Good morning,

While tariffs and wars consume the mental bandwidth of adults, the internet is overflowing with wholesome content created by 12-year-olds.

I always thought that AI slop (low-quality content created by AI) would end the enjoyable internet. But now I realise that the real threat might be tweens discussing oatmeal using microphones that cost more than a new PlayStation.

It's like a parallel universe where kids I've never heard of have millions of followers online.

Listening to Taylor Lorentz and EJ Dickson discuss this trend, they fluctuate between the problems that come with kidfluencers, while they also see all the skills these kids gain from producing content online.

They touch upon a few key reasons for the trend: Inspiration: Big podcasters' role in last year's US presidential election did not go unnoticed among the kids Production: Podcasts are a low-effort format and require less advanced production skills than video Money: There is still a lot of advertising money going into podcasts, compared to other channels like Tiktok and Meta, where it's been reduced Reach: Distribution is non-algorithmic; if you get a subscriber, they will receive the content

57% of US kids want to become influencers. However, 54% of US adults (18 to 60) also say they would quit their job and do full-time influencing if they knew it would be a sustainable business.

This is the world we live in now.

If you grew up thirty years ago, you and your friends started a band in your basement. Today, you start a podcast.

The big difference is the distribution. The band in the basement might be lucky to get a gig at a local school event, and often they had to work for years before potentially getting a record label deal. Today, 12-year-olds can access a global audience when they press upload.

Most tweens don't know what "global reach" means or why it could be nice for them to find their footing in a smaller setting.

Millennials had to clean their Facebook photo albums of party pictures before getting a job. But the reach of those pictures was microscopic compared to the equivalent coming-of-age actions online today.

Still, I believe access to global reach is a challenge for many adults. It is easy to feel that reach and engagement equal real impact, and that people interested in your life online are your friends.

Instead of disclosing everything about our private lives to the masses, maybe we should know less about each other.

That is why the kid-podcast trend is interesting to me. It becomes indisputable how much adults, in general, and adult podcasters, in particular, influence audiences who are way too young for their content. For boys, it's names of hyper-masculine role models like Joe Rogan and Theo Von, and among girls, it's women like Alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy.

Since these are video podcasts, distributed primarily via YouTube, we can see the kids "cosplaying" their adult idols, mimicking the conversation topics, outfits, and attitudes.

As a European, I often feel that the US is culturally more extreme. But I think the world of content is global these days. Generations of kids worldwide have learned English not in school but on YouTube, and with AI-generated translations, we will soon eliminate the language barrier.

This will grow, whether we like it or not.

Moral panic is rarely constructive. Instead, I'm curious about constructive thoughts about this. What do you think it will look like in a few years? Send me an email.

Recommendations of the Week

• PODCAST: Philosophize This! created a playlist of episodes they recommend for anyone trying to understand the current state of the world.
• BOOK: Learn how to navigate a world of misinformation from London Business School professor Alex Edmans and his book May Contain Lies: How stories, statistics and studies exploit our biases — and what we can do about it.
• USE CASE: Two Harvard students have shown how to turn smart glasses into a tool for instant Doxxing, just like in black mirror.
• ARTICLE: Victoria Song's article I used the ‘cheat on everything’ AI tool and it didn’t help me cheat on anything in The Verge about the hyped AI tool Cluely.

Have you read anything good lately?

I love to get content recommended by the community, it makes it much easier to find the most interesting stuff online. Ping me on social media, or send me an email.

See you next week. Until then: over and out!

Anna