☀️ Happy Thursday! The Briefing is your guide to the world of news and information. Sign up here!
In today’s email:
- Featured story: U.K. plans broad social media ban for kids under 16
- New from Pew Research Center: Americans’ experiences with AI and views on its impact
- In other news: Fox to acquire Roku
- Looking ahead: Houston Chronicle partners with local Facebook group
- Chart of the week: How Americans use AI chatbots
🔥 Featured story
The U.K. plans to implement a social media ban for children under 16, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced this week. The ban, which follows a similar move by Australia, is expected to be implemented in early 2027.
In the U.S., more than half of teens ages 13 to 17 use YouTube (92%), TikTok (68%), Instagram (63%) and Snapchat (55%). Teens offer a mix of views when it comes to the impact of TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat on their lives: Users of these apps are more likely to say the apps hurt rather than help their productivity and amount of sleep. But they see the platforms as more helpful than harmful when it comes to friendships. And while roughly one-in-ten teen users of each platform say it is harmful to their mental health, the vast majority say it is neither helpful nor harmful.
Parents of teens have somewhat more negative views. About a quarter (24%) say social media has hurt their teen’s mental health. And parents of teen users of TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram are all more likely than their teens to say the teens are on the apps too much.
🚨 New from Pew Research Center
Americans say they are increasingly interacting with artificial intelligence in a variety of ways, but they also express skepticism about its impact on society. Read more about these findings in a new Pew Research Center report.
📌 In other news
- Fox announces $22 billion acquisition of Roku
- Justice Department and Chinese regulators give green light for Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery; Paramount refuses to air ad criticizing the merger
- Cruz, Wyden introduce bipartisan anti-censorship bill in Senate
- BBC to cut 550 jobs, reduce existing programs in cost-saving measure
- Viktor Orban’s media empire collapses after electoral defeat in Hungary
- The billionaire with growing control over France’s business and economic press
- A look at journalists who are leaving traditional news outlets and going independent
- The Washington Post faces class action lawsuit over pricing
- Study suggests AI results can be manipulated by posting on Reddit and other sites
- Fewer people around the world getting news from news websites and apps, new Reuters Institute study finds
📅 Looking ahead
The Houston Chronicle recently began a content partnership with Black Houston, a Facebook group with about 150,000 members that is focused on issues affecting Black people in the nation’s fourth-largest city.
About half of Americans (52%) say they at least sometimes get local news and information from online forums or discussion groups such as Facebook groups – up from 38% in 2018. This is now larger than the share who get local news from daily newspapers (36%).
📊 Chart of the week
This week’s chart comes from a new Center survey on how Americans use AI, which found that about half of U.S. adults say they use AI chatbots. The most common ways people report using AI chatbots are to search for information (42% of Americans do this) and to help with work tasks (38% of employed adults do this). Fewer Americans (13%) say they use AI chatbots to get news.
👋 That’s all for this week.
The Briefing is compiled by Pew Research Center staff, including Naomi Forman-Katz, Christopher St. Aubin, Emily Tomasik, Joanne Haner, and Sawyer Reed. It is edited by Michael Lipka and copy edited by David Kent.
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