Psychological distress in parents possibly behind low Australian birth rates, not smartphones

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Psychological distress in parents possibly behind low Australian birth rates, not smartphones

22 May 2026

Sixty percent of Australian parents reported experiencing psychological distress, according to the results of the Parenting Today survey, conducted late last year by the Parenting Research Centre.

It has been suggested the impact on the mental health of parents in Australia is contributing to current record low birth rates here.

Psychological distress and poor mental health, are not however the only factors dragging down births both in Australia, and elsewhere in the world. Cost of living pressures and expensive housing are also playing a part. As is, possibly, smartphone usage.

Earlier this week Tyler Cowen, at Marginal Revolution, posted birth rate data from ten countries which generally show a prolonged, and clear, decline in birth rates across the twentieth century.

An uptick is apparent in some nations during the baby-boom, which followed World War II, through to the 1960’s. The overall downward trend in birth rates obviously predate smartphones, and possibly even expensive housing, though.

New Google AI powered search box poses a threat to website traffic

21 May 2026

The AI generated result summaries on Google searches, that we’ve become accustomed to recently, sound like they will be a thing of the past when a new search… experience is rolled out shortly.

Because your curiosity doesn’t always fit into keywords, we’re also introducing the biggest upgrade to our Search box in over 25 years — now completely reimagined with AI. This intelligent Search box puts our most powerful AI tools right at your fingertips, making it easier to ask your questions.

Blame the upgrade — the first in a quarter of century — on our boundless curiosity then.

One can only imagine the impact the new search results will have on website traffic. Particularly if links to the sources of information used to compile search results are not shown.

Emma Roth, writing for The Verge, notes that people will still be able to see “traditional” search results by clicking/pressing on the “web” tab on the search page.

I wonder how many people will select that option, as my guess is the majority of searchers will probably be satisfied with the default AI generated results.

Falling birth rates and smartphones: a technology as malevolent as AI?

19 May 2026

Om Gupta, writing for India Today:

The researchers believe smartphones fundamentally changed how young people interact with each other. More time shifted online, while face-to-face socialising declined. According to the study, this reduction in in-person interaction may have contributed to lower fertility rates. The pattern appears to extend beyond just the US and UK. Financial Times analysis found that birth rates in several countries began falling sharply around the same time smartphones became widely adopted.

Gupta cites research published a few days ago by the Financial Times (paywalled).

I doubt the blame for the reported decline in birth rates globally can be placed wholly at the feet of smartphones, but it’s not unreasonable to believe they are playing some role.

It’s hardly empirical proof, but increasingly I need to sidestep people walking along the footpath who are focused only on their smartphone, almost oblivious to the presence of anyone else. If people can’t go without phones during a short walk from one place to another, when are they ever supposed to focus on other things, let alone meeting, and interacting with others, face-to-face?

I’m a smartphone user the same as everyone else, and couldn’t begin to imagine managing without one. But if indeed it is the case that smartphones are contributing — at least partly — to falling birth rates, shouldn’t we be alarmed?

In recent weeks we have been witnessing a growing, at times hostile, backlash against AI technologies. People are angry and fearful. They are concerned by the threat AI poses to their livelihoods. Of the three epoch-defining shifts in technology — to use the words of John Gruber — in recent decades, being the web, smartphones, and AI, it is the last, AI, that is seen as malevolent.

Or the more malevolent.

But if birth rates are falling across the world, and smartphone usage has something to do with that, can we continue to regard these devices as anything less than pernicious?

But pointing the finger of blame at smartphones is the easy part. What to do about the problem, if that’s even how the situation can be described, is far from straightforward.

It somewhat feels like we are painting ourselves into a corner, if we haven’t already, with, really all three of these epoch-defining shifts in technology.

Only films with human actors, writers, will be eligible for Oscar nomination

15 May 2026

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), the organisation that presents the Oscar awards, recently clarified their rules regarding the use of AI in films they will accept nominations for.

According to rule two, regarding eligibility, specifically clause seven, there are instance where AI, and “other digital tools” (things like visual effects, computer-generated imagery, and green screen, I expect) can be used by filmmakers (PDF), to a degree :

With regard to Generative Artificial Intelligence and other digital tools used in the making of the film, the tools neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination. The Academy and each branch will judge the achievement, taking into account the degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship when choosing which movie to award. If questions arise regarding the aforementioned use of Generative Artificial Intelligence, the Academy reserves the right to request more information about the nature of the use and human authorship.

Rule six, clause one, in regards to the acting awards, makes clear that only films with human actors can be nominated:

Only roles credited in the film’s legal billing and demonstrably performed by humans with their consent will be considered eligible.

Rule twenty-four, clause two, spells out eligibility for writing (screenplays, etc) Oscars:

To be eligible in either Writing category, an explicit screenwriting credit must be present in the film’s legal billing and the screenplay must be human-authored.

That covers the Oscars, for now, but raises the question: will there eventually be a separate set of “night of night” awards — that are nothing to do with the AMPAS/Oscars — for films that are wholly, or largely, made using AI technologies. My guess is it’s bound to happen sooner or later.

Bricks and mortar bookshops making a comeback in the United States

30 April 2026

Andy Hunter, CEO and founder of indie bookseller Bookshop.org, talking recently with Shannon Cudd of Fast Company:

“People are really galvanizing around bookstores as a force for good in our culture,” he says. “You see that in the fact that there are about 70% more bookstores now than there were six years ago in the United States. After 20 years of declining numbers, they’re coming roaring back.”

This can only be a good thing.

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Born again social network Friendster aims to resurrect real-life friends networks

29 April 2026

Even after Friendster stopped being a social network I still checked in on the website from time to time. It’s evidently been a while since I did that though.

Last time I looked, Friendster — having gone through a number of changes in direction — was a gaming platform, but, as I’ve learned, ceased operations in 2015.

After almost a decade in the wilderness, American developer and entrepreneur Mike Carson has revived the old virtual community, but things are little bit different this time around.

When I signed up (again) I needed to install the Friendster app on my phone, even though there is a website. The biggest difference, that I can see so far, is in the way you connect with other people.

Instead of searching for people you might know, friending people on the new Friendster requires doing so in person. In order to connect, you and your prospective friend need to scan codes on each other’s phones. I’m no Snapchat power user, but I think they do, or did, something similar.

Friending acquaintances face-to-face means friends networks may be somewhat smaller than some social network users are accustomed to, but as copy on the website tells us, Friendster is “built for real-life friends”. That’s a feature that will certainly appeal to some people.

Friction-maxxing, a buzzword to restore balance to your life force

24 April 2026

Canadian author and researcher Kathryn Jezer-Morton documented friction-maxxing in an article (paywalled) for The Cut, in January this year. Weeks later, a Wikipedia page was published about the phenomenon. Is that, then, why friction-maxxing is now referred to as a cultural trend?

For the uninitiated, Wikipedia defines friction-maxxing thusly:

Friction-maxxing is the practice of intentionally choosing less convenient options in daily life to build tolerance for discomfort, resist technology-driven ease, and preserve what proponents describe as meaningful human experiences.

I’ve been seeing references to plain old friction, chiefly across the blogosphere, well before January though. Bloggers using the term in their writing were suggesting there ideally/always needed to be a certain difficulty in what we do, whatever that is. This because we’ve somehow come to expect everything we do to be simple and effortless.

I probably live relatively straightforwardly. I work, then I don’t work. I don’t run marathons, climb mountains, or cross oceans in a sail boat. It seems to me if you want more friction in your life, those sorts of activities make a good start. Friction-maxxing, on the other hand, suggests relying less on automated and algorithm-powered goods and services. And AI.

Instead of ordering food delivery, you should prepare the meal yourself. Rather than dictate notes, or type into a notes apps, you should hand write them on paper. Instead of setting up meetings on video calls, you should arrange a face-to-face gathering. Instead of texting or emailing, you should call, and speak to someone, or meet in person. Frightening, no?

For my part, maybe I should, for instance, see movies at the cinema, not stream them in the frictionless comfort of our home. I’ll let you know how that goes.

The big tech companies and social media platforms tell us “boredom, social awkwardness, and effortful thinking”, among other things, are problems to be eliminated. And now that they have been, so we’re told, friction-maxxing is required to make life trickier again. To restore the balance.

Talking of social media though, to instantly increase friction, reduce, or dispense with social media, set up a personal website, and start blogging. That’ll be a source of friction for months.

But in a world where public transport doesn’t run to timetable, traffic gets gridlocked, computers freeze, websites fail to load, phones find themselves in an area with no reception, the coffee grinder at the cafe breaks just as you arrive, you’re caught out by off-app, non-forecast rain in an open, unsheltered space, who needs to be creating friction?

But none of this is really friction, it’s simply life. Annoyances we must deal with. But it keeps us on our toes, and alive. I’m not then convinced by this… cultural trend.

It seems to me embracing friction-maxxing is an attempt to conceal some other, possibly deeper malady. It’s a smoke screen. A marketing term even. Friction-maxxing is akin to putting a band-aid, not on a small cut or scratch, but something far more serious. Something that likely requires proper diagnosis and treatment. If something’s wrong, distractions are not an ideal solution.

Claude Mythos identifies hundreds of bugs in Firefox browser code

23 April 2026

Brian Fagioli, writing for NERDS.xyz:

Something interesting is happening inside Mozilla, and it is not your typical browser update story. With Firefox 150, the team says it fixed 271 vulnerabilities after turning AI loose on its own codebase. That is not a typo. Two hundred seventy one.

Mozilla engineers uncovered the astonishing haul of bugs in Firefox’s code after turning to Claude Mythos, an AI agent that has rattled the tech sector on account of its stealth and sophistication, and fears it could be manipulated by bad actors.

Helping make software used by millions of people safer however, is for today at least, a positive.

Em dashes mean AI wrote for you, am dashes mean you did the writing

22 April 2026

If you subscribe to the notion that the presence of em dashes (—) in a body of text means — in the AI age — the piece must have been composed by an AI agent, you could consider using am dashes instead. Yes, that’s right: an am dash, as opposed to an em dash.

The am dash looks a little like a tilde (~) but with a slightly longer, flat mid horizontal section, between the curly ends. Its creators are calling the am dash a punctuation mark — don’t things likes need to be ratified first? — and, in addition, claim it is unusable by AI.

The am dash may be unusable by AI agents at the moment, but as we’ve seen, AI learns quickly, and copies even faster. If you want to use the am dash in your writing, you’ll need to download one of two typefaces, which the new punctuation mark is inherent to.

By the way, I’m not being flippant when I suggest the am dash needs official recognition as a punctuation mark. I say so, because it seems to me readers unfamiliar with the am dash might think it’s an error, a typo. Maybe even an AI agent attempting to render an em dash, but botching it.

My website is ninety-two percent not ready for AI agents

20 April 2026

This is where we’re at now. Your website needs to be AI agent ready, or it presumably no longer makes the grade. I scored eight out one-hundred. Can I get a badge?

I’m not sure though disassociated is a website AI agents have any interest in anyway.

In any event, AI agent readiness is the new SEO. Since responses to search queries are AI summaries, your website likely no longer features in search engine results. And if it does, chances are no one will click through anyway. They’ll be content with the AI search summary.

But, you may be rewarded with a visitor or two, if an AI agent is able to use information you published, in response to a question (prompt) posed, provided the agent lists your website as a source. We should all be thanking our lucky stars.

I have all sorts of work to do, meanwhile, if I want my website to be AI agent ready. Work that I probably don’t have the time to do. For one, “support” here for Markdown is non-existent.

But, might a low AI agent ready score aid in keeping AI scrapers away? Somehow I doubt it. Even if a website is deemed “low quality” on account of its poor readiness score, I can’t see information hungry AI scrapers ignoring whatever content they can get their hands on.

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