Thank you for reading the Culture Translator.
Every week, we bring parents and caring adults information about what’s happening in culture, including streaming shows, slang terms, trending topics, and tech breakthroughs. This year, our readers opened this newsletter over 2,634,765 times to get informed and equipped to talk with their teens. We offered readers 250 conversation starters, and we reported on at least 200 different topics.
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At the end of every year, we take a few weeks to reset and reflect on everything that happened in culture over the past twelve months. We share our reflections with you in the form of our Top 20 Annual Countdown. This week, you’ll receive 20-11; next week, you’ll get the top ten. If you’d like to hear our deliberations about the order, check out our Roundtable podcasts, available here.
To all of our readers: We know how hard it is to be a parent, teacher, youth leader, and grandparent. We see you. We honor you. And we’re doing it too, right alongside you. Thank you for your trust, feedback, and prayers.
Your Research Assistants,
The Culture Translator Team
20. Hailey and Justin Bieber drama:
“It’s not clocking to you that I am standing on business, is it?” Justin Bieber’s iconic response to a paparazzi bothering him earlier this year was a funny meme for a few months, but among young people, Hailey Bieber may just be more popular than the pop star she shares a last name with. Case in point: In May, her beauty brand Rhode sold for $1 billion to e.l.f. Beauty. Hailey starred on the cover of Vogue that same month to celebrate the sale, and Justin shared the cover to his socials with a strange caption, admitting that “I told hails that she would never be on the cover of Vogue. Yikes I know, so mean.” This added fuel to the fire of people speculating about their relationship dynamic. Comments flooded her socials over the summer, with her audience reading into all of her posts, with some saying that she should divorce him and others claiming she was already divorcing him.
19. The LA Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani winning the World Series:
The LA Dodgers were the first team to win back-to-back World Series’ since the Yankees did it 25 years ago. The team pulled off the win despite a year plagued by injuries and an inconsistent bullpen. During their championship run, Shohei Ohtani cemented his status as a legend in the final game of the NLCS, in which he earned 10 strikeouts and hit three home runs. The matchup of Toronto vs. LA energized old fans and brought new ones into the fold—reaching 19% more viewers than last year—as interest in Ohtani led to a surge in Japanese viewership and the Blue Jays had Canadians tuning in.
18. The rise of smartphone bans in schools:
The 2024 publication of The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt will likely be remembered as a watershed moment—a convergence of psychological data that led to social and legislative change. Within 12 months of its publication, parents and educators were rallying around Haidt’s call for widespread bans on phones in schools. As of this writing, at least 31 states have enacted restrictions around how phones are used in educational settings, and these policies are having a huge impact on teens’ lives. Early data from 20,000 public school teachers implies that classrooms with bans have more focused students (go figure). However, there’s also a disciplinary consequence for these policies, with some evidence coming out of Florida suggesting that suspensions spiked in schools, at least at first, as schools began enacting these bans.
17. Forrest Frank breaking his back:
In July, popular Christian musician and TikToker Forrest Frank broke his back. Just a handful of days later, Frank said that his back, by a miracle of God, had been healed. Miracles and healing are dense and complicated theological topics (we made a resource about miracles earlier this year), but the public conversation grew far beyond Frank himself. We also saw a rise in the popularity of Christian artists (paywall) outside of explicitly Christian spaces, as well as the next generation showing an increased interest in the Bible more broadly. While the social influence of people like Frank can no doubt nudge others in this direction, ultimately a renewed interest in faith can only be attributed to the Holy Spirit. Still, it’s encouraging to see big artists like Frank expressing their faith publicly, rejecting cynicism, and believing in miracles.
16. The fall of Sydney Sweeney:
In January, actress Sydney Sweeney was still riding the high of her hit 2023 rom-com Anyone But You. Between starring in the movie Christy, a biopic that fueled Oscar buzz, and being spotted at the wedding of Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos, she seemed to be approaching Hollywood A-list status. But then a series of political controversies started to crater public sentiment toward the actress—beginning with her appearance in an American Eagle denim campaign that some called tone-deaf. Sweeney struck up a romance with Scooter Braun, the manager perhaps best known for his feud with Taylor Swift, and the biopic was a box office bomb. Sweeney capped the year with an interview in which she stared, blankly, at GQ features editor Kat Stoeffel when pressed on her feelings about the ad campaign. Sweeney didn’t get canceled, per se, but among some cultural tastemakers, her brand capital took quite a hit.
15. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle:
Going to the movies in September felt like an anime convention. You couldn’t look in any direction without seeing a teen wearing Demon Slayer jackets, T-shirts, or a haori. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle felt more like an event than a movie. Box office figures proved that anime fans will absolutely show up in theaters for a story they’re emotionally invested in, even when it’s a direct continuation of a TV series. Plot-wise, the movie wasted no time, jumping straight into the action and leaving little room for anyone unfamiliar with the story to get their bearings. Audiences seeing Demon Slayer for the first time may have felt disoriented at first, but the story weaves in enough character flashbacks to provide emotional context. Audiences cheered, clapped, and reacted together in real time. With Ufotable’s breathtaking animation, incredible sound design, and the theater’s communal energy, Infinity Castle carried the kind of electricity you only get when a story meets the right audience at the right moment.
14. Labubu Dolls:
Is it cute? Is it creepy? Is it both? Labubus are furry little creatures with big ears, nine sharp teeth, and a slightly unsettling facial expression. Created by artist Kasing Lung for his series The Monsters, the figurines, sold by Chinese toy store Pop Mart and popularized by the TikTok Shop, became massively popular this year., Part of the appeal is the blind-box packaging; not knowing which variant you’ll get is part of the fun, and also creates opportunities for influencers to share their unboxing experiences. The Labubu craze tapped into a larger collectibles culture, where scarcity, surprise, and perhaps even social validation drive desire. For parents, Labubus can be a helpful window into how ownership, identity, and belonging are being shaped less by what something is and more by how rare it feels and who gets to see you open it.
13. Adolescence:
Adolescence, a British limited series, was one of the most talked-about TV shows in 2025. It addressed the widening gap between how teens communicate online and how adults interpret what they say. Parents in the series genuinely want to understand their teens, but teens’ language and social rules seem impossible to decode from the outside. This becomes central to the story when a seasoned detective overlooks key clues about a teen suspect, only to realize that his own teenage son understands what he can’t. This realization becomes an invitation toward connection—and helps him crack the case—and for a few weeks this year, this moment of culture translation took over the culture discourse.
12. The Coldplay concert cheating scandal:
On a random Wednesday night in July, during what’s known as the “Jumbotron song” at a Coldplay concert, a camera sweeping the arena focused on a couple who did not seem to want to be on camera. The embarrassment of this couple, captured and posted by another attendee, went viral. The internet quickly discovered the couple to be the CEO and the head of HR at the same company, and, most notably, that they were both married to other people. What followed was an old-fashioned social media witchhunt like the days of 2016 Twitter. While this couple’s behavior is far from excusable, it does shine a light on our modern culture, where we don’t want to be judged, but are often more than willing to judge others.
11. Season three of The Summer I Turned Pretty:
Are you Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah? It was the central question of the summer. The young adult book series-turned-TV show, The Summer I Turned Pretty, centers around Belly Conklin and her complicated love triangle with two brothers. Without spoiling it, let’s just say that this season shows the full range of the human experience—joy, disappointment, sadness, betrayal, hope and everything in between. In previous seasons, the show primarily takes place in Cousins Beach, but this final season follows Belly in her college years. Teen viewers did not seem to care what happened in each episode, even after one too many cringey monologues, as long as Conrad (Christopher Briney) was featured. Week-to-week releases on Amazon Prime kept fans on their toes until its underwhelming final episode, which showrunners quickly followed up with a promise for a richer conclusion in the form of a movie.
Thanks so much for reading our Top 20 Countdown this year! Let us know what you think! Did you agree, did you disagree, was there anything we missed? We’ll be back next week with the Top 10! Until then, we hope you and your family continue to enjoy the Christmas season!