This week, we’ve been exploring the lasting impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, we spoke about what might happen with futurist Amy Webb, the CEO of the Future Today Strategy Group. She predicted, among other things, that we would give up more personal data around our health and location. Then on the show in 2021, she said more definitively that privacy was dead. This week, Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Webb again. They discussed the current state of digital privacy, the lessons not learned from the pandemic and, as Webb sees it, the victory of politics over planning.

In the spring of 2020, 77% of American public schools moved to online distance learning when the pandemic hit, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Prior to the pandemic, you could say that schools were trickling into the digital age. Then, when COVID changed everything, they were basically tossed into it. Some educators adapted quickly, like Bebi Davis, who was working as a vice principal in Honolulu at the time. She’s now principal of Princess Victoria Kaiulani Elementary. Going totally virtual, she said, meant introducing an onslaught of technology — videoconferencing, classroom management software and messaging systems. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes asked Davis about the school system’s experience adopting so much tech all at once.

March 11 marks five years since the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 virus officially a pandemic. Tracking the virus has been key to understanding where outbreaks are occurring and one tracking tool that had been mostly on the shelf prior to the pandemic is wastewater surveillance. That’s pretty much what it sounds like — testing what we flush down the toilet which eventually lands in what’s known as a sewer shed. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with molecular virologist Marc Johnson at the University of Missouri about the advantages of wastewater surveillance. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Today, we’re wrapping up our series “The Infinite Scroll,” where we look at kids’ lives on social media and the risks and rules they face. One approach some states take to creating rules to mitigate risk is known as an age-appropriate design code, a law that puts the onus on tech companies to design products that keep kids safer when they’re on the internet. California passed its Age-Appropriate Design Code Act in 2022, as did Maryland last year. Both have been challenged by lawsuits from the tech industry. State Delegate Jared Solomon, a sponsor and lead author of the Maryland law, explained to Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes that the oversight effort attempts to prevent manipulation by algorithms. He hopes the industry will begin to “think differently about how they design their products.”

On our new series “The Infinite Scroll,” we’re looking at the rules and risks of kids using social media. Artificial intelligence is showing up on these platforms in the form of chatbots, digital characters you can text or talk with. Today we explore what can happen to youngsters who interact with them. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes discussed the subject with Meetali Jain, founder and director at the Tech Justice Law Project. Her organization is involved in a lawsuit against Character.AI, an app that enables users to create and communicate with these bots.  

This week, we are looking at how kids use social media and the risks and rules around it. It’s part of our new series “The Infinite Scroll.” Monday, we talked about how habitually checking social media can change adolescents’ brains, making them more sensitive to feedback from their peers. Today, we’re going to look at what it’s like to be a parent monitoring their kids’ social media. One thing’s clear: It can be a lot of work.  

Social media takes up a huge chunk of kids’ lives. A 2024 study from Pew found that about half of U.S. teenagers are online “almost constantly.” It’s a big source of stress for parents too, and policing their kids’ actions on these platforms can take up a lot of time and energy. Also, there’s AI, and it’s showing up on social media as bots that are always available to talk. We’re going to get to all of that this week in our new series about what it’s like to be a kid on social media and the risks and rules that come with it. We call it “The Infinite Scroll.” We’re kicking things off with Eva Telzer, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Telzer told Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes about the intensity of youngsters’ connection to their phones and its effects on how the kids are wired, which may last into adulthood.

In this week’s “Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” chip powerhouse Nvidia saw its revenue soar last quarter, showing that the AI boom is still booming. Plus, it was a bumpy week for bitcoin after the crypto exchange Bybit lost almost $1.5 billion of digital assets in a hack. But first, Apple announced it’s spending $500 billion to expand manufacturing and create jobs in the U.S. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Anita Ramaswamy, columnist at The Information, about what the investment could do for American tech manufacturing and more.

Patreon, a company that enables fans to directly support internet creators financially, has produced a report looking at how creators and their fans are feeling these days. One finding: Fans say they’re seeing more short-form work on social media, even though they prefer long-form content. And more than half of creators surveyed say it’s harder to reach their followers now than five years ago. This is part of what the report calls the “TikTokification of the internet.” Brielle Villablanca, vice president of communications and creator advocacy at Patreon, discusses the trade-offs for creators in the current TikTok-driven environment with Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes.

For years, coding has been thought of as a useful skill for children to learn. It’s integrated into computer science classes and a number of organizations are dedicated to helping kids code. But now, AI tools can write code themselves. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Monica McGill of the Institute for Advancing Computing Education about what the expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence mean for coding as a necessary — or not so necessary — skill.

Last year, Australia passed a measure that would ban children under 16 from using social media. That’ll be a big shift: About 80% of Australian kids between the ages of 8 and 12 used social media in 2024, according to a report from Australia’s online safety regulator. The government is now working on the details of how to implement what many are calling one of the strictest age restriction policies in the world. The BBC’s Naomi Rainey reports on the difficulties of enforcing the ban and the impact it could have on kids in the future.

Satellite internet has been around for decades. But in just the past six years, the number of satellites orbiting the planet has grown dramatically. Many belong to Starlink, a unit of SpaceX whose satellites are in low Earth orbit. And it’s expected to get even busier up there with Amazon’s Project Kuiper launching thousands of new satellites. Joe Supan of CNET recently wrote about this. He told Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes about the race to claim a piece of space and the risk of high-tech debris clogging the zone.