There's Neuralink—and There's the Mind-Reading Company That Might Surpass It
Mark Jackson is playing a computer game with his mind. As he reclines in bed, three blue circles appear on a laptop screen a few feet away. One turns red: the target. Jackson is in control of a white circle, which he needs to steer into the target without running into the blue obstacles. The game is a bit like Pac-Man . Except instead of a joystick, Jackson uses his thoughts to control his little white circle. To move left, he thinks about clenching his right fist once. To move right, he thinks about doing it twice in a row, like a double click.
Jackson, who is 65 and paralyzed, is good at this game. He steers into the red circle. It turns blue and makes a satisfying ding! He has hit the target. In the next round, the circles change position. He moves to the next round, and the next, and is successful 14 out of 15 times. He's gotten 100 percent at this game before. Then again, he's had some practice.
A couple years ago, surgeons in Pittsburgh implanted Jackson with an experimental brain-computer interface, or BCI. Made by New York–based startup Synchron, it decodes Jackson's brain signals to carry out commands on the laptop and other devices. He's one of 10 people—six in the US and four in Australia—who have received the Synchron implant as part of an early feasibility study. In addition to gaming, the BCI allows him to send text messages, write emails, and shop online.
Jackson's medical saga began about five years ago, when he was living in Georgia and working for a wholesale floral company—his dream job. He thought he had pinched a nerve in his neck. But in January 2021, doctors at Emory University told him the diagnosis was far more serious: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. A neurodegenerative disease, ALS causes nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord to break down over time, resulting in a gradual loss of muscle control. Jackson's doctor asked if he was interested in joining a clinical trial testing an ALS drug. Jackson said it was a no-brainer. Jackson in his first-floor bedroom. PHOTOGRAPH: STEPHANIE STRASBURG Before his ALS diagnosis, Jackson had taken up woodworking. PHOTOGRAPH: STEPHANIE STRASBURG
But by December 2022, he had lost the ability to type or lift buckets of flowers at his job and had to stop working. He moved in with his brother just outside Pittsburgh. 'The loss of mobility, the loss of independence that goes with this disease,' Jackson says, 'it's a lot to take in, it's a lot to process.' He tried to stay positive even as his disease progressed. When the drug trial ended in summer 2023, he was eager to join another study that had a chance of helping his ALS.
Synchron's BCI trial was just getting underway at the University of Pittsburgh. While the implant wouldn't slow the progression of Jackson's ALS, it could give him back some of the autonomy he'd lost to the disease. 'I was immediately excited about it,' Jackson says.
He started the vetting process in July 2023, and six weeks later Jackson was in the operating room. In a roughly three-hour-long procedure, surgeons first inserted the Stentrode, a wire-mesh tube about the size of a matchstick, into his jugular vein at the base of his neck. Using a catheter, they carefully threaded the device up through the vessel, past the ear, and into the side of the head to rest against the motor cortex, the part of the brain that controls voluntary movement. Then they inserted a small rectangular device below Jackson's collarbone, which processes the brain signals and beams them via infrared outside the body. Those signals are collected by a paddle-shaped receiver that sits on Jackson's chest, then sent via a wire to a unit that translates them into commands. When the system is hooked up, a pair of green lights shines through his shirt.
After the surgery, making that initial connection took months. Jackson's chest was swollen from the procedure, which interfered with the signal quality. Plus, the external unit can only be so far away from the internal one. It took so much trial and error that Jackson worried it would never work. 'There was a lot of anticipation,' he says. When the units finally connected in October 2023, Jackson felt a huge release of tension.
When a person is outfitted with a BCI, they're asked to think about doing specific actions, such as opening and closing their fist, so that the system learns to associate that pattern of brain activity with that specific action. It does this by using AI-powered software to decode and interpret those neural signals. Even though Jackson is paralyzed and can't actually move his hand, the neurons associated with that movement still fire when he attempts to make a fist. It's that movement intention that BCIs are designed to read.
If Synchron's process sounds like a lot to undergo, consider that other brain implants involve, well, brain surgery. Synchron's main competitor, Elon Musk's Neuralink, removes a piece of skull and replaces it with a coin-sized device that hooks directly into the brain tissue via 64 robotically positioned wire threads. Musk's company has implanted seven volunteers with its device so far. Some have even been discharged from the hospital the day after their procedure. While invasive implants like Neuralink's carry the risk of brain tissue damage and bleeding, blood clots and stroke are the main concerns with Synchron's device. Any kind of implanted device carries the risk of infection.
Synchron's approach has allowed it to pull ahead in the race to commercialize brain implants. While it has raised just $145 million to date to Neuralink's $1.3 billion, it has attracted funding from big names like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Musk himself reportedly considered investing when development at Neuralink was stalled. And the company keeps expanding the functionalities of its BCI, making it compatible with a range of existing consumer technologies.
Last year, Synchron rolled out a generative chat feature powered by OpenAI to assist users with communication. It also connected its device to the Apple Vision Pro, which Jackson now uses regularly for entertainment. Then came an integration with Amazon Alexa, allowing Stentrode recipients to use the virtual assistant with just their thoughts. And earlier this year, Synchron and Apple introduced a Bluetooth protocol for BCIs, so that when Synchron's system is switched on, it can automatically detect and connect to an iPhone, iPad, or Vision Pro. Synchron is now gearing up for a larger pivotal trial needed for commercialization.
Synchron's Stentrode device is threaded through the jugular vein into the brain. Adobe After Effects
While Musk envisions a transhumanist fusion of mind and machine, Synchron is focused on meeting the immediate needs of people like Jackson who have severe disabilities. If Synchron can get buy-in from insurers and regulators, it could usher in a new era of brain devices that restore communication and movement, treat neurological disorders and mental illness, and detect and monitor brain states and diseases. And though it's not Synchron's goal, its minimally invasive technology could eventually lead to safe, unobtrusive devices that might one day allow anyone to play a video game or surf the web with their thoughts alone.
Tom Oxley, Synchron's cofounder and CEO, didn't exactly set out to start a mind-reading company. After finishing medical school in 2005 at Monash University in Australia, he knew he wanted to specialize in the brain, either neurology or psychiatry—and to do that, he needed to train in internal medicine first. As part of that training, Oxley spent three months in a palliative care clinic for people with ALS. 'It was extremely intense,' he says.
Later, while doing a clinical rotation in the rural region of Mildura, he befriended Rahul Sharma, who was training to be a cardiologist. Sharma would cook Indian food, and they would have long, philosophical conversations about the future of medicine. Sharma told Oxley about the shift from open-heart surgery to minimally invasive techniques that use catheters inserted into blood vessels. Oxley thought, 'What if those techniques made their way over to the brain?' After all, the brain has a vast network of blood vessels. Soon, the two were talking about the possibility of putting stents in the brain to deliver medications, says Sharma, Synchron's cofounder and medical director.
Then, in 2008, Oxley came across a landmark paper in the scientific journal Nature from 2006 describing how two paralyzed patients with a brain implant successfully controlled a computer with their thoughts. One of them was also able to move a robotic arm. To achieve the groundbreaking results, a team from Brown University and Massachusetts General Hospital used a device called the Utah array, a 4- by 4-mm grid with 100 tiny metal spikes. The Utah array penetrates the brain tissue, and electrodes on the spike tips record the firings of individual neurons. Placing the array involves a craniotomy, in which a piece of the skull is temporarily removed. The first person to receive the implant, Matthew Nagle, was able to move a cursor, read emails, play Pong , and draw a circle on a screen.
'At that moment, I got excited about BCI,' Oxley says. While any BCI comes with risks, Jackson says the technology enables him to do more than he ever thought possible. PHOTOGRAPH: STEPHANIE STRASBURG
He and Sharma started thinking about putting electrodes on stents to record from the brain. The idea behind the Stentrode started to take shape. After completing his internal medicine fellowship in 2009, Oxley cold-called the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), which was doing research on BCIs. A Darpa program manager thought his invention could be a way for soldiers who had lost limbs to control robotic arms, and invited Oxley to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to pitch his idea.
Darpa ended up funding Oxley and Sharma's half-baked concept to the tune of $1 million, and two years later they formed a company, SmartStent, which eventually became Synchron. The startup received an additional grant of $5 million from the Australian government and, later, another $4 million from Darpa and the Office of Naval Research. They recruited biomedical engineer Nicholas Opie, who was working on a bionic eye at the time, to design the Stentrode, and by 2012, the company had started implanting the device in sheep. In 2019, the first human subject received the Stentrode in an early feasibility study in Australia. (Neuralink's first human surgery was in January 2024.)
Vinod Khosla, whose venture firm has invested in Synchron, thinks the Stentrode could be scaled up more quickly than other BCIs in development that require invasive brain surgery. Those devices would also need specially trained neurosurgeons—or in Neuralink's case, surgical robots. There are far more cardiologists who are trained to implant stents, Khosla says.
But Synchron's approach comes with trade-offs. From inside the blood vessel, its device uses 16 electrodes dotted on the stent's surface to capture brain activity. Because it sits farther away from individual neurons than the Utah array and Neuralink device do, it picks up a weaker signal.
BCI researchers call this the 'stadium effect.' If you're sitting inside a stadium, you can hear the conversations going on around you. If you're sitting outside the stadium, you would hear the roar of a crowd and might be able to discern when a goal has been scored. 'The question is, how much do you need this to hear to do something useful for the subject?' says Kip Ludwig, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and codirector of the Wisconsin Institute for Translational Neuroengineering, who isn't involved with Synchron.
Neuralink's implant has more than 1,000 electrodes dispersed across 64 flexible wire threads. More electrodes means more information can be extracted from the brain, but more may not necessarily be better, especially for executing relatively simple tasks such as moving a cursor on a computer screen. 'The minimal viable product is the ability to navigate and select on an iPhone,' Oxley says. 'That's what we think is going to be the basic use case.'
Beyond that, Oxley sees huge potential in using small blood vessels as roads to access new parts of the brain. 'We believe that opens up 10 times more brain coverage,' he says. More Stentrodes across the brain could allow for more natural control and more complex functions.
Synchron's next-generation BCI will not require patients to be physically tethered to the system.
As Synchron moves toward a pivotal trial in 2026, which will enroll between 30 and 50 subjects, it will face some key questions about its technology—namely, what are the benefits and how can those benefits be measured? 'These technologies are so new, and they're providing the opportunity to restore functions that no other device or approach is yet able to restore,' says Leigh Hochberg, a BCI researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brown University, and an author on the 2006 paper that inspired Oxley. There are no 'validated outcome measures that can be easily applied,' he says.
For Synchron's implant to win approval in the US, the Food and Drug Administration will want to see that the benefits outweigh any risks that come with the device. And if it is approved, to what extent will insurers cover the cost for patients? Unlike other drugs and medical devices, BCIs don't treat an underlying condition. They're more akin to assistive devices.
As the field matures and more startups work toward commercialization, companies and regulators are trying to come up with those measures. There are already assessment tools to evaluate a person's functional abilities or quality of life, for example, that could be applied to BCIs.
When I talk to Jackson about this idea, he has no doubt that BCIs will have a positive effect on people's health and well-being—eventually. 'I can see down the road where this would give someone their independence,' he says. For now, though, the setup isn't exactly practical. 'I have to be physically connected with an exterior wire. So the only time that I am using the device itself is when I'm hooked up,' he says. That happens twice a week when he is visited by Synchron's field clinical engineer, Maria Nardozzi, for training sessions. In Synchron's second-generation design, which will be tested in the pivotal trial, the internal and external units will connect wirelessly so that subjects won't have to be tethered to the system.
Despite having a BCI, Jackson still relies on voice assist for most of his needs. 'If I'm being honest, that's the easier route,' he says. But there are times when it fails, or an app might not have a voice assist option. For instance, when he tried to use the payment app Venmo, there wasn't a way to use voice assist to indicate a reason for the payment, a required field.
'The voice assist technology is nowhere near where it needs to be,' Sharma says. Anyone who has used Alexa or Siri knows there are accuracy issues and lag time between a request and the device's response. If BCIs can carry out tasks more naturally than voice assist, Sharma thinks that could tip the scales for users. BCIs also provide more privacy. 'If there are other people in your environment, you may not wish to be sharing what it is you are trying to do or express out loud,' he says. And of course for some patients with paralysis who have lost the use of their voice, a BCI may be their only means of communicating and interacting with the world around them. Jackson and Maria Nardozzi, Synchron's field clinical engineer, during a recent BCI training session. PHOTOGRAPH: STEPHANIE STRASBURG
Jackson realizes he's a bit of a guinea pig. He knows that Synchron's technology will get better, faster, and more seamless over time. He enjoys trying out new apps with his BCI and says his favorite thing to do with it is use the Apple Vision Pro. He can't travel anymore, but the headset can transport him to the Swiss Alps or a temperate rainforest in New Zealand. But there are still things beyond the digital world he wishes he could do that the BCI can't help with yet—painting, for instance, and wood carving.
Above his bed hangs a picture of two yellow fruit warblers. He painted it himself when he was 20 years old. His mother kept it and had it framed. He was looking forward to doing more oil painting in his retirement. Jackson knows, of course, that the nature of ALS is that his condition will inevitably get worse. He could eventually lose his speech and what voluntary movement he has left. He may develop cognitive impairment and not be able to control his BCI anymore; the life expectancy for someone with ALS is two to five years after diagnosis. Of the 10 people who have been outfitted with Synchron's BCI, only Jackson and another participant are still using it. The others stopped either because of how their ALS progressed or because they died.
Before his ALS diagnosis, Jackson had started woodworking. He wanted to learn how to carve birds. A wood carving of a cardinal he bought sits on his nightstand as a reminder of the hobby he'll never return to because of his ALS. 'If there could be a way for robotic arm devices or leg devices to be incorporated down the road,' he says, 'that would be freaking amazing.' Neuralink is testing that capability, but current robotic arms are far from being lifelike. They can perform simple tasks executed in jerky movements. It could be decades before BCIs give people the ability to do something as complicated as carving wood.
For now, Jackson is able to use the BCI to explore art museum apps, but he'd like to find a way to create digital art with his thoughts. And while the setup is still limited in a lot of ways, it enables Jackson to do more than he ever thought possible. He is, after all, able to move objects on a screen without using his hands, his feet, his eyes, his shoulders, his face, or even his voice. 'There's a reason why this is pretty groundbreaking technology,' he says.
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Insomnia is a global epidemic. How do we fix it?
On a special episode (first released on July 24th) of The Excerpt podcast: The question is: Why do we struggle to sleep? Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at The Atlantic, joins The Excerpt to talk about insomnia and what we can do about solving our sleep issues. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Hello, I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is a special episode of the Excerpt. According to a report released by the American Medical Association earlier this year, one-third of American adults experience acute insomnia, an inability to fall or stay asleep for several days at a time, but one in 10 adults suffer from chronic insomnia. That's an inability to fall or stay asleep three nights a week for three months or more. The condition has potentially debilitating health impacts, including an increased risk of depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even car accidents. So the question is, why can't we sleep? Here to help me dig into the issue is Jennifer Senior, a staff writer at The Atlantic who recently went on her own journey to solve her insomnia and who shared her story in the magazine. Thank you for joining me, Jennifer. Jennifer Senior: Thanks for having me. Taylor Wilson: So let's start with I guess a 30,000-foot view of the issue. I know you spoke with a lot of sleep specialists, did a lot of independent research for your piece. Jennifer, what's the big picture here on American's trouble with sleep? Jennifer Senior: Right. Yeah. What's funny, I think the story was a little misnamed. I mean, this is really more story about, well, if you can't sleep, don't feel awful about it because there are so many shaming stories about people, whatever solutions people seek out. I do talk in the beginning about the way that the modern world absolutely conspires against sleep, that it just lays waste to your circadian rhythms. That people work two jobs, 16.4% of us work non-standard hours. If you're a white collar kind of professional, you've got these woodpecker like peck, peck, peck, incursions into your life all night and weekend long from your boss's work sort of never ends. I mean, we're just no longer yoked to the rhythms of the earth anymore. We're just part of this whirl of a wired world. Taylor Wilson: In the course of doing your research, was there something in particular that surprised you most about the problem? Jennifer Senior: I'll tell you what surprised me most, just generally. Whenever I interviewed any expert about this, and it didn't matter what species of expert, they could be an epidemiologist, they could be a neurologist, they could be a psychiatrist, they could be a clinician. Most of them said the same thing. There is a slight misconception that you need eight hours of sleep. There is some data saying this. There is another equally robust data set saying 6.5 to 7.4 is associated with the best health outcomes. Now it's very hard to tell. These studies are observational. They're not randomized. There was all sorts of confounds and problems with this, but this one study in particular had a million people in it. It's been replicated. There are plenty of people who believe this data and people vary. And over the course of a lifetime, your individual sleep capacity could change. In a funny way, that was what surprised me most. Right? This mantra, which is kind of a tyranny, get eight hours or else. Taylor Wilson: Well, you talked Jennifer about the modern world conspiring against us and our sleep, and I guess let's try to outline a few of the possible causes of what you call a public health emergency, right? What can you share with us here on this? Jennifer Senior: About other causes, you mean besides the kind of modernity itself and kids working on... Kids being assigned homework online, kids socializing online. I mean, adolescents are desperate for sleep. They're so hungry for it, and modern high schools and middle schools have them waking up preposterously early when their circadian rhythms are pitched forward. We've got a substantial sandwich generation that's taking care of young kids and their elderly parents. That's going to conspire against it. These are all immutable things. Also, there are elevated levels of anxiety now in our world, and anxiety itself is a huge source of... Or can be a source of sleeplessness, certainly can make one prone. So I mean, those are additional examples I suppose. Taylor Wilson: Let's talk through your story a bit here. When did you first realize that you had an issue with sleep? And walk us through your experience with insomnia. Jennifer Senior: It was 25 years ago and it was a very mysterious onset. I cannot tell you what brought it on to this day. It is a mystery. I had this extremely well-regulated kind of circadian clock. I fell asleep every night at 1:00. I woke up every day at 9:00. I lost my alarm clock. I still woke up at those times. I didn't have to buy a new alarm clock until I had an early flight one day, and yet sometime very close to my 29th birthday when virtually no circumstances in my life had changed one iota, I had a bad night, fell asleep at like 5:00. Thought nothing of it until they became more regular, and then I started doing all-nighters involuntarily, and I felt like I'd been poisoned. And to this day, I don't know what happened, but once that happens, the whole cycle starts to happen, then people suddenly become very afraid of not falling asleep and whatever kicked it off whether it's mysterious or known becomes irrelevant because then what you do is you start getting very agitated and going, oh my God, I'm not sleeping. Oh my God, I'm still not sleeping. Now it's 3:00 in the morning. Now it's 4:00 in the morning. Now it's 5:00 in the morning. Oh my God, I have one more hour, et cetera. Taylor Wilson: Well, you did write in the piece about the many different recommendations that she tried to solve your own sleep issues. What were some of them, Jennifer, and did any of them help? Jennifer Senior: Oh God, I tried all the things. This is before I sought real professional help, but I did all the things. I would took Tylenol PM, which did not work. I did acupuncture, which were lovely, but did not work. I listened to a meditation tape that a friend gave me, did not work. I listened to another one that was for sleep only that did not work. I ran. I always was a runner, but I ran extra, did not work. Gosh, changed my diet. I don't remember. I did all sorts of things. I tried different supplements, Valerian root, all these things. Melatonin, nothing, nothing. Taylor Wilson: You wrote in depth about one therapy that was recommended to you, and that was CBTI. That's cognitive based therapy for insomnia. Jennifer, first, what is this? And second, did you find any success by using this? Jennifer Senior: So cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia, as you said, is the gold standard for treating insomnia. It's portable. You can take it with you. It's not like if you leave your sleep meds at home. The main tent pole of it, which is sleep restriction, which I'll get to in a minute, is very hard to do. I found it murder, the kind of easier parts, although they're still in a funny way, kind of paradoxical, are you have to change your thinking around this is the cognitive piece around sleeping and insomnia. You have to decide, okay, I'm not sleeping. So what? Now, this is kind of funny because there's this din surrounding us that says, oh my God, you're not sleeping. You're going to die of a heart attack. You're going to die of an immune disease. You're going to get cancer. All these things, right? You have to set that all aside and decide one more night's sleep that I can't sleep. So what? Right. That's one thing. You have to change your behaviors, deciding that you are going to consistently go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time, all that, and not use your bed for anything other than just for sleeping and sex. The hard part and the most powerful part that I found it brutal was the part that said you have to restrict your sleep. If you had only five hours of sleep, but you're in bed for nine hours, you have to choose a wake-up time. Let's say it's 7:00 and then you have to go to bed five hours earlier, 2:00 to s7:00. That's all you can give yourself, and you cannot stop with that schedule until you've slept for the majority of those hours. That's very hard for a sleepless person. And then once you've succeeded, all you get to add on is 15 more minutes of sleep, and then you have to sleep the majority of those hours for three nights running. This is always for three nights running, and the idea is to build up a enough sleep pressure to regularize yourself. You basically capitulate to exhaustion and you start to develop a rhythm. I couldn't stick with it. I was so kind of stupid and depressed with sleeplessness by the time I started it that it probably was impractical and I refused to take drugs to help me fall asleep at the exact right hour, which many clinics recommend. If you're going to go to bed and sleep from 2:00 to 7:00, take something at 1:30 so that you fall asleep at two. But I was afraid of being dependent on drugs, and you can really wean yourself if you do it for a limited amount of time. You can wean yourself anytime really, if you're shrewd about it and if you taper. But I think that I would tell people to try it and to try it sooner rather than later, and to be unafraid of doing it in combination with drugs so that the schedule worked. Taylor Wilson: Well, I am happy you brought up drugs. I did want to bring that up just in terms of what experts are saying about their impact. Even just drugs and alcohol kind of writ large, but sleeping pills specifically. What did you find in researching this in terms of drugs and alcohol? Jennifer Senior: Well, there's a real stigma taking sleep medication, and I'm frankly a little sick of it. I'm not sure why this is so very stigmatized. Like, oh, they're drug addict. They're hooked on sleeping pills. It's framed as addiction, and no one says that someone is addicted to their Ozempic, even though a lifestyle change could perhaps obviate the need. No one says that they are addicted... Oh, that person is totally addicted to their blood pressure medication, even though maybe a change in lifestyle would help change that. Or that they're addicted to their statins, So I sort of bristle. And those who prescribe these medicines say like, look, if the benefit outweighs the risk and they're used properly, sometimes the real side effect is just being dependent on these drugs, and there's a difference between dependence and addiction. A surprisingly small number of people who take these drugs regularly, like benzodiazepines, like Ativan and Ambien and Klonopin, all these things, a surprisingly small number, like 7% increase their doses if they take it every night. So that's very small. However, there are cognitive decrements over time... Or not decrements. It can interfere with your memory and it can increase your odds of falling as you get older. And those are, to me, the real persuasive reasons to get off. Taylor Wilson: I want to back up a minute here to talk about something many may not be aware of, and that's that historically, at least in some eras, people used to sleep in two blocks. What do you know about this? How did this function and really why did this kind of sleep pattern work for some folks? Jennifer Senior: Well, it was sort of, I think, natural. It seemed that this is, and it has not been proven everywhere, but there's plenty of both historical evidence and also some in a lab by this wonderful guy named Tom Ware that shows that if you sort of just put someone in a room, 14 hours of darkness, what will happen is that their sleep will naturally split into two. They'll sleep for a phase, wake up for a phase, and then sleep for a phase again. And historically, there's all sorts of evidence that people would sleep for a phase, get up and read for a while, do some quiet things, do light tasks, maybe sing, maybe have sex, and then go back to bed. So there seemed to be two phases, and this was much easier to do when midnight was actually midnight. You were going bed when the sun had set, or just after were you were tethered to the rhythms of the earth as opposed to a wired electricity run world. Taylor Wilson: What is something you wish you knew when you first started on this journey? Jennifer Senior: To get on it earlier and to not be as afraid... Cognitive behavioral therapy is, I think, often done in conjunction with taking something like Klonopin or Ativan or Ambien, and I was so petrified of becoming hooked on them that I didn't... I refused to take them and I couldn't get my sleep to contract as a result of it. My body was so completely dysregulated and confused about it was so all over the place that I really needed something to regularize it and stabilize it, and I flipped out, and I think if anybody goes and tries CBT, I and their practitioner says to them, and I'm going to have to be on their recommendation, do this in concert with a drug, because you really need it. Don't sit there and freak out and think that you can't or shouldn't, because it happens a lot and people freak out a lot. Taylor Wilson: All right, Jennifer Senior, thank you so much for coming on the Excerpt. Jennifer Senior: Thank you so much for having me. Taylor Wilson: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's the Excerpt. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Insomnia is a global epidemic. How do we fix it? | The Excerpt
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28 minutes ago
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Meta Clashes With Apple, Google Over Age Check Legislation
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This year alone, at least three states — Utah, Texas and Louisiana — passed legislation requiring tech companies to authenticate users' ages, secure parental consent for anyone under 18 and ensure minors are protected from potentially harmful digital experiences. Now, lobbyists for all three companies are flooding into South Carolina and Ohio, the next possible states to consider such legislation. The debate has taken on new importance after the Supreme Court this summer ruled age verification laws are constitutional in some instances. A tech group on Wednesday petitioned the Supreme Court to block a social media age verification law in Mississippi, teeing up a highly consequential decision in the next few weeks. Child advocates say holding tech companies responsible for verifying the ages of their users is key to creating a safer online experience for minors. Parents and advocates have alleged the social media platforms funnel children into unsafe and toxic online spaces, exposing young people to harmful content about self harm, eating disorders, drug abuse and more. Blame Game Meta supporters argue the app stores should be responsible for figuring out whether minors are accessing inappropriate content, comparing the app store to a liquor store that checks patrons' IDs. Apple and Google, meanwhile, argue age verification laws violate children's privacy and argue the individual apps are better-positioned to do age checks. Apple said it's more accurate to describe the app store as a mall and Meta as the liquor store. The three new state laws put the responsibility on app stores, signaling Meta's arguments are gaining traction. The company lobbied in support of the Utah and Louisiana laws putting the onus on Apple and Google for tracking their users' ages. Similar Meta-backed proposals have been introduced in 20 states. Federal legislation proposed by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah would hold the app stores accountable for verifying users' ages. Still, Meta's track record in its state campaigns is mixed. At least eight states have passed laws since 2024 forcing social media platforms to verify users' ages and protect minors online. Apple and Google have mobilized dozens of lobbyists across those states to argue that Meta is shirking responsibility for protecting children. 'We see the legislation being pushed by Meta as an effort to offload their own responsibilities to keep kids safe,' said Google spokesperson Danielle Cohen. 'These proposals introduce new risks to the privacy of minors, without actually addressing the harms that are inspiring lawmakers to act.' Meta spokesperson Rachel Holland countered that the company is supporting the approach favored by parents who want to keep their children safe online. 'Parents want a one-stop-shop to oversee their teen's online lives and 80% of American parents and bipartisan lawmakers across 20 states and the federal government agree that app stores are best positioned to provide this,' Holland said. As the regulation patchwork continues to take shape, the companies have each taken voluntary steps to protect children online. Meta has implemented new protections to restrict teens from accessing 'sensitive' content, like posts related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders. Apple created 'Child Accounts,' which give parents more control over their children's' online activity. At Apple, spokesperson Peter Ajemian said it 'soon will release our new age assurance feature that empowers parents to share their child's age range with apps without disclosing sensitive information.' Splintered Groups As the lobbying battle over age verification heats up, influential big tech groups are splintering and new ones emerging. Meta last year left Chamber of Progress, a liberal-leaning tech group that counts Apple and Google as members. Since then, the chamber, which is led by a former Google lobbyist and brands itself as the Democratic-aligned voice for the tech industry, has grown more aggressive in its advocacy against all age verification bills. 'I understand the temptation within a company to try to redirect policymakers towards the company's rivals, but ultimately most legislators don't want to intervene in a squabble between big tech giants,' said Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich. Meta tried unsuccessfully to convince another major tech trade group, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, to stop working against bills Meta supports, two people familiar with the dynamics said. Meta, a CCIA member, acknowledged it doesn't always agree with the association. Meta is also still a member of NetChoice, which opposes all age verification laws no matter who's responsible. The group currently has 10 active lawsuits on the matter, including battling some of Meta's preferred laws. The disagreements have prompted some of the companies to form entirely new lobbying outfits. Meta in April teamed up with Spotify Technology SA and Match Group Inc. to launch a coalition aimed at taking on Apple and Google, including over the issue of age verification. Competing Campaigns Meta is also helping to fund the Digital Childhood Alliance, a coalition of conservative groups leading efforts to pass app-store age verification, according to three people familiar with the funding. Neither the Digital Childhood Alliance nor Meta responded directly to questions about whether Meta is funding the group. But Meta said it has collaborated with Digital Childhood Alliance. The group's executive director, Casey Stefanski, said it includes more than 100 organizations and child safety advocates who are pushing for more legislation that puts responsibility on the app stores. Stefanski said the Digital Childhood Alliance has met with Google 'several times' to share their concerns about the app store in recent months. The App Association, a group backed by Apple, has been running ads in Texas, Alabama, Louisiana and Ohio arguing that the app store age verification bills are backed by porn websites and companies. The adult entertainment industry's main lobby said it is not pushing for the bills; pornography is mostly banned from app stores. 'This one-size fits all approach is built to solve problems social media platforms have with their systems while making our members, small tech companies and app developers, collateral damage,' said App Association spokesperson Jack Fleming. In South Carolina and Ohio, there are competing proposals placing different levels of responsibility on the app stores and developers. That could end with more stringent legislation that makes neither side happy. 'When big tech acts as a monolith, that's when things die,' said Joel Thayer, a supporter of the app store age verification bills. 'But when they start breaking up that concentration of influence, all the sudden good things start happening because the reality is, these guys are just a hair's breath away from eating each other alive.' (Updates with App Association statement in 24th paragraph.) Burning Man Is Burning Through Cash Confessions of a Laptop Farmer: How an American Helped North Korea's Wild Remote Worker Scheme It's Not Just Tokyo and Kyoto: Tourists Descend on Rural Japan Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
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New dating advice app Tea rockets to No. 1 app spot: What to know
A dating advice app called Tea has rocketed to the top of the free apps chart in Apple's App Store after it went viral on Reddit, TikTok and across social media. The app varies from traditional dating apps because it's only for women, and instead of looking for dates, women go on the app to share information about and look for tips on potential male partners. The company behind Tea said in an Instagram post that it had reached over 4 million female users and has a waiting list of approximately 900,000 new, prospective users. Get to know the viral new app below. New dating app says it helps women identify red flags in dating What is the Tea app? The Tea app is marketed as a "women-only" app that offers "dating tools for women" and lets women anonymously share and search for information, advice, and photos of men they say they have dates with or are looking to date. According to the Apple App Store, to use the Tea app, users must be 17+. The purpose of a woman adding a man's "dating data" and "dating history" would, in theory, build community and help other women share "red flags" or warnings about people they say they've dated or any "green flags" or vouch for men. Women can share noteworthy dating experiences, both positive and negative. Matchmaker has dating advice for people seeking romance in 2025 The Tea app is available for iOS on Apple's App Store and for Android on the Google Play Store. What does Tea let users do? In one promotional Instagram post, Tea compared itself to the user review app Yelp. "An app that's like Yelp, except for it's reviews of men," the text in the video post reads. After creating an account by logging in through an Apple or Facebook account, a Tea user can use the app's tools to check phone number lookups, do background checks, check criminal records, check if someone is listed on sex offender registries and reverse image search photos to see if photos are used elsewhere, according to explanations posted on the Tea app's social media pages. Users can also search for others based on their location. Tea users can also share first names, photos, and reviews of men they've dated and their date experiences. What are the concerns behind Tea? On Reddit, some users have called for the deletion and removal of the Tea app, calling it a platform that "can be used to spread misinformation," a platform that allows for easy doxing, or the sharing of someone's identity and private information publicly, and a "privacy blindspot" that doesn't let men search for themselves or verify what is shared about them. The Tea app claims to verify all potential users and calls safety its "No. 1 priority." "Because this is a women-only app, our approval process is extremely tedious, to protect the women in Tea," the app stated in an Instagram post. "We pride ourselves on being very thorough, which takes extra time (real human team, no shortcuts!)," the message continued in part. The Tea app's developer, Tea Dating Advice Inc., declined to weigh in on how the app works, how the app's vetting process works, privacy concerns or comment for this article. Solve the daily Crossword