Taylor Lorenz

Every time you plug your iPhone into your car stereo, the first song (in alphabetical order) automatically plays. People hate hearing that same song so much, they’ve begun downloading a 10-minute “song” that’s pure silence. The track is the work…

When 8-year-old Ki’ari Pope’s cousin dared her to sip boiling water through a straw back in March, she obliged. She suffered burns in her mouth and throat and required a tracheotomy. On July 31, when Pope complained she couldn’t breathe, paramedics…

When 14-year-old app developer Saroush Ghodsi cold-called famed Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman on a Friday night in January, he had no idea that he and his friend Stefan Stokic, then 16, would go on to become the youngest founders in Y…

Instagram used to be defined by its feed of stylized, perfectly posed images, but this summer a new trend has swept the platform: the “plandid.” Plandids, or planned candids, have become so ubiquitous that it’s hard to avoid coming across one when…

When 17-year-old Anushk Mittal got really into memes in 2016, he searched for the perfect meme-only social media app. When he couldn’t find one, he decided to build the product himself. The result was Memeois, the first app built solely for…

Los Angeles — Every morning, beginning around 11 a.m., crowds of tweens and teenagers converge on the sleepy Los Angeles neighborhood of Beverly Grove and gather outside Jake Paul’s house. The mid-sized stucco duplex, also known as the “Team 10…

Over the past four months, I’ve developed a nagging habit online that I can’t seem to shake: I’m retweeting myself. Several times a day. Usually the retweets are photos, questions and links to stories I’ve written. Twitter recently revamped its iOS…

Jake Paul, a 20-year-old Disney star and “influencer” with nearly 25 million followers across social media, has been accused of turning his Los Angeles neighborhood into a “living hell” for the families that populate the area. Paul lives in a West…

No millennial attracts more mockery than the “thought leader.” These self-described experts, also known as brand consultants, travel the globe engaging in the debatable science of telling companies how a generation comprised of over 75 million…

Throughout 2017 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been on a cross-country trip throughout the U.S., trying to meet regular folks. He’s toured an auto factory in Detroit, gutted a fish in Alaska, explored a cattle ranch in South Dakota and more. On…

The parents of Isaiah Gonzalez, a Texas teen who livestreamed his own suicide over the weekend, said he did so as part of the deadly “Blue Whale” internet challenge. His body was discovered Saturday morning. The challenge, which originated in…

It’s been a tough few years. 2016 was arguably one of the worst years on record, and 2017 isn’t off to a great start. Recently, it’s never felt more like the collective internet wants to die. While glamorized suicide has reemerged in pop culture…

If you’ve been on the internet at all recently, you’ve probably encountered this dancing hot dog. The character has taken the online universe by storm on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit. The hot dog usually filmed dancing in strange and…

Over the past week you may have noticed a new character in your Twitter timeline: the emoji sheriff. These sheriffs are here to lay down the law on various topics represented by their emoji bodies. They’ve quickly become a popular meme among…

People have begun running their friends over with golf carts in an attempt to go viral. The trend started on July 2, when the popular Instagram account “Best Vines” posted a video of a child being run over by another child in a kiddie car with the…

A London-based restaurant chain is offering diners “Instagram kits” to help their #FoodPorn shine. The kits include a portable LED light, multi-device charger, clip-on wide-angle lens, tripod and a selfie stick, and are lent any patron who requests…

Snapchat unveiled a new update on Wednesday that allows users to add web links to their snaps. The move was praised by publishers and marketers who have long cried for the company to add the ability to drive traffic to their sites or to other…

CHICAGO — On Thursday morning at Facebook's first ever Facebook Communities Summit, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a fundamental shift in the company's mission before a crowd of about 300 leaders of Facebook's most powerful groups. "For the past 10…

On Wednesday, Snapchat released an update that allows users to share their locations and view friends' locations on a map. It's a new social feature called Snap Map. To access the map, navigate to the camera view and use two fingers for a pinch…