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After many years of partisan politics, increasingly divisive language, finger-pointing, and inflammatory speech have contributed to an environment of fear and uncertainty, affecting not just political dynamics but also the priorities and perceptions of young people. As a developmental psychologist who studies the intersection of media and adolescent mental health, and as a mother of two Gen Z kids, I have seen firsthand how external societal factors can profoundly shape young peoples emotional well-being. This was brought into sharp relief through the results of a recent survey my colleagues and I conducted with 1,644 young people across the U.S., ages 10 to 24. The study was not designed as a political poll but rather as a window into what truly matters to adolescents. We asked participants to rate the importance of 14 personal goals. These included classic teenage desires such as being popular, having fun, and being kind. None of these ranked as the top priority. Instead, the No. 1 answer was to be safe. What was once taken for granted The findings are both illuminating and heartbreaking. As a teenager, I did countless unsafe things. My peers and I didnt dwell on harm; we chased fun and freedom. Whereas previous generations may have taken safety for granted, todays youth are growing up in an era of compounded crisesschool shootings, a worsening climate crisis, financial uncertainty, and the lingering trauma of a global pandemic. Even though our research did not pinpoint the specific causes of adolescent fears, the constant exposure to crises, amplified by social media, likely plays a significant role in fostering a pervasive sense of worry. Despite data showing that many aspects of life are safer now than in previous generations, young people just dont feel it. Their perception of danger is further shaped by events like the recent fires that devastated Los Angeles, reinforcing a belief that danger, possibly caused by global crises like climate change, lurks everywhere. This shift in perspective has profound implications for the future of this generation and those to come. Especially vulnerable time Adolescence, like early childhood, is a pivotal period for brain development. Young people are particularly sensitive to their surroundings as their brains evaluate the environment to prepare them for independence. This developmental stagewhen the capacity to regulate emotions and critically assess information is still maturingmakes them especially vulnerable to enduring impacts. Studies show that adolescents struggle to put threats into context. This makes them particularly vulnerable to fear-driven messaging prevalent in both traditional and social media, which is further amplified by political rhetoric and blame-shifting. This vulnerability has implications for their mental health, as prolonged exposure to fear and uncertainty has been linked to increased rates of anxiety, depression, and even physical health issues. So when the various media that Gen Z consumes are dominated by fearbe it through headlines, social media posts, political rhetoric, or even storylines in movies and TVit could shape their worldview in ways that may reverberate for generations to come. Enduring generational impact Historical events have long been shown to shape the worldview of entire generations. For instance, the Great Depression primarily impacted the daily lives of the Silent Generation, those born between 1928 and 1945. Moreover, its long-term effects on financial attitudes and security concerns echoed into the baby boomer generation, influencing how those born between 1946 and 1964 approached money, stability, and risk throughout their lives. Similarly, todays adolescents, growing up amid a series of compounded global crises, will likely carry the imprint of this period of heightened fear and uncertainty well into adulthood. This formative experience could shape their mental health, decision-making, and even their collective identity and values for decades to come. In addition, feelings of insecurity and instability can make people more responsive to fear-based messaging, which could potentially influence their political and social choices. In an era marked by the rise of authoritarian governments, this susceptibility could have far-reaching implications because fear often drives individuals to prioritize immediate safety over moral or ideological ideals. As such, these dynamics may profoundly shape how this generation engages with the world, the causes they champion, and the leaders they choose to follow. Room for optimism? Interestingly, being kind was rated No. 2 in our survey, irrespective of other demographics. While safety dominates their priorities, adolescents still value qualities that foster connection and community. This finding indicates a duality in their aspirations: While they feel a pervasive sense of danger, they also recognize the importance of interpersonal relationships and emotional well-being. Our findings are a call to look at the broader societal context shaping adolescent development. For instance, the rise in school-based safety drills, while intended to provide a sense of preparedness, may unintentionally reinforce feelings of insecurity. Similarly, the apocalyptic narrative around climate change may create a sense of powerlessness that could further compound their fears and leave them wanting to bury their heads in the sand. Understanding how these perceptions are formed and their implications for mental health, decision-making and behavior is essential for parents, storytellers, policymakers, and researchers. I believe we must also consider how societal systems contribute to the pervasive sense of uncertainty and fear among youth. Further research can help untangle the complex relationship between external stressors, media consumption, and youth well-being, shedding liht on how to best support adolescents during this formative stage of life. Yalda T. Uhls is a founder and executive director of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers and an assistant adjunct professor in psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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OpenAI released its newest reasoning model, called o3-mini, on Friday. OpenAI says the model delivers more intelligence than OpenAIs first small reasoning model, o1-mini, while maintaining o1-minis low price and speed. The company says o3-mini excels in science, math, and coding problems. Developers can access o3-mini through an API, and can select between three levels of reasoning intensity. The lowest setting, for example, might be best for less difficult problems where speed of response is a factor. ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users can access OpenAI o3-mini starting today, OpenAI says, while enterprise users will get access in a week. The announcement comes at the end of a week in which the Chinese company DeepSeek dominated headlines after releasing a pair of surprisingly powerful and cost-effective AI models called DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1. The latter, a reasoning model, scored close to, and sometimes above, OpenAIs o1 in a set of recognized benchmark tests. Were shifting the entire costintelligence curve, OpenAI researcher Noam Brown said of o3-mini on X. Model intelligence will continue to go up, and the cost for the same intelligence will continue to go down. He said o3-mini even outperforms the full-sized o1 model in a number of evaluations. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December that the o3 series models demonstrate significantly higher levels of intelligence than the o1 models, including in computer coding and problem solving requiring advanced mathematics. The largest version of o3 also achieved the highest score yet of any AI system on a test called ARC-AGI, a logic and reasoning test designed to measure progress toward artificial general intelligence, meaning AI thats as smart or smarter than humans at most tasks. The o3 model scored 87.5% on the test (humans can score around 85%). OpenAI originally announced o3, along with a smaller version called o3-mini, in December, but said it would complete its internal safety testing, and get feedback from a group of outside safety and security testors, before launching the models. OpenAI said it would release o3-mini this month, and gave no release timeframe for the larger o3 model. OpenAI chose not to expose the o1 models chain of thought, and the same holds true for o3-mini. Researchers have shown that generating chain-of-thought can sometimes confuse models and pull them off focus. DeepSeek-R1, however, is trained to show its chain of thought, and Google announced in December a new experimental model called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking that also shows its thinking. Reasoning models represent a new chapter in developing generative AI models. From 2020-2023 AI labs won almost all of their performance increases by pre-training their models with more data and computing power. That brute force approach began to show diminishing returns in 2024, so the AI labsOpenAI chief among thembegan to teach models to do more reasoning (and use more computing power) at inference time just after the user has asked a question or posed a problem. The model might generate multiple streams of tokens at once, then choose which one leads to the best answers. Or it might follow a certain branch of logic then iteratively backtrack after hitting a dead end. The model generates a lot of tokens, which must all be stored in a context window while the problem is being solved. This requires a lot of memory and a lot of computing power. OpenAIs first try at reasoning models with the o1 series wasnt perfect. The largest o1 model is very expensive to run and its needs a long time to reach an answer. The o3 models are said to do more reasoning at inference time, but return answers faster using less computing power.
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E-Commerce
Ever wonder how some of the stuff we use every day came to be? I think about it sometimes when Im at the stove with my favorite sauté pan, with its perfect trifecta of size, weight and performance. Or when Im struggling with the badly designed zippers on my otherwise-swanky new tote bag. Good design doesnt just come out of thin air. From the idea to the finished product, it can be a long road. One mind might have cooked up the product idea, but theres usually a slew of others who have a say in getting it to your store. At the beginning, every clever gadget and life-simplifying tool had an industrial designer who spent hours thinking about the components that make it so clever or life-simplifying. I talked to two of them, both winners of multiple design awards: Dan Harden of Whipsaw, a San Francisco-based firm thats designed all kinds of products, from water filters and home saunas to the little tags you stick on things you dont want to lose. And Scott Henderson, an industrial designer whose eponymous firm in Brooklyn, New York, designs products for brands youve probably got in the kitchen, nursery and bathroom. Moby spout cover for babies and tots If you have toddlers, you may have a little blue rubber whale, a Moby, on your bathtub spout. Henderson designed it for Skip Hop in 2008. Moby, made of a rubbery latex-free material called TPE, fits over the spout to protect kiddos from bumping into or touching the warm spout while theyre in the bath. Its tail can function as a hook, and the tubs water spout can be right where a whales blowhole would be. When Henderson is asked about his design favorites, Moby tops the list. I think it was a first-of-its-kind product that combined problem-solving innovation with an intrinsic soul and an iconic personality, he says. Pixar included a Moby-like spout cover, Drips the Whale, in Toy Story Toons. Working with boldface names in the kitchen Your OXO dustpan, T-Fal measuring spoons, Sunbeam Mixmaster and Chantal kettle also came from the imagination of Henderson and his team. If a product makes you smile, he says, it becomes easier to use. How do you get a blender or a spoon to make you smile? One approach I like is to design the object around one big idea, instead of 10 small ones. When someone can easily understand the purpose and the way to use a tool, thats a happy feeling,” he says. The experience is as much sensed as it is seen. The product makes them feel smart, and when they feel smart, they smile. A new kind of face shield for the pandemic During COVID’s disruption of the supply chain, many designers started 3-D printing personal protective equipment (PPE) for hospitals and essential workers. After brainstorming ideas with product development company ZVerse, Henderson and his crew had an idea: How about a face shield that attached at the neck instead of the top of the head a boon for food service workers, dentists and others? The ZShield was born. It also became popular for public appearances by celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, Brad Pitt and Michelle Obama. The shield was produced in North Carolina, instead of overseas. We bypassed the supply chain backlog,” Henderson said. Creating something useful is a sublime experience Henderson says the creative breakthrough for a new product idea is the most gratifying part. “It’s a dopamine explosion. And when millions of people start buying it? Says Whipsaws Harden: Its awesome to see your design out in the real world succeeding and making people happy. It starts with a thought that makes your heart jump. Followed by a sketch, then a computer rendering, then a model. Seeing a concept come to life like thats a sublime experience. Hardens design oeuvre includes the FreeSip, a collaborative product with water bottle maker Owala, part of Trove Brands. The product made TIME magazines Best Inventions list in 2023, as well as The New York Times list of best water bottles in 2024. Whipsaw also worked with fitness company Tonal on a smart home gym that has fans like Serena Williams and Lebron James. Instead of a bulky set of iron, the Tonal system is wall-mounted, with digital weights powered by electromagnets, and an interactive screen for virtual training lessons. Then theres the Tile tracker, which attaches to things like wallets, phones, bikes, carry bags and sports gear. Whipsaw worked with Life360 on refining the design for easy attachment, and came up with fun colors to appeal to new tech adopters and families. Design is incredibly fun to do, but there are challenges, Harden says. Keeping a vision alive for the duration of a project is hard, since there are many opportunities for it to get sidetracked by things like cost, product requirements and making sure the concept fits the brand. People think a designer has the proverbial big idea in the shower and snap, its done. Its way more involved than that. Rethinking the piano Also an accomplished artist and musician, Harden says his design aha! moment came while listening to classical music on a long flight. He got thinking about how instruments like the harp, violin and trumpet were beautiful to look at as well as listen to. What each of those instruments looks like greatly elevates the listeners musical experience. But then theres the piano. Its a big black box held up with three chunky legs, with a sound-reflecting lid thats kind of a functional afterthought, he said. Further, a pianist is watched in profile, so you miss much of the emotion on their face. So he started sketching out a sleek, smaller, front-facing piano that showed off its strings and mechanism to the audience within an evocative, wing-like silhouette. By the time I landed several hours later, it was conceptually worked out, and that soon became the Ravenchord piano,” he says. There’s more where that came from If these designers could redesign anything next, what would it be? Henderson would love to make city water towers more attractive; the standard silo with legs doesnt do anything for the look of the building it sits on, he says. Hes also bothered by the unsightly orange construction barriers that beleaguer cityscapes, and sees those as ripe for redesign. Harden thinks the common walking cane could use a rethink. Or really any product that serves our aging population, Id like to design,” he said. Creativity is the most precious of human traits, and theres no better life pursuit than to study, practice and actualize ones creative expression. Kim Cook
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