one study. 

The study, published in Frontiers in Psychiatry from researchers in Germany and Switzerland, analyzed how parental educational attainment may be associated with the stress of their teenage children starting college. Researchers compared hair cortisol concentrations (HHCs) from women in their first semester of college from families where parents had graduated from tertiary education with students from families where parents did not (the stress hormone is typically measured using blood, urine, or saliva samples, and, more recently, hair). While the study was published in 2020, it may be especially timely today, as students face more economic uncertainty and a workforce rapidly changing, largely thanks to AI. 

Those who had at least one parent graduate from college appeared to have more physiological stress after starting school than those whose parents did not graduate from college. While self-reported stress levels did not vary, the physiological stress measured by HHCs did. 

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From Facebook to X to TikTok, today’s social media giants position themselves as bastions of free speech. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg now says fact-checking caused “too much censorship,” while TikTok brandishes a freedom-of-expression argument against its forced sale. Who, after all, could argue against the untrammeled freedom to speak?

The answer, it transpires, might be anyone paying attention. As we begin to understand the cataclysmic effect of viral misinformation flooding social media, the undeniable reality is that these media empires profiteer hugely from division and fear. In everything from politics to health, falsehoods propagated across social media cause immense harm. From 2018’s genocide against Myanmar’s Rohingya people, incited on Facebook, to X, Facebook and Telegram posts last year that sparked violent anti-immigrant riots in the U.K. to the people who gave 1.8 million views to a TikTok video that encouraged them to take bleach enemas to cure supposed parasite infestation, the evidence is clear that social media myths cause huge societal harm.

While Europe has moved to hold social media giants accountable, U.S. efforts have almost completely faltered, with YouTube, X and other platforms curtailing misinformation teams and allowing conspiracy theories to run riot. The industry’s now familiar attempts to deny responsibility for the harms of immensely lucrative products follows a familiar, deeply instructive playbook: the tobacco industry’s strategy of obstruction.

Just as four in 10 people were once smokers in the U.S., poisoning their lungs, vast numbers of people now get their news through the editorial prism of social media, poisoning their perceptions.

Around a fifth of Americans now get their news from social media influencers. A recent European survey of older teenagers and young adults found that 42 percent got their news mainly from social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. In the past two decades, social media giants have displaced traditional media as the news source for many, without the pesky issues of journalistic integrity or editorial responsibility. Instead they profit off engagement. And it is here that the corporate avarice and mendacity of the tobacco industry are especially illuminating.

Long before the overwhelming harms of smoking were widely known, tobacco companies already knew their product was harmful and addictive. Instead of taking corrective action, they spent decades undermining any regulation, even while cigarettes continued to kill millions. Opting not to mitigate harms but to instead distract from the overwhelming evidence their product was deadly, they aggressively pushed their product on vulnerable audiences. One now infamous leaked memo from a tobacco company in the 1960s bragged that “doubt is our product,” a means to distract from the harms of their profitable industry.

In the information age, social media companies are no different. From their own internal metrics, tech giants have long known what independent research now continuously validates: that the content that is most likely to go viral is that which induces strong feelings such as outrage and disgust, regardless of its underlying veracity. Moreover, they also know that such content is heavily engaged with and most profitable. Far from acting against false, harmful content, they placed profits above its staggering—and damaging—social impact to implicitly encourage it while downplaying the massive costs.

We’ve known this at least since the aftermath of the divisive 2016 American presidential election, where the culpability of social media for its signature triumph of fictions was greeted with what now looks like mock contrition. Tech giants such as Facebook even trumpeted their partnerships with fact-checking organizations.

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CLIMATEWIRE | Widespread layoffs this week at the Department of Health and Human Services have effectively dismantled programs aimed at keeping Americans safe from extreme heat and other climate-driven weather.

Last year was the warmest on record. But layoffs at HHS include staff that administer grants that help state and local health departments prepare and respond to extreme weather events such as heat waves, as well as federal workers tasked with maintaining online tools that raise awareness about the dangers of heat and tell people how to protect themselves from fatal conditions such as heat stroke.

“This is really important, valuable work,” said Lori Freeman, CEO for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “As entire departments are cut, we are concerned that it will decimate resources available to key state and local work.”

That includes the entire staff of a federal program that helps low-income households pay utility bills for air conditioning and heating.

Congress’ recently passed continuing resolution allocated $378 million to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It provides support to some 6 million Americans.

But the staff who normally would process that money and send it to states where it can be spent to keep air conditioners running through summer heat waves are now all on administrative leave, and will be terminated June 2.

“There are over 6 million families that are helped through this program, and now there is a possibility that the administration won’t allocate them,” said Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which represents states. “It’s deeply disturbing.”

Heat can be deadly when people don’t have access to air conditioning, as the majority of Americans who die from heat perish indoors. Cutting LIHEAP staff, and potentially preventing funds from reaching people in need, could cost lives, said Amneh Minkara, deputy director of the Sierra Club Building Electrification Campaign.

“The elimination of the staff administering LIHEAP could have dire, potentially deadly, impacts for folks who will not be able to safely cool their homes as we enter what is predicted to be another historically hot summer,” she said.

LIHEAP isn’t alone. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly the entire staff for the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP) has been axed, including those who worked in the climate and health program that provides grants to local and state health departments.

Currently, the climate program, which annually receives $10 million in congressional appropriations, is funding grants to 13 state and local health departments. Those grants are in their fourth of five years, and recipients next week are supposed to submit annual reviews of how they have used the funds before they can be allocated the last year of funds.

“The reports are just going to sit there because there is no one left to review them and approve their next year of funding,” said one employee who until this week worked in DEHSP’s climate and health program. The employee was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Asked about the funds, HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said the agency “will continue to comply with statutory requirements, and as a result of the reorganization, will be better positioned to execute on Congress’ statutory intent.”

She did not respond to follow-up questions asking how HHS would allocate funds to states without help from staff members who have been laid off.

Asked about HHS layoffs more broadly during a POLITICO Live event, HHS special government employee Calley Means said, “it is insane for you to insinuate that the thing standing between us and better health is more government bureaucrats.”

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