Chrissy Teigen flew 6 hours to speak at Digital Parenthood Summit. Social media addiction in children and teens has become a bit of a cause célèbre, like Jonathan Haidt’s aggressively promoted book The Anxious Generation. The data says this is a crisis – device addiction is real and has been tied to an increase in anxiety, depression and poor self-image. But I think the missing component to a lot of these conversations is that parents are addicted, too. And while adult brains absorb the information differently than developing brains, it is still harmful.
Chrissy Teigen and Jessica Seinfeld are both very, very active online – does that make them more equipped to talk about the dangers of social media, because they themselves see it, or less? I don’t know but it does feel a little “I’m on the internet telling you to get off the internet.”
Back to the conference: it was hosted by the team behind Aura, which bills itself as a “smart, simple way to stay safe online.” Another way to be safer is to be online less. We can’t banish the internet and need to teach kids how to use it safely, but these types of solutions seem like another way Silicone Valley wants to create a tech hack to a problem that requires human effort, not another app.
Yesterday, Lainey covered Demi Moore and Joe Jonas and it got me thinking: does anyone remember Nick Jonas and Kate Hudson? They were a thing many years ago! Kind of a good piece of nostalgic gossip.
We’re going on about week three of zero online interaction between Nicola and Brooklyn Peltz-Beckham. She is not posting on main but has been doing stories (she’s a huge animal advocate and has been highlighting dogs up for adoption). He hasn’t been reposting. She has not liked his sponcon. For these two, who never missed a chance to declare their undying love for one another multiple times a week online, it’s a little unusual.
This morning Lainey wrote about the Bennifer real estate news; she and Sarah are talking about it on The Squawk and are on high alert for Friday. My query here is not about them but about real estate. Why are $60 million homes listed on a pubic website like this? Like if someone has $60 million, are they browsing Zillow for their next pad? It just doesn’t scream wealth, and to buy a home like that, you need wealth.
That said, Zillow does offer many benefits including: allowing us to gawk at beautiful, unaffordable homes; making fun of McMansions; snooping to find out how much someone paid for their house (bonus points if it’s a social media acquaintance); browsing listings for a city you visited for two days and want to move to and finally, for those in HCOL area, checking out how much house you can get in a city that is not outrageously expensive.
It does all that and for the next little while, it’s also a gossip site.
