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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.

10/10/25 6:27AM

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 Keegan2h

Google’s AI chip business could be a $900 billion boon for the company

Google may be sitting on a massive new business that it has yet to fully exploit.

Google’s custom tensor processing unit (TPU) AI chips have been getting a lot of attention recently, making the tech world wonder if there are other ways to power its AI dreams rather than just by using Nvidia’s GPUs.

Bloomberg spoke with analysts who estimate that, if it does decide to sell its chips to others, Google could capture 20% of the AI market, making it a $900 billion business. For comparison, Google Cloud pulled in $43.2 billion of revenue last year.

Even if Google just sticks with renting access to its TPUs, it will continue to drive down costs and increase margins as it ekes out performance improvements, such as the 30x improvement in power efficiency that the latest generation of TPUs has delivered for the company.

Alphabet’s AI Chips Are a Potential $900 Billion ‘Secret Sauce’

Rani Molla3h

OpenAI’s Sam Altman has explored bringing his feud with Tesla’s Elon Musk to space

Billionaires, they’re just like us: they want to bring their terrestrial beefs to outer space.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has explored buying or partnering with a rocket company to compete with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX, The Wall Street Journal reports. The two billionaires have had numerous public feuds over the years that have played out in the courts and on social media. They also both lead AI companies that have insatiable needs for data centers and have publicly discussed building data centers in space.

Altman seems like he thinks this could be more than science fiction. He reportedly reached out to rocket maker Stoke Space to potentially make equity investments in the company to get a controlling stake, though the talks are no longer active, WSJ reports.

Or perhaps he just wanted a Sherwood bobblehead of himself.

Jon Keegan4h

Report: Meta to slash metaverse, VR spending by up to 30%

Four years after changing its name to reflect its focus on the loosely defined “metaverse,” Meta is planning deep cuts to the company’s money-losing virtual reality efforts, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Meta’s Reality Labs division, home to the teams working on metaverse products — which include Quest VR headsets, Horizon Worlds, and its Ray-Ban Meta glasses — has lost about $70 billion since the company started breaking out the unit in 2020.

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.

Meta’s Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Kicks Off Dreamforce With Keynote Presentation

The best quotes from Salesforce’s earnings call

CEO Marc Benioff doesn’t disappoint.

Rani Molla4h

Rani Molla22h

Salesforce jumps as Q3 earnings top expectations

Salesforce jumped after-hours Wednesday as it posted earnings and guidance that beat analysts’ expectations. Its adjusted earnings per share came in at $3.25 for the third quarter of fiscal 2026, above the FactSet analyst consensus estimate of $2.86. Its revenue rose 9% to $10.3 billion, in line with expectations.

The software-as-a-service company issued fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $11.13 billion to $11.23 billion, well above the $10.9 billion analysts had predicted. It also forecast adjusted earnings of $3.02 to $3.04 per share, compared with analysts’ expectations of $3.04.

Shares were up 4.3% in recent trading.

“Our Agentforce and Data 360 products are the momentum drivers,” CEO Marc Benioff said in the press release.

Last quarter, Salesforce shares fell after the company issued disappointing third-quarter guidance. Coming into today’s report, the stock was down about 30% year to date.

Investors will be watching the earnings call closely for updates on the company’s AI strategy — particularly progress on Agentforce and broader adoption of its AI-driven cloud offerings.