Governments are tightening social-media bans for minors, but loopholes and court challenges question their impact, as tech focuses on pet life extension and “rust” batteries.

Today’s technology headlines show a growing gap between policy ambitions and what actually works online—along with a very different kind of attempt to control time itself.

Social-media bans for minors keep spreading—and keep running into reality

A wave of governments is trying to limit children’s access to major social platforms, but early results suggest the approach may be more symbolic than effective. France recently moved to restrict social media use for minors, joining Australia in proposing barriers for children under 15 to access large platforms. France’s effort, however, was halted after the country’s highest court intervened, citing human-rights concerns.

More restrictions are queued up elsewhere. The UK has signaled plans to block children under 16 from using services such as Facebook and TikTok beginning in early 2027. The European Union has also outlined its own proposal to prohibit social media use for kids under 15.

Australia offers the clearest test case so far: it enacted a ban in 2024. The lesson from that experiment is sobering—age gates are easy to dodge. Workarounds, from misreported birthdates to other forms of evasion, can quickly undermine a rule that depends on verifying identity at scale. The emerging takeaway is that lawmakers may need to focus less on blanket prohibitions and more on measures that actually improve safety for young people online.

The new frontier in “more time”: extending pets’ lives

Another part of today’s tech conversation is far more intimate. For many people, the loss of a pet is a defining childhood memory. That grief is now meeting an expanding set of commercial and scientific offerings aimed at keeping animals around longer.

Pet owners today can choose from a growing menu of life-extension possibilities—including pharmaceuticals designed to address aging, as well as more extreme options like cloning and cryonics. These approaches raise a hard question: even if it becomes technically feasible to add years to an animal’s life (or preserve the possibility of a future return), should we? The promise is more time with beloved companions; the pitfalls include ethical dilemmas, uneven access, and uncertainty about outcomes.

A climate-tech bet on “reversible rust”

Meanwhile, as renewable electricity from wind and solar continues to expand, utilities are searching for affordable ways to store power for long stretches—not just hours, but days. Form Energy is targeting that gap with batteries designed to deliver roughly 100 hours of storage.

The company’s approach uses iron, a widely available and inexpensive material compared with metals commonly used in many batteries today. Form’s system relies on what it calls “reversible rusting”: as the battery discharges, iron oxidizes into rust; when the system charges, the chemical process is reversed, turning rust back into iron. The goal is to make long-duration storage cheap enough to help stabilize a grid increasingly dependent on variable renewable generation.

More tech stories driving the day

  • Insurers are emerging as a major friction point for AI deployment, as AI firms accumulate legal exposure tied to real-world harms. US regulators are also probing consumer risks: the Federal Trade Commission has sent subpoenas to OpenAI and Anthropic.
  • A Russian drone reportedly entered NATO waters for the first time, with incidents near Bulgaria and Romania prompting calls for stronger defenses.
  • A pullback in AI-related stocks has unsettled markets, fueling questions about whether data-center demand can keep growing at its current pace. Recent signals include slower growth reported by Anthropic and cost controls by firms limiting employee spending on Claude.
  • “Zero-click” spyware is being used to hack targets via seemingly harmless online ads, while a separate sophisticated crypto attack recently stole $90 million from wallets.
  • Deepfake celebrity ads are proliferating, often promoting products without the real person’s involvement—and the trend is accelerating.
  • AI tools may reduce parents’ planning and administrative burden, but typically require extensive data sharing, intensifying privacy concerns.

Why it matters

Governments are moving quickly to regulate platforms, but Australia’s experience shows that age-based bans can be bypassed unless enforcement and verification are realistically designed. At the same time, biotech and consumer tech are pushing into emotionally charged territory—like pet longevity—before society has settled the ethics. And on the energy side, long-duration storage solutions such as iron-based batteries could determine how reliably grids can run on renewables in the next decade.