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It seemed like a pretty straightforward exercise.

Arsenii Alenichev typed sentences like “Black African doctors providing care for white suffering children” and “Traditional African healer is helping poor and sick white children” into an artificial intelligence program designed to generate photo-like images.

His goal was to see if AI would come up with images that flip the stereotype of “white saviors or the suffering Black kids,” he says. “We wanted to invert your typical global health tropes.”

Alenichev is quick to point out that he wasn’t designing a rigorous study. A social scientist and postdoctoral fellow with the Oxford-Johns Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative, he’s one of many researchers playing with AI image generators to see how they work.

In his small-scale exploration, here’s what happened: Despite his specifications, with that request, the AI program almost always depicted the children as Black. As for the doctors, he estimates that in 22 of over 350 images, they were white.

Alenichev’s work is part of a broader study of global health images that he is conducting with his adviser, Oxford sociologist Patricia Kingori. For this experiment, they used an AI site called Midjourney, because their reading suggested it was good at producing images that looked very much like photos.

Alenichev didn’t just put in one phrase to see what would happen. He brainstormed ways to see if he could get AI images that matched his specifications, collaborating with anthropologist Koen Peeters Grietens at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp. They realized AI did fine at providing on-point images if asked to show either Black African doctors or white suffering children. It was the combination of those two requests that was problematic.

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Parenting styles are currently all the rage, and the herd of animal-themed subtypes just keeps growing. Tiger, elephant, dolphin, and even jellyfish styles are amongst those that have emerged in an attempt to help parents identify and evaluate their approach and give them a fresh perspective as to how their parenting style affects their kids.

It’s not as though these styles are new, per se. But they function as an easy-to-remember repackaging of the authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive paradigms identified by psychologist Diana Baumrind in the 1960s, which psychologists still widely accepted today.

Baumrind’s parenting style construct focuses on how demanding or structured parents are and their responsiveness to kids’ needs. Authoritative parents who have reasonably high expectations for their kids while at the same time responding to their needs quickly and with warmth embody the best of both worlds. They tend to raise kids who feel appreciated, autonomous, and empowered and are more likely to become independent, motivated, and compassionate adults.

But even with a well-explained and time-tested construct for parenting styles, the question still remains as to what factors and characteristics contribute to healthy authoritative parenting. And researchers from the University of Bucharest recently published a study in Frontiers in Public Health that sheds light on how emotional intelligence, parental competence, self-esteem, and self-compassion inform how people parent.

Using a question-based survey to gather data from 610 respondents, the researchers determined that, as expected, emotional intelligence — the ability to manage your emotions and understand the emotions of people around you — is the underlying foundation for authoritative parenting.

“Parents with a high level of emotional intelligence demonstrate a high level of parental competence as a result of the specific emotional intelligence strategies they use in the parenting process,” the study authors wrote. “The high level of emotional intelligence of parents is associated with the adoption of the authoritative parenting style that is in agreement with specific elements of this intelligence.”

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There are so many benefits of walking. For starters, it’s one of the most beginner-friendly workout modalities out there—not to mention a great form of exercise all on its own. It’s also a proven way to increase cardio endurance and reduce blood pressure and cholesterol.

One thing regular ol’ walking doesn’t do, though, is drastically change the shape and size of your bum. Sure, walking works your glutes (along with your hamstrings, quads, calves, and core), but if your goal is to transform your hot girl walk into a glute-maximizing workout, there are certain tweaks you’ll have to make to your form and/or technique.

Why building glute muscles matters

“As one of the biggest muscles in your body, you want to keep your glutes strong in order to keep your overall body in alignment,” says Rebecca Louise, a mindset and fitness coach and author of It Takes Grit. “They support your lower back, especially when you’re lifting or keeping your pelvis and core stabilized.”

If your glutes aren’t strong enough, the surrounding muscles have to step in to compensate. “This puts a lot of stress on the knees, hips, and lower back,” says Peloton instructor Jess Sims, who notes that your glutes are often considered part of your core. “Your glutes allow the upper and lower extremities [of your body] to function properly.” She points to the example of running: To have proper form, it’s important to tuck your pelvis forward (or, as she likes to say, “take your butt with you”). “If you don’t do this, you might feel pain in your lower back, hips, or knees,” says Sims.

The point is: It’s important to mindfully move in order to activate your glutes and reap even more benefits of walking. Luckily, you don’t have to do anything particularly excessive in order to do so. (Cough, cough: 10,000 steps a day is a myth.) To prove it, ahead you’ll uncover the many benefits of walking and find a number of trainer-approved tweaks to make your steps especially beneficial for building tush strength.  

But first, do you really need to take 10,000 steps a day?

If you’re aiming to get your 10,000 daily steps in hopes of making your butt bigger, we have some bad news for you. According to Los Angeles-based certified personal trainer, Danny Saltos, the short answer is no, walking alone won’t help build your booty muscles, despite the rising trends you may have seen on social media.

That said, the recommendation for walking 10,000 steps a day actually has nothing to do with booty size. “Most trackers have 10K as a default setting, but there’s no major significance to it,” admits NASM-CPT Susane Pata. “It’s good to have a number like 10K steps to aim for because even if you somewhat undershoot it, you can still access benefits. And whereas you don’t necessarily have to hit 10k steps to access the benefits, the more steps you perform per day, the better.”

In general, Pata says that National Academy of Sports Medicine recommends healthy adults engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, which can include brisk walking. “The key phrase to note is ‘at least,’ with more benefits being realized with more activity,” she adds.

Does walking make your bum bigger or smaller?

Walking is absolutely a great form of exercise, and one that doesn’t always get a ton of love because it’s so chill compared to other forms of exercise, Saltos says. But, rather than building butt muscles, walking can actually make your butt a bit smaller.

Here’s why: “Walking is a low-impact movement that offers a great way to burn calories,” Saltos explains. “When you burn more calories than you consume, you lose fat. The body doesn’t discriminate [between] the areas from where fat is lost, and one place where there is typically ample amounts of it is on our rear end.”

With this in mind, if your primary goal is to build your booty, it’s important to supplement your walking routine with effective glute exercises (including upper glute exercises to help grow that coveted shelf). “If you really want to build the size and change the shape [of your butt], you need to strength train with resistance that actually stimulates the muscles in order to really make a change in shape and possibly grow the muscles—it also depends on genetics,” Pata says. “Begin a progressive training program with key exercises like deadlifts and squats, single-leg glute bridges, hip thrusts, and curtsy lunges, among many others. One idea is to perform these exercises before a walk. That way you have activated these muscles and conditioned them and now walking can further condition them.”

Benefits of walking

While walking alone won’t drastically change the size of your booty, that’s not to say the movement is without benefits. According to Pata, walking is a great form of exercise to incorporate into your routine because:

• It’s beginner-friendly
• It burns calories (“Approximately 200 to 500 per hour, depending on walking speed, distance, weight, and walking environment,” she points out.) 
• It can help reduce cholesterol 
• It can help lower blood pressure 
• It increases cardiovascular endurance 
• It strengthens the heart  
• It boosts immunity
• It can reduce anxiety, depression, and stress
• It’s a free, accessible workout

How to activate your glutes when walking

Although walking doesn’t directly create a juicy peach, there are ways to turn a simple stroll into a glute-centric workout that helps strengthen and tone your butt, along with other parts of your lower body. Yes, you can strengthen your glutes through walking, with some strategic tweaks to your daily stroll.

Like with any new fitness routine, patience and consistency is key. To see the results, Saltos recommends doing a minimum of three 30 to 45 minute butt-toning walking workout sessions per week featuring the moves below and committing to it for at least six to eight weeks, but ideally 10 to 12.

1. Hit up an incline

One tried-and-true glute-burning upgrade to a walk is to get your steps on an incline. “Walking on an incline, either on the treadmill or on a hill, is a great way to switch up regular walking and target your glute muscles,” says Louise. Start with a smaller incline and work your way up to increase the intensity.

2. Hold a high knee

For this walking workout, you’re taking four to six steps before balancing on one foot as you bring the opposite leg into a high knee pause. Squeeze the glute of the leg that’s still on the ground, push your hips forward, and draw your navel in towards your spine. “It’s so important to work our bodies unilaterally,” says Sims, referring to working one side at a time. “This helps to eliminate overcompensation and also helps your body neurologically practice balancing so that when you miss a curb or you trip, your body can minimize injury risk because you’ve introduced these balancing movement patterns.”

3. Do some ‘butt zaps’

For this walking tweak—which Sims calls a “butt zap”—simply bring awareness to your glutes by squeezing the glute of the foot that’s still on the ground. “What you’re doing is pushing your pelvis forward as you squeeze the glute,” she says. So, basically, you’re giving an extra squeeze to the side of your glutes that’s powering your base foot, and alternating as you step forward. For an added challenge, Sims recommends exaggerating your walk by putting your heel down first, rolling through the center of your foot, and as you go onto the ball of the foot, do a calf raise, and add the butt zap.

4. Take it sideways

Sims also recommends lateral step-outs, which fire up your gluteus medius, aka the part of your glutes that helps with hip movement. “Turn to the side, bend your knees a bit extra, and do sets of 10 to 20,” she suggests. Break into these after you reach certain minute or mile marks to switch up your steps.

5. Mix it up with a lateral incline

To take things up a notch, try this technique, which Saltos swears by, that puts those lateral steps on an incline. He describes it as “one of the best booty burners of your life.” Remember to take it slow as you’re starting off. And, Saltos notes it’s important to “maintain your balance by keeping your core engaged, holding an athletic and wide stance, and squeezing in your glutes.”

6. Do a lateral hill climb

This technique is similar to the previous one; the difference is you’re talking it outdoors. To really up the challenge factor, Saltos recommends turning it into a full-blown, glute-centric walking workout. Here’s the sequence he recommends: Walk in a flat area for 10 minutes. Then do five to eight sets of 12 reps of left lateral steps uphill, followed by five to eight sets of 12 reps of right lateral steps uphill. Finish with a five-minute cooldown walk in a flat area.

7. Flip it and reverse it

Another genius and highly effective hack for elevating your stroll into a butt-burning sesh is by simply walking backward, which will fire up your glutes and hamstrings. “When taking your steps in reverse, make sure to land with your toes first, a slight lean forward, and your knee over your toe,” Saltos says. “Toe to heel and repeat.” Want more of a challenge? Saltos suggests an interval reverse walk. To do it, walk at a brisk pace for one minute. Then walk in reverse at a moderate pace for one minute. Repeat the cycle for 10 to 15 rounds.

8. Do an interval reverse walk

If you really want to step up your butt-burning walk (no pun intended), you can mix the above techniques into one workout. Saltos calls it “around the world.” Start by walking forward for one minute. Then walk for one minute in reverse, followed by a one-minute walk to the left, and a one-minute walk to the right. Repeat the cycle for five to 10 rounds. You’ll be strengthening the glutes through walking in every direction.

Frequently asked questions

Is it better to walk faster or longer for glute-building?

According to Pata, walking faster can lead to more noticeable glute-boosting results. “Walking faster increases intensity and stimulates the muscles a bit more,” she explains. 

Walking for longer has its benefits, too, though. “Walking longer means more time burning fat (the rate does not change, but the longer you’re at it, the more you burn, as it doesn’t happen fast—it happens with longer distances),” she says. 

More than how fast or how long you walk, Pata says the terrain—meaning hills—has the biggest impact on how your stride targets your glutes. “The terrain is what can make a difference—it can serve as an added stimulus to stress the muscles,” she says. If you don’t live in a place with varying terrain, you can hop on a treadmill to enjoy incline walking (the Bowflex Tread 22, $2,599, features a whopping 20 percent incline), or you can do a few stair climbs before and after to switch it up and tap into your glutes.

How soon will I see results from walking?

It’s normal not to notice physical changes to your body during the first few weeks of walking—even if you’re tailoring your stride for glute benefits. “Physiologic adaptations to exercise occur both immediately on a cellular level and over time in strength and fitness,” Pata says. “The type and frequency of exercise you engage in will play a significant role in how your body adapts to exercise and in what time frame.” In a 2023 study published in the Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness, researchers found that, following 12 weeks of walking 10,000 steps a day, obese college-aged women experienced some weight loss, increased muscle conditioning, and most importantly, improved cardiorespiratory fitness.

Which shoes are best for glute-centric walking workouts?

The best shoes for walking are those that are cushy and cozy so that you can take your steps comfortably while wearing them. Meanwhile, the best shoes for general glute strength training tend to be flatter, as they offer more stability. That said, walking in super flat sneakers isn’t very comfortable, so opt for something cushy-yet-stable, such as the Hoka Women’s Clifton 9 ($145), Adidas Ultraboost Light Running Shoes ($190), Lululemon Blissfeel 2 Women’s Running Shoe ($128), or APL Women’s TechLoom Dream ($250). (FYI: While walking offers different benefits than running, all of these shoes are also great for picking up the pace.)

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Photo: Getty Images/Nazar Abbas Photography

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The scale of last weekend’s surprise attacks by Hamas militants on Israel has staggered Israel and the world.

Hundreds of Israelis have been killed, thousands injured and dozens still held hostage by Hamas, young children included. Israel’s ongoing retaliation has left hundreds of Palestinians dead, at least 90 children among them, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And humanitarian groups are warning of a coming crisis if Israel follows through on its vow to cut off food, water, and electricity to Gaza, where nearly half of residents are under 18 years of age.

The news is alarming for anyone — and especially for children, who may be left grappling with questions about why other children are among those affected, and whether they are safe. Here’s some advice on how to get started with talking to kids about the conflict.

Be proactive about starting the conversation

Children of all ages deserve a conversation, said experts interviewed by NPR — even those without loved ones who live in Israel or Gaza.

Many children are likely to have heard something already, experts agreed, whether from peers at school, by picking up on news broadcasts or by overhearing adults’ conversations.

Often, parents choose to sit back, believing that their kids will start a conversation when they feel ready. That can be a mistake, said Waheeda Saif, a program coordinator at Riverside Trauma Center in Massachusetts. “We don’t want to wait for our kids to come to us,” she said.

Instead, Saif suggests using open-ended questions to start a conversation: “‘Have you heard what’s been going on in the world?’ ‘Have you heard anything about what’s going on in Israel and Palestine?’ And just see what they say, and take it from there,” she said.

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This brings the total budget earmarked for the next five years to €1bn.

So is Germany about to take a leap forward in fusion engineering?

“We want to create a fusion ecosystem with industry, so that a fusion power plant in Germany becomes reality as quickly as possible,” said Minister of Research, Bettina Stark-Watzinger.

Nuclear fusion is the reaction that powers the sun. It produces vast amounts of energy by fusing together hydrogen nuclei.

If it can be harnessed here on Earth, then it promises abundant, cheap, and emission-free electricity.

But the engineering hurdles are daunting. Sparking a fusion reaction and keeping it going needs immense temperature and pressure, and will require technology that is yet to be invented.

Private firms and government projects around the world have made much progress in recent years in overcoming the challenges.

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Can Germany’s strong engineering base accelerate fusion technology?

Germany is home to the advanced Wendelstein 7-X fusion experiment

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You might be able to identify a narcissistic friend, colleague, or partner—perhaps by their constant show of self-importance or sole focus on themselves. The signs that you grew up with a narcissistic parent, though, may not be as obvious. After all, a parent is naturally in a disciplinary role, and it can be easy to confuse the kind of brash criticism that flows from narcissism for typical parental feedback. Not to mention, the outsize role of a parent in conditioning a child’s perception of “normal.” But pinpointing the signs that you may have grown up with a narcissistic parent can help you better understand why you act the way you do, have self-compassion, and form more secure relationships going forward.

While a relationship of any sort with a narcissist can be emotionally taxing or even abusive, narcissism and parenthood are a particularly toxic combination. “Good parenting requires empathy, compassion, and being willing to make some of your needs secondary,” says psychologist Alyson Nerenberg, PsyD, author of No Perfect Love: Shattering the Illusion of Flawless Relationships. “These are qualities that narcissists lack.”

“Good parenting requires empathy, compassion, and being willing to make some of your needs secondary—all qualities that narcissists lack.” —Alyson Nerenberg, PsyD, psychologist

Because narcissism revolves around a self-entitled need for constant admiration, the narcissistic parent has a hard time seeing their child as having needs or emotions that deserve attention, or as having worth beyond serving as a tool for their own validation. “They might fly into a rage or become withdrawn and depressed if the child doesn’t make them feel good about themselves by getting good grades or the starring role in the school play, or by listening to their problems,” says clinical psychologist Stephanie Kriesberg, PsyD, author of the forthcoming book Adult Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers.

Below, psychologists break down the common ways that a narcissistic parent-child relationship unfolds and share key behavioral signs that you grew up with a narcissistic parent, as well as how to manage the emotional fallout.

How narcissism presents in a parent and within the parent-child relationship

The narcissistic parent expects a child to fuel their ever-growing sense of self-interest and self-worth, either by asking the child to directly care for them and do things in service of them, or by pushing them to succeed in highly visible ways that the parent can then attribute to their own success in raising them. Largely, these tendencies spring from deep-seated insecurities, says Dr. Kriesberg. Essentially, the narcissistic parent is not secure in their own sense of self and needs to access that security through external sources, including their child.

“This typically shows up in two patterns: the grandiose pattern and the vulnerable pattern,” says Dr. Kriesberg. With the former, “the parent is brash, full of themselves, and always needs to be the center of attention,” not just professionally or socially but within their own home, too, she says. Their child is then enlisted to help them maintain that feeling.

But with the latter, the parent may seem “fragile, depressed, anxious, or needy,” says Dr. Kriesberg. “They may be ill, unstable, or unable to care or provide for their child.” In this case, their problems become the problems of their child, too, “of whom they demand a great deal of care and attention,” she says.

“[Narcissistic parents] tend to be emotionally reactive but do not allow their child to have an emotional reaction and may even shame their child for expressing feelings.” —Dr. Nerenberg

In either scenario, the roles of the parent and child are flipped, says Dr. Kriesberg, and the child is required to meet the needs of the parent, rather than the other way around. But should the child have their own needs or feelings, the narcissistic parent will often swiftly dismiss them. “They tend to be emotionally reactive but do not allow their child to have an emotional reaction and may even shame their child for expressing feelings,” says Dr. Nerenberg. Rather than being empathetic to the concerns of their child—were they to express, for example, fear, upset, or self-consciousness—the narcissistic parent would just tell them to “get over it,” she adds.

In the same realm, the narcissistic parent is prone to interrupting a child, if they deem whatever they’re saying to be unimportant, and may excessively criticize a child if they aren’t maintaining an image that props up the parent—whether by way of their physical appearance or performance in school or extracurriculars, says Dr. Nerenberg.

As a result, the child may begin to define their own worth by their looks or accomplishments and constantly strive for their parent’s nearly impossible-to-get approval. After a while, this unrewarded effort could leave them feeling as if they’ll never be “good enough,” leading to low self-esteem. At the extreme, the child may even feel guilty for the perceived shortcomings that the narcissistic parent calls out and blame themselves for having caused hardship in their parent’s life, says Dr. Nerenberg.

5 behavioral signs that you grew up with a narcissistic parent

1. You people-please to a fault or find yourself constantly in a caretaker role

“Because of their familiarity with trying to please a difficult parent, a child of a narcissist may later choose to date or even marry a narcissist because the role of taking care of another person’s needs is familiar for them,” says Dr. Nerenberg.

The relationship that first defined love for this person was transactional—they could earn their parent’s love by doing certain things for them or achieving certain successes—so they’ve internalized love as conditional and may seek out partnerships that also require them to meet certain rigid conditions. “We often end up choosing situations that are familiar to us and end up re-creating a similar dynamic,” says Dr. Nerenberg.

2. You regularly doubt yourself and your reality

In failing to give credence to their kid’s emotions, a narcissistic parent also often dismisses their child’s very understanding of reality. “They might have told you that certain things that happened didn’t actually happen,” says Dr. Kriesberg. “For example, let’s say you were upset because your sibling knocked over the block tower you just built. A narcissistic parent might say, ‘Your brother would never do that. You must have knocked it over yourself.’”

Over time, these kinds of experiences can “diminish the ‘sense of self’ that you bring to adulthood,” she says, “and leave you questioning yourself and your perceptions.”

3. You’re often on the hunt for external validation

A child of a narcissist learns at a young age that their own worth is intrinsically tied up in how much they can satisfy others. So, later in life, they could find themselves dead-set on receiving validation from others that they’re, in fact, serving them in some positive way.

“Children of narcissists can often ‘hear’ their parent’s overly critical voice in their head, like a recording that won’t turn off,” says Dr. Kriesberg. And one way to lower its volume is to solicit and receive from others the positive affirmations that their narcissistic parent rarely, if ever, provided.

4. You downgrade, dismiss, or hide your feelings or emotions

Perhaps one of the most common signs that you grew up with a narcissistic parent is the tendency to nullify your own feelings and emotions. As noted above, a child of a narcissist routinely has their feelings dismissed, so it only makes sense that over time, they’d come to believe that their own needs must be unimportant and inconsequential, says Dr. Nerenberg.

This belief can manifest in a few different ways: In some cases, you might just feel as if other people’s needs and happiness will always be fundamentally more important than your own (and, thus, you just ignore your needs). In other cases, you might actually have difficulty putting your feelings into words or even knowing how you feel, given that you were rarely allowed the space to articulate your feelings throughout childhood, says Dr. Kriesberg.

In still other cases, “you may feel the need to conceal your real feelings from a friend or partner in the same way that you once learned to hide your authentic feelings from a narcissistic parent,” says Dr. Nerenberg. “When you were vulnerable with a narcissistic parent, you were likely ridiculed or ignored, so you then learn to avoid being vulnerable with others later in life.”

5. You have difficulty trusting others

Lack of trust flows directly from the struggle with vulnerability noted above. As soon as a child of a narcissist feels as though they can’t open up to a friend or partner (for fear of criticism or ridicule, or just deep self-doubt), they close the door to trust.

“When you grow up with a narcissistic parent, you grow up with a parent who not only doesn’t see or validate your feelings but also might actively make fun of or even deny your emotions,” says Dr. Kriesberg. As a result, it’s no wonder you might later put up a wall and have trouble getting close with or actually trusting others—largely as a mechanism of self-protection, says Dr. Nerenberg.

How to heal from the experience of being raised by a narcissistic parent

Both psychologists stress the importance of educating yourself on parental narcissism. It’s only through understanding the patterns of narcissism and its impact that you can “stop blaming yourself for not meeting the impossible needs of a narcissistic parent and avoid falling into the trap of dating or befriending narcissists,” says Dr. Nerenberg.

Learning about narcissism in parent-child relationships can also help you form connections between things that currently set you off (like a critical remark) or roadblock your relationships (like an inability to be vulnerable) and various traumatizing interactions with a narcissistic parent in your childhood. “These experiences from growing up tend to get stuck in the emotional parts of our brain, out of awareness,” says Dr. Kriesberg. “But making connections between these past experiences and current ones you’re having can help you learn how and why you’re getting emotionally frozen in certain reactions.”

Once you have that awareness, “you can begin to take steps to remind yourself that you’re in the ‘here and now’” and no longer need to respond or react as you once needed to do, says Dr. Kriesberg. A few of her in-the-moment grounding recommendations? “Calming breathing, moving your body, talking to yourself with kindness, and repeating a soothing or empowering phrase in your head,” she says.

Long-term, it’s also essential to recognize and label the feelings that bubble up around relationships and the needs you have of others in your life, says Dr. Nerenberg. By doing so, “you can find empathy and compassion for yourself,” particularly after having had your emotions and needs so readily invalidated by a narcissistic parent, she says. In that realm, she also suggests prioritizing friendships and mentor relationships where empathy is the norm and seeing a therapist who can guide you toward supportive relationships and away from destructive ones.

While you’re moving through this healing process, it’s also important to set boundaries with your narcissistic parent. “For example, you might set a boundary that your parent(s) can’t call your home after a certain time or aren’t able to show up unannounced,” says Dr. Nerenberg. “Limiting your time with your narcissistic parent is crucial to healing and living your own life.”

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At the same time, we’ve also seen many states pick up (and politicize) laws about online safety for kids in recent months. These policies vary quite a bit from state to state, as I wrote back in April. Some focus on children’s data, and others try to limit how much and when kids can get online. 

Supporters say these laws are necessary to mitigate the risks that big tech companies pose to young people—risks that are increasingly well documented. They say it’s well past time to put guardrails in place and limit the collecting and selling of minors’ data.

“What we’re doing here is creating a duty of care that makes the social media platforms accountable for the harms they’ve caused,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is co-sponsoring a child online safety bill in the Senate, in an interview with Slate. “It gives attorneys general and the FTC the power to bring lawsuits based on the product designs that, in effect, drive eating disorders, bullying, suicide, and sex and drug abuse that kids haven’t requested and that can be addictive.”

But—surprise, surprise—as with most things, it’s not really that simple. There are also vocal critics who argue that child safety laws are actually harmful to kids because all these laws, no matter their shape, have to contend with a central tension: in order to implement laws that apply to kids online, companies need to actually identify which users are kids—which requires the collection or estimation of sensitive personal information. 

I was thinking about this when the prominent New York–based civil society organization S.T.O.P. (which stands for the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project) released a report on September 28 that highlights some of these potential harms and makes the case that all bills requiring tech companies to identify underage users, even if well intentioned, will increase online surveillance for everyone. 

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Alicia Johansen spent her childhood moving with her drug-addicted mom from one place to the next, trying to brace herself for the moment when the water and the electricity would get cut off. So at 22, when she had a chance to run Dolittle’s pool hall in the ranching town of Akron, Colorado, she was intent on making some money. She kept the bar open deep into the night, after the older guys who bet on horse races departed, and the truckers and the younger crowd, with the meth, drifted in. Meth, she soon discovered, helped her work longer hours.

An occasional customer was Fred Thornton, a former high school baseball star in his early 30s. Fred was sometimes a roofer and at other times unemployed and homeless. They began dating casually and using together, and he told her of his own complicated childhood: placed in foster care as a toddler, after allegations of neglect, and later adopted.

Alicia’s period was irregular because of the meth, which also dimmed her self-awareness. She was six months along before she realized that she was pregnant; a month after that, she woke up in pain. She had preeclampsia, which caused dangerously high blood pressure, and needed an immediate C-section. She was airlifted to a hospital in Denver, a hundred miles away. Her and Fred’s son, Carter James Thornton, was born on Aug. 6, 2019 — two and a half months premature, 2.5 pounds in weight, and, according to his lab work, exposed to meth and to THC.

That first week at the hospital, Alicia hovered over Carter, who was curled beneath a web of tubes and wires, before going home to get baby things. The third week, she and Fred visited their son and held him skin-to-skin. The fourth week, back in Akron, they faltered: They had no gas money for a return to the big city; they were bickering; they were high. On the fifth week, when Carter was stable enough to leave the neonatal intensive care unit, Alicia returned, but foster parents from Akron were the ones who took him home.

Carter’s drug exposure and his parents’ weekslong absence had triggered a call to child protective services and then a neglect case against Alicia and Fred in the juvenile court of Washington County, where they lived. To get their son back, the judge informed them, they’d need to take a series of steps laid out by the county’s human services department: pass random urinalysis drug tests, with missed ones considered positives; secure stable housing and employment; and make it to regular supervised visits with Carter. During the next three months, as the department steadily recorded Alicia and Fred’s positive drug tests and missed visits, none of their excuses were entertained, a hard line for which they would later be grateful. In December, they decided that if they wanted to raise their child together — and they did — they would have to get sober for good.

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Alicia Johansen and Fred Thornton with their son, Carter Credit: Rachel Woolf for ProPublica

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There are two distinct factions of parents on TikTok: those who will crack eggs over their kids’ heads for likes and those who are trying desperately to make sure the internet doesn’t know who their children are.

For the 35-year-old TikTok star who posts under the name Kodye Elyse, an uncomfortable online experience made her stop including her three children on her social media. A video she posted in 2020 of her young daughter dancing attracted millions of views and creepy comments from strange men. (She requested that The New York Times not print her full name because she and her children have been doxxed in the past.)

“It’s kind of like ‘The Truman Show’ on the internet,” said Kodye Elyse, who has four million followers on TikTok and posts about her work as a cosmetic tattoo artist and her experiences as a single mother. “You never know who’s looking.”

After that experience, she scrubbed her children’s images from the internet. She tracked down all of her online accounts, on sites such as Facebook and Pinterest, and deleted them or made them private. She has since joined the clamorous camp of TikTokers encouraging fellow parents not to post about their children publicly.

But in September, she discovered her efforts hadn’t been entirely successful. Kodye Elyse used PimEyes, a startling search engine that finds photos of a person on the internet within seconds using facial recognition technology. When she uploaded a photo of her 7-year-old son, the results included an image of him she had never seen before. She needed a $29.99 subscription to see where the image had come from.

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Credit…LINCOLN AGNEW

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