A Win Against Big Tech

Hey Friends!

Somehow we're already deep into summer. The school routines feel like a distant memory (although, we just saw our first back-to-school ad?!) and the days are blurring together.

It also marks the end of a few weeks of us living in different countries. Nat's been making summer memories with her family in the U.S. while Cat's been holding down the fort at home. And now we're finally back together!

It also got us thinking about something we've talked about a lot over the years… technology isn't inherently good or bad. It's a tool. Sometimes it brings us closer to the people we love. Other times it pulls us away from them. The difference is how it's designed, how we use it, and whether we're paying attention.

That feels like the perfect way to step into this week's Rundown, because both stories ask the same question: is this technology actually working for us... or are we unknowingly adapting to it instead?

Why Meta pulled it’s new AI feature days after launch.

This week, Meta rolled out, and then abruptly pulled, a new AI feature called Muse Image. It let users generate AI images from text prompts, and for public Instagram accounts, it let anyone create AI images using someone else's real photos just by @ mentioning that account. The catch was that the feature was turned on automatically. Within days, privacy advocates, creators, and parents were all asking the same question of, what happens when this gets used to make fake, embarrassing, or exploitative images of someone without their knowledge, including kids whose photos are sitting on public profiles right now. The backlash was fast enough that Meta reversed course within the week, admitting the feature "missed the mark."

That's good news…great even! But we keep coming back to the fact that it launched this way in the first place. Meta’s eyes were set on building a flashy AI tool and missed (or ignored) what parents and other users saw immediately. That gap is the thing to remember, because it isn't unique to Meta and it isn't over. Tech companies will continue to release features to keep users engaged. That’s where the money is. Profit will always come before what’s right.

What you can do: 
Build the habit of asking "what could go wrong here" before assuming a new feature is harmless, especially anything touching photos or AI. It's worth doing a quick privacy check whenever a platform announces something new, since default settings are almost always built for engagement, not safety and it's worth teaching your kid to ask that same question, because that instinct outlasts any single setting.

Turns out your kid understands the algorithm better than you think.

New research found that kids aren't confused about how social media algorithms work. They get it. Like they deeply understand them… They know their attention trains the feed, they know it makes platforms money, and they actively weigh the risks and rewards of being online. What they feel they don't have is any real power to act on that knowledge. Teens described feeling "trapped in a loop" by personalized feeds and infinite scroll, and said that even brief curiosity and attention on something gets read by the algorithm as genuine interest, leading to repeated exposure to similar content. Several described starting with something totally ordinary and ending up served increasingly inappropriate material they never searched for (shocker). Reporting tools, when they tried them, mostly felt useless so a lot of kids just scroll faster and hope the algorithm moves on.

What you can do: 
This is a great conversation starter. Ask your kid what the algorithm knows about them and whether they've noticed it steering them somewhere they didn't ask to go. It's also a good moment to talk through what reporting and "not interested" actually do versus what they don't, so your kid isn't relying on tools that quietly don't work. There’s new tools within Instagram ironically that are meant to help user curate their own algorithm. We walk through this in the Screen Sense Guide in the Instagram Chapter. You can check it out here.

We know that Summer doesn't mean the same thing for every family. For some of you it's juggling a full workday with a kid who's suddenly home with a summer cold (the worst). For some it's camp pickup lines and trying to keep everyone fed, sunscreened, and off a screen for five minutes. For some it's just getting through the day without a meltdown (yours or theirs).

We see all of it. The parent working from the kitchen table while refereeing an argument in the next room. The parent who said yes to one more hour of screen time today because it was that kind of day. The parent trying to keep a bored teenager out of trouble without becoming the fun police. There is no version of summer parenting that isn't a bit of a scramble, and there's no wrong way to be doing it right now.

If you want a hand, that's exactly why we built our free Less Phone. More Life. guide. It’s got real, doable ways to bring a little more balance to the screen time chaos without turning it into a daily fight. We won’t be serving any guilt, and we don’t promise a perfect plan… it’s just small shifts that work when you're already stretched thin. Get the free guide here.

However you're getting through these weeks, you're doing better than you think!

—Cat & Nat