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.

In mathematics, ubiquitous objects called groups display nearly magical powers. Though they’re defined by just a few rules, groups help illuminate an astonishing range of mysteries. They can tell you which polynomial equations are solvable, for instance, or how atoms are arranged in a crystal. And yet, among all the different kinds of groups, one type stands out. Identified in the early 1870s…

Source

I observe and interact with humans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five almost every day of my life, as part of my job. Like many, when AI chatbots were maliciously (indiscriminately is too kind of a word) released into the wild several years ago, I watched in horror—the kind of horror one might feel watching a pod of orcas play with a baby seal before ripping it to shreds. Only in this case the seal believes itself to be the one having all the fun. That young people were attracted to an openly available technological wonder is not surprising, though it was disconcerting to witness. What was truly shocking to me in that first year—and still is—was the almost complete lack of resistance by those charged with educating these young souls. Half-hearted appeals for deliberate discernment of the adoption of AI into higher education quickly dissipated and joined the chorus of administrators recommending “responsible use,” by this very phrase unintentionally treating AI as a harmful substance, yet one we can’t expect young people to abstain from using.

My own view from the beginning of this new era of machine domination has been that tools of such power require their users to have an extremely high degree of maturity and responsibility. But the whole growth model of corporate AI tools requires as much input and interaction as possible from as many users as possible. Thus, it came to be that perhaps the most powerful tool ever created by humanity fell into the untried hands of a generation known for, among other things, eating Tide pods. Not that all the blame for the irresponsible use of AI falls on younger generations. Aspirations to transgress the bounds of natural limitations have plagued humanity from the beginning. “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves,” Babel’s vision-casting team said. The builders and sellers of AI—futurists, pioneers, entrepreneurs, and engineers, along with their funders—will be the most culpable for harm caused, especially if products are designed to entice and addict.

In the many conversations I have had on this topic over the past three years, most of my interlocutors have taken either a neutral or a positive stance toward AI, though of late I have seen some who were previously unconcerned begin to grow wary. I find that the majority of those I speak with on the topic, however, have given little thought to the potential downsides of AI. Few have made the effort to subject their use of AI to moral scrutiny, and even fewer have dared to ask whether any and all use of AI may implicate the user in some moral evil. Yet there are a multitude of reasons not merely to approach AI with caution but to engage in determined opposition to it. In what follows I offer a handful of what I take as the weightier among these reasons, and I invite those who read this to consider joining the resistance.

The most common reactions I hear in response to my rejection of AI have to do with all the real or imagined goods AI might help bring about: medical advancement, all manner of scientific research, eliminating dull and time-consuming tasks in human work, and so on. Virtually everyone acknowledges the risks of AI and the ways it can be used for harm rather than good, but these are taken as the price that must be paid to attain the good. AI is simply a tool, they say, and like all tools it can be used for good or for ill. It would be ludicrous to get rid of the tool just because some bad actors abuse it. This line of thought fails in at least two ways.

First of all, it fails to recognize a distinction between moral evil and natural evil. Natural evils are things we deem bad—usually due to the loss of life—but for which we are not culpable: natural disasters, diseases, etc. Moral evils are things we deem bad and hold people responsible for. Moral evils are always more grave for the souls involved than natural evils, even if the scale seems smaller. AI may help attenuate natural evils by finding cures for diseases or drastically improving disaster prediction, for example. But the capability and availability of AI have already drastically increased moral evil. This is not a net gain for humanity. To put it bluntly, it is better to suffer natural evils and possess virtue than to eradicate natural evils and lack virtue. Ends never justify means.

Second, although AI can be thought of as a tool, it is unlike any other tool due to its ability to “self-improve” based on human input and interaction along with ever-expanding data sets. If a person uses a hammer to smash the skull of an innocent other, this is clearly a case of a tool being misused. But the hammer undergoes no change; through the act of someone using it to commit murder, the hammer itself does not become a better weapon. With AI this is not the case. As more and more people use AI tools, the tools themselves change and get better at doing what their users ask. Which means even supposedly harmless uses of AI actively contribute to the tools becoming better at bringing ill will to fruition. Millions of users, for example, creating relatively innocuous fake videos for work or for fun contribute to the tool becoming better at making realistic child pornography. Again, this is not a tradeoff we should be willing to tolerate.

In addition to these moral questions pertaining to the very existence and use of AI, there are moral concerns pertaining to the peripheries of the AI complex. A prime example of this is the investments being poured into creating an AI-integrated world. Hundreds of billions of dollars have already been spent on developing and deploying AI tools, and there are only signs that this will increase in the near future. If achieving an AI-integrated world were a matter of meeting critical needs, perhaps such expenditures would be justified. But there are no critical needs in the world that can only be addressed with AI. Poverty, violence, famine, loneliness, lack of healthcare, environmental collapse—these are needs which, in order to be met, require human and financial resources, not AI. Because these critical needs have not been met, it is unjust to direct such vast resources toward something which, though technologically revolutionary, is quite frivolous in relation to the realities of human existence. We do not need AI to flourish as humans. We do need peace, healthy communities, clean water, fertile soil, and a dependable food supply, all of which AI cannot supply.

The environmental cost of AI is something to consider as well, working on the assumption that keeping this planet perpetually fruitful and safe to inhabit is important for humanity. Massive data centers are required to keep AI running, along with cloud computing, streaming, and a host of other digital commodities, and each data center requires a massive amount of electrical and water supply, not to mention actual land usage. Data centers collectively are becoming one of the leading emitters of carbon through electrical consumption, and newer “hyperscale” centers are expected to require more water than current ones. On a planet that was already facing environmental crises before the rise of AI, surely AI’s energy, water, mined material, and land demands are going to make it even more difficult to address these crises, especially since AI seems to have quickly been deemed a necessity by corporate and political powers. Care for our common home ought to at least cause us to question whether this is the best path forward for humanity.

There are a host of other reasons to reject the use of AI outright, such as the minor issue of a possible machine-assisted human extinction event, but I will offer one final thought. The use of AI degrades the value of human work and so of humans themselves. Those who tout the benefits of AI, like most advocates of machine technology, view natural human limitations as weaknesses to be transcended if possible. This attitude is of course a derivative of an economic order built on hyper consumption. In both production and consumption, more and faster is always better. Since the introduction of machines greatly enhances production, the goodness of machines is not to be questioned. But the unmentioned corollary of this is that the productive value of a mere human without a machine is reduced to almost nothing. Being human is not enough. You and I, considered in ourselves, are of insufficient value in the minds of those pushing for an AI-integrated world, unless we amend our humanity with machines.

The effect of this in the agricultural realm is widely recognized. Even though the only things required to make land productive are human care, human or animal power, and water, a farm without machines is a near impossibility today. And the idea of farm work being done without machines is seen as something rightly relegated to some past peasantry. This same degradation of work done at an actual human scale by actual humans will come to every sector that adopts AI. Productivity will go up, value and diversity will go down, and the monoculture dullness that one sees flying over the machine-leveled fields of middle America, with its ecological and cultural costs, will characterize much of society and the economy. Yes, you will be able to escape from this ugliness into virtual worlds. But I, for one, would prefer to enjoy the beauty of the real world—the beauty that is the ordered harmony of great variety; the beauty that must be cultivated, preserved, and fought for; the beauty that can only exist when natural limits are respected; the beauty that came under threat after the industrial revolution; the beauty that could very well disappear after the AI revolution. Unless we resist.

Image Credit.