Thinking of letting your kids, especially young teens, use ChatGPT? Hold on. There’s a major issue you need to know.
OpenAI adds parental safety controls: After a slew of lawsuits and deaths, ChatGPT will now flag suicidal prompts from teens, with one big but: Both you and the kids have to opt in first. If something happens, human reviewers step in and alerts go out. Oh, you can also block ChatGPT past bedtime. Remember when you were a teen? Yea, they can get around these controls without a problem.
👻 Boo-tiful viral pages: Love creepy but adorable things? Then check out Spooky Cutie. It’s a viral coloring book perfect for both teens and adults. With 40 single-sided pages, you can keep it simple or go all out with shading and personal designs. Plus, it makes a … fang-tastic gift. (lol)
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🔴 Red pill teens are rising: “Red pilled” used to mean you saw the truth, like in The Matrix. Now it’s code for online communities where young men vent about women, feminism and dating, often turning hateful, sexist and sometimes racist. It’s becoming a gateway drug for disillusioned boys looking for belonging. Make sure your guys are not partaking.
Teen taxi takeover: Waymo just dropped a self-driving car service (paywall link) for teens in Phoenix, with plans to expand. Kids ages 14 to 17 can summon robot cars to school, soccer or wherever else, no license needed. Parents are jazzed. “So like my dad’s Waymo can pick us up at 6 if your mom’s Waymo can drop us off at 10.”
🎶 Songwriters go social: TikTok just launched a “Songwriter” tag and profile tab, so hitmakers behind the hits can finally get some spotlight, as opposed to solely relying on dancing teens for career stability.
⏩ 2x speed frying memory: A new study says bingeing podcasts and videos at warp speed might make you dumber or at least worsen memory retention. Turns out 2x pushes the brain past its “working memory” limit, especially for older adults. Teens? Basically brain athletes for TikTok TED Talks. The rest of us? Toast.
🔞 TikTok trouble, again: This is really bad. A viral TikTok trend is using motivational clips to camouflage grooming tactics. Teens, mostly girls, lip-synch “Yes you can” while text implies dating younger kids or sneaking out. Experts say it plays on empowerment language to nudge kids into risky behavior. Predators are watching and commenting. TikTok, of course, does nothing.
🧠 Viral trend, real brain damage: Talk to your kids about TikTok’s risky new “Dusting Challenge.” This brain stunt features teens inhaling computer duster spray for what they think is a quick high. What they’re actually getting: seizures, suffocation and possible brain damage.
Tracked and fambushed: New word to know. Teens are stalking their moms, using things like Life360 and Snap Maps to “fambush” their parents. Basically, they show up unannounced at Starbucks, restaurants or … dates. It’s part bonding moment, part digital stakeout, and mostly just unhinged with a dash of funny. Parents are starting to realize: Maybe they’re the ones who need privacy settings.
$100,000
The lifetime wealth boost from just one high school personal finance class. According to a new study, that’s the ROI for teaching teens how money works: budgeting, investing, credit scores, the whole shebang except how to set up a joint account.
🔞 Forget the days of finding Dad’s Playboy under the bed: If you have teens, talk to them about this. Teens are romancing bots and AI on apps. Some bots have filters, others barely try. The risk isn’t just sexting, it’s warping emotional development in a world where your “girlfriend” never says no and always texts back. Speaking of … Years ago, a monk was selling flowers on the Playboy Mansion grounds, and no one but Hef could get him to leave. Turns out, only Hugh would prevent florist friars. (I saw you shake your head!)
🚔 Modern superhero: Modern Family’s Ariel Winter is now working undercover in child predator stings. Yes, that Ariel. She volunteers with SOSA, posing as teens online to catch creeps in real life. As you can imagine, Ariel describes how emotionally demanding the gig can be.
📈 Teens are using ChatGPT for stocks: They’re running prompts to see where their money could land in a few years if they invest now. Take 15-year-old Ryan, up $6,000 after throwing his $800 paychecks into Bitcoin and MicroStrategy. Ambitious? Sure. Kids these days are skipping lawn mowing hustles and going straight to leveraged ETFs.
How make $1 million reselling junk
Two teens started flipping discarded items from landfills. Now they run a seven-figure resale business.
“KYS” isn’t harmless teen slang: Parents, you might see “kys” or “keys” online and think it’s just another TikTok-ified acronym. But it’s actually short for “kill yourself,” and it’s alarmingly common in teen comment sections and DMs. Some teens use it jokingly (🤨), but it can land with real emotional weight.
🍿 Minecraft mayhem: Minecraft meets real-life survival mode. Teens are going wild for the new Minecraft movie, shouting, tossing snacks, spraying lotion on seats and someone even let live chickens loose. Why? Many kids got hooked on the game during the pandemic. Now they’re letting all that nostalgia loose in the form of chaos. Talk about a block party!
😴 Schools are teaching kids how to sleep: Forget band and robotics. Most teens are getting just six hours of sleep a night, way below the recommended eight for developing brains. Blame late-night scrolling and heavy schedules. The fix? Classes that teach time management, no phones before bed and skipping midnight snacks. Next up: teaching Gen A how to blink between TikToks.
👨👩👧👦 Eyes on your teens: If your kid is between 13 and 17, set up Supervision on Instagram. You or your teen can send the invite by going to your profile, tapping Menu (three lines) > Family Center > Invite your teen. Find their name and hit Invite. Then, open their account and tap the invite > Next > Allow. Simple.