“Using AI creates a convenient moral distance between people and their actions — it can induce them to request behaviors they wouldn’t necessarily engage in themselves, nor potentially request from other humans,” said behavioral scientist and study co-author Zoe Rahwan, of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, in a statement about the research.

That’s not exactly news to anybody who’s been following the many media reports of students using AI to cheat on assignments, or lawyers turning in fake AI-generated citations, but it’s intriguing to see quantitative evidence.

To explore the question of ethical behavior and AI, the research team conducted 13 tests on 8,000 participants, with the goal of measuring the level of honesty in people when they instruct AI to perform an action.

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One in three New York City public school students was chronically absent last school year, which is defined as missing at least 10% of school days, according to statistics released Wednesday.

That represents a slight dip from the 2023-24 school year, when 34.8% of students were chronically absent. But it is still considerably higher than pre-pandemic levels, when chronic absenteeism rates hovered closer to 1 in 4 children.

Attendance is considered a key metric for school performance for a commonsense reason: Missed school typically means missed learning.

Chronic absenteeism exploded to 40%, the highest level in decades, during the COVID pandemic when students returned full-time to their classrooms during the 2021-22 school year, following the city’s pivot to remote learning.

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Students at a school district in Kentucky are putting down their phones and cracking books at a record pace now that devices are banned during class, district officials said.

The head-spinning shift from digital to analog is well underway at Jefferson County Public Schools, which serves nearly 97,000 students as Kentucky’s largest school district. Library books are flying off the shelves following the enactment of a statewide ban of electronic devices in classrooms, librarians told Newsweek.

At Ballard High School in Louisville, where just 31 percent of roughly 2,000 students meet state reading proficiency standards, 891 books were checked out in August, compared to 533 last year — an increase of 67 percent.

“Oh, definitely,” librarian Stephanie Conrad said when asked if she believes the phone ban factored into the spike. “We anticipated a really big increase in book circulation, so we planned for that over the summer to really make books available and plan for any kind of downtime so that students wouldn’t be tempted to look at their phones.”

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Teens, parents, and online safety advocates were protesting outside of Apple’s flagship store in Midtown Manhattan.

They say Apple needs to do more to keep young people safe from the dangers of social media.

The organizers of the protest were youth advocates from Design It For Us, in partnership with Heat Initiative and the LOG OFF Movement.

They want Apple to put more safety guards on apps and support legislation that protects kids.

Eyewitness News spoke to one mom who blames Apple and social media for her son taking his life.

“The videos featured the very method he used. It took 13 days from the time the first video showed up until my son was dead. My baby died in my arms because he was able to download an app that I did not give permission for him to download,” she said.

Friday morning’s protest coincided with the release of the new iPhone 17.

The rallying cry is Big Tech is failing to protect kids. Today we are honored to be joined by Lennon Torres from the Heat Initiative, a fearless voice calling out Big Tech for its failures and its complicity in putting children at risk. Lennon, and the Heat Initiative team, have been on the front lines, demanding accountability and transparency, and challenging the powerful companies that profit while ignoring the dangers. The Mission of the Heat Initiative is turning up the ‘heat’ on Big Tech. This conversation is about truth, courage and putting kids first.The Heat Initiative believes Big Tech’s inaction is due in part to a lack of pressure. That’s why they’re targeting companies with demonstrated negligence around child sexual abuse. We discuss the recent report from ParentsTogether Action, in partnership with Heat Initiative about harmful AI – Artificial Intelligence chatbots.

Watch here. 

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A CDC report earlier this year found that teen depression was up by 60 percent — a number that shocked many mental health professionals. An analysis of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report published by the CDC in 2024 appears to confirm the grim state of teen mental health, reporting that 40 percent of high school students report persistent sadness/hopelessness, and 20 percent seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.

However, a CDC report earlier this year contradicted this result, finding that teen depression was up by 60 percent — a number that shocked many mental health professionals. An analysis of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report published by the CDC in 2024 appears to confirm the grim state of teen mental health, reporting that 40 percent of high school students report persistent sadness/hopelessness, and 20 percent seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.

Read more here.

US, China reach ‘framework’ deal for TikTok

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