TikTok Jayaissance and After-Prom Kings

Justin Bieber is teasing a SKYLRK phone; Role Model got Lena Dunham addicted to Zyn; Sydney Sweeney’s lingerie brand Syrn is in crisis; and we’re getting a second season of YA hit drama Sterling Point.

HOW TEEN ‘AFTER-PROM’ KINGS IN LA MONETIZED THE HIGH SCHOOL RAGER, wired
Jack Schwartz, the 21-year-old founder of party promotion app MyPlots, has turned LA’s teen party scene into a booming business. MyPlots takes a 20% cut of ticket sales, and while users — of which there are more than a million — technically need to be 18, “people find ways around that.” Schwartz got his start throwing parties as a freshman at Palisades Charter High School, where the average neighborhood home price tops $3 million. “He was like The Great Gatsby,” says Zane Harwin, a former classmate who’s now a marketer for the company. “That’s what we would all call him.” The appeal of MyPlots, which is currently trying to raise $10 million from angel investors, is not the tech so much as the user base: cool teens with “their parents’ credit card on their phone” who are “absent-mindedly spending a lot of money.”

PARENTS ARE PAYING $95,000 FOR GAP YEARS TO GIVE THEIR KIDS AN EDGE, bloomberg
As parents (and kids!) lose faith in college as an institution, premium gap years are on the rise, with high-touch programs costing up to six figures. Natalia Bertran spent about $80,000 sending her older son on an eight-month Baret Scholars trip, and is deferring her younger son’s first year at Purdue to do the same. “I can guarantee he learned more that year than in a year of university,” she said of the itinerary, which included activities like bungee jumping near Victoria Falls, visiting the Brazilian bank Itaú Unibanco, and coding an app. “It was of course expensive,” she added. “But it was reasonable based on what they got.” Gap-year consultant Julia Rogers calls it “a boutique experience that you’re getting for less than college.”

GEN Z IS OVER DATING APPS. THIS 403% SURGE REVEALS WHAT THEY’RE DOING INSTEAD, fastcompany
Young people are meeting partners at hobby-based events rather than on dating apps, according to new Eventbrite research. (So much for “hobbyamory,” the trend the Times wrote about a few weeks ago in which young singles were forgoing dating in favor of pursuing hobbies.) Trivia nights with “meeting-intent” language are up 403% year-over-year, mahjong gatherings are up 235%, and birdwatching meetups are up 131%. “For a long time, people kept dating in one box and hobbies in another,” said Andrea Parodi, Eventbrite’s general manager. “What we’re seeing is that line starting to dissolve.” For those maxed out on hobbymaxxing, I’m very charmed by D8 Time, a roving singles-night–turned–speed-dating event that’s been popping up at bars across the city; one of the founders, Zoë Zelken, is joining me on an upcoming panel! Their next event is Monday.

‘I DON’T WANT TO SPEND TIME SCROLLING’: 7 KIDS ON HOW THEY USE TECH, wirecutter
A fascinating look into the tech habits of Gen Alpha: Auggie, 11, asked his mom for screen time restrictions after realizing he was “doing slop all day,” and prefers his cellular-free old iPhone because “I don’t get any notifications” when hanging with friends. He built a workout site called Fit Kitty with the help of AI and runs a YouTube channel his parents vetted. Roland, 12, attends online school and FaceTimes his long-distance best friend daily over Minecraft, while Archer, 13, doesn’t have a phone and left a friend’s house after the friend ignored him for a card game app for 20 minutes.

THE JAY-Z RESURGENCE HAS REACHED TIKTOK, rollingstone
Jay-Z’s 2013 track “Tom Ford” has become a TikTok hit with young viewers 13 years later. A 23-year-old streamer named Raud started opening his streams with an absurdist dance to the song after buying a Tom Ford suit for Streamer Prom; four of his recent posts using the track have gotten more than 550,000 likes, and the sound has appeared in more than 10,000 videos. “Tom Ford,” which peaked at No. 39 on the Hot 100 in 2013, crossed 100 million Spotify streams this month. This “Jayaissance,” as Rolling Stone dubbed it, coincides with the rapper’s anniversary shows at Yankee Stadium, after which Reasonable Doubt streams jumped 94% to more than 2 million and The Blueprint rose 118% to 2.4 million.

WHY DISNEY+ IS LEANING HARDER ON MILLENNIAL NOSTALGIA THAN EVER, thewrap
Disney+ is doubling down on millennial nostalgia as a strategy to win over Gen Alpha through their sentimental parents. The Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special, which Miley Cyrus herself pitched to the studio, pulled 6.3 million views in three days and drove a nearly 1,000% jump in viewing of the show’s catalog that week, while the Malcolm in the Middle revival led to a 107% bump for the original. Pop culture historian Gabrielle Moss says that millennials are uniquely receptive to this kind of throwback programming because they’re “the first generation who came of age surrounded by reboots,” and now they're passing the preference down to their kids.

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