When 15-year-old Carlee Jade Clements wakes up, her first thought is to record a Get Ready With Me video to share with her friends on TikTok. “I love recording everything and posting it the moment I have it,” says Clements, who lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Like many teenagers, Clements communicates with the world primarily through social media: Snapchat for messaging her friends, Pinterest for inspiration, TikTok for … well, everything. Unlike many teenagers, she also uses social media professionally; Clements has over 37,000 followers on Instagram, where she often posts product reviews (skin care, slime) and photos from her modeling and acting gigs.

But as of December 10, 2025, that will change. That’s when Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age regulation will go into effect, which will prevent Australians under 16 years old from having social media accounts. “It’s gonna be very weird and quiet and isolated,” says Clements. “I’m going to feel like I’m cut off from the world.”

Globally, people are starting to realize how social media can negatively impact adolescents. Even teenagers themselves are seeing this: Almost half of adolescents in the US claim these platforms harm people their age. Australia is the first country to take serious action. In December 2024, legislators passed the Social Media Minimum Age Bill, which will penalize tech platforms (including TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, and Reddit) that allow under-16s to access their platforms.

In response, platforms are locking accounts and adopting age verification requirements. Some platforms, including Meta, started to enforce it early.

Teen content creators are taking steps, too. Zoey Bender, age 14, likes to post GRWM videos and tips: for making friends in high school, for starting seventh grade, for dealing with braces. “I love being creative about it,” says Bender, who has 58,000 followers on TikTok. “It’s my outlet.”

Her handle used to be @heyitszoey. In November, she and her dad, Mark, changed it to @_heyitszoeyandmark, with the hopes that her account won’t be deleted on December 10 because it’s now managed by an adult. She says that many other teenagers with large followings are doing the same; Clements’ mom already manages her Instagram account.

That means that once the age restrictions are in place, their professional accounts will likely still exist—although as teen and kid accounts are suspended, their engagement will likely go down, and they may lose followers, too. That would mean a decline in free products and in revenue, though it’s generally not a huge amount: Ava Jones, 12, who has 11,500 followers on Instagram, estimates that she makes $1,000-$2,000 Australian ($600-$1,300 US) per year, which she generally spends on makeup and clothes. “If that went away, I’d have to do more chores at home,” she says.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was at the center of Silicon Valley’s most visible publicity push in recent memory Monday night when he appeared on The Tonight Show. In a predictably softball interview with host Jimmy Fallon, Altman explained how ChatGPT has helped him alleviate the anxiety that comes with being a new parent.

It was a distinctly clever, if somewhat surprising, choice from Altman who has mostly kept his personal life out of the media spotlight. But Altman is a salesman, and a good salesman understands the optics of good television. So he talked about being a dad and being worried that his son—who wasn’t crawling at six months—was developing slower than other children (spoiler: he’s not). “I cannot imagine having gone through, figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT,” Altman told Fallon. “People did it for a long time, no problem. So clearly it was possible, but I have relied on it so much.”

As the fears around the future of AI continue to mount, the subtext was patently obvious: Technology can help people better understand their kids. We should welcome it. The timing of that particular message was not by mistake.

Of late, the tech establishment has gone on a charm offensive as age-verification laws sweep the US and the world, and the public backlash to AI intensifies.

Altman acknowledged as much but didn’t get into specifics during the interview. “One of the things that I’m worried about is just the rate of change that’s happening in the world right now. This is a three-year-old technology. No other technology has ever been adopted by the world this fast,” Altman said. “Making sure that we introduce this to the world in a responsible way, where people have time to adapt, to give input, to figure out how to do this—you could imagine us getting that wrong.”

Those concerns have only accelerated a concentrated campaign out of the Valley to better control the narrative, which has included everything from TV ads to pop-ups to create better brand awareness, and explain why the virtues of AI and social media, and all that it can do for people, outweigh the harms. If Silicon Valley is in its “hard tech era,” it is making an even harder sell.

The ads are everywhere you are: streaming, cable, social media. TikTok is great for dad advice. ChatGPT can teach you how to properly exercise, cook memorable dishes, or can curate an unforgettable road trip. Google wants you to “ask more of your phone” with its AI features. Anthropic—which, in a September ad spot, claimed “there’s never been a better time” for AI—is even hosting pop-ups and selling merch. Meta promises to be your personal AI for, well, everything.

Razors are one of the most heavily and competitively marketed products in American capitalism. Made with steel and plastic that costs a few pennies, but sold for a thousand percent profit, the razor market is the subject of vigorous academic study and debate.

The founder of Gillette famously came up with a model of basically giving away the razor handle so he could sell the blades. Canadian startup Henson has the opposite model, charging $79 for a razor that can give you an excellent shave with dirt-cheap disposable blades that cost about 15 cents each.

I’ve been using the Henson razor for the past three months, and it offers the best shave I’ve had up to this point in my life. Right now, Walmart is selling the device with enough blades to last you two years for just $80. Razors are always a popular Christmas gift for fathers, and this deal would fit nicely under your tree.

Henson is a Canadian company with roots in aerospace, having contributed components to the Mars rover. The AL13 Safety Razor is made from aluminum machined at their shop in Ontario. It comes in a half-dozen colors, including the classic copper I’ve tested.

The razor’s head is two parts that dovetail together and are then compressed using the screw-on handle. The handle holds the blade in place with extreme rigidity at a precise angle so the blade doesn’t chatter around, which can cause skin irritation. The blade barely sticks out from the head, with an edge only about half the width of a hair exposed—you’ll have to look very closely to see it.

The Henson razor is manufactured with exacting tolerances of 0.00025 of an inch, or about one-twelfth the thickness of a human hair. There are no plastic parts, just aluminum with stainless steel bushings. Henson specifically designed its device to work with cheap, generic double-edged blades that sell for ten or 15 cents each—the difference here is how firmly and precisely those blades are held in place.

I’ve been using the Henson for about two months now and have never had better shaves. I shave about every other day, and each blade lasts me about a week, meaning the 100-pack included here will last you two years. The shave is very close but smooth, and I’ve only barely nicked myself a few times in that span. (The company has paid for medical imaging that shows its razors cause one-third the skin irritation you get from multi-blade razors.) The company sent me its proprietary $20 shaving cream, which I somehow misplaced before ever using, but I have had extremely crisp and clean shaves with a $4 can of regular Gillette foam.

The one tip I have is that you get the best results if you unscrew the handle a bit when rinsing the blades between uses, as shaved hairs otherwise tend to get stuck in the space between components and don’t easily rinse out.

Did I mention it’s a very handsome razor? It is, with a machined handle that has a texture that looks good and also provides a nice, gritty grip when wet. If you’re looking to gift a grooming device—or just want to treat yourself—the Henson at this price is a great buy.