As child social media bans spread across Europe and beyond, Estonia isn't having it. On Friday, the country's education minister said the bans won't "actually solve problems," while warning that the kids will find a way regardless. Although companies like Meta would love for you to believe it’s a fairy tale , social media addiction is associated with tangible negative repercussions for children. Studies show that its harms range from depression and anxiety to sleep deprivation and obesity. (The latter is from all the targeted junk food advertising.) On the other hand, teens can find community and support from social media. A growing list of countries looked at the negative data and concluded that the answer was to ban social media altogether for children. Although the age cutoff varies, legislation has been floated or enacted in Australia , Greece , France , Austria , Spain , Indonesia , Malaysia , the UK and Denmark — just to name a few. Estonia's education minister believes these countries are coming at the very real problem from the wrong angle. "The way to approach this, to me, is not to make kids responsible for that harm and start self-regulating," Kristina Kallas said at a Politico forum in Barcelona. She added that "kids will find very quickly the ways to go around and to still use social media." Instead, she said the responsibility lies with governments and corporations. "Europe pretends to be weak when it comes to big American and international corporations," she added. But she called that a "pretense," challenging the EU to "actually take this power and start regulating the big American corporations." To be fair, the EU regulates the tech industry more effectively than anywhere else in the world. But the point on childhood social bans stands. Another argument against the bans is that it’s a short path from the well-meaning to a more sinister erosion of basic freedoms. In February, France suggested that the next logical step after passing an under-15 social media ban would be to go after VPNs . After all, once you pass the ban, you need to enforce it — and that can mean snuffing out the tools children could use to work around it. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/estonia-is-the-rare-eu-country-opposing-child-social-media-bans-194620916.html?src=rss
A 20-year-old man was arrested by the San Francisco Police Department after allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's house, The New York Times reports . In a statement shared on X , SFPD wrote that it responded to a request for a fire investigation in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco around 7:12 AM ET / 4:12AM PT. "At the scene, officers learned that an unknown male subject threw an incendiary destructive device at a home, causing a fire at an exterior gate." After the man fled on foot, police found and arrested him around an hour later while responding to a business' complaint about an "unknown male subject threatening to burn down the building." That business turned out to be OpenAI's headquarters and the subject happened to be the same man who threw the Molotov at Altman's house. View our latest statement regarding an incident that occurred early this morning at a North Beach residence. Officers have made an arrest, and no injuries were reported as a result of this incident. pic.twitter.com/t4DsF31uxh — San Francisco Police (@SFPD) April 10, 2026 "Early this morning, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s home and also made threats at our San Francisco headquarters. Thankfully, no one was hurt," an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Wired . "We deeply appreciate how quickly SFPD responded and the support from the city in helping keep our employees safe. The individual is in custody, and we’re assisting law enforcement with their investigation." As it's become more commonplace, artificial intelligence has also become more divisive. While more and more people continue to use AI tools, public reaction to the encroachment of the technology, whether in gaming or customer service , is increasingly negative. Altman's warnings of AI's impact on employment , and a recent New Yorker investigation digging into his allegedly manipulative leadership style at OpenAI, have also raised questions about the CEO's prominent role as a steward of the technology. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/a-man-allegedly-threw-a-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-house-210444731.html?src=rss
