School districts are paying extra for basic supplies thanks to unpredictable dynamic pricing on Amazon, which is costing them on average 17 percent more, according to a report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). As reported earlier by The Guardian, unlike the contracts schools and local governments would traditionally make with local suppliers, who would bid to offer the best rates, Amazon Business doesn’t guarantee locked-in prices, resulting in huge pricing swings. 

For instance, the report mentions an employee of the City of Boulder, Colorado, who purchased a 12-pack of Sharpie markers for $8.99, while an employee of the nearby Denver Public Schools was charged $28.63 for the same product on the same day. ILSR cites similar price fluctuations for Crayola markers, Kleenex tissues, Expo dry erase markers, Elmer’s school glue, and more. 

In a statement shared with The Verge, Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin claimed ILSR’s report was “flawed and misleading,” stating, “Pricing research is notoriously difficult to conduct accurately and typically lacks reliable methodology, including cherry-picked product selections, mismatched product comparisons, and comparing in-stock items with products out-of-stock at competitors.”

ILSR takes issue with Amazon’s lack of transparency around how dynamic pricing changes are calculated by its algorithm, and what triggers different prices for different buyers. However, it seems like the more often an item is ordered, the more significant the price fluctuations can be. ILSR found that “among the 100 most frequently ordered products, the highest prices Amazon charged were, on average, 136 percent higher than the lowest.” 

As the report points out, Amazon Business has also reduced competition for these necessary school and office supplies, cutting down the number of independent suppliers from 1,300 to 900 over the past decade. A price comparison of commonly-purchased school supplies found that an independent supplier was able to beat Amazon’s prices on 68 percent of products. 

A separate study published last month by Profitero and highlighted by Amazon found that Amazon offers, on average, 14 percent lower prices than 23 other leading U.S. retailers. In the case of state and local governments, though, that doesn’t necessarily reflect lower prices that could have been negotiated with local independent suppliers, such as bulk discounts, especially compared with the peak prices from Amazon’s dynamic pricing.

Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin:

This flawed and misleading report based on data from 2023 misrepresents the facts and does not reflect the significant cost savings Amazon Business provides customers by offering everyday low prices that meet or beat other online providers and powerful tools to lower their spend. Pricing research is notoriously difficult to conduct accurately and typically lacks reliable methodology, including cherry-picked product selections, mismatched product comparisons, and comparing in-stock items with products out-of-stock at competitors. Amazon Business offers customers price ceilings that ensure they don’t pay above an agreed price, while automatically capturing savings when prices are lower.

Update, December 4th: Added comment from Amazon spokesperson Jessica Martin.

Thirty years ago today, Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems issued a joint press release announcing JavaScript, an object scripting language designed for creating interactive web applications. The language emerged from a frantic 10-day sprint at pioneering browser company Netscape, where engineer Brendan Eich hacked together a working internal prototype during May 1995.

While the JavaScript language didn’t ship publicly until that September and didn’t reach a 1.0 release until March 1996, the descendants of Eich’s initial 10-day hack now run on approximately 98.9 percent of all websites with client-side code, making JavaScript the dominant programming language of the web. It’s wildly popular; beyond the browser, JavaScript powers server backends, mobile apps, desktop software, and even some embedded systems. According to several surveys, JavaScript consistently ranks among the most widely used programming languages in the world.

In crafting JavaScript, Netscape wanted a scripting language that could make webpages interactive, something lightweight that would appeal to web designers and non-professional programmers. Eich drew from several influences: The syntax looked like a trendy new programming language called Java to satisfy Netscape management, but its guts borrowed concepts from Scheme, a language Eich admired, and Self, which contributed JavaScript’s prototype-based object model.

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I’m currently revisiting Seinfeld with my youngest son. I haven’t watched the sitcom in decades. I am surprised at how genuinely funny it remains and how badly some of the core premises have aged.

Case in point: the non-fat yogurt episode from season five. The entire segment, which aired in 1993, hinges on the idea that this kind of food is a disastrous dietary choice and consuming it will make you “fat” (lots of weight gags throughout). The fat-is-evil theme is taken as a truism. As Jerry exclaims to a neighbour in the final scene (spoiler alert!), the yogurt actually had fat in it! “It’s not good for you!” Cue laugh track.

Fast forward to 2025. Fat, according to hype merchants, is good! It’s healthy! There is the ketogenic diet (lots of fat). The Atkins diet (a fat bomb). The carnivore diet (bursting with fat, cuz meat!). Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current United States Department of Health and Human Services secretary, wants full-fat dairy in schools across America. And he wants to change dietary guidelines to encourage people to eat more saturated fats. Bring on the full-fat yogurt!

Every few years, a new, of-the-moment, allegedly definitive bit of nutritional advice becomes so fully embraced by the news media, the food industry, and pop culture that it is taken—like “fat-free,” in the 1990s—as a truism. And then—flip—it isn’t anymore.

The current obsession taken up by the vast and growing Wellness Industrial Complex can be summarized in one word: protein. It is everywhere. Protein popcorn. Protein breakfast cereal. Protein ice cream. Protein potato chips. Protein candy bars. Starbucks is offering protein-infused lattes. There is an ever-expanding assortment of protein powders and supplements. And, the 1990s Jerry Seinfeld would be happy to hear, protein yogurt. Protein stacked on top of protein. This protein blitzkrieg has been felt. Consumers are responding. Marketing has won.

A 2024 survey found that 71 percent of Americans are trying to increase their protein intake. Another survey found that over 90 percent believe the inaccurate idea that it is essential to eat meat to get enough protein. In a 2021 industry survey involving a dozen countries, roughly half of respondents said they associate protein with a “healthy diet,” and 72 percent were willing to pay a premium for “protein fortification.” And the market for protein-rich food products is predicted to double over the next decade, rising to more than $100 billion (US) by 2034.

The reality is that most of us consume more than enough protein. Indeed, it has been estimated that the average adult male overshoots their protein consumption by 55 percent. While others put that overconsumption at less, there clearly isn’t some vast lack-of-protein crisis gripping the developed world. As Stuart Phillips, one of the world’s leading experts on all things protein, told me, “Protein is essential, but the hype has turned it into a farce. People have lost their minds on this one.”

Yes, research is exploring the benefits for certain populations, such as older adults and those on GLP-1 medications (which help regulate blood sugar levels). Study results are mixed, but some evidence suggests they may benefit from consuming slightly more protein than the conventionally recommended 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight. But despite the emerging science, Phillips, who has done some of the foundational work on this, feels it is important to emphasize that “the push for mega doses isn’t backed by any solid science.”

Indeed, for the vast majority of people, there are no health benefits to eating more protein than the recommended daily allowance. Extra protein doesn’t magically turn into extra muscle; it is flushed out of our bodies as urea. Or, as Marcia Clark, an orthopedic surgeon, sports medicine expert, and president of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, told me, the extra protein mostly just “becomes expensive pee.” It is also worth noting that any excess calories connected to consuming all that protein aren’t stored in some special repository in our body. They are stored as fat.

Given the lack of evidence to support the protein craze, what is driving it? A big factor is socio-political. Manosphere influencers (think Joe Rogan, et al.) are one of the proteinification epicentres. Protein, especially if it comes from an animal, scans as manly. Fruits and veggies? Not so much. Studies consistently show a connection between traditional masculine norms and meat consumption. One recent study found that “men who support the use of physical violence and place high importance on sex” ate more meat. Okay, that example is a bit extreme, but you get the idea. Protein is manly, macho, MAGA.

Another huge reason for the rise of protein is that it is a massive opportunity for the food industry, which, of course, was also the case with the 1990s fat-free trend. Once a health trend starts to work its way into the public consciousness—think GMO-free, organic, natural, clean—the market responds by leveraging that trend into a new health halo. Health halos give the impression a product is a healthy and sensible choice, even if the evidence suggests otherwise. Health halos can also cause people to consume more calories because of this “It’s healthy!” misperception. But there’s no reason a protein-enhanced potato chip can’t have as many calories—and be just as unhealthy—as a regular potato chip.

• Sure, Ultra-Processed Foods Are Bad. But How Does That Help Anyone?
• The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Wellness Industry Is Making Us Sick
• You’re Not Imagining It. Health Misinformation Is Everywhere

Some studies suggest the processed foods bearing the “protein” badge can be troublesome in their own right. A recent study from Spain looked at thousands of food products and found that 90.8 percent of those with the “protein” label should be classified as “less healthy,” and over 50 percent were high in fat or sodium. A Snickers candy bar labelled “protein” (a real product, by the way) is still just a Snickers candy bar.

There are a host of other issues associated with the protein trend. It is bad for the environment—not just because higher demand for meat drives up greenhouse gas emissions, but because all that protein-polluted pee breaks down into nitrogen that can harm both water and air. (Seriously, this is a real, albeit still speculative, concern.) Protein supplements, which are part of a lightly regulated product, can have problematic toxins. For example, a recent analysis by Consumer Reports found that protein powders often contain worrying levels of lead. And, in case you are wondering, there also isn’t good evidence that a high-protein diet will lead to long-term weight loss.

The bottom line: the current fixation on protein is yet another evidence-free diet trend that will likely pass. Given RFK Jr.’s recent declarations about saturated fats, perhaps that will be the new wellness fad? Let’s debunk that one before it even starts. A large and consistent body of evidence tells us we don’t need to be eating more saturated fats.

Whenever you see a new health-halo label, think of Seinfeld and that fat-free yogurt. If you have health concerns or are worried about your diet, consult a dietitian or other science-informed health professional. But it is almost always a good idea to ignore the diet hype. As Phillips nicely concludes, “for most, real food and a balanced diet is still the big win.”

The post Bro, Enough with the Protein. You’re Just Making Expensive Pee first appeared on The Walrus.

Along the vast divide between AI optimists and pessimists, the main factor in determining which side you fall on may be where you see yourself in the future: above the effects of AI, or beneath them.

[Jean] “Twenge is a psychology professor at San Diego State University and the author of “10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World.” This op-ed article appeared in The New York Times, November 16, 2025.

The standardized test scores of American students had been rising for decades. Then they began to slide, dropping to their lowest point in two decades in 2023 and 2024.

This is not a problem confined to the United States. Worldwide, the performance of 15-year-olds in math, reading and science reached a nadir in 2022.

These dismal results are at least partly a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Missed instruction during those years may still be having an impact on academic performance.

But that’s only part of the story. The decline in test scores started well before the pandemic, around 2012. One obvious culprit is smartphones, which became popular just as test scores started to decline. Since 2017, I’ve been doing research on what smartphones do to our mental health, and I recently started to study how they affect academic performance. The negative impact of smartphones on learning is one reason many school districts have instituted a bell-to-bell ban on smartphones in K-12 education, including all public schools in New York State, which also banned students’ personal laptops, tablets and smart watches.

That’s progress, especially when 83 percent of K-12 teachers surveyed by one major union think that smartphone bans are a good idea. But they are not a complete solution, because phones are not the only electronic devices students use at school. These days, nearly every middle and high school student — and a good number in the elementary grades as well — brings a laptop or tablet to school and uses it at home for homework.

Many of these devices are provided by schools. You might think that these school-issued devices allow only a limited number of functions, like access to classroom Canvas pages and Google Docs. If you assumed that, you would be wrong.

Sylvie McNamara, a parent of a ninth grader in Washington, D.C., wrote in Washingtonian magazine that her son was spending every class period watching TV shows and playing games on his school-issued laptop. He often had no idea what topics his classes were covering. When she asked school administrators to restrict her son’s use of the laptop, they resisted, saying the device was integral to the curriculum.

In a survey of American teenagers by the nonprofit Common Sense Media, one-fourth admitted they had seen pornographic content during the school day. Almost half of that group saw it on a school-issued device. Students watching porn in class doesn’t just affect the students themselves — picture being a teenager in math class trying to concentrate on sine and cosine while sitting behind that display of flesh. It is disturbing on a number of levels.

Even when laptop abuse doesn’t reach this point, it still consumes a substantial amount of instructional time. One study of Michigan State college students — nearly all legal adults presumably more capable of focusing their attention than young teens — found that they spent nearly 40 percent of class time scrolling social media, checking email or watching videos on their laptops — anything but their classwork.

School laptops are also distracting at home. Many allow unfettered access to YouTube, tempting students to watch an endless loop of videos instead of doing their homework. Just the other day, my daughter told me she was watching the violent cop show “The Rookie” on her school laptop at home. Apparently the device did not block access to the streaming service Disney+. How can we expect 13-year-olds to focus on their assignments when a vast library of entertaining video content is a tab away?

It seems ridiculous to have to say this, but digital distraction is terrible for academic performance. The more time college students spent doing something else on their laptops during class, the lower their exam scores, even after accounting for academic ability.

This also applies to teenagers around the world. A 2023 UNESCO report concluded that too much device use can hurt academic performance, mostly because of increased distraction and engagement in nonacademic activities.

In a study published in October in The Journal of Adolescence, I found that standardized test scores in math, reading and science fell significantly more in countries where students spent more time using electronic devices for leisure purposes during the school day than they did in countries where they spent less time.

The situation in Finland, once known for having one of the best school systems in the world, is telling. In 2022, teenagers in Finland admitted to using their devices during the school day for noneducational purposes for nearly 90 minutes. Perhaps as a result, the test scores of Finnish students plummeted between 2006 and 2022. In countries such as Japan, where students spend less than a half-hour on devices for leisure during the school day, academic performance has remained fairly steady, especially in math and science.

If tablets and laptops are behind even a small portion of the decline in academic performance, parents and educators will need to work together to find solutions. At the moment, parents are virtually powerless: They can’t install parental control software on school devices. Nevertheless, many districts try to foist responsibility back onto parents by telling them, as my children’s district does, that “there is no substitute for parental supervision. Be knowledgeable of what sites your child goes to online.” How, exactly, are we supposed to do that when we can’t install control software and given that it’s not possible to hover over our teenagers every minute?

If school districts want to improve their test scores — and most are desperate to do so — changing the way students use school-issued devices is critical. To start, school I.T. departments should lock down devices much more securely so students can’t use them to watch TV shows, play games or continuously consume videos. Whatever efforts schools are making in that direction right now are frequently evaded by tech-savvy students.

There should be districtwide policies that specifically disallow these types of uses and instruct teachers to embed educational videos on the classroom page instead of giving students unlimited access to YouTube.

Districts and teachers should also consider scaling back on the number of assignments that require a device to complete in the first place. A paper math worksheet or a handwritten response to a reading assignment is one less opportunity for kids to use a device chock-full of digital distractions, and one less opportunity to cut and paste an essay written by ChatGPT.

Parents should also have the option to opt out. I’ve spoken with many parents whose children struggle to focus while using laptops, only for school administrators to tell them the devices are required. Angela Arsenault, a state representative in Vermont, is planning to introduce a bill to give parents the ability to opt their children out of receiving school-issued devices. A version of the bill was first introduced in 2015, a stark illustration of how long this has been an issue.

Districts could even eliminate school electronic devices entirely. Many parents and teachers might protest that this would have an adverse impact on learning or tilt the scales in favor of wealthier students who have access to their own devices, but several studies suggest it might instead improve learning. One study of nearly 300,000 fourth and eighth graders in the United States found that students who spent more time using digital devices in language arts classes performed worse on reading tests. A 2018 meta-analysis found that reading on paper, compared with reading digitally, led to significantly better comprehension among students, from elementary school to college. Across 24 studies, college students who took handwritten notes were 58 percent more likely to get A’s in their courses than those who typed notes on laptops. In contrast, students who typed notes were 75 percent more likely to fail the course than those who wrote them by hand.

Although it once seemed like a good idea to give every child his or her own device, it’s clear that those policies have been a failure. It may be possible to harness the power of school devices more judiciously, with little to no device use in lower grades, and high school students given laptops strictly limited to relevant apps. We could go further, creating completely device-free schools with rare exceptions for students with special needs. It would be back to the textbooks, paper and pencil of previous eras — when the most significant classroom distraction was students passing notes.

Many adults struggle to concentrate on work when social media, shopping and movies are just a click away. Imagine how much more difficult it is for a 16-year-old, much less an 11-year-old, to focus in the same situation. Asking students to drill down on their schoolwork amid an array of digital distractions isn’t just bad for test scores; it is inimical to learning.

And it is fundamentally unfair to our children.

U.S. adults under 30 follow news less closely than any other age group. And they’re more likely to get (and trust) news from social media.

The post Young Adults and the Future of News appeared first on Pew Research Center.