The corpses started appearing in the early 2000s, hanging from overpasses with threats scrawled on their shirts. Everyone in Mexico knew that drug cartels were murdering people, but they rarely made such a show of it. Then, in 2005, a kingpin named Edgar Valdez Villarreal (a.k.a. 'La Barbie') ramped up the exhibitionism, posting a video online of his gang torturing and murdering its rivals. My stepbrother, a telenovela actor, agreed to play Valdez in a biopic; the film turned out to be written and financed by La Barbie himself, who often wandered the set. Two decades later, I realize that these grim spectacles were the beginning of a trend: Cartels are influencers now. They have converted their criminality into a commodity, broadcasting with impunity while law enforcement and social-media platforms struggle to rein them in. On TikTok, drug traffickers filmed themselves fleeing from customs agents in a high-speed boat chase, garnering millions of likes. Some content is less Miami Vice and more cottagecore: farmers harvesting poppy seeds, for instance. Keep scrolling and you might find henchmen bagging bales of $100 bills, tiger cubs lounging in trucks, and dogs trotting with decapitated heads in their mouths....
Research shows that, over the past two decades, rates of mental illness have been increasing in adolescents in many countries. While some scientists point to soaring use of smartphones and social media as a key driver for this trend, others say the evidence does not show a large effect of these technologies on teenagers' psychological health....
When Congress passed a law in 2024 to ban TikTok unless it came under U.S. ownership, lawmakers argued that the app's Chinese parent company posed national security concerns. The Trump administration, which had granted the viral video app a reprieve shortly after taking office in January 2025, extended that pause again on April 4 after the Chinese government reportedly scuttled a planned deal. Given that worry, it might surprise Americans to learn that nearly every social media giant is controlled by just one or two men. For example, Mark Zuckerberg controls Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, while Larry Page and Sergey Brin control Alphabet, which owns YouTube and Google. What does 'control' mean' These companies are publicly traded ' anybody can buy or sell their shares ' but a legal mechanism known as dual-class stock gives founders extra votes in shareholder decisions. The dual-class structure crowns these men 'corporate royalty,' as one former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner has put it, granting them near-absolute control of corporate policy and resources without requiring them to take on commensurate financial risk....
