The worlds biggest tech companies are facing a legal showdown that could fundamentally change the way that social media is designed.
The trial is taking place in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, where jury selection started on January 27. Its testing out a new legal theory intended to spur greater regulation of social media platforms like TikTok, Snap, YouTube, and Metas Facebook and Instagram: Lawyers are gearing up to argue that the companies behind these platforms are designing their sites to be deliberately addictive, resulting in direct personal injury to users, especially children.
Overall, the trial is expected to consist of nine cases, which have been compiled by judges across the nation as some of the strongest bellwethers for this new argument. First on the docket is a case brought by a 20-year-old plaintiff identified as K.G.M., who says that a lack of sufficient guardrails on social media sites during her youth led to compulsive use and mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, body dysmorphia, self-harm, and risk of suicide.
The defendants named in K.G.M.s initial suit were Bytedance, the former majority owner of TikTok; Snap, which owns Snapchat; Google, the owner of YouTube; and Meta. However, both Snap and TikTok settled the suit in the days leading up to jury selection for undisclosed sums, leaving just Meta and Google.
The results of these initial decisions are expected to serve as a testing ground for a second set of federal cases, scheduled for trial this summer, wherein several school districts, states, and attorneys general plan to argue that social media is a public nuisance and addictive to children.
At the crux of all of these suits lies a design-based claim: These tech companies are using intentionally engineered tricks to foster addictive behaviors among young users. Court documents point out several specific user experience (UX) choices as evidence of this pattern. Here are a few of the key examples in question.
[Illustration: FC]
Endless scroll
“Endless (or infinite) scroll” is a chief concern across almost all of the cases that have been filed. It refers to any feature that allows users to continuously scroll through video content without disruptions.
One court document, filed by the Florida attorney generals office against Meta, claims that infinite scroll makes it difficult for young users to disengage [from the content] because there is no natural end point for the display of new information.
In a court filing before Bytedances settlement, K.G.M. testified that TikToks endless scroll feature disrupted her sleep and caused her to become addicted to the app. According to confidential internal messages obtained by NPR back in October, TikTok is aware of the addictive nature of its central endless scroll Explore page, and even calculated the number of videos required to become hooked to the app to be 260.
[Illustration: FC]
Ephemeral content
Another pattern of social media design thats frequently cited in these legal documents is ephemeral content. This refers to any kind of post that can only be viewed under certain time parameters, like a once-viewable snap on Snapchat or an 24-hour Instagram story.
The Florida attorney generals office specifically called out Metas visual design cues on Instagram Stories indicating that the content would soon disappear forever,” noting that this tactic made young users feel more compelled to keep clicking on new content to avoid potential social consequences.
Meta designed such ephemeral content features to induce a sense of FOMO in young users, that is, a fear of missing out, which would drive teen engagement, the filing reads.
[Illustration: FC]
Algorithmic recommendations
One of the most concerning details in K.G.M.s testimony regards the algorithmic recommendations that shes encountered on social media, which she says have repeatedly directed her to content with disturbing or damaging themes.
I have gotten a lot of content promoting that kind of stuffjust like body checking, posts [of] what I eat in a dayjust a cucumbermaking people feel bad if they dont eat like that, she said in her deposition.
Per the Florida attorney generals filing, Metas algorithms direct users to concerning content like this by design. Its platforms, the document reads, periodically [present] users with emotionally gripping content to provoke intense reactions’ (e.g., relating to eating disorders, self-har, suicide, violence, body-image issues, and more), a result of what Meta purportedly refers to as the algorithms’ preference amplification. Despite Meta’s representations to the contrary, this design results in harm to young users.
For their part, K.G.M.s lawyers are grounding their arguments in past precedents established by cases ruling that products with purposefully addictive designs should be off-limits to kids.
“Borrowing heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, [d]efendants deliberately embedded in their products an array of design features aimed at maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue,” the lawsuit alleges. It adds: “Like the cigarette industry a generation earlier, [d]efendants understand that a child user today becomes an adult user tomorrow.
Recently, I have developed a conflicted relationship with Lego. I love it. Theres so much Lego in our apartment that you can remove the brick and mortar, and I would still have a standing home.
But lately, Im getting fed up with how hard the Danish company is pushing it. Pushing the absurd licensing deals. Pushing nostalgia. Pushing the gigantic sets that adults want, kids dream of, but so many parents cant afford.
And sure. I cant really blame Lego for wanting to make money. Its a private company, and they are in the business of, you know, selling stuff. But by pushing so hard in every department, Lego risks brand exhaustion. At least, it’s exhausting the brick out of me.
Lego is one of the greatest, most beloved brands in the world. One that resonates with adults and kids at many levels. Emotionally, millions have that memory that makes us teary. I think back on recent memories of crafting Lego worlds with my son, as well as distant memories, like assembling spaceships with my father and siblings.
Rationally, theres a definitive appeal in the engineering of building complex designs from very simple pieces. Culturally, Lego is iconic on its own and often becomes entangled with other iconic brands, from Star Wars to Harry Potter. Sensorially, the touch, the clickity-clack-click of the building experience itself brings calm and anchors you to the present, making you forget problems and worries.
Clearly, Lego has many paths to our pocketbooks.
Its just that now, it feels like the worldwide Lego craze is on overdrive, and its becoming way too much.
There are many things that bother me. The companys increasing reliance on licensed IP themes is one of them. While some licensed sets from Star Wars and Ghostbusters are great because of their clever design and engineering, many others feel like cash grabs. Like the recent Marvel logo set, a monument to shilling that lacks both the creativity and playability that these toys always strived for.
Others feel out of place, like their deal with FIFA, a shady sports organization plagued with corruption scandals and wrongdoings. That cannot be further away from the Danish companys alleged innocent spirit and its learning-through-play philosophy. For a company that bans miniature replicas of guns from its sets, its appalling to see it associated with brutal dictatorial regimes, even if it is only by proxy. Plus, Legos World Cup trophy looks as hideous as Donald Trumps FIFA Peace Prize.
Enough already
The 1×1 plate that spilled my mental Lego cup was the ad that introduced its latest toy line: Pokémon. It is such a smarmy play for millennials thatwhile I love both Pokémon and LegoI couldnt help but have an instant visceral hate for it.
That licensing deal also highlighted another huge problem, which is the proliferation of expensive sets. The company traditionally aims big multi-thousand-piece sets at adults. But it’s one thing to sell adults the Taj Mahal, the Titanic, or the Roman Colosseum, and it’s another to put out a $1,000 Death Star or this $650 Venusaur, Charizard, and Blastoise set. Both sold out in a few hours. Sure, adults will buy those, but do you really expect kids to look at those toys and not want them?
Lego has always sold the occasional pricey setespecially in the Star Wars linebut the size (and price) increase is nuts. Data from the popular Lego set tracker Brickset shows that, in the entire pre2000 era, there were only 28 sets with over 1,000 pieces. By mid2025, there were already 80 such sets released in six months alone, showing a huge increase in the annual volume of big sets.
The same data shows that there has been a big price increase. In 2016, the average Lego set cost about $40. From 2024 to 2026, that average had grown to around $70. Thats about a 75% price increase over the last decade, caused by the increase of licensed IP sets (which add an extra margin to pay the intellectual property owners around 20%).
Six years ago, Lego licensing worked from the “physical world” to the “brick world.” External partners were primarily car manufacturers or entertainment studios lik Disney and Warner Bros., which resulted in some fun toys.
For decades, however, Lego was fiercely protective of its brand, rarely allowing it on products it didn’t manufacture. Starting in 2020, this strategy flipped. Lego began aggressively pursuing “lifestyle partnerships” to make the brand a status symbol for adults in fashion and home decor rather than just a toy for kids. From that point on, Lego has been launching collaborations with Adidas, Levi’s, Ikea, Nike, Target (with products for pets too!), Moleskine, Concept One, Hype, and even Pottery Barn. I’m sure I’m missing some.
I find the latest collab with Crocs to be particularly offensive, and the news drove me over the edge when it popped up in my social media feeds in late January. The Lego Brick Clog features a molded brick design on the midsole. There’s nothing else to it. It just looks dumb. Given its shape and giant size, it could serve as a bento box, one can only imagine.
It’s possible this is a “me” problem. Maybe others don’t notice or don’t care. But theres a danger of being so overexposed, everywhere. Maybe you need to slow it down a bit, Lego. Not everything has to be AWESOME all the bloody time.
Whether you call him groundhog, woodchuck, or whistle-pig, or use the full genus and species name, Marmota monax, the nations premier animal weather forecaster has been making headlines as Punxsutawney Phil for decades.
The largest ground squirrel in its range, groundhogs like Phil are found throughout the midwestern United States, most of Canada, and into southern Alaska. M. monax is the most widespread marmot, while the Vancouver Island marmot (M. vancouverensis) is found only on one island in British Columbia.
In total, there are 15 species in the genus Marmota, found around the world from as far south as the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico and the Pyrenees Mountains of Spain, and as far north as regions of Siberia and Alaska so dark and cold that the marmots must hibernate for up to nine months of the year.
Hibernating to escape tough times
Marmots, including all the actors who have played Phil over the years, are the largest true hibernators: animals that enter a torpor that reduces their biological functions to a level closer to dead than alive.
Because this phenomenon is so interesting, scientists pay attention to all aspects of marmot anatomy and physiology. Basic observational science like this is important to advance our understanding of the world, and it sometimes leads to discoveries that improve human lives. Marmot studies are the foundation for experiments to address obesity, cardiovascular disease, mpox, stress, hepatitis, and liver cancer, and they may inform work on osteoporosis and organ transplantation.
Aging seems to nearly stop during hibernation, as the marmot heart rate drops from nearly 200 beats per minute when active to about nine during hibernation. Similarly, their active body temperature can be 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius)about the same as a dog or catbut plummet to 41° F (5° C) when hibernating. Humans, in comparison, become hypothermic at a core temperature of 95° F (35° C).
Fueling feast and famine
Marmots only source of energy during the hibernation period is stored fat, which they may metabolize as slowly as 1 gram per day. But even that is a large amount when it must suffice for more than half a year.
So, marmots need to double their weight during the summer, even in places where the season is only a few months long. To do so, they double the size of their hibernation-state gastrointestinal tract and liver, and then carefully select the most nutritious plants, including legumes, flowers, grains, and grasses. Despite their corpulence, they can also climb trees to eat buds and fruit.
Gardener, architect, and menu item
The digging and seed dispersal that accompany foraging create flower-filled meadows. Some marmots, like Mongolias Tarbagan marmot (M. siberica), are keystone species whose presence is associated with increased diversity of plants and predators.
Marmot burrows are a key architectural component of many other animals habitats. Abandoned marmot excavations can provide temperature- and humidity-controlled housing for dozens of species, from frogs and foxes to snakes and owls.
The same activities can make groundhogs a pest to people. In most of the Midwest, groundhog predators were largely eliminated at the same time that agricultural fields became vast marmot buffets. Today, many groundhog populations are tightly controlled by invasive coyotes, as well as recovering populations of bobcats.
Because they are such a high-quality meal, marmots are an important conduit of energy from plants to carnivores. Everything from hawks to eagles, weasels to wolves, may eat them. And, like most native birds and mammals, marmots are on the menu of house cats, too. Humans also have long exploited marmots for meat and fur. As a result, once-common marmot species are rare in many places.
But marmots breed like the proverbial bunnies and so have the potential to come back quickly from population declines. They can be reintroduced to former haunts, benefiting the ecosystem.
Hibernation must end at the right time
Shortly after waking from hibernation, marmots mate, giving birth about 4 weeks later to half a dozen or more offspring. Ideally, pups are born just as the first plants peak through the snowmeltmaximizing the time available to pack on fat for the coming hibernation season.
Given the food needs of these big ground squirrels, and the fact they may be seen poking their heads above the snow before any food is available, it seems reasonable to assume that they have some power of weather prediction. Indeed, people celebrate scores of individual groundhogs across the U.S. and Canada for their ability to anticipate weather six weeks hence.
This American groundhog tradition apparently started with German immigrants recalling the spring emergence of badgers and hedgehogs in the old country. Brown bears have a similar spring schedule and are still celebrated in Romania and Serbia.
People ascribe weather-predicting abilities to other species, too, including woolly bear caterpillars, sheep, cats and dormice.
One tradition holds that tree squirrel nests, called dreys, can predict the severity of the coming winter. Leafy dreys are well ventilated and privategood choices if you need less protection during a warm winter. More insulated hollow trees are cozy in the cold but communal, and so come with the risk of sharing parasites. As a squirrel researcher, I have noted the location, number, and size of nests for years but seen no discernible patterns related to weather.
Weather responders, not weather predictors
Despite traditional claims, youve probably already guessed that Phil and his friends are about as good at predicting the coming weather as that kid who answers C for every multiple choice question. A 2021 study on the subject reported that groundhogs predictions of spring onset (are) no better than chance. Thats right, groundhogs are correct 50% of the time.
One big problem with relying on any species on a specific calendar day is that seasons follow latitude and altitude. Anyone who has hiked the Appalachian Trail can tell you that trekking from south to north maximizes your time in cool spring weather. Similarly, if you venture to the peaks of the Rockies in August, youll find spring wildflowers.
For this reason, groundhogs in Alabama emerge from their dens much earlier than those in Wisconsin. As one Canadian newspaper put it in 1939: Here in Manitoba, no woodchuck in his senses would voluntarily emerge into the cold on February 2.
Animals senses are tools for survival
Modern technology can accurately predict the average weatherthat is, climatefar into the future, and the precise weather five days in advance. But the accuracy of a forecast at a given point on Earth 10 days in the future is only about 50%as good as a groundhog.
However, many animals are sensitive to phenomena that humans need tools to even notice.
Flocks of warblers, sparrows, and other birds sometimes seem to appear out of nowhere before a storm. These species often migrate at night, navigating across land and sea by the stars and Earths magnetic fields. To avoid getting lost in fog or blown off course, theyll fall out of the sky at good resting spots when bad weather is building. At such times, take the warblers advice and dont venture out on the water.
Frogs chirping in spring indicate that water temperatures are warm enough for eggs, while air temperatures influence caterpillar hatching and activity. Farmers over the centuries have recorded the blooming dates of flowers over the years as a way to predict when to plant and harvest.
Noticing and tracking timing of annual events
Phenology is the study of these natural phenomena and their annual cycles, from the first springtime peek of a groundhog to the last autumn honk of a goose. When does the first flower bloom in your neighborhood, the first thunder clap rumble, or the last cricket chirp?
No individual observation, even Phils, has the power to predict the weather. But in aggregate, these observations can tell us a lot about what the world is doing and predict how it will change. You can be like Phil and look for your shadow, or for a nice legume to eat, and then contribute to science by adding your observations to the National Phenology Network.
Traditions dont need to be factually true to be useful. Groundhog shadows bring people together at a cold time of year to look at the clouds, notice buds on the trees, and track down the earliest green sprouts, such as skunk cabbage, which warms the snow around it. This Groundhog Day, get out there and enjoy nature as you celebrate the lengthening days and increased activities of the organisms we share this planet with.
Steven Sullivan is the director of the Hefner Museum of Natural History at Miami University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Bitwarden is one of the more likable tech companies. It offers a great password manager for free, charges modestly for its paid version, and has mostly stayed in its lane with its focus on security products.
So it’s disappointing that it isn’t being more transparent about the first price hike in its 10-year history. Bitwarden’s Premium version now costs $20 per year, up from $10 per year previously. But instead of announcing the change directly, the company buried the news in a blog post about new features, such as more attachment storage and alerts about weak passwords.
Meanwhile, Bitwarden isn’t rushing to let customers know about the increase. Theyll only get an email about the price hike (or, as Bitwarden calls it, “updated pricing”) 15 days before their next renewal.
Those emails don’t spell out the actual yearly price, either. Instead, Bitwarden follows the SaaS industry scourge of listing a monthly price for an annual subscription, further obscuring the actual price. The company doesn’t offer a monthly subscription, yet it’s telling customers that they’ll pay “$1.65/month, billed annually.” (Existing customers are getting a onetime discount, at $15 for their next year.)
The extra $10 per year doesn’t bother me much. I’ve been a happy paying Bitwarden customer for a couple of years now, and I find value in Premium features like two-factor authentication code storage, password hygiene checks, and Emergency Access, which will let my wife access my vault if something happens to me. Proton Pass Plus and 1Password are the only other paid password managers I’ve considered, and they’re both nearly twice the price, at $36 per year.
But the way Bitwarden announced the price hike gives me pause.
Like a lot of Bitwarden users, I switched over from LastPass in 2021. At the time, LastPass had started limiting free users to a single device type, which meant no more syncing passwords between a phone and a computer. Bitwarden had no such restrictions, and moving my passwords over was easier than I expected. As its founder, Kyle Spearrin, later told me, LastPass’s various blunders (including a major security breach in 2023) helped drive a lot of new business to Bitwarden over the years.
The company has since grown from Spearrin alone to roughly 200 employees, with a business model that largely revolves around enterprise customers. When Bitwarden has raised moneyan undisclosed Series A in 2019, then a $100 million round in 2022it has been to satisfy business demands such as security certifications or to invest in workplace features like developer API key management.
Individual users, meanwhile, have served as a funnel for the more lucrative enterprise business, with CEO Michael Crandell calling it a “virtuous circle” between the two. Those who get Bitwarden from their work get lifetime access to its Premium plan for families, even when they change jobs.
Why, then, is Bitwarden sneakily announcing a price hike for individuals instead of owning it? Is the consumer side so fragile that Bitwarden can’t stand behind the value of a $20 annual subscription? Is the consumer-to-business funnel not working the way it used to? Is it a sign that Bitwarden has lost touch with the community that helped build it up in the first place?
I don’t know, but I’m not alone in thinking this way. Here’s a sampling of comments from Bitwarden’s Reddit thread about the news:
“This is disappointing not because of the price increase itself, but because of how it was handled and communicated.”
“These premium ‘enhancements’ don’t really seem worth the extra $10 a year. Just be honest with us and say it’s for rising costs.”
“Thing is, I don’t mind the increase (it was bound to happen sooner rather than later) so much as the way it’s being handled.”
“A price increase had long been overdue, but still not so abruptly and not under the guise of adding marketing features nobody needs.”
The company said via email that its vision of helping individuals and companies manage sensitive information has not changed. I hope this is just a marketing blunder, and not anything bigger to worry about.
Eat this, not that. This one food will cure everything. That food is poison. Cut this food out. Try this diet. Dont eat at these times. Eat this food and youll lose weight. With societys obsession with food, health, and weight, statements like these are all over social media, gyms, and even healthcare offices.
But do you need to follow rules like these to be healthy? Most often the answer is no, because health and nutrition is much more complex and nuanced than a simple list of what to eat and what to avoid. Despite this, rules about health and nutrition are so common because of diet culturea morality imposed by society that sees falling outside the arbitrary ideal of thinness as a personal failure. Diet culture and the people promoting it expect you to pursue or maintain thinness at all times.
Diet culture norms have led to a multibillion-dollar industry promoting diets that each come with their own set of rules, with each claiming its the only way to be healthy or lose weight. When access to nutrition information is at an all-time high online, people are often left digging through conflicting information when trying to figure out what to eat or what a healthy diet look likes.
As a registered dietitian specializing in eating disorders, the majority of my clients have been, and continue to be, harmed by diet culture. They wrestle with guilt and shame around food, and their health is often negatively affected by rigid rules about nutrition. Rather than improving health, research has shown that diet culture increases your risk of unhealthy behaviors, including yo-yo dieting, weight cycling, and eating disorders.
If the solution to health isnt following the rules of diet culture, what is the answer? I believe an all-foods-fit approach to nutrition can offer an antidote.
What is “all foods fit”?
“All foods fit” may sound like eat whatever you want, whenever you want, but that is an oversimplification of this approach to nutrition. Rather, this model is based on the idea that all foods can fit into a healthy diet by balancing food and nutrition in a way that promotes health. It does this by enabling flexibility in your diet through listening to internal body cues to decide what and when to eat instead of following external rules.
All foods fit allows for nuance to exist in health and nutrition. Diet culture is black and whitefoods are either good or bad. But nutrition and health are much more complex. For starters, many factors beyond diet affect health: exercise, sleep, stress, mental health, socioeconomic status, access to food, and healthcare, to name a few.
Similarly, while general guidelines around nutrition are available, everyone has individual needs based on their preferences, health status, access to food, daily schedule, cooking skills, and more. The flexibility of all foods fit can help you make empowered food choices based on your health goals, tastes, exercise habits, and life circumstances.
All foods fit in action
A common pushback to the all-foods-fit approach is that you cant be healthy if you are eating unhealthy foods, and giving yourself permission to eat all foods means youll primarily eat the bad ones. However, research shows that removing the morality around food can actually lead to healthier food choices by decreasing stress related to food decisions. This reduces the risk of disordered eating, resulting in improved physical health.
To see what an all-foods-fit approach might look like, imagine youre attending a social event where the food options are pizza, a veggie and dip tray, and cookies. According to the diet youre following, pizza, cookies, and dips are all bad foods to avoid. You grab some of the veggies to eat, but are still hungry.
Youre starving toward the end of the event, but the only food left is cookies. You plan on eating only one, but feel so hungry and guilty that you end up eating a lot of cookies and feel out of control. You feel sick when you go home and promise yourself to do better tomorrow. But this binge-restrict cycle will continue.
Now imagine attending the same social event, but you dont label foods as good or bad. From experience, you know you often feel hungry and unwell after eating pizza by itself. You also know that fiber, which can be found in vegetables, is helpful for gut health and can make you feel more satisfied after meals. So you balance your plate with a couple slices of pizza and a handful of veggies and dip.
You feel pretty satisfied after that meal and dont feel the need to eat a cookie. Toward the end of the event, you grab a cookie because you enjoy the taste and eat most of it before feeling satisfied. You save the rest of the cookie for later.
Rather than following strict rules and restrictions that can lead to cycles of guilt and shame, an all-foods-fit approach can lead to more sustainable, healthy habits where stress and disruptions to routine dont wreak havoc on your overall diet.
How to get started with an all-foods-fit approach
It can be incredibly hard to divest from diet culture and adopt an all-foods-fit approach to nutrition and health. Here are some tips to help you get started.
Remove any moral labels on food. Instead of good or bad, or healthy or unhealthy, think about the name of the food or the nutritional components it has. For example, chicken is high in protein, broccoli is a source of fiber, and ice cream is a dessert. Neutral labels can help determine what food choices make sense for you in the moment and reduce any guilt or shame around food.
Focus on your internal cueshunger, fullness, satisfaction, and how food makes you physically feel. Becoming attuned to your body can help you regulate food choices and determine what eating pattern makes you feel your best.
Eat consistently. When you arent eating regularly, it can be hard to feel in control around food. Your hunger can become more intense, and your body less sensitive to fullness hormones. Implement an eating schedule that spaces food regularly throughout the day, filling any prolonged gaps between meals with a snack.
Reintrduce foods you previously restricted. Start small with foods that feel less scary or with a small amount of a food youre anxious about. This could look like adding a piece of chocolate to lunch most days, or trying out a bagel for one breakfast. By intentionally adding these foods back into your diet, you can build trust with yourself that you wont feel out of control around these foods.
Check in with yourself before eating. Ask yourself, how hungry am I? What sounds good right now? How long until I can eat again?
And sometimes, more support is needed. This can be especially true if youre experiencing disordered eating habits or have an eating disorder. Consider working with a dietitian to help challenge nutrition misinformation and heal your relationship to food.
Charlotte Carlson is the director of the Kendall Reagan Nutrition Center at Colorado State University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
There is a deeply unsettling paradox in how aging women are represented today. The louder the discourse on inclusion and diversity becomes, the fewer women we see who actually look like women over 45. Women who age normallywho live in their bodies, with their features, their lines, their visible agehave almost vanished from public view. When women in their 50s or 60s do gain visibility, it is often with a body and a face that belong to the strange category of Forever 35: perfectly smooth, ageless, suspended in time.
This is not a trivial aesthetic issue, for it has major consequences for work, careers, and power. When women disappear from view as they age, they lose access to role models at exactly the moment when careers are supposed to stretch and evolve. If you are expected to work for 50 years but can only see the first 20 years of that life representedin leadership, in organizations, in the mediathen most of your working life remains unimaginable. There is no shared script for what professional authority, ambition, or success look like at 60.
When women in their 50s or 60s are made visible, it is often on the condition that they look 10 or 20 years younger. As a result, women in their 60s are effectively invisiblepresent only if their age is erased. This narrows ambition, encourages self-censorship, and makes later-life leadership or reinvention seem abnormal rather than expected. It quietly redistributes power away from aging women by making long careers harder to imagine, claim, and inhabit.
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Theres no point in blaming the women
Let us be absolutely clear: This is not about condemning womens individual choices. Gray hair or dyed hair. Injections or not. Surgery or not. Filters or not. To suggest that women are responsible for their own invisibility because they give in to beauty standards would be both unjust and profoundly naive. We do what we can with the constraints and possibilities we have. We do what we can with the contradictory injunctions we receive.
The problem is not that women try to look younger. Thats perfectly understandable. The problem is that older women are either not there or only tolerated if they do not look old. As a result, the normal faces of aging womento borrow the central idea of a brilliant newsletter by author Caroline Criado Perezhave almost disappeared from our visual landscape. This disappearance is anything but accidental.It reflects the demographic structure of power in which men are allowed to age as they move up the ladder, while women in the workspace are expected to remain in their placesubmissive, at the bottom of the hierarchy, there to please the eye, whatever their job and position.
A double disappearance: organizations and media
Sociologists have long documented the progressive invisibilization of women in U.S. organizations, and the numbers tell a familiar story. In Fortune 500 companies, women now make up roughly 30% of executive leadership roles, but this progress is uneven and heavily skewed toward younger cohorts. Women over 50and especially over 60are dramatically underrepresented at the highest levels of visible power, despite decades of accumulated experience.
This organizational invisibility mirrors what happens in the media. Research by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media consistently shows that women are both underrepresented and age-erased on both the big and small screen. Women over 50 account for a small fraction of speaking roles, even though they represent more than a third of the U.S. adult population. As women age, they quite literally vanish from movies, television, and advertising. And when they are allowed to reappear, it is often on the condition that their age be visually erased. Across film, TV, and ads, female bodies are toleratedeven in leadership or expert rolesonly if they are filtered, smoothed, lifted, and polished. We want women leaders, but not their wrinkles of concentration nor the visible marks of 25 years of work.
When aging becomes a defect to be corrected
Criado Perez describes how she started collecting images of actresses whose faces have not been artificially rejuvenatedEmma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Kate Winsletbecause encountering a female face over 35 that looks real has become a rare event. Seeing such faces should be familiar and banal. On-screen, its exceptional. Thus, we have lost our collective visual memory of what women in their 40s, 50s, or 60s actually look like. Perfectly normal featureslines of expression, changes in skin texture, saggingare now perceived as signs of neglect and personal failure. The traits of a normal age have been reframed as flaws.
New generative AI tools are making this visual amnesia even worse. Ask an image generator to show you a 50-year-old woman, and you will usually get either a smoothed, poreless face that could be 35or a woman who looks closer to 70. The technology merely reproduces and amplifies the biases of the image databases it is trained on. AI does not show us women of 50; it shows us what the internet imagines they should look like.
It is just as pervasive in corporate stock photography, in recruitment materials, and in the visual representations of the business world more broadly. The world of work, as it is depicted today, is populated by smooth, vaguely thirtysomething faces, where age is either erased or reduced to a stereotype. Women in their 50s or 60s are largely absentexcept when they are used to illustrate end-of-career narratives, mentorship, or decline.
The enduring double standard of aging
This brings us back to a concept articulated more than 50 years ago by Susan Sontag: the double standard of aging. Male aging is associated with added valueauthority, gravitas, experience, powerwhile female aging is framed as decline. Nothing fundamental has changed. After 45, women are expected either to fade into the background or to invest enormous energy into looking younger, but never to sho visible signs of aging without consequence. Many describe a feeling of literal disappearance, what French journalist Sophie Dancourt has memorably called the convent syndrome: an unspoken injunction to withdraw from public life once youth, fertility, and sexualized visibility are presumed to be over.
This logic is brutally familiar in the entertainment industry, where womens careers are still shaped by narrow and unforgiving norms of desirability. Aging men are cast as mentors, leaders, or lovers; aging women are quietly written out, unless they conform to increasingly unrealistic beauty standards. The result is not only professional marginalization, but also a cultural message that equates womens worth with youthand treats aging as a problem to be managed rather than a reality to be lived.
That is precisely what makes the sketch Last Fuckable Day, from Inside Amy Schumer, so powerful. Schumer unexpectedly runs into her show-business heroesTina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patricia Arquettewho are celebrating a darkly comic milestone: the age at which women are deemed no longer desirable or castable. Made 10 years ago, the sketch does not feel dated at all. It turns ageist erasure into a sharp piece of feminist satireone that feels even more relevant today than when it first aired.
Why this matters so much at work
The absence of older female role models is extremely costly. First, it deprives younger women of projection. How can you imagine a long, evolving career when most, if not all, visible success stories stop at 40? In a world where working lives are getting longer, this lack of role models is deeply destabilizing.Second, it reinforces discrimination. When women over 45 are rarely seen in leadership, those who succeed are perceived as exceptions rather than as the norm. This fuels stereotypes about atypical careers and legitimizes bad decisions in hiring, promotion, and training.
Third, it creates collective anxiety around aging. When the only acceptable image of professional success is youth, aging becomes something to fear. This anxiety affects all womennot just those who are already older.Finally, organizations lose out. Women over 45 represent a massive pool of experience, skills, and leadership potential. Treating them as obsolete is economically irrational.
Its about diversity
Calling for more older female role models does not mean prescribing how women should age. There should be no new rulewhether to go gray or not, to reject aesthetic medicine or embrace it. The aim is not to replace one norm with another, but to leave room for choice.
What we desperately need is more diversity of the ways of aging. Wrinkled faces and smooth ones. Gray hair and dyed hair. Bodies that show time in different ways. Making this diversity visible expands what is socially imaginable.
Every woman who chooseswhen she can, when she wantsto show her real, aging face widens the spectrum of the visible. She sends a simple but powerful message: I am here. I am aging in my own way. And I matter.
In doing so, she not only challenges stereotypes todayshe also helps shape the images, datasets, and representations that will train the technologies and imaginations of tomorrow.
Older female role models at work are not a niche demand. They are a condition for fairer careers, healthier organizations, and a society that can finally accept womens lives in their full lengthnot just in their youth.
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Have you ever watched someone try to come up with a creative idea: Postit notes, coffee, laptop, a determined glint in their eye and a solemn expression on their face? If the idea isnt coming, add a few sighs, some squirming, and the magical rearrangement of every object on the desk. Most workplaces still reward this try harder ritual. This is rarely where creative energy actually emerges.
We all know the stories. The best ideas come in the shower, on a walk, doing dishes, or even during everyones beloved folding of laundry. Heres the thing: its not a quirk.
Movement helps foster creativity. It occupies the body in a repeating pattern that doesnt require the brain to do too many mental pull-ups, which is why it reliably restores access to insight. When the nervous system settles even slightly, the mind widens its search and connects ideas that didnt seem related a few minutes earlier.
When employees end up performing creativity instead of accessing it, their attention often tightens around the problem. They start monitoring, judging, checking. That pressure narrows perception and makes it harder to notice new connections. If your team is struggling to find creative solutions, do not ask people to push harder. Instead, try to get your team to move so people can relax enough for their creative ideas to flow without force.
Here are three moments when leaders should watch for and what they should do when they happen.
1. Redlight: Reactive Pause
Red-light moments are fight or flight situations, with burn it to the ground imagination at play. This looks like: Lets scrap the entire project and start over, fire off an unprofessional email, or make an impulsive, on-the-spot yes commitment. Perception narrows, patience disappears, and rarely does acting or creating from that charge produce a positive, generative outcome.
Red-light pauses call for brief, more vigorous movement to discharge the stress response. Build in a quick change of scene: a fast lap around the building, a flight of stairs, or shaking out the arms. The purpose is to burn off adrenaline, widen perception, and step back out of emergency mode so people can return their creative focus to the ideas and projects they should be solving.
If your team is up for it, jumping jacks definitely give that destructive charge somewhere to go with some humor added.
2. Yellowlight: Reroute Pause
Yellowlight moments are the Ive been staring at this for an hour and its not getting better days. The mind is running the same idea over and over, the idea of the outcome is sabotaging the actual creating of it, instead of building the conditions for imagination to thrive.
Normalize small, rhythmic movement that lets the mind drift. Unlike red-light pauses, which are brief and vigorous, yellow-light pauses are slower and sustained. Close the laptops and take a slow 10-minute walk outside, with the main intention of shifting attention to sensory input, like noticing different types of cars, sounds, or colors, or spend a few minutes doodling the same shape. The plan is to give the brain enough repetition to relax its grip so energy can reroute toward new options.
Teams quickly learn that this isnt slacking. Its a practical way to refocus creative energy so work can move faster, not slower. When people step away without technology, theyre far more likely to return with a fresh angle instead of the same recycled thought in a slightly different font.
3. Greenlight: Proactive Pause
Green-light moments are when you want to generate new ideas and can see the tank is empty: people are exhausted or viewing the unknown like its an uncertain void.
This is where move and think brainstorms shine, because moderate movement feels spacious and supports idea generation. Instead of another conferenceroom session, leaders can take a product question, culture question, or whats next for this team question on a slow lap. For strategy days or longer meetings, consider gifting each person a small notebook for doodling or standing while they think.
Making movement part of how your team creates
Treat movement as a legitimate part of the creative process, not something people squeeze in at lunch. Many employees discover that language for what they think about a project arrives much more easily in motion than it does under fluorescent lights.
Add movement time to the projects creative process, especially for undefined work.
Recognize and ask, Is it a reachforthesneakers moment? and then give clear permission to do it.
Extra-long meeting? Book two conference rooms and switch at the halfway mark.
Model it yourself. Take your own red-, yellow-, and green-light pauses and name them so your team sees that movement is part of how you think.
When employees arent generating ideas, its rarely because they lack creativity. Its usually because theyre trying to access it under the worst conditions. The most effective leadership move is giving people permission to step away and trusting that their best thinking often happens when they are given the freedom to move.
In the months after a 2018 Supreme Court decision opened the door for states to legalize sports betting within their borders, giddy lawmakers across the country couldnt move quickly enough. No one wanted to miss out on the billions of dollars in tax revenue that the high court had suddenly placed within their reachor, worse yet, to watch that easy money go to neighboring states whose leaders had the presence of mind to move first. Within a month of the decision, Delaware Gov. John Carney bet $10 on a Phillies gamethe first legal single-game sports bet outside of Nevada.
Many states were more concerned with getting sportsbooks online in time for a big-ticket event (the Super Bowl, March Madness) than building an infrastructure to regulate the multibillion-dollar industrya dynamic that journalist Danny Funt details in his book Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling. Lawmakers in some states even passed laws authorizing sports gambling before the Supreme Court decided Murphy v. NCAA, so theyd be ready to jump after a favorable ruling.
Eight years later, its clear that this gold rush has had (and I am being diplomatic here) some negative consequences. Sports media outlets have become hopelessly intertwined with gambling behemoths eager to turn more fans into paying customers. Athletes who do not perform to bettors satisfaction are often subjected to racist abuse, death threats, or some combination thereof. And gambling addiction has spiked, thanks to the proliferation of app-based mobile betting that allows users to get their fixes anytime, anywhere.
A 2025 study found that internet searches for help with gambling addiction increased 23% between 2018 and June 2024, and that they surged more with the arrival of online sportsbooks than they did when brick-and-mortar casinos opened.
Over the last few years, a series of high-profile scandals have demonstrated the extent to which legalization has warped the actual games on which people are betting all this money. In 2024, the NBA issued a lifetime ban to Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter for his part in a conspiracy in which he pulled himself early from games to ensure that under bets on his performance would hit. Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier was implicated in a similar scheme last year, as were two Cleveland Guardians pitchers who were charged with rigging ball-or-strike bets on specific pitches in exchange for cash bribes.
Then, earlier this month, federal prosecutors named 39 players across 17 teams who were allegedly part of a point-shaving ring that fixed mens college basketball games during the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons. According to the indictment, bettors offered players bribes in the low five figures to underperform in agreed-upon games, and then wagered heavily on outcomes they had good reason to believe would go their way.
Leagues and sportsbooks typically frame corruption as rare and make examples of those who are involved in it. But the mere knowledge that scandals like this exist can throw the entire enterprise into doubt: If you are a gambler who is angry about a bad bet, its very easy to wonder if you were cheated by perpetrators who were just lucky enough not to get caught.
A new bill in Tennessee, where residents wagered $1.3 billion on sports over a two-month period last year, is maybe the most significant effort yet to retreat from the status quo. Introduced by a pair of Democratic lawmakers, state Rep. John Ray Clemmons and state Sen. Jeff Yarbro, the proposal would ban state-licensed sportsbooks from taking bets from people who are on the campuses of public colleges and universities, as well as from people at venues where those schools teams are playing games.
Sportsbooks use the geolocation capabilities of smartphones to determine app users eligibility, so logistically speaking, rejecting bets from phones that are located within newly designated restricted areas would not be especially complicated. Colleges and universities would also be required to block people from accessing online sportsbooks while connected to campus networks.
A handful of states have previously imposed modest limits on betting on college sportsfor example, banning proposition bets on college athletes, or prohibiting wagering on in-state school teams. The scope of Clemmons and Yarbros proposal is broader: It would prevent people on campus from placing any type of sports bet, college or otherwise.
The rationales for targeting restrictions at college students are straightforward: Gambling addiction has hit young people hard, and young men the hardest. A Pew Research Center study last year found that 31% of adults between ages 18 and 29 had bet on sports in the previous yearthe most of any age group. A 2023 survey commissioned by the NCAA found that more than a quarter of college-age adults had placed a bet online, and overall, 58% had bet in some form. In 2024, a Pennsylvania addiction therapist told 60 Minutes about a troubling new archetype of patient hed encountered in recent years: college students who gamble away their federal student loan money.
Clemmons echoed many of these concerns in an email to me, explaining that he was motivated by rising addiction rates among young people, sportsbooks efforts to target young people with advertising, the ongoing harassment of student-athletes, and a desire to prevent students from losing their parents’ hard-earned money to sportsbooks. If you are a policymaker looking to enact more robust protections for those whom the data shows are most vulnerable, the people who are physically present on a college campus is a pretty good place to start.
At the same time, the bills parameters demonstrate the challenges inherent in trying to provide oversight to an industry that has, to date, been allowed to set new land-speed record every year. Bettors have long demonstrated their willingness to move around in order to place bets. In his book, Funt writes that before New York authorized sports betting, New York City residents would simply walk across the George Washington Bridge until their phones registered their presence in New Jersey, where betting was legal. Given what we know about how addiction works and how prevalent it is, Im not sure that requiring college students to cross the street in order to place a wager is going to be, in the scheme of things, a significant deterrent.
Its also worth contemplating all the people and behaviors to whom this law would not apply. It doesnt affect private schools, which means that while students at the University of Tennessee might be temporarily locked out of their FanDuel accounts, students at Vanderbilt might not even realize if and when a ban takes effect. It doesnt affect private property, which means that students who live off campus would be free to continue wagering from the comfort of their couches. It doesnt affect access to federally regulated prediction sites like Kalshi, which function as backdoor sportsbooks accessible to anyone 18 and older.
Since Tennessee already prohibits anyone under 21 from betting with state-licensed sportsbooks, the people who would be barred from wagering under this law and who are not barred from wagering under existing law are, basically, fans at certain sporting events, and college juniors and seniors at public schools, if they happen to be on school property at that moment.
By email, Clemmons noted the legislatures limited jurisdiction over nonpublic property, and he asserted that geo-targeting campuses and sports venues seems the most effective, legal way to accomplish our primary aims. In response to my question about the merits of, for example, raising the minimum betting age or barring college students from betting regardless of their physical location, Clemmons said that if they pass this law and determine that more action is necessary, they will certainly look to have those discussions.
I dont mean to suggest that lawmakers considering responses like this one to the various crises before them are falling down on the job. When there is this much evidence over this many years that the post-Murphy free-for-all is ruining this many lives, I would prefer people in power do what they can to mitigate the harm rather than shrug their shoulders and do nothing.
I’m simply saying that at this point, eight years after the Supreme Court empowered the gambling industry to begin swallowing sports whole, it is going to be really, really challenging for lawmakers, in Tennessee or anywhere else, to start putting the proverbial toothpaste back in the tube.
This is largely the result of the states own choices: They could have proceeded more cautiously after Murphy, by more aggressively limiting the pools of eligible bettors, or imposing more onerous tobacco-style restrictions on sportsbook advertising, or simply deciding to wait a little while before putting virtual casinos in millions of pockets. But they wanted the money that would come with acting fast.
Now, theyre paying the true price.
Though I long resisted the label, I have been a solopreneur ever since I started working as a freelance writer in 2010. As the owner, manager, and only employee, all decisions about my solo freelancing business are up to mewhich continues to feel simultaneously invigorating and terrifying.
But not all daunting solopreneurship decisions are the same. While taking creative risks and pitching big names continue to cause some minor fingernail-chewing even after all these years, investing in my business is the leading cause of second-guessing (and third-guessing, fourth-guessing) my own abilities as an entrepreneur.
Many other solopreneurs share my lack of confidence about investing in a solo business. Not only do solo entrepreneurs tend to suffer from a kind money dysmorphia telling them they are one bad month away from everything falling apart, but the kinds of investments you make for a solo business dont typically offer a clear return on investment.
While a factory owner can typically draw a straight line from their investment in newer equipment and higher output, a solopreneur generally cant know for sure that the social media ad buys, the coaching, the annual subscription, or the virtual assistant moved the needle for their business. So how do you decide when and whether to invest your money into your solopreneurship when you cant predict the ROIor even necessarily observe it after the fact?
Build a firewall between your business and personal finances
Reinvesting in your business often tends to be scary because solopreneurs have irregular income. It feels like tempting fate to drop a significant amount of your big payout this month on an investment into your solo businessbecause, our paranoid monkey minds tell us, doing that practically guarantees your clients will dry up next month. And then you will have spent your grocery money on a new business laptop that could have waited six months.
This is why part of making solopreneurship sustainable is creating a financial safety net. Specifically, solopreneurs must put a firewall between their business and personal budgets. Though it may take some time to get there, your goal is for your solo business to pay you a salary.
Heres how that would work:
While youre in feast-or-famine mode, open a business savings account, and transfer any excess cash into it during high-income months. Even if you don’t have “excess cash,” commit to putting something aside, even if it’s just five bucks. This will create a habit that helps you build up a cushion for lean months when you dont have many clients or you have to chase the ones you have for payment. Over time, this savings account will begin to grow large enough that you can start paying yourself a biweekly salary.
Once you have reached that point, you can switch to having your payments deposited directly into the savings account rather than the checking account. By then, your biweekly salary payments can be automated, so you can feel confident that your personal budget and expenses are covered.
By setting up your business finances this way, you will have a better sense of how your business is doing and what kind of business cash flow you have without getting it confused with your personal cash flow.
Earmark some money for business development
In Vegas, its a huge mistake to gamble with money you cant afford to lose.
The same is true with risking an investment into your solo businessor any business, really. (For every Apple IPO, there are hundreds more pets.com failures.)
If youre a risk averse solo business owner (like yours truly), it can feel safer to simply clench your teeth and try to grow without spending a dime. (Trust me, its painful, slow, and kind of boring).
But my years of avoiding the risk of investing money in the wrong business opportunity ignored the second half of the advice. Taking a calculated risk on money I can afford to lose is well worth it.
Which is why, after eight years of freelancing, I started setting aside 5% to 10% of my income to reinvest in my business. Having this money specifically earmarked for business expenses and investments helped me feel more confident about potential development opportunities that couldnt promise a specific ROI. If these opportunities didnt pan out, I could afford to lose the money.
Even if consistently setting aside a percentage of your income isnt possible, you can find potential business investment money in lots of other places, such as your tax refund, a gift or inheritance, or an unexpected bonus from a client.
Act slowly and carry a big notebook
Even the most decisive solopreneur can get stuck in analysis paralysis when it comes to investing in their business. You may worry that youre missing out on incredible opportunities, but you may also worry that youre throwing money away.
Its in this state of indecision that were most vulnerable to the kind of high-pressure sales pitches that were most likely to regret latersince those pitches often come couched in the language of absolute certainty, whether youre talking to the salesperson at the Apple store who is trying to get you to upgrade to a more expensive laptop, or the marketing expert who wants you to commit to 12 months of one-on-one coaching for tens of thousands of dollars.
To help you identify investment opportunities that are more likely to benefit you and your small business, follow these steps:
Commit to at least a 24-hour period before buying anything. This protects you from your own enthusiasm and gives you a chance to let your cooler head prevail.
Write down what you hope the investment can do for your business. There are no guarantees that youll get these returns, but the act of writing down your hopes can help you see if they are realistic or pie-in-the-sky thinking. Its even better if you share your thoughts with a colleague in the same or a similar field.
Create a premortem. In business, teams will sometimes conduct a premortem before starting a major project to identify the things that are most likely to go wrong. If youre looking to invest a significant amount of money ito your solo business, create a premortem beforehand to identify what could go wrong with your investment so you can shore up those potential problemsor abandon the investment if the issues seem inevitable.
The few, the proud, the solopreneurs
Working for yourself as a solo business owner is not for the faint of heart. Not only do you have to deal with all the problems that come with entrepreneurship, but you also have to make all the hard decisionsincluding when to invest money back into the enterprise.
While investing in a solo business will never be a clear decision, there are several things you can do to make the process feel less terrifying. To start, creating a firewall between your business and personal finances will help make your business decisions feel less personal. From there, earmarking some money for business development can help you feel more comfortable investing, since the money will be cash you can afford to lose.
Finally, youll feel more confident about the opportunities you choose to put money into if you commit to a waiting period before making any purchases, write down what you hope to get from the investment to check that your expectations are realistic, and conduct a premortem to identify likely problems.
When Roc Nation and the NFL decided that Bad Bunny would be their Super Bowl headliner, the next step was for Apple, the shows sponsor, to set the strategy to hype the halftime show.
Apple has spearheaded the Super Bowl halftime show since 2023, building a complex array of advertising, teasers, playlists, and other content across its many platforms for Rihanna (2023), Usher (2024), and Kendrick Lamar (2025). Since the start of this $50-million-per-year sponsorship deal, Apple has treated the halftime show like it might be one of its products, with all the marketing and advertising bells and whistles it has at its disposal for things like the iPhone and Apple Watch.
And it seems to be working.
Since 2022, Apple Music has grown its subscriber base from 88 million globally to about 108 million. It currently has about a 30% market share of music streaming subscribers in the U.S., compared with Spotify’s 36%. Globally, though, Apple’s market share drops to about 16%and this is where the Bad Bunny strategy comes in.
The Puerto Rican superstar is one of the most-streamed artists on the planet. As soon as he was announced, Apple Music released custom playlists, interviews, and more to excite fans and educate curious potential new fans. By crafting and promoting the Super Bowl halftime show as a global product launch starring such an internationally popular artist, Apple is using its broader playbook to expand the footprint of its big game investment.
Artist first
After landing the halftime performer, the first thing Apples vice president of marketing, Tor Myhren, and his team do is sit down with the artist and ask a few questions: What is it that you want to get out of this? What do you want this to be? What’s the goal here?
Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, is a global superstar and one of the most-streamed artist on the planet. His answer? This isn’t my halftime show. This is for everyone.
We thought that was such an inclusive, optimistic approach, Myhren says. So we just wrote that on the wall and said, That’s the brief, so let’s just make sure it feels like this is for everyone. This is a celebration.
The celebration theme is in sharp contrast to the reaction from right-wing media and social commentators, and even President Trump himself, since Bad Bunny was announced as the halftime act in late September. Last week, Trump was asked about him and fellow Super Bowl performers Green Day. Im anti-them, Trump said. I think its a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.
The reality of Bad Bunnys message is the exact opposite of hatred. In the halftime shows trailer, the artist is seen dancing happily with people of all shades, shapes, and sizes.
Myhren says that this, in essence, is Bad Bunnys vibe. He wants it to be positive. He wants it to be filled with optimism.”
And why shouldnt he? He is the fourth artist to do the show since Apple took over its sponsorship, and each year it has broken viewership records. Rihannas 2023 show had 121 million, Usher’s had 123.4 million, and Lamars performance last year hit 133.5 million viewers.
Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music, Sports, and Beats, says that the companys relationship with artists makes it ideal for the halftime show. Theyve been working with Bad Bunny since about 2016. Unlike previous sponsors, we have such a close relationship with the artists that in all four years, we were able to work really closely on how we want this to be announced, how we want it to be rolled out, and what the surprises are, Schusser says. And I think that puts us in a very unique position, unlike any other version of this event.
The goal this year is to globally expand the show. Myhren says Apple is using some of the same tactics it employs to launch new products around the world to promote this show.
When you think about the way we launch our physical productswhether its an outdoor billboard, a film ad, a small piece in your social feedthey have to be able to play everywhere, he says. They have to speak to everyone, which is why we don’t use a lot of dialogue. Music is a universal language, so we use that. That’s been really, really fun and challenging.
Measuring success
Apples halftime show sponsorship is a five-year deal with the NFL that was signed in September 2022. And just like any Super Bowl advertiser that wants you to remember its big game commercial, Apple wants to make sure we all know whos sponsoring the halftime show. Myhren says that the brand measures success in the most obvious waystotal viewership, social impressions, and earned media. Are we watching and are we talking about it? Three years and three record-breaking audiences later, and the answer is pretty clear.
The brand produces a slick pregame press conference for each halftime artist to further entice music fans. Far beyond your typical press room table and mic, its more like a slick talk-show pop-up. The Apple Music platform is packed with a variety of playlists tailored to everyone from Bad Bunny stans to total n00bs. And all the video content, including the show itself, is available on Apple TV.
We’ve figured out ways to just make sure we’re a part of that conversation, which is critical, Myhren says. By building up what’s happening on the platform, we want peoplewhether they’re Apple Music subscribers now or potential subscriberscoming to the platform and experiencing what we have tere, especially around these few weeks.
Myhren knows the question on any marketers mind is: What are you getting out of this?
It really sits at the center of the biggest viewership event in the U.S. every year by a long shot. There’s nothing else even close, he says. I think it’s really unique and absolutely worth every penny.
