Morning Brew Daily
Australia Bans Social Media for Kids & Women’s Workplace Progress Stalls?
10 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Australia banned social media for kids under 16. What's next? They're going to say they can't vote?
Ben, Instacart is using AI to change the price of your groceries right under your nose. It's Wednesday, December 10th. Let's ride.
Good morning and happy Wednesday. Your romantic relationship might not be working out for any number of reasons, but one of them could very well be an insurmountable difference in swag levels. Dubbed the swag gap by Gen Z, the term refers to the fundamental disparity by which two people who are dating carry themselves in the world. specifically how they dress and the confidence they exude.
The Wall Street Journal mentions that the swag gap concept originates from a photograph of Justin Bieber and his wife Hailey back in 2023. He was phoning it in wearing socks and yellow Crocs while she looked a lot more put together. Toby, as our Gen Z correspondent, is the swag gap real?
As someone on the other end of a swag gap in his relationship, it is fantastic because you wake up every morning with something to pursue. How do I close the swag gap today? A new coat, perhaps. It's very aspirational. But also the Wall Street Journal article that talked about this framed it in terms of actual relationships.
But there can be swag gaps in friend groups as well, which you were saying wasn't always a bad thing.
I absolutely think that there should be swag gaps in friend groups. That's what makes friend groups so great. There's a lot of dynamism. Some people are cool. They talk to everybody. Some people lay back and just have that one little funny quip. And especially, you're talking about aspirational.
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Chapter 2: What are the details of Australia's social media ban for kids?
If you walk into a room and have the most swag, you're in the wrong room.
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Right now, spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions may apply. If you want to use social media down under, you can no longer be under the age of 16.
On Wednesday, in a first of its kind move anywhere around the world, the country banned anyone under 16 from having accounts on the most popular social media platforms, including Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, and X. It makes Australia the first country to put social media scrolling in the same bucket as booze, tobacco, and driving as activities that are off limits to kids until they're old enough to safely use them.
To justify the law, Australian officials say social media harms kids by increasing anxiety, exposing them to cyberbullying and predators, and in the worst case scenario, causing mental illness and suicide. They blame the companies for creating addicting but unsafe products by prioritizing profits over safety.
But there are many on the other side who oppose the age restrictions as a massive overreach. They argue that the ban cuts off kids, especially from marginalized communities, from connecting with each other and will make them less informed, less prepared citizens down the road.
Most of all, they say this ban is simply not enforceable and certainly won't lead to Australian kids putting down their phones and frolicking outside all day in analog bliss. Toby, is this a landmark seatbelt moment for child safety or a misguided slapdash unworkable policy?
The world is watching Australia right now, that is for sure, because you are right. Whatever your thoughts are on the actual argument of should kids be able to have access to social media, the real question is how the heck do you enforce something like this? And they're kind of taking a kitchen sink approach. A lot of technologies are factoring into this.
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Chapter 3: How does Australia justify the social media ban for minors?
And what I thought was the most egregious example of us being in an experiment was the fact that in one of these tests, they looked at a brand of saltine crackers at a Safeway in Seattle. Now, the final sale price was the same for everyone, $3.99. But it was shown that these these saltines were at a discount. The original price was different for every other volunteer.
One of the original prices was $5.93. The other was $5.99. The other was $6.69. So the final sale was all the same price. But what the consumer was shown was how much they were discounting it. And they wanted to see how our minds, our little shopping brain minds would react to that. And that just reminded me how manipulative these things are.
Now there are some arguments that variable pricing can help some customers because if you charge more during peak demand, you could hypothetically subsidize lower prices during off peak times. Also more price sensitive customers who are lower income can maybe be offset by charging less price sensitive customers higher prices, but there's tons of transparency concerns
I think that's the biggest thing. A lot of people aren't aware that this is happening, or they are aware subconsciously that something wonky is going on. You need these things to either be predictable, to be public, to be equal access for everyone. Right now, algorithmic pricing is governed by these AI models. It's
very opaque it's very individualized it feels random and that is what has some regulators also sniffing around this saying is this actually legal which right now it apparently is but this opacity is part of the issue because you just don't know what's going on these black boxes
And it's something that we've accepted in certain domains and certain industries. When you log on to Amtrak or to buy a flight ticket, you know that they're doing variable pricing and you don't quite understand how it works, but it's just been going on for decades and you just accept that. But now it's moving into different domains. I remember
Last year, Wendy's said it was going to do variable pricing at its stores. There was a huge backlash to that, and the next day they backtracked. Delta, also in an industry that we've come to accept variable pricing for, said it was going to use AI to develop personalized pricing. That's a distinction we should make. There's algorithmic pricing, and then there's personalized pricing.
Personalized pricing looks at your shopping history or where you live, your zip code, your income, and then makes a price specifically catered to you. They had to backtrack from that. So a lot of these companies that say they're getting into this are going to do it quietly because when they publicly announce it, they face a lot of outrage from consumers.
One unintended consequences of algorithmic pricing becoming more widespread is that you might get unintentional collusion. Obviously, you can't collude on prices as business. You can't have Delta setting one price and United setting the other price and saying, hey, if we both raise it together, no one will know. That is illegal.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the social media ban enforcement?
One, the business itself is ripping, powered by profits from its Starlink Internet division. SpaceX expects revenue to come in between $22 and $24 billion next year. Funds raised in the IPO process would also be helpful in new moonshot projects it has in mind, including developing space-based data centers. Neil, trillionaire Elon Musk incoming.
Just to give you some perspective, when Google IPO in 2004, it was worth $23 billion. And when Facebook IPO in 2012, it was worth about $100 billion. So SpaceX going public at potentially a $1.5 trillion valuation truly boggles the mind.
And it sets up 2026 to be a blockbuster year for blockbuster IPOs, another company that a lot of people are watching, whether it will go public because it would be the first of its kind to do that. is Anthropic. That's the AI startup behind the Claude chatbot. And they are looking at a valuation right now, not even at their IPO, of about $300 billion.
So with OpenAI not seemingly going public anytime soon, there's going to be a lot of focus on the SpaceX IPO and the Anthropic IPO. Next year, of course, these things get delayed, could slip into the next year after that. But just as much as drama and volatility that Tesla makes on the stock market, can you imagine what investing in SpaceX would be like?
Even if you think soccer is lame, one of the things you might appreciate about it compared to American sports is the lack of commercials over the breezy 90 minute runtime. That's going to change for the upcoming World Cup. FIFA announced that all games at next year's tournament hosted in North America will
will feature a three-minute hydration break 22 minutes into each half, essentially dividing the games into quarters. FIFA said that the decision prioritizes player welfare given the expected high temperatures in the summer, but it also certainly prioritizes broadcasters who will surely air commercials during the three-minute break.
Heat was a huge issue at the summer's Club World Cup hosted in the U.S., with periodic hydration breaks taken after players complained of the worst conditions they've ever played in anywhere around the world.
Yeah, there's two angles to this. FIFA is obviously saying this is for player safety. You know, we just did a tournament in the U.S. and it was way too hot for everyone. But they've kind of bent the rules to say that, all right, we probably don't need hydration breaks in every single match. Some of these matches are taking place inside.
You definitely don't need a hydration break then, but they want to keep equal playing field. But a lot of people read between the lines and said, hey, You want ad breaks. You know, this is why soccer has never caught on in America. The fact that we even call it soccer shows that it hasn't caught on because there hasn't been a consistent commercial break schedule.
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