

Discover more from After School by Casey Lewis
Good morning! Did you know that Meta’s backing a sextortion prevention platform and that one of the most effective Super Bowl commercials — at least among young people — wasn’t even on TV? Today we’re talking about that and more…
STATE FARM WENT ALL IN ON TIKTOK FOR THE SUPER BOWL—WAS IT WORTH IT?, marketingbrew
Tl;dr, yes. The campaign “far exceeded expectations,” according to State Farm’s CMO. They had a combined reach of over 245 million, more than 11 million organic views, and more than 568,000 organic likes, with Khaby Lame’s video alone drawing more than 221 million views.
TIKTOK IS BANKING ON “PROJECT TEXAS” TO AVOID A U.S. BAN. BUT WHAT IS IT?, texasmonthly
Under “Project Texas,” a massive, $1.5-billion corporate restructuring plan aimed at instilling American confidence in TikTok’s operations and security, the app’s U.S. operations will potentially “be siloed and monitored by an in-house committee called TikTok U.S. Data Security — leadership for which would be approved by the U.S. government.”
META CRACKS DOWN ON A GROWING CRIME AGAINST TEENAGERS, cnn
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children — a non-profit organization — launched a tool yesterday that allows young people to remove explicit images of themselves that appear online, or block such photos from being shared. The platform, known as “Take It Down,” is being funded by Meta.
INSTAGRAM USERS ARE BEING SERVED GORY VIDEOS OF KILLING AND TORTURE, wapo
There’s a “sprawling underbelly” of accounts competing for Instagram Reels views that have begun posting increasingly violent content; one day last week, four large meme pages, two with over 1 million followers, posted a video of a young child being shot in the head.
APPLE’S IPHONES WINNING OVER GEN Z — AND THE WORLD’S PREMIUM MARKET, wsj
Apple’s market lead is growing around the world — around 52% of people age 18 to 29 in South Korea were using an Apple smartphone as of 2022, up from 44% (!) two years earlier — with polls showing that Gen Z "increasingly see the iPhone as a must-have.” Young people cite its design, cameras, and AirDrop features as reasons why it’s an essential.
YOUNGER AMERICANS AREN’T BUYING THE IDEA THAT RECENT MASS LAYOFFS WERE UNAVOIDABLE, morningconsult
60% of Gen Z said recent mass layoffs were avoidable based on the current economic environment, while more than half (52%) of millennials said the same. The same study shows that young people also take issue with corporate opposition to employee unionization efforts, with 59% of employed Gen Z adults saying they would not be likely to consider working for a company that had recently expressed such a stance.
One last thought: