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Don't Swap Your Gas-Guzzler for an Electric Vehicle to Avoid High Fuel Prices

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Don't Swap Your Gas-Guzzler for an Electric Vehicle to Avoid High Fuel Prices

This story is part of Plugged In, CNET's hub for all things EV and the future of electrified mobility. From vehicle reviews to helpful hints and the latest industry news, we've got you covered.

There are plenty of great reasons to consider an electric vehicle. They usually offer stellar performance, they're smooth and quiet to drive, you can do much of your "refueling" at home (meaning you never have to visit a gas station unless you need snacks or a bathroom break) and they have zero tailpipe emissions. But despite their considerable advantages, EVs still aren't for everyone, and they don't always make the most economic sense.

If you tow earth-moving equipment or haul gravel for a living, you're probably going to want a heavy duty diesel-powered pickup, because today's EVs aren't going to cut it. Likewise, if you reside in an apartment and don't have a parking space, much less a garage with a Level 2 charger, an electric vehicle may be a hard sell. But what if you're looking for relief from high fuel prices? EVs cost way less to "refuel," though they are often quite expensive upfront.

Let's say you own a midrange, Lariat-trim, 2022 Ford F-150 with four-wheel drive, the lovely 2.7-liter EcoBoost twin-turbocharged V6 and a standard 10-speed automatic transmission, a popular pickup configuration in the US. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this big bad truck stickers at up to 19 mpg city, 24 mpg highway and 21 mpg combined; frightening figures compared to a Toyota Prius, but everything is relative. For a full-size truck, this rig is actually quite economical.

Electric vehicles offer instant torque for speedy acceleration. 

Nick Miotke/CNET

But what does it cost to fuel this full-size truck each year? Well, let's do a little math to figure it out. (Scary, I know!) According to AAA, at the time of writing the national average price for a gallon of regular-grade gasoline is about $4.24. This varies wildly from state to state: In California, the per-gallon price is around $5.88; on the opposite coast in Maryland, it's a much more reasonable $3.80. As reported by insurance comparison site The Zebra, Americans drive an average of 14,263 miles each year. To keep things simple, let's round up and say you travel 15,000 miles annually in your F-150 and average 21 mpg doing so (the EPA estimate). Dividing 15,000 by 21 means you're burning about 714 gallons of dinosaur juice per year. There are myriad variables on top of that, but we can simply multiply 714 by 4.24, which works out to an annual fuel bill of about $3,028. Ouch.

Now let's compare that traditional, combustion-powered pickup to the exciting, all-electric F-150 Lightning. In midrange XLT trim with the extended-range battery pack, this truck offers an estimated 320 miles of range. As for efficiency, this version of the Lightning should return 78 mpge city and 63 mpge highway, scores that result in a combined rating of 70 mpge. For reference, mpge is a way of quantifying how much energy is in a gallon of gasoline; it works out to about 33.7 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Next, according to the Energy Information Administration, the national average residential cost of electricity in the US was 13.72 cents per kWh in January 2022; we'll round up and say 14 cents per kWh. The Lightning's large battery pack clocks in at a husky 131 kilowatt-hours, so multiplying that by 0.14 means it would cost about $18.34 to completely recharge this truck from 0 to 100%. This is not something most people will ever do, because who wants to roll up to a charger with zero range? (Also, if you use public chargers, you'll probably be paying a lot more for the privilege.) Still, this is illustrative of how affordable it is to run an EV.

The Kia EV6 is one of our favorite new electric vehicles.

Antuan Goodwin/CNET

But now let's calculate how much it costs to run the Lightning for a year. We could base this off the EPA's estimated 48 kWh/100-mile efficiency figure, but let's do it just like we did with the standard F-150 above. Taking 15,000 miles per year and dividing that by 70 mpge, the combined "fuel economy" rating of this vehicle, gets you 214 "gallons" of electricity. Next, multiply 214 by 33.7, the equivalent number of kWh per gallon of gasoline and you get about 7,221 kWh. Multiply that figure by $0.14 and the result is roughly $1,011 in electricity per year. This is very close to the EPA's estimate of $950.

So, if it costs $3,028 to run the conventionally powered F-150 15,000 miles each year and just $1,011 to power the Lightning, the all-electric model is only one-third as expensive. The annual difference is a not insubstantial $2,017. What could you do with an extra two grand each year?

Combustion vs. Electric

	2022 Ford F-150 Lariat	2022 Ford F-150 Lightning XLT	2022 Honda Accord Sport	2022 Kia EV6 Wind
Vehicle Details	4WD, crew-cab body, 2.7-liter twin-turbo V6, 5.5-foot bed	4WD, crew-cab body, 5.5-foot bed, 131-kWh long-range battery	FWD, 1.5-liter turbo-four, continuously variable transmission	RWD, 77.4-kWh long-range battery
Range (miles)	Up to 546	320	Up to 488	310
City Efficiency (mpg or mpge)	19	78	30	134
Highway Efficiency (mpg or mpge)	24	63	38	101
Combined Efficiency (mpg or mpge)	21	70	33	117
EPA kWh/100 miles	N/A	48	N/A	29
As-Tested Price	$56,020	$74,269	$31,085	$48,255
Estimated Annual Fuel/Electricity Cost to Drive 15,000 Miles	$3,028	$1,011	$1,929	$605

What about payback (and I don't mean revenge) time? Well, that XLT-trim Lighting with the big battery and no options starts at $74,269, including $1,795 in destination fees. That's certainly pricey, but the top-shelf Platinum model is far richer, kicking off at nearly 93 grand. As for our old-fashioned Ford F-150 (a midrange, Lariat trim, crew-cab model with a 5.5-foot bed, four-wheel-drive and the standard equipment group), it stickers for around $56,020, also including $1,795 for delivery. Subtracting $56,020 from $74,269 means the Lightning is a whopping $18,249 pricier, more than the cost of a new Nissan Versa sedan.

Next, dividing the price delta between these trucks by the annual fuel/electricity cost difference means you'd have to own the Lightning for about nine years for your "fuel" savings to make up the price difference, though if you get a more expensive model, a higher-trim F-150 or the same variant with more options, the payback period compared to that all-electric Lighting will be shorter.

Not surprisingly, it's the same story with smaller vehicles. Take the lovely Kia EV6, for instance. This stylish and spacious hatchback is a great choice for folks that want to downsize from a truck and save a big chunk of change in the process. A long-range, Wind-trim, rear-drive EV6 offers 310 miles of range and stickers at 134 miles per gallon equivalent city, 101 mpge highway and 117 mpge combined. Calculating the EV6's efficiency like we did with the Lightning above reveals that the electricity needed to run this vehicle for 15,000 miles should cost around $605 per year, which is very close to the EPA's estimate of $550.

Despite the myriad benefits of owning an EV, sometimes it still makes more sense to keep your combustion-powered vehicle.

Steven Ewing/CNET

Comparing our miserly EV6 to a midrange Honda Accord Sport sedan, which is far more efficient than an F-150, is similarly revealing. With a 1.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine, a continuously variable transmission and a combined fuel economy rating of 33 mpg, you'd be spending about $1,928 on fuel to drive this Honda for 15,000 miles... nearly 3.2 times more than the Kia. However, including destination and delivery, the Accord is far cheaper at a totally reasonable $31,085 compared to the EV6's $48,255 price tag. It's a difference of $17,170, which is slightly less than the delta between the standard F-150 and the Lightning. 

Dividing that figure by $1,323, the annual price difference of running the Accord compared to the Kia, works out to a payback period of nearly 13 years. In this case, it may make more sense to keep on driving the Accord even if you nearly faint every time you fill the tank.

The entirety of this discussion presupposes you're focused on prioritizing personal finances above all other concerns. But there's a bigger picture to consider: We haven't even discussed the negative environmental impact that burning fossil fuels or digging up rare earth minerals has on climate change, let alone the many and varied downstream costs that come home to roost societally as a result. Those sorts of long-term communal costs are clearly beyond the scope of this article, but they deserve to be considered.

At the end of the day, there are plenty of great reasons to get an electric vehicle, but if you're thinking about swapping your internal combustion-powered car or truck for a new EV just to save money at the pump, make sure to do the math first -- especially if your current ride is paid for -- because plugging in and making a change may not make economic sense for you, even with fuel prices in the stratosphere.

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The Galaxy S21 lineup is here, with a $200 price cut, new design and S Pen support

The Galaxy S21 lineup is here, with a $200 price cut, new design and S Pen support

This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon.

Samsung's new Galaxy S21 lineup is here. And the new Galaxy S21, S21 Plus and S21 Ultra have plenty to attract would-be buyers, including new designs and $200 shaved off the starting price of their predecessors.

The South Korean electronics giant on Thursday, during its first virtual Unpacked event of the year, showed off its three new phones: the $800 Galaxy S21, the $1,000 Galaxy S21 Plus and the $1,200 Galaxy S21 Ultra. (In the UK, the S21 will start at £769, just £30 cheaper than the S20.) It also unveiled new $200 earbuds, called the Galaxy Buds Pro; $30 Tile-like Galaxy SmartTags that can track nonelectronic items like pets; and a $40 S Pen accessory. The event took place on the last day of this year's CES and more than a month earlier than normal. 

Samsung's Galaxy S21 lineup is packed with refinements to the cameras, displays and 5G capabilities. The new phones feature a redesign that accentuates the camera lenses on their backs while linking them with their metal frames, something Samsung calls "Contour Cut Camera" housing. The base amount of storage for all of the S21 models is 128GB, and Samsung boosted the photo and video capabilities for vloggers and others. 

The lower price is a nod to the realities of the world, with the coronavirus pandemic shutting down many global economies and eliminating millions of jobs. Smartphones, serving as a lifeline to friends and co-workers, remain one of the few essential gadgets. This is also one of the first phones in a few years that didn't introduce a brand new technology like 5G, which often justifies a premium. 

"In 2021, our top priority is to bring the benefit of technology to more people," TM Roh, the head of Samsung's mobile communication business, said in a statement, calling the Galaxy S21 series "the most powerful and versatile flagship lineup ever."

On the other end of the spectrum, the S21 Ultra is designed for people who want the "best of the best." It features a 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x display, Samsung's best camera of the S21 lineup with four back lenses, and Corning's scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and back. The S21 and S21 Plus have 6.2- and 6.7-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2x displays, respectively, and Gorilla Glass Victus on the front. The S21 Plus also has the glass on the back, while the regular S21 features a plastic polycarbonate backing. Both have three camera lenses on the back.

This year, Samsung has brought support for its S Pen, a hallmark of the Galaxy Note lineup, to its Galaxy S family for the first time. Of the three new phones, only the S21 Ultra works with the S Pen, and it comes as a separate accessory that costs $40 for just the pen or $70 when bundled with a specially designed case that stores the stylus. Users can't stow the S Pen away inside the S21 Ultra like they can with Note, but they can use their old Note styluses with the S21 Ultra. The new accessory doesn't work with gestures or many of the other features found in the Note's S Pen, which likely means the Note line isn't dead quite yet.

Samsung will introduce an S Pen Pro later this year, though, that has some of the Bluetooth-enabled features found in the Note's stylus, like gestures. Samsung didn't give a price or release date for the S Pen Pro. 

The new phones come as Samsung faces a tougher market for 5G phones. When the Galaxy S20 lineup hit the market a year ago, there still were relatively few 5G phones available, and they weren't cheap. Now competition is fierce. Prices for 5G phones go as low as $300 in the US, and virtually all companies sell 5G models. Every phone in Apple'siPhone 12 lineup from late 2020 came with 5G by default, something that was expected to help the technology go mainstream. At the same time, the world continues to grapple with a pandemic that's limiting budgets for new gadgets. 

Samsung made the decision to drop the starting price of its new phones by $200 because of a few factors. Components like 5G processors, displays and camera modules now cost less because Samsung has such a high volume of those parts in devices across its portfolio. The company also made some minor trade-offs in its S21 and S21 Plus devices, like lowering the base level of RAM to 8GB from 12GB. 

"For people who want the highest-end, Ultra experience, we still have that, and we're not sacrificing [the features] based on price point," Drew Blackard, Samsung Electronics America's vice president of product management, said in an interview ahead of Unpacked. "For people who want value and an amazing flagship experience at the same time, we still have a great offering for them with the S21. And then we've got something kind of in between for people who want a little bit of both."

The existence of the Ultra is a reminder that not everyone feels the impact of the pandemic equally.

"The people that are buying an S21 Ultra are not feeling the pressure of the pandemic," Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said. Samsung "could have decided that maybe [its] entry product was going to be cheaper but leave the two flagships more expensive. But it's not doing that." 

Preorders for the phones begin Thursday at 8 a.m. PT, and the phones hit stores on Jan. 29. The Galaxy Buds Pro are available Thursday on Samsung.com and will be at other retailers on Friday. People who preorder the phones get up to $200 in Samsung credit and also get a free Galaxy SmartTag. In addition, carriers are offering promotions, like AT&T's offer for up to $800 off when trading in an eligible device and purchasing the new phone on a 30-month installment plan.

Say cheese

One of the biggest differentiators for the Galaxy S21 Ultra over the S21 and S21 Plus is the camera. The pricier device comes with four cameras on the back -- ultra-wide, wide and dual tele-lenses -- and an upgraded 108-megapixel sensor. That allows users to capture 12-bit HDR photos with 64 times richer color data and more than three times wider dynamic range. In other words, sharper, better photos. 

"When designing the Galaxy S21, we thought about how people use their cameras today," Stephen Hawke, director of product management for Samsung Electronics America, said during a briefing with reporters ahead of Unpacked. "For instance, there are those fleeting moments when you just don't have time to think about the perfect mode or setting to capture a shot, let alone switch to recording video. We need our phones to do all this for us. With a Galaxy S21, you get photos and videos with the simplicity of point and shoot."

When it comes to video, the Ultra enables users to shoot in 4K at 60fps across all lenses, including those on the front, meaning they can shift to different perspectives with the same quality. A new feature called Director's View lets you see a scene from multiple perspectives simultaneously, while Vlogger View lets you shoot with the front and rear cameras at the same time. Pro Mode lets users capture images in a 12-bit raw file format to make it easier to edit the images later. 

The Galaxy S21 Ultra has four camera and laser autofocus on the back.

Drew Evans/CNET

The S20 Ultra features 100x Space Zoom, like its predecessor, but in this year's phone is a new feature called Zoom Lock that keeps the camera focused on an object for a clearer picture. Samsung said it provides "tripod-like stability with an AI-powered stabilizer." Space Zoom on the S21 Ultra is powered by Samsung's first dual-tele-lens system, which is one optical 3X zoom for midrange and one optical 10x zoom for long-range. Both have dual pixel autofocus to capture ultra clear shots. 

Low-light photography also gets a boost in the Galaxy S21 Ultra. Samsung improved its Bright Night sensor and Night Mode to reduce noise and capture challenging shots like dimly lit rooms or landscapes at night. 

The Galaxy S21 and S21 Plus both have three rear cameras in ultra-wide, wide and tele-lens. They feature 30X Space Zoom with Zoom Lock, as well as Director's View and Vlogger View. Portrait Mode gets a boost from AI, which provides options for virtual studio light and effects to make the subject pop from the frame -- with both the rear cameras and the front-facing selfie lens. 

Samsung has improved its 8K Snap feature to let users grab clear images from 8K video footage, and its Super Steady Video records at an "improved" 60fps. The new Galaxy S21 phones also feature Multi-Mic Recording when paired with the new Galaxy Buds Pro, letting users record with their camera mic and earbuds mic at the same time. 

What's inside

All phones in the Galaxy S21 lineup in the US come with Qualcomm's new Snapdragon 888 processor and integrated 5G modem. The new Snapdragon chip is more effective at connecting to all flavors of 5G, from the slower, more reliable nationwide variant offered by all the US carriers, or the speedier but more finicky millimeter wave version touted by Verizon, and boasts peak download speeds of 7.5 Gbps and upload speeds of 3Gbps.

The new processor with its integrated modem is "really important," Technalysis Research analyst Bob O'Donnell said. By being able to combine different types of 5G airwaves together, there's a "huge potential increase in performance in 5G," he said. 

The Galaxy S21 Plus gets a bigger battery -- 4,800 mAh versus 4,500 in the S20 Plus -- while the S21 stays steady with 4,000 mAh and the S21 Ultra retains its 5,000 mAH battery. 

Also under the hood, or rather the display, is an improved fingerprint sensor from Qualcomm. The chip giant on Monday unveiled the second generation of its 3D Sonic Sensor that's 50% faster and 77% bigger than the previous generation, making it easier for people to to unlock their devices using their fingerprints. Along with making it simpler to know where to place a finger, the larger size also allows the technology to collect 1.7 times more biometric data, speeding up the unlock time. 

Samsung also included ultra wideband, or UWB, technology in the Galaxy S21 Plus and S21 Ultra. The technology lets a user pinpoint the exact location of phones, key fobs and tracking tags, helping them find lost dogs or automatically unlock their car. UWB calculates precise locations by measuring how long it takes super-short radio pulses to travel between devices. (Note: It's different from the Ultra Wideband terminology Verizon uses for its mmWave 5G network.)

Samsung will eventually have UWB in its Galaxy SmartTags, but the first version available will use Bluetooth Low Energy. The company didn't yet say when the UWB version will be available or how much it will cost, but it sees big opportunities for UWB in the future, especially as it tries to control the smart home. 

"We recently launched SmartThings Find to help you quickly and easily locate your Galaxy devices, even when offline," KJ Kim, chief technology officer and head of mobile R&D for Samsung, said in a statement. "We took this a step further with Galaxy S21 Plus and S21 Ultra, which use expanded UWB capabilities to utilize the AR finder so you can send virtual messages to other Galaxy users during your search."

He added that Samsung has formed partnerships with "major car companies" to provide "a next-generation car experience starting this summer."

And out

The phones in the Galaxy S21 lineup all feature a matte finish that helps minimize fingerprints. In the US, the Galaxy S21 Ultra comes in phantom black and phantom silver, and it has four possible configurations. The silver only comes with 128GB of storage and 12GB RAM, while the black has 128GB or 256GB of storage with 12GB RAM, and a monster 512GB model with 16GB RAM. 

The S21 Plus and S21 have some brighter color options, including phantom violet and phantom pink, the latter of which is only in the S21. There are two storage options for those phones, either 128GB or 256GB, both with 8GB RAM.

Samsung's Galaxy S21 (left), Galaxy S21 Plus (center) and Galaxy S21 Ultra hit stores Jan. 29.

Drew Evans/CNET

Samsung's Bixby voice assistant again makes an appearance in the S21 lineup, but its button can be remapped to other tasks. It's also integrated into SmartThings, Samsung's smart home control app.

The S21 Ultra has some advantages when it comes to the screen. All three use Samsung's Infinity-O Displays, are HDR10+ certified and have an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate that automatically adjusts based on what the users is doing, but the Ultra has a resolution of 3,200x1,440, while the other two are 2,400x1,080. 

The Ultra also has a Quad HD+ display -- versus flat, full HD+ in the S21 and S21 Plus -- and "the best, brightest display ever," Samsung's Hawke said. He noted the picture is 25% brighter than in the S21 and S21 Plus. The Ultra also has a 50% improved contrast ratio to deliver clear, immersive images, even when outdoors, and a brighter screen

"This is going to make content really pop, especially high dynamic range content," said Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart. "People will be able to use it outdoors without [the screen] getting washed out."

For Samsung, the hope is that its lineup has something for everyone. 

"When it comes to shopping for new smartphones, first and foremost, people want choice," Samsung's Blackard said. "That is both in terms of features and in terms of price points. So we're really committed to driving a range of different devices that offer what we think is that diversity of needs that's in the market today."

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TikTok Parents Are Taking Advantage of Their Kids. It Needs to Stop

TikTok Parents Are Taking Advantage of Their Kids. It Needs to Stop

Rachel Barkman's son started accurately identifying different species of mushroom at the age of 2. Together they'd go out into the mossy woods near her home in Vancouver and forage. When it came to occasionally sharing in her TikTok videos her son's enthusiasm and skill for picking mushrooms, she didn't think twice about it -- they captured a few cute moments, and many of her 350,000-plus followers seemed to like it.

That was until last winter, when a female stranger approached them in the forest, bent down and addressed her son, then 3, by name and asked if he could show her some mushrooms. 

"I immediately went cold at the realization that I had equipped complete strangers with knowledge of my son that puts him at risk," Barkman said in an interview this past June. 

This incident, combined with research into the dangers of sharing too much, made her reevaluate her son's presence online. Starting at the beginning of this year, she vowed not to feature his face in future content. 

"My decision was fueled by a desire to protect my son, but also to protect and respect his identity and privacy, because he has a right to choose the way he is shown to the world," she said.

These kinds of dangers have cropped up alongside the rise in child influencers, such as 10-year-old Ryan Kaji of Ryan's World, who has almost 33 million subscribers, with various estimates putting his net worth in the multiple tens of millions of dollars. Increasingly, brands are looking to use smaller, more niche, micro- and nano-influencers, developing popular accounts on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube to reach their audiences. And amid this influencer gold rush there's a strong incentive for parents, many of whom are sharing photos and videos of their kids online anyway, to get in on the action. 

The increase in the number of parents who manage accounts for their kids -- child influencers' parents are often referred to as "sharents" -- opens the door to exploitation or other dangers. With almost no industry guardrails in place, these parents find themselves in an unregulated wild west. They're the only arbiters of how much exposure their children get, how much work their kids do, and what happens to money earned through any content they feature in.

"Once public engagement happens, it is very hard, if not impossible, to really put meaningful boundaries around it."

Leah Plunkett, author, Sharenthood

Instagram didn't respond to multiple requests for comment about whether it takes any steps to safeguard child influencers. A representative for TikTok said the company has a zero-tolerance approach to sexual exploitation and pointed to policies to protect accounts of users under the age of 16. But these policies don't apply to parents posting with or on behalf of their children. YouTube didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

"When parents share about their children online, they act as both the gatekeeper -- the one tasked with protecting a child's personal information -- and as the gate opener," said Stacey Steinberg, a professor of law at the University of Florida and author of the book Growing Up Shared. As the gate opener, "they benefit, gaining both social and possibly financial capital by their online disclosures."

The reality is that some parents neglect the gatekeeping and leave the gate wide open for any internet stranger to walk through unchecked. And walk through they do.

Meet the sharents

Mollie is an aspiring dancer and model with an Instagram following of 122,000 people. Her age is ambiguous but she could be anywhere from 11-13, meaning it's unlikely she's old enough to meet the social media platform's minimum age requirement. Her account is managed by her father, Chris, whose own account is linked in her bio, bringing things in line with Instagram's policy. (Chris didn't respond to a request for comment.)

You don't have to travel far on Instagram to discover accounts such as Mollie's, where grown men openly leer at preteen girls. Public-facing, parent-run accounts dedicated to dancers and gymnasts -- who are under the age of 13 and too young to have accounts of their own -- number in the thousands. (To protect privacy, we've chosen not to identify Mollie, which isn't her real name, or any other minors who haven't already appeared in the media.)

Parents use these accounts, which can have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of followers, to raise their daughters' profiles by posting photos of them posing and demonstrating their flexibility in bikinis and leotards. The comment sections are often flooded with sexualized remarks. A single, ugly word appeared under one group shot of several young girls in bikinis: "orgy."

Some parents try to contain the damage by limiting comments on posts that attract too much attention. The parent running one dancer account took a break from regular scheduling to post a pastel-hued graphic reminding other parents to review their followers regularly. "After seeing multiple stories and posts from dance photographers we admire about cleaning up followers, I decided to spend time cleaning," read the caption. "I was shocked at how many creeps got through as followers."

But "cleaning up" means engaging in a never-ending game of whack-a-mole to keep unwanted followers at bay, and it ignores the fact that you don't need to be following a public account to view the posts. Photos of children are regularly reposted on fan or aggregator accounts, over which parents have no control, and they can also be served up through hashtags or through Instagram's discovery algorithms.

The simple truth is that publicly posted content is anyone's for the taking. "Once public engagement happens, it is very hard, if not impossible, to really put meaningful boundaries around it," said Leah Plunkett, author of the book Sharenthood and a member of the faculty at Harvard Law School.

This concern is at the heart of the current drama concerning the TikTok account @wren.eleanor. Wren is an adorable blonde 3-year-old girl, and the account, which has 17.3 million followers, is managed by her mother, Jacquelyn, who posts videos almost exclusively of her child. 

"As kids get older, they naturally want to define themselves on their own terms, and if parents have overshared about them in public spaces, that can be difficult."

Stacey Steinberg, author, Growing Up Shared

Concerned onlookers have pointed Jacquelyn toward comments that appear to be predatory, and have warned her that videos in which Wren is in a bathing suit, pretending to insert a tampon, or eating various foodstuffs have more watches, likes and saves than other content. They claim her reluctance to stop posting in spite of their warnings demonstrates she's prioritizing the income from her account over Wren's safety. Jacquelyn didn't respond to several requests for comment.

Last year, the FBI ran a campaign in which it estimated that there were 500,000 predators online every day -- and that's just in the US. Right now, across social platforms, we're seeing the growth of digital marketplaces that hinge on child exploitation, said Plunkett. She doesn't want to tell other parents what to do, she added, but she wants them to be aware that there's "a very real, very pressing threat that even innocent content that they put up about their children is very likely to be repurposed and find its way into those marketplaces."

Naivete vs. exploitation

When parent influencers started out in the world of blogging over a decade ago, the industry wasn't exploitative in the same way it is today, said Crystal Abidin, an academic from Curtin University who specializes in internet cultures. When you trace the child influencer industry back to its roots, what you find is parents, usually mothers, reaching out to one another to connect. "It first came from a place of care among these parent influencers," she said.

Over time, the industry shifted, centering on children more and more as advertising dollars flowed in and new marketplaces formed. 

Education about the risks hasn't caught up, which is why people like Sarah Adams, a Vancouver mom who runs the TikTok account @mom.uncharted, have taken it upon themselves to raise the flag on those risks. "My ultimate goal is just have parents pause and reflect on the state of sharenting right now," she said. 

But as Mom Uncharted, Adams is also part of a wider unofficial and informal watchdog group of internet moms and child safety experts shedding light on the often disturbing way in which some parents are, sometimes knowingly, exploiting their children online.

The troubling behavior uncovered by Adams and others suggests there's more than naivete at play -- specifically when parents sign up for and advertise services that let people buy "exclusive" or "VIP" access to content featuring their children.

Some parent-run social media accounts that Adams has found linked out to a site called SelectSets, which lets the parents sell photo sets of their children. One account offered sets with titles such as "2 little princesses." SelectSets has described the service as "a classy and professional" option for influencers to monetize content, allowing them to "avoid the stigma often associated with other platforms."

Over the last few weeks, SelectSets has gone offline and no owner could be traced for comment.

In addition to selling photos, many parent-run dancer accounts, Mollie's included, allow strangers to send the dancers swimwear and underwear from the dancers' Amazon wish lists, or money to "sponsor" them to "realize their dream" or support them on their "journeys."

While there's nothing technically illegal about anything these parents are doing, they're placing their children in a gray area that's not explicitly sexual but that many people would consider to be sexualized. The business model of using an Amazon wish list is one commonly embraced by online sugar babies who accept money and gifts from older men.

"Our Conditions of Use and Sale make clear that users of Amazon Services must be 18 or older or accompanied by a parent or guardian," said an Amazon spokesperson in a statement. "In rare cases where we are made aware that an account has been opened by a minor without permission, we close the account."

Adams says it's unlikely to be other 11-year-olds sending their pocket money to these girls so they attend their next bikini modeling shoot. "Who the fuck do you think is tipping these kids?" she said. "It's predators who are liking the way you exploit your child and giving them all the content they need."

Turning points

Plunkett distinguishes between parents who are casually sharing content that features their kids and parents who are sharing for profit, an activity she describes as "commercial sharenting." 

"You are taking your child, or in some cases, your broader family's private or intimate moments, and sharing them digitally, in the hope of having some kind of current or future financial benefit," she said.

No matter the parent's hopes or intentions, any time children appear in public-facing social media content, that content has the potential to go viral, and when it does, parents have a choice to either lean in and monetize it or try to rein it in.

During Abidin's research -- in which she follows the changing activities of the same influencers over time -- she's found that many influencer parents reach a turning point. It can be triggered by something as simple as other children at school being aware of their child's celebrity or their child not enjoying it anymore, or as serious as being involved in a car chase while trying to escape fans (an occurrence recounted to Abidin by one of her research subjects). 

"Frankly, this is all just a large social experiment."

Sarah Adams, who runs the TikTok account @mom.uncharted

One influencer, Katy Rose Pritchard, who has almost 92,000 Instagram followers, decided to stop showing her children's faces on social media this year after she discovered they were being used to create role-playing accounts. People had taken photos of her children that she'd posted and used them to create fictional profiles of children for personal gratification, which she said in a post made her feel "violated."

All these examples highlight the different kinds of threats sharents are exposing their children to. Plunkett describes three "buckets" of risk tied to publicly sharing content online. The first and perhaps most obvious are risks involving criminal and/or dangerous behavior, posing a direct threat to the child. 

The second are indirect risks, where content posted featuring children can be taken, reused, analyzed or repurposed by people with nefarious motives. Consequences include anything from bullying to harming future job prospects to millions of people having access to children's medical information -- a common trope on YouTube is a video with a melodramatic title and thumbnail involving a child's trip to the hospital, in which influencer parents with sick kids will document their health journeys in blow-by-blow detail.

The third set of risks are probably the least talked about, but they involve potential harm to a child's sense of self. If you're a child influencer, how you see yourself as a person and your ability to develop into an adult is "going to be shaped and in some instances impeded by the fact that your parents are creating this public performance persona for you," said Plunkett.

Often children won't be aware of what this public persona looks like to the audience and how it's being interpreted. They may not even be aware it exists. But at some point, as happened with Barkman, the private world in which content is created and the public world in which it's consumed will inevitably collide. At that point, the child will be thrust into the position of confronting the persona that's been created for them.

"As kids get older, they naturally want to define themselves on their own terms, and if parents have overshared about them in public spaces, that can be difficult, as many will already have notions about who that child is or what that child may like," said Steinberg. "These notions, of course, may be incorrect. And some children may value privacy and wish their life stories were theirs -- not their parents -- to tell."

Savannah and Cole LaBrant have documented nearly everything about their children's lives.

Jim Spellman/WireImage

This aspect of having their real-life stories made public is a key factor distinguishing children working in social media from children working in the professional entertainment industry, who usually play fictional roles. Many children who will become teens and adults in the next couple of decades will have to reckon with the fact that their parents put their most vulnerable moments on the internet for the world to see -- their meltdowns, their humiliation, their most personal moments. 

One influencer family, the LaBrants, were forced to issue a public apology in 2019 after they played an April Fools' Day Joke on their 6-year-old daughter Everleigh. The family pretended they were giving her dog away, eliciting tears throughout the video. As a result, many viewers felt that her parents, Sav and Cole, had inflicted unnecessary distress on her.

In the past few months, parents who film their children during meltdowns to demonstrate how to calm them down have found themselves the subject of ire on parenting Subreddits. Their critics argue that it's unfair to post content of children when they're at their most vulnerable, as it shows a lack of respect for a child's right to privacy.

Privacy-centric parenting

Even the staunchest advocates of child privacy know and understand the parental instinct of wanting to share their children's cuteness and talent with the world. "Our kids are the things usually we're the most proud of, the most excited about," said Adams. "It is normal to want to show them off and be proud of them."

When Adams started her account two years ago, she said her views were seen as more polarizing. But increasingly people seem to relate and share her concerns. Most of these are "average parents," naive to the risks they're exposing their kids to, but some are "commercial sharents" too.

Even though they don't always see eye to eye, the private conversations she's had with parents of children (she doesn't publicly call out anyone) with massive social media presences have been civil and productive. "I hope it opens more parents' eyes to the reality of the situation, because frankly this is all just a large social experiment," she said. "And it's being done on our kids. And that just doesn't seem like a good idea."

For Barkman, it's been "surprisingly easy, and hugely beneficial" to stop sharing content about her son. She's more present, and focuses only on capturing memories she wants to keep for herself.

"When motherhood is all consuming, it sometimes feels like that's all you have to offer, so I completely understand how we have slid into oversharing our children," she said. "It's a huge chunk of our identity and our hearts."

But Barkman recognizes the reality of the situation, which is that she doesn't know who's viewing her content and that she can't rely on tech platforms to protect her son. "We are raising a generation of children who have their entire lives broadcast online, and the newness of social media means we don't have much data on the impacts of that reality on children," she said. "I feel better acting with caution and letting my son have his privacy so that he can decide how he wants to be perceived by the world when he's ready and able."

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Apple Watch: It's been 5 years since my original review, and it holds up

Apple Watch: It's been 5 years since my original review, and it holds up

I'd love to say that when I first put on the Apple Watch, I'd never seen anything like it before. But of course, that's not true. By late 2014 I'd been surrounded by smartwatches for a few years. So when Apple announced it was making its own watch, my thought (as so often with Apple) was: finally.

The first smartwatch I reviewed at CNET was the Martian Passport, an analog watch that could make phone calls. It sounds so primitive now, but it was cool in early 2013. The Pebble Watch followed, and the Steel version became my favorite: It was like a Casio watch turned into a useful little pager-assistant. It was simple and had long battery life, and it was great.

There were others, too: Samsung's first smartwatches were ambitious (a camera?). Google's first Android Wear watches arrived in 2014. Meanwhile, there were Fitbits and Jawbone trackers galore.

I say this to lay the groundwork for the Apple Watch and what its impact was. Like the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone, the Apple Watch wasn't the first smartwatch... but it made the biggest footprint. It was another step validating that a world of wearables was here to stay. 

I was able to wear the Apple Watch a month before it went on sale. I spent a ton of time with it, getting used to both how it handled phone calls, and the activity tracking rings. I looked at my heart rate measurements. I accidentally ordered an Xbox One with an early Amazon app.

The Watch was, much like the first iPhone, sometimes feature-limited. But it also had some features that already stood out.

My original review was updated a year later, which you can read here. Some parts have changed, clearly, and Apple has updated the OS. But I'll comment on what I wrote then, and how I felt, and how that's evolved. Quotes from the original review are in italics.

The gold Apple Watch, way back when.

James Martin/CNET

An excellent design, with luxury overtones

Apple wants you to think of the Apple Watch as fine jewelry. Maybe that's a stretch, but in terms of craftsmanship, there isn't a more elegantly made piece of wearable tech. Look at the Apple Watch from a distance, and it might appear unremarkable in its rectangular simplicity compared with bolder, circular Android Wear watches. It's clearly a revamped sort of iPod Nano. But get closer, and you can see the seamless, excellent construction.

The first Apple Watch came in aluminum, steel and ramped all the way up to a gold model costing more than $10,000. Compared to other smartwatches, it screamed luxury.

Certain touches felt luxurious, too: the fine-feeling Digital Crown, which spun ever so smoothly like a real watch part, for instance. The OLED display, which was a first for an Apple product, looked crisp and bright.

The most amazing part, maybe, were the watch bands. Apple created a really nice series of specially designed straps, from a steel link to a clever magnetic Milanese mesh that were extremely expensive and impressively engineered. 

Its watch face designs were great, too, and they integrated some information from the iPhone that aimed to add at-a-glance ease of use. There was a Mickey Mouse watch face that danced! The Solar face showing sunrise and sunset, and the astronomy face that showed planetary alignments and moon phases, felt like magic. I wanted more, but Apple's assortment of watch faces was limited, and it didn't allow for third-party watch face design. That's still the case now.

A lot of the Apple Watch reminded me of the strides Apple began with the iPod Nano, which also had watch mode... and a Mickey Mouse watch face.

Sarah Tew

New technologies at first: fantastic haptics, a force-sensitive display

All Apple Watches have a new S1 processor made by Apple, that "taptic" haptic engine and a force-sensitive and very bright OLED display, which is differently sized on the 38mm and 42mm models. The watch has its own accelerometer, gyrometer and heart-rate monitor, but no onboard GPS. It uses Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11b/g/n 2.4GHz Wi-Fi to connect to your phone or your home network. There's a built-in speaker and microphone, but no headphone jack.

As I wore the watch on the first day, I felt a rippling buzz and a metallic ping: one of my credit card payments showed up as a message. Apple's "Taptic Engine" and a built-in speaker convey both a range of advanced taps and vibrations, plus sounds. Unlike the buzz in a phone or most wearables, these haptics feel sharper: a single tap, or a ripple of them, or thumps.

Sometimes the feelings are too subtle: I don't know if I felt them or imagined them. My wrists might be numbed from too many smart devices. I set my alerts to "prominent" and got sharper nudges on my wrist.

The first watch introduced some ideas that eventually made their way to other iPhones. A "taptic engine" delivered on some amazingly refined vibration effects, ranging from a purr to a ping to a gentle tap. These were way ahead of what anybody else was doing -- and they weren't just a gimmick. The notification types associated with unique vibrations felt distinct. Sometimes, the vibrating taps on the first Watch weren't as powerful as I wanted. But with later updates, the haptics made parts of the interface seem real: virtual wheels, clicking as if moving with invisible gears.

The more advanced haptics made their way to the iPhone next, making us used to them now. Other phones, game consoles like the Nintendo Switch, and VR accessories, have evolved haptics since, but the Apple Watch was the first mainstream device that upped the haptics game.

Force Touch was another wild idea: Apple made its watch display force-sensitive, meaning a deeper press could work like pushing a button. Though this idea was refined further into 3D Touch on the iPhone 6S, 3D Touch was a technology that never became as necessary as expected, and current iPhone models have dropped the pressure-sensitive display tech completely.

The Apple Watch still has Force Touch, though, and I think it always will.

Digital Touch: I never used it much after that.

Sarah Tew

Lots of features. Too many features?

As you can see, this is a lot of stuff. Did I have fun using the watch? Yes, mostly, but there are so many features that I felt a little lost at times. There are so many ways to interact: swiping, touching, pressing harder into the display, a button and a clickable digital crown-wheel. Plus, there's Siri. Do I swipe, or click, or force touch or speak? Sometimes I didn't know where an app menu was. Or, I'd find getting back to an app I just had open would require an annoying series of crown clicks, swiping through apps, then opening the app again.

There's a reason I used the word "complicated" to describe my feelings using that first Apple Watch. Setting up bits of information, called complications, was slow and not always intuitive. Apps took a while to load, and were sometimes so slow that it was easier to check my phone instead. Quick glances and notifications, and phone calls, were fine. Apple Pay on the watch was clever, but would I use it? I wished the watch had more battery life.

I didn't like the overcomplicated feel. The design of the OS, and the card-like swappable mini-view apps that used to be on the Watch like a dock, changed over time. It's gotten better since.

Storing music on the watch, while it took a while to sync, was easier than attempts on Samsung Gear or Android Wear. Of course, I had to hunt for a good pair of Bluetooth headphones to connect with the watch.

Today I still forget to dive into and make the most of the apps on the watch. I just dusted off Walkie Talkie: it's cool. There's noise monitoring. One app lets me remote control my iPhone camera, which has been a huge help for my stay-at-home self-shot videos. The Remote app helps me when I lose the Apple TV remote every other day. 

Third-party apps, and the grid of options? It turns out I don't use them much at all. I don't dig down deep into the layers of functions. I prefer what's on the surface: watch faces, and their readouts. But I've come to appreciate the watch's surprising number of options and settings. It's better than not having them at all.

The rings were the beginning.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Fitness: The ring idea was just the beginning

The Apple Watch doesn't work any fitness miracles that the rest of the wearable world hasn't already invented, and it doesn't ship with any new magical sensors that change the game. But the Apple-made integrated fitness apps, Activity and Workout, are far and away the best fitness apps on any existing smartwatch that isn't a dedicated "fitness watch" (Samsung Gear, Android Wear, Pebble and the like). A clever three-ring method of tracking daily activity, which simultaneously measures and rewards daily calorie burn, active exercise and standing up, feels like a fusion of rewards and metrics seen on the Nike FuelBand, Jawbone Up, Fitbit and others. 

I appreciated Apple's complete-the-ring motivational activity tracker, which felt inspired by wearables like the Nike FuelBand (not surprising, since Apple's head of fitness, Jay Blahnik, arrived from Nike). For the red ring's daily goals, it's great. It felt too easy to complete the blue Stand ring, and it still does.

There are tons of fitness advancements Apple has made on the Watch in the last five years: GPS, resting heart rate, workout controls, social sharing, third-party app integration, swimming, modes for accessibility, activity trends -- and I haven't even discussed Apple's massive health aspirations like adding ECG, checking for falls, monitoring elevated or irregular heart rate or women's health tracking. There is some form of coaching and motivation, too. But I'd still love to see more of that. I hit a wall when trying to be fit, and there's only so much watches seem to help.

The first Apple Watch was more of a Fitbit. Now, it's more of a health companion. Those two worlds still feel like they need to dovetail and grow. There are missing features, too, like sleep tracking, which feels like the inevitable next step.

You still need an iPhone, just like in 2015.

Sarah Tew

It was, and still is, an iPhone accessory

Much like most other smartwatches, the Apple Watch isn't a standalone device -- it's a phone accessory. Android Wear, Samsung Gear, Pebble and others work the same way. But here, you must own an iPhone 5 or later to use the Watch. A few Apple Watch functions work away from the phone, but the watch primarily works alongside the phone as an extension, a second screen and basically another part of your iOS experience. It's a symbiote.

One thing I noted back then was that you needed an iPhone to use the Apple Watch. Unlike other wearables that can pair with Android or iOS, or even sync with a computer, the Apple Watch was always designed to live symbiotically with the iPhone.

That's still the case now. Even with independent cellular options, and an on-watch App Store, you can't use the Watch without pairing to an iPhone. And it still won't work with Android. It's a shame, because a fully standalone watch could be a really helpful tool for many people who don't have iPhones, and it could even be a phone alternative (for kids, maybe).

Apple's AirPods created a gadget trinity where the Watch, the iPhone and AirPods can all work seamlessly together. But that trinity is an expensive one. The entry price of the Apple Watch has dropped, at least. But it feels like an extension of the iPhone more than its own device, even now.

The Apple Watch Series 5: much better, with a few similarities.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Today: the best watch in a war of attrition

You don't need an Apple Watch. In many ways, it's a toy: an amazing little do-it-all, a clever invention, a possibly time-saving companion, a wrist-worn assistant. It's also mostly a phone accessory for now. In the months and years to come, that may change: with Apple's assortment of iPads, Macs, Apple TV and who knows what else to come, the watch could end up being a remote and accessory to many things. Maybe it'll be the key to unlock a world of smart appliances, cars and connected places. In that type of world, a smartwatch could end up feeling utterly essential.

I think back to what the Apple Watch was competing against back then: Jawbone, Pebble, Fitbit, Google's Android Wear, Samsung's watches, the Microsoft Band. A lot of competitors are gone now. Fitbit was acquired by Google. Samsung still has watches. Garmin makes lots of dedicated fitness watches. There are still plenty of more affordable relative newcomers, too.

The original Apple Watch, with the Pebble Steel, Moto 360 and the original iPod Nano with wristband (clockwise from top left).

Sarah Tew

In a field of fewer alternatives, the Apple Watch's consistent addition of new features and ongoing performance improvements has made it the best option. It's Apple's commitment to gradual improvements that has made it a stand-out watch now, especially compared to the struggles of Google's Wear OS.

The Apple Watch is still an iPhone accessory. And it's still not an essential product. But it's become a really fluid and useful device, one with lots of key upgrades that work, and one that's a lot easier to use.

What's the best smartwatch now? The Apple Watch. That doesn't mean I don't want to see improvements: battery life, sleep tracking, a watch face store and most importantly, Android support and true standalone function. If the last five years are any indication, Apple will tackle these problems on its own... time.

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