Baby sat at office desk, holding telephone.

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BORN TO SCROLL

Nearly 40% of kids under 2 years old interact with smartphones, according to their parents

A new Pew Research study outlines just how pervasive technology use among US children has become.

As parents in 2025 know, they really do grow up so fast. First words today, first Google query tomorrow. Then, before you know it, they’re asking ChatGPT to read them a bedtime story...

On Wednesday, Pew Research Center published a survey assessing how parents in the US with children under 12 manage their kids’ screen time, which revealed that 61% of respondents overall reported their child ever uses or interacts with smartphones — including 38% of those with children under 2 years old.

Much of this smartphone screen time is likely made up by parents streaming kid-friendly cartoons for their little ones to watch on the go: the study also found that YouTube use among children under 2 has risen sharply from 45% to 62% over the last five years. But it appears that most American toddlers only need to wait a few years before they can get devices of their very own.

Smartphones children Pew Research — Sherwood News

The same survey showed that almost one in four US parents overall allow their children aged 12 and under to have their own smartphones, and this ballooned to nearly 60% when just looking at kids aged 11-12 years old.

Indeed, even with statewide smartphone bans spurring an old-school iPod revival, most parents — the vast majority of whom (92%) reported being concerned about staying in contact with their children — are allowing their descendants who’ve barely hit double digits to have devices to use in their free time.

Pre-teens, post-screens

While traditional cable viewership continues to sink, TV remains the screen of choice for kids’ entertainment, permitted by 90% of parents surveyed. However, moms and dads may now be faced with a whole new hotbed of childcare worries: the study also found that some 8% of kids aged 5-12 have interacted with AI chatbots.

As an overwhelming majority of parents (80%) still harbor concerns over the harms of social media, the negative consequences of this relatively novel, extremely powerful tech for a whole cohort of young people may become even more stark in years to come — through screens or otherwise.

Jon Keegan1h

OpenAI reportedly commits up to $25 billion for a data center in Argentina with Sur Energy

OpenAI has reportedly signed a letter of intent to invest up to $25 billion on a data center in Argentina, citing the Argentine government.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing story.

Jon Keegan22h

Meta considering a stand-alone TV app as it leans into Instagram videos

Meta is considering building a dedicated TV app to expand the reach of Instagram’s video content, according to comments by Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, at a Bloomberg conference.

Instagram has 3 billion monthly users and is leaning into its Reels vertical videos, which puts it head-to-head with TikTok. Mosseri told Bloomberg:

“If behavior [and] the consumption of these platforms is moving to TV, then we need to move to TV, too.”

A move to living room screens could let Meta compete against Alphabet’s YouTube, but adapting vertical videos to TV could prove challenging.

Instagram Is ‘Exploring’ a Dedicated TV App in Video Push

“If behavior [and] the consumption of these platforms is moving to TV, then we need to move to TV, too.”

A move to living room screens could let Meta compete against Alphabet’s YouTube, but adapting vertical videos to TV could prove challenging.

Jon Keegan10/9/25

Nvidia backs Reflection AI in $2 billion fundraising round

When DeepSeek R1 was released at the end of last year, it shook the AI world to its core.

The scrappy Chinese startup developed a competitive open-weights reasoning model that bested several state-of-the-art models from OpenAI and Google in several benchmarks.

The release caused the industry to question its bet on massive AI infrastructure over clever engineering done with constrained resources.

American startup Reflection AI thinks the West needs its own DeepSeek, and plans on being the company to build it.

On Thursday, Reflection AI announced it had raised $2 billion at an $8 billion valuation, with Nvidia leading the fundraising round with an $800 million investment.

Reflection does not appear to have developed a frontier-scale model yet, but has built the software needed to train one. A $2 billion cash infusion will certainly help with the company’s training costs, but by comparison, DeepSeek’s R1 model was trained for only $249,000.

Reflection AI Raises $2 Billion as It Aims to Compete With DeepSeek

The release caused the industry to question its bet on massive AI infrastructure over clever engineering done with constrained resources.

American startup Reflection AI thinks the West needs its own DeepSeek, and plans on being the company to build it.

On Thursday, Reflection AI announced it had raised $2 billion at an $8 billion valuation, with Nvidia leading the fundraising round with an $800 million investment.

Jon Keegan10/9/25

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang throws shade at OpenAI-AMD deal

In an interview on CNBC yesterday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang threw some shade at the recently announced megadeal between competitor Advanced Micro Devices and its partner, OpenAI.

The unusual deal calls for AMD to sell multiple generations of its GPUs to OpenAI, totaling 6 gigawatts of computing power, in exchange for stock warrants for OpenAI to buy about 10% of the company.

When asked about the deal, Huang said:

“Yeah, I saw the deal. It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising. Considering they were so excited about their next-generation product, I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it.”

The move diversifies part of OpenAI’s GPU supply chain away from Nvidia, which supplies the vast majority of GPUs for hyperscalers today.

Nvidia Chief’s Not-So-Subtle Dig at AMD

When asked about the deal, Huang said:

“Yeah, I saw the deal. It’s imaginative, it’s unique and surprising. Considering they were so excited about their next-generation product, I’m surprised that they would give away 10% of the company before they even built it.”

The move diversifies part of OpenAI’s GPU supply chain away from Nvidia, which supplies the vast majority of GPUs for hyperscalers today.

0.6%

Rani Molla10/9/25

The Washington Post’s Geoffrey Fowler tracked prices before and during Amazon’s recent “Prime Big Deal Days” and found the savings to be paltry: on a group of nearly 50 products he’d bought on Amazon over the past six months, he would have saved just 0.6% if he’d bought them during Amazon’s high-profile sale. And those savings, Fowler points out, don’t factor in the annual $139 Prime membership fee.

In a number of cases, some big-ticket items like TVs were actually more expensive during the e-commerce giant’s much-hyped discount days than they are normally.