It’s Wednesday, December 10. This is The Front Page, your daily window into the world of The Free Press—and our take on the world at large. Today: An incredibly potent drug sold on the streets of Philadelphia is turning people into zombies. Is Trump going to accidentally start a war with Venezuela? Have the Ayatollah’s henchmen fled to Canada? Is climate change a thing of the past up north? And much more.
But first: Is the techlash a social mania? Tyler Cowen thinks so.
“It’s the phones.” For a lot of people, this three-word phrase explains almost everything about the modern world—or at least so much of what is wrong with it.
Like any good slogan, it sort of explains itself. In case it’s not clear, it’s the idea that those small, shiny things that put the world in our pockets two decades ago are to blame for all manner of problems: learning loss, teen depression, dwindling attention spans, the loneliness epidemic, and more.
A lot of you probably subscribe to some version of this view. I know I do. And so do a lot of our contributors. People like Jonathan Haidt, who last month wrote an unsettling essay for us about “The Devil’s Plan to Ruin the Next Generation.” Or August Lamm, who has sworn off modern tech and written about it in our pages. Or Jared Cooney Horvath, who last week wrote convincingly about how the digitization of our classrooms has been a disaster.
And this camp is winning the argument: There are phone bans in American schools, the flip phone renaissance, the rise of low-tech parenting, and Australia’s ban on social media for everyone under 16, which came into effect this week. In my view, almost all of this is all good news—and long overdue.
But here’s the thing: One of the thinkers I trust the most takes a radically different view. I’m talking about Free Press columnist Tyler Cowen. Tyler is a techno-optimist, and not only does he disagree with Australia’s social media ban, he calls it the “zenith” of a “hysteria” over the harm smartphones do to kids.
Now, Tyler doesn’t deny that smartphones need to be used thoughtfully. He says he wouldn’t want students to use them during school hours if he were running a school, for example. But he thinks the harms are grossly overstated, and he warns that the “techlash” brings risks of its own—not least for free expression.
Like any good opinion writing, this essay from Tyler is guaranteed to make you think—and his argument is worth grappling with even if, like me, you think it’s the phones.
—Oliver Wiseman
A new drug has hit Kensington, Philadelphia, and as Mattha Busby reports, it’s terrifying. Medetomidine delivers a high with “no stages. . . you go straight to sleep,” leaving people unconscious, sick, or in the ER—if they wake up at all. Read Mattha’s dispatch from the neighborhood long known as America’s open-air drug market, now being hollowed out by the “poison” dealers are mixing into $2 stamps.
Diplomatic and military ambivalence can easily spark the flame of war, writes Chuck Lane. President Trump’s show of force and flirtation with regime change in Latin America is not new; it resembles George H.W. Bush’s policy on Panama, one that resulted in war. Trump may not seek war, but he is surely creating the conditions for one. If previous American operations in Latin America teach us anything, “presidents who bluff about invading eventually get called on it.”
After Israel’s strikes on Iran this summer, Benjamin Netanyahu warned that senior regime officials were “packing their bags.” Now, with investigations surging and visas quietly revoked, Casey Babb reports that Iranian activists in Canada fear some of those officials have slipped into the country and are living among the very refugees they once persecuted.
In other news from north of the border, climate anxiety seems to have evaporated in Canada. Public opinion has taken a “quiet but dramatic U-turn,” with only 4 percent now calling climate change their top concern. Priorities have been “rearranged twice over,” giving Mark Carney “far more political wiggle room” to push major energy projects. All that and more in Rupa Subramanya’s latest installment of This Week in Canada.
Breaking History: Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs
Did you know the soundtrack of Americans’ Christmas was written largely by. . . Jews? In a replay of this Breaking History episode, Eli Lake digs into how a generation of Jewish immigrants ended up shaping the very sound of America’s most beloved holiday.
Meta is driving economic growth and supporting local jobs nationwide with a $600 billion investment in American infrastructure.
Two men were arrested for allegedly running a scheme to smuggle Nvidia’s H100 and H200 AI chips to China, part of a DOJ operation that seized over $50 million in restricted GPUs. The charges landed even as President Trump moved to ease export limits on some of Nvidia’s most advanced chips, underscoring the intensifying fight over control of advanced AI technology.
Trump is heading to a swing district in Pennsylvania to pitch his economic message as Republicans worry voters no longer trust the GOP on affordability. Polls show widespread frustration with high costs, while Trump resists acknowledging voters’ financial strain and has dismissed affordability concerns as a “hoax.”
Miami’s mayoral runoff pits Republican Emilio Gonzalez against Democrat Eileen Higgins in a race that could break the GOP’s nearly 30-year hold on the office. With affordability and immigration dominating the campaign—and Trump’s future presidential library hanging in the balance—a Higgins win would give Democrats fresh momentum heading into 2026, and cause the president to find another location for his library.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky flatly rejected any plan that requires Ukraine to give up territory to Russia, rebuffing a key element of Trump’s proposed peace deal and signaling that Kyiv won’t bow to pressure from Washington or Moscow. While some provisions of the U.S.-backed plan have softened, Zelensky and European leaders insist that Putin cannot be allowed to redraw borders by force—a stance that could doom the proposal entirely.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a progressive Democrat, has launched a Texas Senate bid, pitting her against state representative James Talarico, a rising star in the party, and jolting the Democratic primary. Both Republican candidates, Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, blasted her entry in the race, with Cornyn describing her as “radical, theatrical, and ineffective.” A Democrat has not won a statewide race in Texas in over three decades.
Police in Goodyear, Arizona, have begun replacing hand-drawn suspect sketches with AI-generated images, aiming for more lifelike depictions that will attract public attention. Experts warn the practice could worsen misidentification risks and face legal challenges, but the department’s forensic artist says AI tools are already becoming a powerful part of police work.
Nearly a year after the Eaton Fire tore through Altadena, California, residents are restoring a cherished tradition. This holiday season, the community has brought back “Christmas Tree Lane,” lining Santa Rosa Avenue with over 130 trees illuminated with thousands of lights—and offering a hopeful reminder of renewal after the devastation.
I read this article when I was in fifth grade. Scared me straight for the rest of my life. The Lexington Ave story proves there are no simple answers, only people who really want to beat the habit.
https://www.life.com/lifestyle/two-lives-lost-to-heroin-a-harrowing-early-portrait-of-addicts/
An "economic message" falls on deaf ears. It's what people see and pay and hear every day. Stocks are good but a lot of voters don't have stocks.
I'm noticing that grocery prices seem to be skyrocketing. The house next door was in a bidding war and sold for $300,000 over asking. They moved to a Republican state.
Prior to the 2024 election the Biden Administration and its media kept telling us how great the economy was, but people knew what they were seeing at the grocery store-- that's the baseline. The Democrats pivoted from DEI as a message to "affordability" -- their definition of affordability is redistribution rather than a healthy economy.
So somebody's got to get busy and find out what's going on with the grocery prices.