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    Trend Overload

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    We cover a surprising form of Gen Z burnout. Consider yourself lucky if you have never heard of the “coastal grandmother aesthetic.”Or “blueberry milk nails,” or the “mob wife aesthetic” or a hundred other blink-and-you’ll-miss-them crazes that cycle online with the ferocity of a centrifuge. These microtrends, as they’re known, tend to be associated with Gen Z. But members of that generation say they are exhausted by the onslaught of faddish clothes and new phrases they encounter every time they pick up their phones.I’ve spent the last few months asking young people about the fashion and social media trends that are actually registering in their offline lives. More than any one trend, the teenagers and twentysomethings I spoke with wanted to talk about just how many trends there were, and how overwhelming it all felt.Every generation feels pressure to keep up with trends, especially in its youth. But many members of Gen Z seem to be under particular stress: The fire hose of social media offers endless opportunities to feel left out. Others say they just can’t afford — mentally or financially — to try to keep up.For a new story in The Times’s Style section, I talked to young people about the frenzied trend ecosystem — and what some of them were doing to escape it.Keeping upShort-form video platforms like TikTok are fertile territory for microtrends. They get a heavy assist from fast fashion companies like Temu and Shein that sell inexpensive but poorly made clothes and accessories, available in just a few clicks on the apps.On the first day of sixth grade, Neena Atkins noticed that several girls at her middle school wore scrunchies on their wrists. She searched for scrunchies on TikTok, and in the days that followed she was served dozens more videos in which the hair ties were being worn as bracelets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How TikTok Helped Germany’s Left to a Surprise Election Showing

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      Struggling a month ago, the far-left Die Linke party surged into Parliament by riding a backlash against conservative immigration policy.Her fans call her Heidi. She is 36 years old. She talks a mile a minute. She has a tattoo of the Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg on her left arm and a million followers across TikTok and Instagram. She was relatively unknown in German politics until January, but as of Sunday, she’s a political force.Heidi Reichinnek is the woman who led the surprise story of Germany’s parliamentary elections on Sunday: an almost overnight resurgence of Die Linke, which translates as “The Left.”A month ago, Die Linke looked likely to miss the 5 percent voting cutoff needed for parties to earn seats in Germany’s Parliament, the Bundestag. On Sunday, it won nearly 9 percent of the vote and 64 seats in the Bundestag. “It was one of only five parties to win multiple seats in the new Parliament, joining the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the hard-right Alternative for Germany and the Green Party.It was a remarkable comeback, powered by young voters, high prices, a backlash against conservative politicians, and a social-media-forward message that mixed celebration and defiance.At a time when German politicians are moving to the right on issues like immigration, and when the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, doubled its vote share from four years ago, Ms. Reichinnek, the party’s co-leader in the Bundestag, and Die Linke succeeded by channeling outrage from liberal, young voters.They pitched themselves as an aggressive check on a more conservative government, which will almost certainly be led by Friedrich Merz, a businessman who has led the Christian Democrats to take a harsher line on border security and migrants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      JD Vance Is in Charge of Getting a TikTok Deal. Can He Find a Buyer?

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      The vice president is in a tricky position as he looks for a deal to save the popular short-form video app, which is subject to being banned in the U.S. if it is not sold to a non-Chinese owner.Last week, an aide for Vice President JD Vance reached out to the billionaire Frank McCourt.The topic at hand was Mr. McCourt’s $20 billion long-shot offer to buy TikTok, the Chinese-owned video app. Mr. Vance’s aide wanted details about the bid, which was one of several public overtures for the app, according to two people familiar with the process.The inquiry was one of Mr. Vance’s earliest moves toward corralling a deal for the popular app after President Trump tapped him earlier this month to find an arrangement to save it. TikTok was recently banned in the United States under a new federal law that prohibited distribution in the country if it was not sold to a non-Chinese owner, though Mr. Trump delayed enforcement of the law until early April.Mr. Trump’s assignment plunges Mr. Vance into a fraught geopolitical and corporate negotiation over the fate of the app, which counts some 170 million American users. It is not clear who could buy TikTok in the United States, or even whether China or ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, would allow a sale. And the Trump administration is under scrutiny for its decision to disregard the law’s Jan. 19 deadline for a sale or a ban. Mr. Vance’s involvement ensures that he and Mr. Trump — both of whom once supported banning TikTok because of national security concerns — have some public accountability for saving it, according to analysts and people involved in negotiations for a sale. Tapping Mr. Vance could also help lend negotiations more credibility, said Peter Harrell, a former Biden White House official who worked on national security, tech and economic issues.“What he brings to the role is everybody’s going to take his call and take him seriously,” Mr. Harrell said. “Most people, given Trump has been pretty clear he’s tapped Vance for this, will assume that Vance is speaking for the president.”An electronic billboard for TikTok in Times Square. Mr. Vance’s involvement adds some credibility to the White House’s efforts to find new owner for TikTok.Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Apple and Google Restore TikTok to App Stores in the U.S.

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      The popular social media app was removed to comply with a new law that banned it in the United States.Apple and Google restored TikTok to their app stores in the United States on Thursday evening, several weeks after they removed the short-form video platform in compliance with a new law that banned it in the country.President Trump tried to pause enforcement of the TikTok ban with an executive order, but the companies were reluctant to bring TikTok back until they were certain they were not breaking the law.The law, signed last year, had called for ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, to sell TikTok to a non-Chinese owner by Jan. 19. The law targeted app store operators and internet hosting companies with steep financial penalties if they distributed or maintained TikTok.Mr. Trump’s executive order prompted confusion among technology companies. While Apple and Google kept TikTok out of their app stores, companies like Oracle, which provided back-end technology support for the app, resumed working with it after a brief shutdown in January.While Apple and Google blocked new downloads of TikTok, the app was largely unaffected if it was already downloaded on American phones. TikTok claims 170 million U.S. users.The return of the app to the stores is a positive sign for TikTok, which now has until early April to find a buyer. It’s also a remarkable turnabout for the company. Just a month ago, it was facing down a ban with wide bipartisan support in Congress. The law was upheld unanimously by the Supreme Court — only to be upended by Mr. Trump.TikTok executives told video creators in a briefing call on Tuesday that it was optimistic that Apple and Google would soon reinstate the app, said H. Lee Justine, a TikTok creator and author, who was on the call.“They said that the administration had given them a lot of information that they wouldn’t be penalized and that they were really hopeful that any day now they would put it back in the app stores,” she said in an interview. “It makes me very hopeful that they felt that they could do this because hopefully this means that long term there’s not going to be issues and this will work out.”TikTok declined to comment on its return to the app stores or the briefing.This is a developing story. Check back for updates. More

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      U.S. Court Denies TikTok’s Request to Freeze Sale-or-Ban Law

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      TikTok had sought to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent to sell the app or face a U.S. ban next month. The case may now head to the Supreme Court.A federal court on Friday denied TikTok’s request to temporarily freeze a law that requires its Chinese parent company to sell the app or face a ban in the United States as of Jan. 19, a decision that puts the fate of the app in the Supreme Court’s hands.The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in a filing late on Friday that an injunction was “unwarranted,” and that it had expedited its decision so that TikTok and its users could seek an emergency freeze from the Supreme Court.A week ago, three judges in the same court unanimously denied petitions from the company and its users to overturn the law. TikTok then asked the court on Monday to temporarily block the law until the Supreme Court decided on TikTok’s planned appeal of that decision, and sought a decision by Dec. 16.The court said on Friday that TikTok and its users “have not identified any case in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court.”It isn’t clear whether the Supreme Court will agree to temporarily freeze the law and hear the case, though experts say that is likely.Michael Hughes, a spokesman for TikTok, said, “As we have previously stated, we plan on taking this case to the Supreme Court, which has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech.” He said that American users’ voices would be “silenced” if the law were not stopped.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What to Know About Australia’s Social Media Ban for Children Under 16

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      Critics say big questions remain not only about how the new law will be enforced, but also about whether the ban will really protect young people.Australia has passed a law to prevent children under 16 from creating accounts on social media platforms.The bill, which the government calls a “world leading” move to protect young people online, was approved in the Senate on Thursday with support from both of the country’s major parties. The lower house of Parliament had passed it earlier in the week.“This is about protecting young people — not punishing or isolating them,” said Michelle Rowland, Australia’s communications minister. She cited exposure to content about drug abuse, eating disorders and violence as some of the harms children can encounter online.The legislation has broad support among Australians, and some parental groups have been vocal advocates. But it has faced backlash from an unlikely alliance of tech giants, human rights groups and social media experts. Critics say there are major unanswered questions about how the law will be enforced, how users’ privacy will be protected and, fundamentally, whether the ban will actually protect children.What’s in the law?The law requires social media platforms to take “reasonable steps” to verify the age of users and prohibit those under 16 from opening accounts. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Trump 2.0 Means for Tech + A.I. Made Me Basic + HatGPT!

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      Listen to and follow ‘Hard Fork’Apple | Spotify | Amazon | YouTube | iHeartRadioKevin Roose and Rachel Cohn and Dan PowellElisheba IttoopPat McCusker and As of this week, we have a new president-elect. We discuss how the incoming administration’s approach to technology will affect Elon Musk, a TikTok ban, Big Tech’s antitrust challenges and the speed of A.I. progress. Then, Kashmir Hill, a technology reporter for The Times, joins to discuss her weeklong experiment of letting A.I. make every decision in her life. And finally, we play a round of election-free HatGPT!Guest:Kashmir Hill, technology reporter for The New York Times.Additional Reading:What a Trump Victory Means for TechI Took a ‘Decision Holiday’ and Put A.I. in Charge of My LifeAn ‘Interview’ With a Dead Luminary Exposes the Pitfalls of A.I.Meta’s Plan for Nuclear-Powered A.I. Data Center Thwarted by Rare BeesFired Employee Allegedly Hacked Disney World’s Menu System to Alter Peanut Allergy InformationPhoto Illustration by The New York Times; Photos: Doug Mills/The New York Times (Trump); Getty Images (emojis)Credits“Hard Fork” is hosted by More

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      TikTok Faces Lawsuits From 13 States Around Teens and Mental Health

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      More than a dozen states sued TikTok on Tuesday for creating an app designed to be addictive to children and teens.Thirteen states and the District of Columbia sued TikTok on Tuesday for creating an intentionally addictive app that harmed children and teens while making false claims to the public about its commitment to safety.In separate lawsuits, a bipartisan group of attorneys general cited internal company documents to paint a picture of a multibillion dollar company that knowingly contributed to a mental health crisis among American teenagers to maximize its advertising revenue. They said that TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, has relentlessly designed features to prompt heavy, compulsive use of TikTok and that many children were using the app late at night when they would otherwise have been asleep.TikTok “knew the harms to children,” Rob Bonta, the Democratic attorney general of California, said in an interview. “They chose addiction and more use and more eyeballs and more mental and physical harm for our young people in order to get profits — it’s really that simple.”The lawsuits add to a rapidly expanding list of challenges for TikTok in the United States, which now counts 170 million monthly U.S. users. A federal law passed in April calls for the app to be banned in the United States as of January unless it is sold. A federal lawsuit against the company in August also claimed that TikTok allowed children to open accounts, gathered information about them and made it difficult for their parents to delete the accounts.TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The states, many of which started investigating the company’s harms to minors in early 2022, are generally claiming that TikTok’s conduct violates their consumer protection laws. The states say that TikTok plays videos in a manner that aims to make young users lose track of time and sends them round-the-clock notifications and ephemeral content like livestreams to compel them to keep checking in. The longer users stay on the app, the more targeted ads TikTok is able to show them.The attorneys general say that TikTok has misled users about its so-called 60-minute screen time limits for young people and other features that promise to curate the videos that they see.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Meta Distanced Itself From Politics

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      In January 2021, after pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new priority for Meta: He wanted to reduce the amount of political content on the company’s apps, including Facebook and Instagram.As the United States hurtles toward November’s election, Mr. Zuckerberg’s plan appears to be working.On Facebook, Instagram and Threads, political content is less heavily featured. App settings have been automatically set to de-emphasize the posts that users see about campaigns and candidates. And political misinformation is harder to find on the platforms after Meta removed transparency tools that journalists and researchers used to monitor the sites.Inside Meta, Mr. Zuckerberg, 40, no longer meets weekly with the heads of election security as he once did, according to four employees. He has reduced the number of full-time employees working on the issue and disbanded the election integrity team, these employees said, though the company says the election integrity workers were integrated into other teams. He has also decided not to have a “war room,” which Meta previously used to prepare for elections.Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee laying out how he wanted to distance himself and his company from politics. The goal, he said, was to be “neutral” and to not “even appear to be playing a role.”“It’s quite the pendulum swing because a decade ago, everyone at Facebook was desperate to be the face of elections,” said Katie Harbath, chief executive of Anchor Change, a tech consulting firm, who previously worked at Facebook. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More