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Social media is terrible for teens mental healthor is it? At the same time that rising rates of poor mental health among youth have been called a national crisis, and as parents and regulators call on social media companies to do more to keep young people safe online, a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that social mediawhile flawedcan sometimes be a positive influence on teenagers. In a survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, 74% said social media makes them feel more connected to their friends, and 63% said online platforms give them a place to show off their creativity. Theres more good news: About half52%said social media makes them feel more accepted and supported through tough times. The bad news? That number is down from 67% in 2022. The survey found that parents, more than teens themselves, are likely to see social media as a threat to the mental health of teen users. Nearly half (44%) of parents blamed social media as the single greatest negative influence on teens mental health, followed by technology and bullying. Only 22% of teens agreed, citing a broader range of negative influences, including bullying and pressure to meet expectations. Everyone expects teens to have it all figured out by the time we get out of high school, one teenage girl said. Sometimes we dont know what we want to do. We are figuring life out too. Still, social media ranked as the most negative influence according to both teens and parents. The overuse of social media in our society seems to be the main cause of depression among those in my age group, a teenage boy said. People seem to let themselves be affected by the opinions of people they dont know, and it wreaks havoc upon peoples states of mind. Interestingly, teens seem more concerned about the effect of social media on their peers than on themselves. Roughly half (48%) said these sites have a mostly negative effect on teens their ageup from 32% in 2022while just 14% said they believe social media negatively affects them personally. At the same time, the number of teens who said they think social media has a positive effect on their peers dropped from 24% in 2022 to just 11% in the current survey. As a result, many teens are trying to cut back: 44% said they have reduced the time they spend on social media and smartphones. That means more than half are still scrolling.
Category:
E-Commerce
As Liverpool FC stars Mo Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Virgil van Dijk celebrated winning the Premier League clubs 20th title on Sunday, you can bet that across the ocean thousands of American fans were ordering shirts with their names on the back. There are 24 million Liverpool fans in the U.S. Many of them are spread across 67 different club supporters groups in 35 states. Americans buy more Liverpool kits and merchandise than any other international market. Sales were up 14% last season, and that coincides with more than 30 million U.S. fans watching the club on TV, up 42%. More than half of Liverpool’s partners are headquartered in the U.S., including Nike, Coca-Cola, Expedia, and UPS. The clubs success and ability to grow its business across the pond is a snapshot of how its overall approach to the business of global soccer has been directly tied to its ability to win on the field. Back in 2010, Liverpool FC was struggling financially. It was a celebrated and historic sports icon, but bad business had put the club on the verge of collapse. Boston-based Fenway Sports Group bought the club for about $380 million. In May, Forbes estimated the clubs worth at roughly $5.7 billion. Ben Latty, Liverpool FCs chief commercial officer, says it was about a decade ago that Liverpool really focused on specific areas of business growth. The way that we operate commercially, and from a revenue standpoint, is very different to American sports, says Latty, who joined the club in 2013. The Premier League controls the broadcast rights, so Liverpool put its emphasis on as many other areas as possible that it could control: licensing, partnerships, and retail. There’s other models out there, yeah, pros and cons of those. But we believe that we’ve got the right model to control our own destiny, Latty says. Heres how it works. [Photo: Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside/Getty Images] In-house ownership In the NFL, most teams control their local broadcast rights. For retail, Fanatics designs, manufactures, and distributes the fan gear, and in many cases manages retail and ecommerce. Global football clubs operate much more independently from their leagues, so their ability to afford the best playersand therefore succeed on the fieldis largely driven by how well they run as a business. Latty says for Liverpool, that means owning and operating many of the primary points of contact fans have with the club. All its merchandise design and even manufacturing, except for its game kit by Nike, is club owned. We do everything ourselves, says Latty. That has pros and cons, but it allows us to control our own destinyscale up when we need to and, though we havent had to yet, scale back when we need to. Our retail business is really important as it relates to engaging with our fan base around the world, making sure we have the right products for the right regions, and the customer service that they expect. [Photo: Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC/Getty Images] Power in partnerships A key cog in the Liverpool FC global brand machine is its ability to attract and work with big-name corporate partners. In the past 18 months, the club has signed 10 major deals, including with Google Pixel, UPS, Japan Airlines, Peloton, and Husqvarna. And more than half of its major partners are U.S.-based companies, including Nike, Coca-Cola, and Expedia. Latty says it’s about balancing partners across different industries and product categories, and then working with them to create content that works best for them, the club, and its fans. The key word is impact, he says. We’ve got to make sure that what we provide to them hits their objectives and becomes impactful. These are brands from every corner of the planet, and the impact is to a global audience through broadcast, digital, and social. . . . These partners are a really important piece for us to engage with our fan base in all of those global markets. For example, as part of its partnership with Google Pixel, the club gave the smartphones to all its media and content staff to capture behind-the-scenes contentsome scripted, some not so much. There was this amazing moment last season, when during a goal celebration Virgil van Dijk . . . noticed someone from the media team behind the goal. He took the phone and filmed the celebration. It wasnt planned at all, Latty says. You can say that’s luck, but you also make your own luck seeding the right people in the right places with the right technology. A truly incredible angle of Darwin's winner and then celebrations shot by the skipper #AD | #TeamPixel pic.twitter.com/humiZ1djWl— Liverpool FC (@LFC) March 2, 2024 Content Club Liverpool FC was the first Premier League club to reach more than 10 million followers on YouTube (now it has more than 11 million). Its content is a mix of behind-the-scenes, interviews, fan engagements, and game highlights. The club also produces all its branded content fr partners in-house. Our content team is really at the center of working with our partnerships team to make sure that whatever we’re coming up with for our partners is going to resonate on our channels and give them the reach they signed up for, Latty says. The club has more than 46.7 million Instagram followers, and last season it reported 1.5 billion engagements across its social channels, a 40% increase from the previous season, and tops in the Premier League. To put our level of engagements into context, when we won the Carabao Cup back in February 2024, we got 61.3 million social engagements, Latty says. When Real Madrid won La Liga, they got 48.9 million engagements, and when the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl last year, they registered 12.7 million engagements. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Liverpool Football Club (@liverpoolfc) Latty says roughly 70% of the clubs content is watched by people who dont regularly follow soccer. He credits the quality of the content to how media and content is woven into the organization. I think some of the beauty of that is how closely theyre integrated into what we do as a football operations team so theyre there for the moments that matter, he says. As Salah, van Dijk, and the rest of the team prepare to officially lift the Premier League title trophy later in May, the goal for Latty is to make sure the business side keeps fueling wins like this. We’ve got to continue to protect what we’ve built up to now, he says. For me, the pressure is always to drive as much revenue as we can for the football club, so that we can do what we’re doing on the pitch now, and long may that continue.
Category:
E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While national active housing inventory for sale at the end of March 2025 was still 20% below pre-pandemic March 2019 levels, on a year-over-year basis national active listings are up 29% between March 2024 and March 2025. This indicates that homebuyers have gained some leverage in many parts of the country over the past year. One of the biggest year-over-year increases is happening in Californiawhere active inventory for sale is up 50% year-over-year. Despite the 50% year-over-year jump in active California housing inventory for saleincluding both single-family homes and condosCalifornia at the end of March 2025 still had 20% fewer homes for sale than it did in pre-pandemic March 2019. But more California housing markets are climbing out of that inventory deficit. And if the current trajectory holds, California could soon be out of its pandemic housing boom era inventory hole. Among Californias 36 major counties with at least 100,000 residents, nine have more active housing inventory for sale in March 2025 compared to pre-pandemic March 2019. The other 27 major California counties still have inventory below pre-pandemic March 2019 levels. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}))}(); In housing markets where active inventory for sale rises significantly, homebuyers are gaining leverage. In housing markets where active inventory for sale has shot up above pre-pandemic 2019 levels, homebuyers have gained considerable leverage relative to past years. Homebuyers in San Francisco (in particular San Francisco propers condo market) had a lot more leverage recently than homebuyers in, say, Orange County.
Category:
E-Commerce
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