Morning Brew Daily - Australia Bans Social Media for Kids & Women’s Workplace Progress Stalls?

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Episode 732: Neal and Toby chat about Australia’s worlds-first social media ban for teenagers that goes into effect. Then, a new study from McKinsey and LeanIn found an ambition gap growing between women and men where women are less inclined to pursue promotions. Also, an investigation has found evidence that Instacart's AI pricing experiment may be inflating grocery prices of the same item for different people. Meanwhile, Google may have tried tech glasses before and failed…but this time, it’s hoping its AI will turn it into the next revolutionary tech wearable.  Check out https://www.linkedIn.com/mbd for more. Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many employees can't afford a hefty medical bill that pops up out of the blue, but it happens. And employees who are financially stressed are, understandably, more likely to be distracted at work, costing their employers greatly in lost productivity. Luckily, AFLAQ plans help with out-of-pocket expenses not covered by health insurance and can be offered at no direct cost to businesses. Learn more at aflac.com slash morningbreedaly. That's aflac.com slash morning brewdaily. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman.

And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Australia banned social media for kids under 16. What's next? You're going to say they can't vote? Ben, Instacart is using AI to change the price of your groceries right under your nose. It's Wednesday, December 10th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Wednesday.

Your romantic relationship might not be working out for any number of reasons, but one of them could very well be in. an insurmountable difference in swag levels, dubbed the swag gap by Gen Z. The term refers to the fundamental disparity by which two people who are dating carry themselves in the world, specifically how they dress and the confidence they exude. The Wall Street Journal mentions that the swag gap concept originates from a photograph of Justin Bieber and his wife Haley back in 2023. He was phoning it in, wearing socks and yellow crocs, while she looked a lot more put

together. Toby, as our Gen Z correspondent, is the swag gap real? As someone on the other end of a swag wrap in his relationship, it is fantastic because you wake up every morning with something to pursue. How do I close the swag gap today? A new coat, perhaps. It's very aspirational, but also the Wall Street Journal article that talked about this framed it in terms of actual relationships, but there can be swag gaps in friend groups as well, which you were saying wasn't always a bad thing. I absolutely think that. I absolutely think that there should be swag gaps in friend groups. That's what make friends groups so

great. There's a lot of dynamism. Some people are cool. They talk to everybody. Some people lay back and just have that one little funny quip and especially you're talking about aspirational. It's great to have friends that are better dressed than you that know how to style themselves because you can ask them for advice. I fully agree. If you walk into a room and

have the most swag, you're in the wrong room. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. Happy holidays, Toby. I got you something. Oh, Neil. You shouldn't have. But I did. And it's the gift of good advice. Check out LinkedIn ads. They have the highest B2B return on ad spend of all online ad networks, and they have a network of over one billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority,

skills, company revenue, so you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience. Right now, spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com. slash MBD. Terms and conditions may apply. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time,

college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 premium and a year of Xbox GamePass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller.

Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last. ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.m.S. College PC. If you want to use social media down under, you can no longer be under the age of 16. On Wednesday, in a first of its kind move anywhere around the world, the country banned anyone under 16 from having accounts on the most popular social media platforms, including Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, and X. It makes Australia the first country to put social

media scrolling in the same bucket as booze, tobacco, and driving as activities that are off-limits to kids until they're old enough to safely use them. To justify the law, Australian officials say social media harms kids by increasing anxiety, exposing them to cyberbullying and predators, and in the worst case scenario, causing mental illness and suicide. They blame the companies for creating addicting but unsaved products by prioritizing profits over safety. But there are many on the other side who oppose the age restrictions as a massive

overreach. They argue that the ban cuts off kids, especially from marginalized communities, from connecting with each other and will make them. less informed, less prepared citizens down the road. Most of all, they say this ban is simply not enforceable and certainly won't lead to Australian kids putting down their phones and frolicing outside all day in analog bliss. Toby, is this a landmark seatbelt moment for child safety

or a misguided slapdash unworkable policy? The world is watching Australia right now. That is for sure because you are right. Whatever your thoughts are on the actual argument of should kids be able to have access to social media? The real question is how the heck you, enforce something like this. And they're kind of taking a kitchen sink approach. A lot of technologies are factoring into this. Some of them relate to just ID verification where you have to upload

pictures of sensitive documents, sensitive identity documents, like a passport or something like that. But a lot of people don't trust social media companies. So there's privacy concerns with that. Then there's age inference technology, which is basically you read through posts, scrolling patterns, behavior on these social networks, and you try to distinguish. if you're a 14-year-old, if you're a 16-year-old based off of what you've said or posted, there's facial age assessments, but that gets a little wonky too. As you approach the age of 16, also can be fooled using Halloween masks in some cases. So a lot of this is just an experiment of how do you nail down the enforcement of this

and what other countries will be watching, hey, Australia, how you doing this? Are you actually keeping the youth off social media? The key is that who they're making responsible for enforcing this is, the social media companies. They are, they're telling the social media companies that you have to take reasonable steps, that's the quote, reasonable, to enforce this ban or else be fined about $32 million for serious or repeated breaches. Children and parents are not going to be infringed for any, or are not going to be punished for any type of infringement. So the onus is completely on the social media companies, which is something that they've balked at and said, we can't

actually enforce this. We're going to do our best because you will find us a lot of money, if not, but the fact is that parents and kids aren't going to be punished at all for this, so it gives them a little less of an incentive to not do it. Well, you did mention the fine, and some people pointed out that the fine is more of a slap on the wrist when it comes to the sheer amount of money these social media companies makes. I mean, Facebook alone makes $49 million in under two hours globally. So you're talking about these major monetary fines aren't so major, actually. So is it in their best interest to enforce this ban?

Maybe not. maybe they'll just give it a half-hearted effort at best. I think the key theory of success here for lawmakers is that they don't need 100% enforcement. You don't need to get every single kid off. But if you get enough kids off, social media isn't social anymore. And it's kind of a reverse network effect. We're like, oh, Johnny and Lucy aren't on Snapchat anymore. I don't need to be.

We're texting again. But if the opposite happens where a lot of kids figure out how to circumvent these bands, then you have an uphill battle because the conversations are still happening on Snap and people feel left out of that. So whatever way the majority goes, I think that's how this ban will go. There's a lot of evidence that kids will circumvent these bans. At a large poll of Australian, 9 to 16-year-olds, only 6% of them thought the new ban was going to work.

Three-quarters of all children, Poll said that they were going to continue to use social media, whether that's through a VPN or they'll just migrate to other social media sites. and in fact two 15-year-olds in Australia filed a constitutional challenge to the law saying that it infringes on their rights of freedom and participation in political communication. One of them, Noah Jones, said, do you want 15-year-old boys to have no clue about consent? Do you want teenagers who don't know about the dangers of vaping? Both topics I've learned about on social media. And that's one of the main criticisms of this law is that how do kids learn about the world these days

is going on YouTube and watching videos and looking at Instagram and TikTok? Yes, there's a lot of crap out there, but at the same time, there's a lot of educational tools, and that's how they learn about the world and become informed citizens. Sounds like what a 15-year-old would argue if they were trying to keep access to their social media accounts. Moving on, after a decade of slow but steady progress, women have hit a wall as they try to advance through the ranks of corporate America. That's according to a new report from McKinsey and the Women's Advocacy Group Lean In, founded by former Facebook executive Cheryl Sandberg. Sandberg says that a variety of factors, including the retreat from DEI initiatives to return to

work mandates show that employers are dropping their support for women's careers. In fact, a little over half, 56% of HR professionals said that women's career advancement is a priority at their organization. That marks a reversal from 2017 when 88% said gender equity was a high priority. The most startling finding in this report was what lean in called the ambition gap. Overall, 80% of women surveyed said they wanted to be promoted to the next level compared to 86% of men. And the divide is even wider when you zero in on entry level and senior level positions. In 11 years of doing this report, Lean In has never found an ambition gap between men and women and blame those loosening supports for causing women to lean out. Rachel Thomas,

the CEO of Lean In, said corporate America signaling that they're kind of rolling back their commitment to women and women themselves are signaling that they are feeling it. I think that gap being the widest at the top and the bottom is the most interesting part of this because When you see an entry level worker enter the workforce and you are women, you are less likely to have. Sponsors within a company, you are less likely to be considered for, you know, extra assignments. You are more likely to lose flexible work options as well. A lot of return to office mandates more most heavily on women, especially when it comes to child care. So when you are looking ahead and saying, do I want a promotion?

Maybe not because this workforce clearly isn't, you know, catered to my life. And so why would I want to continue to pursue climb the ladder in this place that isn't necessarily meant for me? And then same thing. Senior women who have seen the system from the inside also have a large ambition gap when it comes to their counterparts, their male counterparts, because they've been passed over more often. They have a steeper path. They usually end up in less rewarding landing spots. A lot of them, you get put in a CEO role, and it's very hard to succeed there.

And so you're almost set up for failure. So the top and bottom ends of the barbell is where you see the biggest gas because of just all that you've seen at that point in your career. A couple of headlines from recent months and years highlight this. The progress being stalled for women in November. Goldman Sachs promoted the smallest proportion of women to managing director since 2018. And then in 2023, about 60 C-suite roles women lost at companies in the S&P Global Total Market Index. that was the first time the number of female executives at this level of the business world dropped in almost 20 years. And that's the quantitative data, the qualitative data.

Just look at Cheryl Sandberg's former boss, Mark Zuckerberg. He said that his company, among his many changes, said he wanted his company to have more masculine energy. And that got a lot of push. That is a direct quote. Also, 40% of California AI startups have zero women on board. So if you're looking at the next crop of companies being started, not a lot of references. there for women as well. Moving on, when the original Google Glass came out in 2014, the $1,500 consumer version was riddled with privacy issues and made you look like a freaking

nerd. So Google went back to the drawing board, and now over a decade later, it's back in the glasses game announcing via blog post that its first AI-powered glasses are coming in 2026. The glasses, which will come in two models, one with screens and another that's audio focus, is meant to compete in the same category as meta raybans. Both companies are betting that the next great form factor for the AI era isn't your smartphone, but something you wear on your face. In preparation for the launch, Google sent some pairs to media organizations to test out to pretty positive reviews. One CNN tester noted how well Google maths performed as a heads-up display, better than having to glance down at your phone all the time. The Verge had a good experience booking in Uber,

where the glasses again subbed in for your phone when it came to relaying information like pick up time, license plate, and car model. And all the takeaway was that Google was making the right moves on paper to one, avoid mistakes it made in the past, and two, to take on meta as it gears up to make a splash in the space and on your face. Neil, you know the saying, if at first you don't succeed, wait 11 years and try again. If at first you don't succeed, watch someone who is succeeding and then do exactly what they're doing.

and Mark Zuckerberg and Meta have done a great job with their glasses. I think one of the keys that Google Glass didn't do 11 years ago was partner with somebody else to make the hardware and make it fit into their daily lives. For some reason, this never occurred to anyone until Meta went out and said, hey, Rayband, you actually make cool glasses that people buy. Why don't we just make an AI smart glass with you? And those have been selling like hotcakes.

In November, they just had this recent launch. It sold out at every store in 48 hours. So Google is doing something similar. They've made a $150 million commitment with Warby Parker. And they say our belief here is that glasses can fail based on a lack of social acceptance for AI and XR to be truly helpful XR as extended reality. The hardware needs to fit seamlessly into your life and match your personal style. So it feels like they figure out the hardware angle.

And I think that you hit on the point correctly that the providers of the hardware, in this case, the glasses, it's actually a bigger deal for them than Google. If you look at Google's stock price yesterday, it barely budged on the news that these glasses were out there. But shares of Warby Parker, who are providing the frames, they have been doing very well. shares popped 13% yesterday, 9.2% the day before. And then if you look at shares of Meda's Raybans, parent company, which is a Selcer Luxottica, they fell on the news that Google was getting into the glasses game. So for the smaller players involved in this, someone like Warby Parker, I mean, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world.

this is a big deal for them because the form factor is usually the make or break part of the technology. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back right after this. Ever feel like you're getting ripped off? Like there are forces conspiring against you to make your life harder, more annoying, and more expensive. Well, you might have an intergenerational curse on your family name, or you could be a victim of algorithmic pricing. To get to the bottom of mysterious changing prices, 200 volunteers from the groundwork collaborative and consumer reports got to work starting with Instacart.

Their hypothesis was that Instacart shows different prices to different users often for the exact same product at the exact same time. To put the theory to the test, volunteers logged onto a conference call, viewed up Instacart, and simultaneously chose the same store, a Safeway in Washington, D.C.,

the same product, a brand of eggs, and the same fulfillment method, pick-up-not delivery, and the results will drive you nuts. Some lucky shoppers got their eggs for $3.99. Others saw $4.59 to $4.69 for a dozen, while one unlucky cohort was stuck paying $4.79 $0.79, 20% higher than the lowest price for the identical item. The volunteers tested other examples across four different cities and got the same results.

In total, price differences appeared on 75% of all items tested, potentially costing shoppers an extra $1,200 a year. Neil, this is increasingly becoming a thing. There is no single price for a product anymore because algorithms allow companies to adjust them in seconds based on competitors' pricing or consumer behavior. But to see it in real time at the same store with the same product, it shocked a lot of people. We are all unwitting participants or guinea pigs in retailers' experiments to extract as much value from us as possible. They want to charge us the maximum amount of price that we are willing to pay. And with algorithms and fast-changing pricing online and in e-commerce, they can,

do that. And what I thought was the most egregious example of us being in an experiment was the fact that in one of these tests, they looked at a brand of saltine crackers at a safe way in Seattle. Now, the final sale price was the same for everyone, $3.99. But it was shown that these saltines were at a discount. The original price was different for every other volunteer. One of the original prices was $5.93. The other was $5.99. The other was $6.69. So the final sale was all the same price. But what the consumer was shown was how much they were discounting it. And they wanted to see how our minds, our little shopping brain minds, would react to that. And that just reminded me how manipulative these things are. Now, there are some arguments that variable pricing can help

some customers, because if you charge more during peak demand, you could hypothetically subsidize lower prices during off-peak times. Also, more price-sensitive customers who are lower income can maybe be offset by charging less-priced-sensitive customers higher prices. But there's tons of transparency concerns. I think that's the biggest thing. A lot of people aren't aware that this happening or they are aware subconsciously that something wonky is going on. You need these things to either be predictable, to be public, to be equal access for everyone. Right now, algorithmic pricing is governed by these AI models. It's very opaque. It's very individualized. It feels random. And that is what has some regulators also sniffing around this saying, is this

actually legal, which right now it apparently is, but this opacity is part of the issue because you just don't know what's going on, these black boxes. And it's something that we've accepted in certain domains in certain industries. When you log on to Amtrak or to buy a flight ticket, You know that they're doing variable pricing and you don't quite understand how it works, but it's just been going on for decades and you just accept that. But now it's moving into different domains. I remember last year, Wendy's said it was going to do variable pricing at its stores. There was a huge backlash to that.

And the next day, they backtrack Delta, also in an industry that we've come to accept variable pricing for, said it was going to use AI to develop personalized pricing. That's a distinction we should make. There's algorithmic pricing and then there's personalized pricing. Personalized pricing looks at your shopping history or where your live, your zip code, your income, and then makes a price specifically catered to you. They had to backtrack from that. So a lot of these companies that say they're getting into this are going to do it quietly

because when they publicly announce it, they face a lot of outrage from consumers. One unintended consequences of algorithmic pricing becoming more widespread is that you might get unintentional collusion. And obviously you can't collude on prices as business. You can't have Delta setting one price and United setting the other price and saying, hey, if we both raise it together, no one will know. That is illegal. But if you have these algorithms looking at Delta's pricing and you have another one looking at United's pricing,

they may unintentionally start colluding because they saw one price rise. And so you have this weird effect where no human is pulling the strings. But these AI bots are basically instantly matching companies B's price sites, which just leads to higher prices for consumers. So there's a whole new world of consumer protection out there based off these algorithms doing their thing. Let's give Instacart the last word here. They did respond to this consumer report, testing report. And they said, just as retailers have long tested prices in their physical stores to better understand consumer preferences, a subset of only 10 retail partners, one that already apply markups,

the same online via Instacart. They said these tests were limited short-term and randomized, but they did pull the test from Target and Costco once this report, or once they contacted them about these experiments. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. If you're looking for a high-flying company to invest in with explosive potential, SpaceX is eyeing an IPO next year. According to a report from Bloomberg, Elon's second prize jewel is gearing up for a 2026 IPO that is targeting a valuation of one and a half trillion dollars. That would make it the largest IPO ever edging out Saudi Ramco's 2019 listing. Why the interest in the public markets? One, the business itself is ripping, powered by profits from its Starlink Internet division. SpaceS expects revenue to come in between $22 and $24 billion next year.

Funds raised in the IPO process would also be helpful in new moonshot projects it has in mind, including developing space-based data centers, Neil Trillionaire Elon Musk incoming. Just to give you some perspective, when Google IPOed in 2004, it was worth $23 billion. And when Facebook IPOed in 2012, it was worth about $100 billion. So SpaceX going public at potentially a $1.5 trillion valuation truly boggles the mind. And it sets up 2026 to be a blockbuster year for Blockbuster IPOs. Another company that a lot of people are watching, whether it will go public because it would be the first of it's kind to do that, is Anthropic. That's the AI startup behind. the Claude Chatbot, and they are looking at a valuation right now, not even at their IPO, of about $300 billion.

So with Open AI, not seemingly going public anytime soon, there's going to be a lot of focus on the SpaceX IPO and the Anthropic IPO next year. Of course, these things get delayed. Could slip into the next year after that. But just as much as drama and volatility that Tesla makes on the stock market, can you imagine what investing in SpaceX would be like? Even if you think soccer is lame, one of the things you might appreciate about it compared to American sports is the lack of commercials over the breezy 90-minute runtime. That's going to change for the upcoming World Cup. FIFA announced that all games at next year's tournament hosted in North America will feature a three-minute hydration break 22 minutes into each half, essentially dividing the games into quarters. FIFA said that the decision prioritizes player welfare given the expected high temperatures in the summer, but it also certainly prioritizes broadcasters, who, will surely air commercials during the three-minute break.

Heat was a huge issue at the Summers Club World Cup hosted in the U.S. with periodic hydration breaks taken after players complained of the worst conditions they've ever played in anywhere around the world. Yeah, there's two angles to this. FIFA is obviously saying this is for player safety. You know, we just did a tournament in the U.S., and it was way too hot for everyone. But they've kind of bent the rules to say that,

all right, we probably don't need hydration breaks in every single match. Some of these matches are taking place inside. You definitely don't need a hydration break then, but they want to keep equal playing field. But a lot of people read between the lines and said, hey, you want ad breaks. You know, this is why soccer has never caught on in America. The fact that we even call it soccer shows that it hasn't caught on because there hasn't been a consistent commercial break schedule. But now when you introduce three minute breaks two times a match times 104 games in the tournament, that is a massive new revenue stream. So I'm actually for it.

You know, if it, if the thing that makes football or soccer become more popular in America. I'm not sure I follow your reasoning here. How will more commercial breaks make soccer more popular? It will just make it more commercially popular with advertisers. You know, the NFL is the greatest commercial sport in the world, which is why it's so popular in America because there's so much money that goes into it. I think it will just lead to more money flowing into the sport as well if these advertising partners get, you know, get their beak sweat. if they get more air time. So yes, as a purist, it stinks.

As maybe a rationalist, it could lead to the sport growing in America. It stinks, though. The Spice Maker McCormick is back with its flavor of the year, and this one is a bit of a weird one. Right in the heels of naming Ahi Amarillo, its 2025 flavor of the year, the 1,26-year-old brand thinks Black Current is going to dominate 2026 menus. Black Currants currently appear on just 1% of Menriot.

menus in North America, but they pop up more frequently in liqueurs across Europe, vinegars in Australia, and glazes in Asia. Mentions in the U.S. are up 34% in the last 12 months, with most of that growth driven largely by non-alcoholic beverages. Neil, I've never come across a black current on a menu. You're probably not going to find them in a berry form, but apparently they make some swaggy sauces in drinks. Yeah, I like a current.

I've got some at the market last year. Red current, though, not black current. Then you kind of boil it down into a sauce or a concentrate or a syrup and then put it on various things. It's very good in baked goods and also works on meats like duck and pork. So it's just a little niche. I don't think black current's going to be a huge thing on menus anywhere, but apparently McCormick thinks it goes in enough things that also its spices can go into. So it wants to sell more of those things. And it's highlighting black current, which I guess is cool because it's an ingredient that I think a lot of

people don't know about, but it's a, it's quite an interesting berry. That was what we were wondering. Why would McCormick, a spice maker, highlight an ingredient that they don't sell? We were literally looking up and down their product line. They don't have even a blackcurrant extract or something like that. So yes, I guess they're making a very adjacent bet here to say, hey, black currants are also go well with, you know, the spices that we sell. All right, that is all the time we have.

Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. If you want to get in touch, you can send a note to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew. or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lou is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Yuchinawa Ogu is our technical director.

Hair and makeup have no swag gap between them. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morningboro. Great. So today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.