• Two internet relics are rising from the dead this week: Friendster and Vine.
• DiVine, backed by Jack Dorsey, launched a decentralized version of the short-form video app, Vine.
• Friendster, an early social network, is back with a new founder and a different experience.

It's time to welcome back two social networks we once loved: Friendster and Vine.

After shutting down in the 2010s, the two social media platforms are rising from the dead this week.

Both of the apps, however, are Frankenstein versions of their predecessors. Neither is being resurrected by its original founders, and the app design and experiences differ from the original platforms.

Nostalgia for a simpler internet, especially for those who remember the early days with rose-colored glasses, is partially fueling this resurgence.

Evan Henshaw-Plath — who goes by Rabble — is the early Twitter employee behind the Vine reboot, DiVine.

He said that "people look back" at the era of social media before everything got so darn big. People not only miss the features and feel of these old apps, but also that time period.

"It's very telling that in the beginning of the year, people were looking back to 2016," he said, referring to a social media trend of people romanticizing that year.

Vine officially shut down in 2017 after being acquired by Twitter in 2012, paving the way for the rise of TikTok and other short-form feeds.

Its remake, DiVine, revived hundreds of thousands of old Vine videos from digital archives. Users can post new Vine-style six-second videos. The content must be filmed directly within the app, and DiVine has a firm anti-AI-slop stance. The project is also decentralized and built on Nostr, an open-source protocol not owned by a single company.

DiVine is funded by And Other Stuff, a nonprofit that received a $10 million grant from Jack Dorsey.

Meanwhile, Friendster, a social network that predated Myspace and Facebook, was rebuilt by startup founder Mike Carson as a no-frills mobile social app for your real-life friends. For example, users can only add new friends by tapping their iPhones in person. (So far, I have a grand total of one friend: Business Insider's Katie Notopoulos, who told me she was an OG Friendster fan.)

Carson told Business Insider that he paid about $30,000 for the Friendster domain and trademark.

After being overtaken by the rise of Myspace and then later Facebook, Friendster rebranded as a gaming company in 2011. By 2015, it shut down its website.

The new app — which doesn't resemble the former version much other than its shared name — quickly jumped to No. 12 in Apple's App Store social networking category on Thursday.

Unlike DiVine, the new Friendster doesn't have access to any of the prior version's data or content.

What's old is new again on the internet

I'm not old enough to be on the original Friendster, but I remember the Vine days well. I'm also not alone in feeling nostalgic for the earlier days of the internet (or particularly, the 2010s).

Carson wrote in a Medium post this week that while today's social networks "foster a lot of negativity," he remembers the original days of Friendster as "a positive and enjoyable experience."

DiVine and Friendster aren't the only internet relics that have been resurrected recently.

Last year, Digg, once a rival to Reddit, was revived by its original cofounder, Kevin Rose, and Alexis Ohanian (a cofounder of Reddit). In March, however, the company said it was downsizing its team and rethinking its strategy.

Building any new social platform is an uphill battle, even if you have a recognizable name from a previous era.

People are loyal to the platforms they've already dug their heels into, and getting them to migrate can be challenging, Digg's CEO Justin Mezzell wrote in a letter shared to the platform's website.

Friendster and DiVine could face similar challenges.

What's abundantly clear is that there's an appetite among founders to build alternative social platforms — especially those that strike a nostalgic chord. Newer startups, like Perfectly Imperfect or Cosmos, are leveraging nostalgia to build platforms that feel reminiscent of Tumblr.

The big question: Can they actually build a community?

Tech founders can build new spaces, or reimagine old ones, but getting users to stay, return, and create a culture is what gives an app life (or breathes life back into one).

"It is not the software, it is not the founder, it is not the team," Henshaw-Plath said. "It is the community of users that makes these things work."

• Donald Trump owns his own social media company.
• But Truth Social isn't where to go if you want a lot of people to see you attack Jimmy Kimmel.
• So Melania Trump made sure her demand that ABC do something about Kimmel appeared on Elon Musk's X, too.

Melania Trump says ABC should "take a stand" over Jimmy Kimmel, because she doesn't like a joke the talk show host made last week.

First things first: The first lady calling on a media company to do something about its employee because she doesn't like what that employee said is a bad thing. It's an attempt to use the power of the White House to silence speech that the White House doesn't like.

And it's just as worrisome as it was last September, when Brendan Carr, Trump's pick to head the Federal Communications Commission, told ABC owner Disney to "take action, frankly, on Kimmel" because Kimmel had made a joke about Trump supporters and Charlie Kirk. Disney suspended Kimmel for a few days and then reinstated him after public outcry.

There is a difference between Carr's demand and Melania Trump's demand on Monday, since Carr is a regulator with direct oversight over parts of Disney's business, and Melania Trump doesn't have any formal power over … anything. But she's still using the power of the White House to try to control speech, and that should alarm anyone with any common sense. (I've asked her office for comment.)

Let's see how new Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro responds to this one.

Much less important, but still interesting to me: The first lady's choice of platform to make her demand/threat. Melania Trump used Elon Musk's X, the site formally known as Twitter, to post her thoughts on Monday, using both her official First Lady of the United States account and her own personal account.

Trump also posted the same statement on Truth Social, the social media site owned by her husband. But that one seemed obligatory. Not in the way it's literally obligatory for Donald Trump to post at least some of his thoughts on his own social platform before he puts them anywhere else. But in the way you're supposed to tell your significant other you think they make the best pasta, when what you really crave is Olive Garden.

The numbers make it clear why Melania Trump chose to use X to make a splash: Her post on that platform has 230,000 likes, and that number is skyrocketing. Her Truth Social post has 6,500 likes and is traveling at a much more leisurely pace.

All of which is a reminder that while Truth Social is the Trump-owned Twitter alternative Donald Trump uses, it remains a minor-at-best platform. One that won't tell you how many users it has, and one that managed to lose more than $700 million on revenue of $3.7 million in 2025.

None of that is news, nor does it seem to matter to Trump, who still owns a company worth nearly $3 billion, even after a stock plunge and the departure of its CEO — perhaps because the company's current plan is to merge with a nuclear fusion company.

It also doesn't matter where Donald Trump truths or posts or spouts off — he's the president of the United States, so just about anything he says that's noteworthy gets instantly transmitted through the global media ecosystem. Like what happened on Monday afternoon, where he piggybacked on his wife's post and explicitly called on Disney and ABC to fire Kimmel.

But for the rest of us — including the first lady of the United States — where you post a message matters. Which is why she's using the one that helped her husband get into the White House in the first place.

• Michaeleen Doucleff, author of "Dopamine Kids," wanted to wean her daughter off screens.
• She said the key was to replace screens with activities that genuinely motivated and excited her daughter.
• She also cut back on buying ultra-processed foods by having her daughter bake cookies from scratch.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michaeleen Doucleff, the author of "Hunt, Gather, Parent" and "Dopamine Kids," released on March 3. This story has been edited for length and clarity.

Around the time my daughter, Rosy, was 4, we went to the beach. It was a really beautiful, sunny day, and I realized I couldn't enjoy it. She was having a great time building a sandcastle; I was sitting there checking my email, texts, and social media.

I felt this little hum of anxiety. Was she going to grow up without me being able to enjoy our lives together?

I started examining my own relationship to dopamine, the brain systems involved in reward and motivation, whether it is related to screens or ultra-processed foods. I realized that for me, these products were reclaiming the pleasure in our lives.

My life started to change when I set limits on screen time and processed snacks, swapping them for other activities and whole foods.

Then I wanted to help Rosy, who was 8 at the time.

I learned that a lot of the advice out there didn't work for me because it was based on research from 20 to 40 years ago. I kept trying things that I would read in parenting books, like "let children be bored." If I told Rosy to go to her room and play without screens, I'd just create a struggle. She'd crave screen time even more.

The truth is, parents are up against a lot. Apps, games, and ultra-processed foods are designed to keep us coming back. Research suggests that if parents don't have a clear mission for their families, it's much harder to keep impulses under control.

Luckily, research also suggests ways to change your child's relationship with screens. Here's how I got my daughter to swap them for activities that she enjoys.

I made a 'family dream list' to guide us

The first step is about taking back the wheel. That came with deciding what I wanted for my family. What was my dream?

Exploration is a fundamental need for my child, and I didn't want her to fulfill it with video games and social media. Instead, I wanted Rosy to enjoy being outside with her friends and going on adventures.

So one day, I said, "I'm going to teach you to do something you've been dying to do," which was riding a bike by herself to the market. We spent a few nights biking around everywhere until she felt comfortable on her own. Instead of watching YouTube videos of cartoon characters biking around, she could now do it herself.

Now that she's 10, biking is one of Rosy's favorite activities. She bikes to piano lessons and soccer practice. Sometimes, on Saturdays, she'll spend six hours biking with her friends, then come home exhausted and happy.

Leaning into her natural motivation

Dopamine plays a key role in motivation; it makes us seek out things that feel rewarding. To compete with screens, it helps to ride the motivational wave.

Once, we were in the cookie aisle of the grocery store. Rosy started begging for cookies because foods like that light up the brain's reward system. Instead of saying no to the cookies, I wanted to cultivate her desire to create a new habit.

I said, "OK, you can have the cookies, but you're going to bake the cookies all by yourself." I'd help her get started, and she learned how to use the mixer and oven.

When she finished baking the cookies, she ate only one or two. She wanted to save the rest because they were so precious to her. To this day, she's an amazing baker. A couple of months ago, she made a whole lasagna for dinner.

It turned out to be a great swap we made, both for cutting down on store-bought snacks and on screen time.

Micro-celebrations kept her going

The internet uses micro-celebrations: The little "ding" when you send a message, the hearts, the emojis. They seem very simple, and like they're not doing anything, but they're triggering a tiny bit of pleasure in our brains. It's the superglue that keeps us attached.

As a parent, I wanted to give Rosy similar micro-celebrations. When Rosy and I were first starting to bike around the neighborhood, every now and then I'd say, "Wow, this is really fun. I love this. This feels so good." It's just about sprinkling in a little bit of excitement.

Another really powerful micro-celebration parents can use is having the kid present what they made to you, whether it's a drawing or a craft. It creates an emotional payoff for the child, making them feel like they've done something important. It'll make them want to keep doing it more and more.

I set a price for screen time

Products like TVs and tablets are what I call "dopamine magnets"; they're incredibly hard to resist. We can't rely on willpower alone. Instead, we need very clear, simple rules that never change.

Almost every Saturday afternoon, Rosy would ask to watch a movie. Finally, I agreed, but with one new rule: She had to write a two-page summary of the last movie she watched, and present it to me.

At first, I was blown away. She ran to go do it — she was really willing to work to get this movie. Still, after a few times, she stopped asking for Saturday movies. She decided they weren't worth the price.

By then, we had other activities to replace the movie. On top of riding her bike, she was making a lot of crafts — embroidering, crocheting, and paper quilling.

Creating screen-free environments

What many people don't realize is that the pull happens before you use the device. Usually, there's some cue in your environment, such as the sight of your phone or the places you typically use it.

For example, a child might associate getting into the car with playing games on a tablet. Instead, you can change that to another activity. We bought a CD player for Rosy so she could listen to audiobooks on drives. It forces her to wait and listen to the book again, instead of us immediately buying a new one.

Without changing cues, parents may have to fight to pull their kids off screens or to police what they eat.

By using these behavioral principles, you can set up routines that help kids rely less on willpower alone. Over time, those pathways stick.

• Meta and YouTube were found negligent in a landmark social media addiction trial.
• The case centered on a woman who said social media harmed her mental health from a young age.
• The case is viewed as a key test of how juries may see dozens of similar pending lawsuits.

Meta and Google were found negligent in a social media addiction trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday, potentially setting the stage for dozens of similar lawsuits that have been brought against Big Tech companies.

The case centered on a 20-year-old woman, identified as KGM, who said her use of social media from a young age was detrimental to her mental health and accused the companies of knowingly engineering their products to addict kids.

After nine days of deliberation, the jury found Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Google, which owns YouTube, negligent. In a 10-to-2 vote, the jury also ruled that the two companies knew their design was "dangerous" but failed to warn the plaintiffs.

The jury awarded the plaintiff $6 million. That's $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages.

The jury determined Meta was responsible for 70% of the harm, while YouTube was responsible for 30%. That means the total damages owed by Meta is $4.2 million, while YouTube owes $1.8 million.

The plaintiff's lead counsel, the Lanier Law Firm, called the verdict "a referendum" in a statement. "For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features," the statement said.

Spokespeople for Meta and Google both said the companies disagreed with the verdicts and plan to appeal.

"Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app," a Meta spokesperson said. "We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online."

"This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site," the Google spokesperson said.

The Los Angeles state court trial has been viewed as a bellwether, offering a key test of how juries may see similar personal injury lawsuits brought by over 2,000 individuals. Meta has said potential damages in certain cases could reach into the "high tens of billions of dollars."

TikTok and Snapchat were also defendants, but settled the lawsuit before the trial began.

Meta executives testified at the trial last month, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, drawing large crowds of media and concerned parents, including some involved in other social media addiction lawsuits. YouTube's VP of engineering, Cristos Goodrow, also testified.

The companies have argued that plaintiffs' struggles are due to myriad reasons and can't necessarily be linked to social media.

During Meta's closing argument at the Los Angeles trial, Paul Schmidt, one of the company's attorneys, said the plaintiff needed to prove that if Instagram were taken away from KGM, her "life would be meaningfully different."

"The evidence has shown just the opposite," Schmidt said.

In January, Meta warned investors that its mounting legal battles related to youth safety could "significantly impact" its 2026 financial results. Attorneys for more than 100,000 individual arbitration claimants have "sent mass arbitration demands relating to 'social media addiction'" since late 2024, the company said in a 2026 10-K, specifically noting the case in Los Angeles, as well as a separate case in New Mexico.

The New Mexico case, which occurred at the same time as the Los Angeles trial, addressed different legal and technical issues.

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million after a verdict came down in the state's lawsuit against the company about sexual exploitation.

Meta said it would appeal the case.

• "Clipping" marketing, a practice where creators get paid to repost video clips, is taking off.
• Top-tier clipping creators can now earn thousands of dollars a month, with guaranteed pay.
• Clipping has gained popularity among podcasters, Kick streamers, and YouTubers like MrBeast.

There's a new class of creators moving from side hustlers to in-demand pros.

Dubbed "clippers," these creators are paid to post snippets of podcasts, livestreams, movies, or songs on TikTok and other social apps, creating the impression that they're trendy.

Even if you haven't heard of "clipping," you've likely seen this emerging social-media strategy in the wild.

YouTubers, podcasters, and Kick streamers are early adopters of the tactic, which is performance-based and usually only pays out if a video gets significant views.

The clipping community is filled with side hustlers who are happy to earn $200 from a viral video. However, as the category has matured and attracted larger budgets, a new professional class of high-performing clippers has emerged. These clipping all-stars can still get performance-based pay, but they're also being offered guaranteed retainers of $500 to $1,500 a month to ensure they get to work, according to one "elite clipper" application viewed by Business Insider.

"An elite clipper is someone who runs hundreds of pages, and across those hundreds of pages, multiple have millions of followers or a minimum 100,000 followers," said Evan Stanfield, cofounder of the clip-marketing agency Clipping Culture. "If we're paying a monthly retainer, we can ask them to post 20 or 30 times a month, instead of whenever they feel like it."

These "top 1% of clippers" can earn five figures a month, Stanfield said.

Clipping is gaining popularity at a moment of flux in the world of social media marketing. As algorithmic feeds become more personalized, hiring influencers to post sponsored content doesn't necessarily translate into views (unless you're a superstar). Marketers who post clipping campaigns only pay when their content performs.

YouTuber MrBeast recently launched his own clipping platform, Vyro, which he uses to promote his channel, according to the company's website.

"The clippers that we're talking about are not like influencers," said Johnny Cloherty, CEO of the marketing-agency Genni. "You're getting people that are like you and me, or maybe some college kids that are just looking for some extra dough."

Clippers can sign up for campaigns in Discord servers, side-hustle sites like Whop, or marketing platforms like Genni. While they're often paid to clip footage, at other times the task is to add a brand's logo to a viral video clip or to embed a song beneath a post.

They're typically offered between $1 and $4 per 1,000 views, marketers told Business Insider, though some agencies offer higher rates when creators reach thresholds like 100,000 or 1 million views.

To promote the launch of Beast Land, MrBeast offered creators $2 for every 1,000 views on clips they posted about the pop-up theme park, for example. A Vyro promotion for a November boxing match between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr. offered the same rate. One of Clipping Culture's recent briefs asked clippers to promote footage from Sabrina Carpenter and María Becerra's Lollapalooza Argentina appearance for around $1 per 1,000 views.

"It is a little bit of a roll of the dice for the clippers, but it's a super low lift for them," Cloherty said. "These clippers have become an ecosystem and a community out there that kind of know what they're doing, and know the pros and cons of it."

One morning in January, Gracie Nielson was scrolling TikTok when she discovered something that made her skin crawl.

The fashion, lifestyle, and beauty influencer with over 600,000 followers noticed a comment on one of her videos that directed her to a clip of a woman wearing low-slung blue jeans and a yellow crop top. Her face didn't resemble Nielson's, but the exact same outfit was hanging in Nielson's closet, and even the woman's body struck a familiar pose. Nielson realized it was a shot-for-shot replica of a video she'd posted months prior, down to the backdrop — a corner of Nielson's home in California. Intrigue quickly devolved into unease.

"That's so crazy. This is my house. This is my body, just with somebody else's face," Nielson recalled thinking. "It's just a really uncomfortable feeling."

The other woman in question may not be a woman at all, but a digital echo: Sienna Rose, aka @siennarosely, describes herself as a neo-soul singer who has over 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Her TikTok page is filled with uncanny videos where the star smiles and vamps — but never talks — to the camera. Though she's been plagued by accusations that she's AI-generated, Rose has never performed live; AI detection tools used by the streaming service Deezer have flagged Rose's music as AI-generated. Emails I sent to the address listed in Rose's TikTok bio went unanswered.

It's Nielson's job to make videos, so she made another TikTok to share her reaction to the discovery. "I'm so scared, you guys," she said, comparing her video to Rose's since-deleted one. The TikTok quickly went viral, amassing over 2.4 million views to date — confirmation that Nielson's shock had reverberated far beyond her usual audience.

"I even had a friend text me that day, and she was like, 'I did not know Sienna Rose was AI,'" Nielson said. "She's like, 'I have listened to her music before, completely not knowing that this is not a real person.'"

AI influencers are here, and if Nielson's case is any indication, you may not have even noticed. As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly sophisticated and accessible to the average person, employers, companies, and brands have begun investing in the technology to reduce labor costs. Number-crunchers aren't the only ones who are being replaced — creatives are feeling the heat, too. Now, there's AI music on the Billboard charts, AI used in Oscar-winning movies, and, of course, AI all over our social media feeds.

Just as influencers once stormed the internet — harnessing the then-new technology of social media to draw eyeballs, score paid sponsorships, and rake in advertising dollars previously reserved for traditional celebrities — digital avatars are now poised to flood the same market.

Ally Rooker, a part-time content creator with nearly 190,000 followers on TikTok, described having AI imitate real-life influencers to hawk products as nothing short of labor-busting.

"When I see influencers promoting generative AI video tools, I'm like, 'You don't understand the reason that you have a career,'" Rooker told Business Insider. "You don't understand how fragile what you're doing is, and how fragile your revenue is. Because you're promoting your replacement."

The multibillion-dollar creator economy was built on aspirational influencers who can promise their followers that a better life — or at least clearer skin, or a life-changing haircut, or a dream vacation — is just a swipe away. So what happens when a new crop of competitors is aspiration, personified: influencers who don't suffer from hormonal acne, bed head, or debilitating jet lag? Friendly, almost-human faces who don't need to eat, sleep, or even get paid?

AI influencers are already making money from brand deals

In a social media landscape where real people already use beauty filters and Photoshop, brands are going all in on artificiality. A 2025 survey of about 1,000 senior marketers in the UK and US from the social and influencer marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy found that roughly 79% said they are increasing investment in AI-generated creator content. Grand View Research estimates that the global virtual influencer market will reach $48.88 billion by 2030.

Real influencers fear that could translate into a lot of lost income.

"Why would Maybelline pay a real person if they can just pay an AI person that looks essentially the same?" Rooker said, using the popular beauty brand as an example. "The person scrolling Maybelline's Instagram doesn't need to know who it is in the video. They just have to think it's a real person."

Right now, "think" is the operative word. Disclosure requirements for AI influencers remain murky, and lawful uses of AI vary from state to state in the US. While many AI influencers are labeled as such in their bios — Aitana Lopez, a pink-haired fitness and fashion influencer calls herself a "digital soul," while Olivia Brand, a blonde Alex Cooper knock-off who generates inspirational podcast clips on TikTok, calls herself an "AI it-girl" — casual scrollers on their FYPs can easily remain oblivious to the fact that they've encountered AI at all.

Even if someone like Nielson could make the case for a right of publicity violation — alleging that a third party has taken her name, image, or likeness and used it for a commercial purpose without permission — lawsuits are expensive, and a worthwhile payoff isn't guaranteed.

All of this raises questions about how human influencers can continue to make a living if brands begin to favor their visually pristine, easily programmable counterparts. Those fears aren't unfounded: The Clueless, the Barcelona-based agency that created Aitana Lopez, among other hyper-realistic AI "stock models," pivoted away from hiring humans in the pandemic, citing their unpredictability and inconsistency as motivating factors.

Now, Aitana has three full-time partnerships, including one with a Spanish salon chain. She was recently used in a Black Friday campaign for Amazon. The Clueless creative director Andy García estimated that Aitana's assets — including her brand deals, paid posts, and bespoke "skincare" brand, Vellum, which is actually a software program to enhance the skin texture of AI avatars — generate about $75,000 to $100,000 a month. Other AI influencers also boast thriving careers: Lil Miquela, one of the original digital avatars, has partnered with Prada and Calvin Klein; Xania Monet landed a multimillion-dollar record deal; and Shudu, marketed as "the world's first digital supermodel," has starred in campaigns for Balmain and Hyundai.

García doesn't see her company's creation and other AI influencers as job-killers, but rather hurdles real humans have the tools to overcome.

"Right now, AI influencers are really not a threat to real influencers," she said. "It's like any opportunity, to which real influencers can adapt."

Many people still prefer to follow humans over robots

While brands may enjoy the control and cost efficiency digital avatars afford, when confronted directly with the question of AI, many consumers remain unconvinced.

Comment sections online are full of backlash against AI-generated ads and digital avatars, particularly those that seem designed to blend in with real people. Sienna Rose has inspired numerous sleuths to comb through her videos for copy-and-pasted details. (Suffice it to say that Nielson isn't the only creator whose backdrops and body movements appear to have been cloned on Rose's page.) Others have gone viral for protesting AI creep in daily life, from bots replacing customer service agents to stumbling across fake influencers on their feeds. When they're not being fooled by AI, many are irritated by it.

Cameron Mackintosh, a part-time content creator based in Nashville, said she was shocked and dismayed when she was briefly duped by an AI influencer on Instagram — and, even worse, when she noticed that people she knew in real life were following the account. Her video about the revelation blew up, amassing over 1.7 million views and hundreds of passionate comments.

"I would never want to read a story written by AI. I would never want to read a book written by AI. I wouldn't want to consume a painting that was created by a computer," Mackintosh told Business Insider.

As Business Insider reported in October, consumer backlash to AI accounts is causing some brands to retreat from the tech. In February, The New York Times compared the AI boom unfavorably to the "dot-com boom," citing a 2025 YouGov survey in which more than a third of respondents said they were "concerned that AI would end human life on earth."

Allison Fitzpatrick, an attorney in New York with experience in advertising and influencer marketing, told me that concerns about intellectual property and copyright infringement — not to mention the demand for real-human relatability that made influencers a force in the first place — have translated to a lack of interest in AI influencers among the brands that she works with.

"I think the human audience, the followers, are smart enough to know that between an influencer who is human and can actually taste the product or go on vacation and stay at the hotel or fly in the airline," she said. "You're going to take the human influencer's endorsement far more seriously than an AI influencer who's done none of what I've just described."

Influencers are ready to fight back

Influencers like Nielson aren't giving up hope yet. They say leaning into reality, not realism, will be key to staying in business.

"A lot of content creators, people like to follow them because they are relatable — people sharing skin issues or insecurities, for example," Nielson said. "That wouldn't really happen using an AI avatar because it's not human. It's not real."

Emily Higgins, a North Carolina-based content creator who also runs a social media consulting business, told me that as high-production-value content becomes the norm, she expects to see a renewed embrace of scripting hiccups, grainy footage, and other deliberate imperfections.

"If something's too highly produced or too perfect-seeming, then immediately, it can be dismissed as AI," Higgins said. "We're going to see people trying to create more flaws in their content. We'll see more human, emotional, raw kinds of elements."

Some brands are already leading the charge. Dove and Aerie have vowed not to use AI in their marketing materials, using slogans like "Real People Only" and "Keep Beauty Real." Aerie, which stopped retouching its models in 2014 — putting stretch marks, blemishes, and body diversity front and center — earned its most popular Instagram post in a year thanks to its anti-AI promise. Meanwhile, Heineken and Polaroid have explicitly mocked AI and Big Tech in recent ad campaigns.

Influencing is often dismissed as a low-effort profession, but at its core, it's an act of vulnerability. To broadcast your face and feelings to hundreds, thousands, or even millions of strangers requires nerve and resilience, neither of which AI can reproduce.

As a result, Mackintosh said she expects people to begin seeking out creators and brands that put visible effort into the creative process.

"There's this novelty about human creation, and I don't think that will ever go away," she said. "I always think it will be appreciated. I just think there will be less and less of it because, economically, it will be easier to fake."

• Many tech leaders say they're ditching screen time limits, though some still use them.
• Instead, they're focused on how their kids are interacting with technology, prioritizing creativity.
• Short-form video and social media remain major concerns for many parents.

These days, parenting means navigating a seemingly endless parade of decisions about technology. Can your toddler watch "Sesame Street" on an iPad? Does FaceTiming the grandparents count toward screen time? Should your teen have access to social media just because "everyone else" seems to?

Parents are more cognizant than ever about the pitfalls — and potential — of technology, so it's natural to wonder how the people leading tech companies handle this with their own kids. Paypal cofounder Peter Thiel and Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel have both said they limit their young children (all 8 or under) to an hour and a half of screen time per week. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has said that he wants his kids to use screens for communication, not passive consumption.

It turns out, tech leaders, for the most part, are like the rest of us: trying to balance screen-free time and critical thinking skills, while also giving their kids access to the world that technology can unlock.

Here's how seven tech leaders are handling technology decisions for their families.

Finding the middle

Kate Doerksen is the co-founder and CEO of Sage Haven, an app that helps parents monitor their kids' messaging. Her kids, who are 7 and 9, get an hour per day on their iPads or Nintendo Switch, plus additional time if the family is playing a video game together. She plans to delay smartphones and social media, but her daughter has an Apple Watch with messenger (which Doerksen monitors).

"Like most things in life, the right answer feels like it lies somewhere in the middle," Doerksen says. "It's not tech abstinence, and it's not unlimited, unfettered usage. It's moderate usage on non-addictive apps and games with boundaries."

Learning and creating

As the chief learning officer at the online education company Stride, Niyoka McCoy, sees tech as a normal part of life, but she's still intentional about how her children — who are 14 and 2 — use it.

"We believe technology should be a tool for learning and creativity first, and entertainment second," she says. Her kids don't have hard-and-fast screen time limits, but McCoy aims to avoid them passively consuming content.

"When kids spend too much time scrolling or watching instead of creating, learning, or building something meaningful," she says, "that is when technology stops being beneficial."

Focusing on well-being, not screen time

Three years ago, Hari Ravichandran's daughter, who was then 13, went through a tough time — one that he believes her access to a smartphone contributed to. He had given her a phone at 13, but now believes that was too young, so he decided to take the phone away and delay access until 15 or 16 for her as well as his three younger children.

"I knew we couldn't just send her back into the same digital environment that had amplified those issues," said Ravichandran, the founder and CEO of online security company Aura.

At the same time, "What I think is overblown is the idea that technology itself is the enemy," Ravichandran says. "Cutting it out completely doesn't solve the root problem and can actually limit kids' independence and digital literacy."

Today, he focuses on how technology impacts his children's mood, sleep, self-esteem, and overall well-being.

"For us, it's less about strict bans and more about awareness, accountability, and open dialogue," he says.

Making sure values align

Tim Sheehan, co-founder and CEO Greenlight — which provides debit cards for children and teens — gave his four kids access to smartphones at 12, and social media at 15. His kids now range in age from 17 to 26. When they were younger, he watched their tech consumption closely, knowing how impressionable they were.

"My goal is to make sure the outside influences in their lives support the values we're trying to instill," he says.

Limiting short-term video

Justice Eroline, chief technology officer at the software development firm BairesDev, has a blanket rule of 1 hour of screen time for his kids, who are 8, 10, and 12. Even within that, he pays close attention to the type of content they're watching.

"I don't allow short-form content for the kids as it affects their attention span," he says.

Ahu Chhapgar, chief technology officer at fintech company Paysafe and dad of two (ages 10 and 13), says short-form video worries him more than anything else.

"When kids get access to it, they almost enter a trance," he says. "That level of stimulus is not how the brain evolved to process information, and I do worry about long-term effects on attention and impulse control."

Allowing AI, and gaming

Unlike some parents, Eroline is much less concerned about gaming.

"Video games can teach kids a lot of different things: teamwork, reaction time, problem solving, grit, dealing with defeat," Eroline says. "The content of the video game might be questionable, but there are plenty that can work for different age ranges."

Chhapgar won't let his kids have access to smartphones until they're 14, and social media until they're 16, but he does encourage them to use ChatGPT for 20 minutes each day.

"No one has all the answers about AI yet," he says. "So I'd rather they explore, build, and experiment responsibly instead of just passively consuming technology."

Controlling the interaction

Nik Kale, principal engineer with Cisco Systems, makes sure that his 3-year-old isn't given a screen when she's upset.

"I don't want her building a dependency where the first response to discomfort is a device," he explains.

He also ensures that he or his wife — not an algorithm — are choosing what their daughter sees.

"I don't let automated systems make unsupervised decisions in my production environments at work," he says. "I'm not going to let one make unsupervised decisions about what my three-year-old's brain consumes either."

That, to him, is much more important than seemingly arbitrary screen time limits.

"Parents are adding up minutes like it's a toxicity dosage," he says, "when the real variable is whether a human or an algorithm is driving the experience."