Hi, welcome to your Weekend!
Ever since Covid lockdowns began three years ago, young people have seemed a bit adrift. I see it at home with my two daughters, 13 and 11, who still can’t break some of the annoying screen habits they formed during the pandemic. I see it with their public school peers in San Francisco, many of whom are still climbing out of the pedagogical hole that their district leaders dug for them. (Keepings S.F. schools closed for nearly two full years was clearly a colossal mistake.)
And you can see it in the lives of even the most talented and prodigious kids. As Margaux writes in her fascinating two-part survey on today’s teen founders—the centerpiece of our first-ever Wunderkind Issue—these teens “entered the pandemic as more or less normal (albeit gifted) kids and left it as pseudo adults in the workforce, sometimes bringing in more income than their parents.”
Famous founders like Michael Dell and Mark Zuckerberg notwithstanding, it’s always been an uphill climb for teenagers in the tech industry.
But the odds of success should have been even steeper for the lockdown generation—the Zoomers. How any teenagers emerged from the chaos of Covid in charge of million-dollar companies is a wonder.
For parents, their stories offer hope that all wasn’t lost for our kids over the past three years. We just need to figure out how they did it, which today’s stories will fully explain. Now onto the wunderkinder...
the big read
Here Come the Zoomers: Silicon Valley Greets a New Generation of Teen Founders
Covid-19 lockdowns chained a generation of teenagers to their computers. For a lucky few, it opened up a world of opportunity. Margaux speaks with some of the most promising teen founders of this generation.
the flip side
Plight of the Wunderkind: The Hidden Struggles of Tech’s Teen Entrepreneurs
Silicon Valley loves a teen superstar—but all the attention can come at a cost. In a companion piece, Margaux breaks down the challenges and dangers that come with making it so big so young.
social studies
Their Last Names Are Gates, Jobs, Xie and Cuban. Their Brands Are Still Loading
Pushing back against their media-wary parents, tech’s next generation is pumping out intimate influencer content. Annie talks to Phoebe Gates (Bill’s 20-year-old) and Alexis Cuban (Mark’s 19-year-old) about strategically using the platforms that their parents helped enable.
parental guidance
So You Want to Raise a Wunderkind: The Tech Parent’s Guide to Alt Education
More than ever, Silicon Valley families are turning away from traditional schools and summer programs. Journalist Diana Kapp takes us inside the latest design realization garages, brain wave recording studios and an “Olympic-level training camp for the next generation of scientists, entrepreneurs and technologists.”
Listening: A comedic take on defunct careers
Ever wonder how telegraph operators passed messages to a moving train? Or how telephone booths kept working during the 1977 New York City blackout? A new Wondery podcast, “This Job is History,” answers those questions and many more. Each episode examines a career from ye olden days: factory lectors, pigeoneers, VJs—and, yes, telegraph operators and telephone booth repairpeople. (Some 5% were women, according to the pod.) The program functions a bit like a “Saturday Night Live” skit, with funnyman host Chris Parnell (an “SNL” alum) playing a dim-bulb interviewer who speaks with “actual people from the actual past” to learn about these professions, like the fictional Susan Chapman, an 1870 telegraph operator stationed in Lincoln, Nebraska. (She’s voiced by actress Mary Birdsong doing an amusing Calamity Jane in a calico dress.) It’s all very PG—perfect for a family car trip. —Abe
Reading: The death of the English major
Here’s a new leading indicator: When the American economy is doing well, more students enroll in English and other humanities degrees, according to Nathan Heller’s recent piece in the “New Yorker.” But when the economy sours, those departments tend to shrink. And right now, they’re on the path to extinction, down by 50% or more, as students increasingly opt for “practical” degrees like engineering or economics. I was not an English major—I chose the more enigmatic path of studying philosophy with a side of gender studies—but there’s something unnerving about a generation turning away from the liberal arts. Yes, student debt is real, and yes, it’s hard to graduate into a recession, but markets change. It will always be important to know how to think. At the very least, English majors (or those who have read writers like Mary Shelley, Aldous Huxley and Philip K. Dick) will have a better sense of what to do when the future plays out differently than we hoped. —Arielle
Watching: A never-ending stream of YA drama
I grew up on the cusp of The CW era, religiously tuning into (the old) “Gossip Girl” and (the new) “90210” once a week so that I wouldn’t hear any spoilers at school the next day. The era of young adult network TV may be long gone, but streamers have more than filled the void. As detailed by Wendy Lee and Brian Contreras in the Los Angeles Times, Netflix has become The CW on steroids, cornering the YA market with shows like “Wednesday,” “Outer Banks,” “Never Have I Ever,” “Ginny and Georgia” and many, many others. Though I’m technically out of the YA demographic, I’m still a sucker for these series—often funny, suspenseful and relatable to a whole swath of teens and adults alike. Of course, Netflix now has a slew of competitors now, with HBO Max (“Sex Lives of College Girls,” “Euphoria”) and Amazon Prime (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”) also competing for the YA crown. Next up on my YA watch list: “Daisy Jones and the Six,” based on a hit #BookTok book, which just debuted on Amazon Prime. —Annie
Makes You Think
Let’s hear it for the Eli Lilly impersonator!
Until next Weekend, thanks for reading.
—Jon
Weekend Editor, The Information
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