Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, March 18th. I'm Victoria Craig for the Wall Street Journal.

You know the frustration when someone leaves your text on red? Will they respond? Was it something you said?

That kind of angst is spreading among teen users of popular social media app Snapchat, and new messaging features

are the culprit.

Then, basketball-sized orbs that scan your retinas could be the future of identity verification

in the U.S., letting you do everything from buying bread to paying taxes.

We'll weigh the pros and data protection cons of a new Sam Altman startup with

our technology columnist. First, new features on Snapchat have become a real source of

stress for teenagers. So-called half-swiping lets people read messages without the senders knowing.

It's causing a lot of anxiety among

teens who tend to use the social media app as a dating tool or to strike up a conversation

with a crush. Snapchat user Elle Lehmann says she's been half-swiped by boys more times than

she can count, and that the practice is one of the most toxic parts of teen dating.

It just really felt like almost dehumanizing to me, but he did not realize he was making me feel that way.

And so when I was able to tell him, hey, like, that was a really long time, you left me feeling really uncertain.

He immediately apologized and was like, oh my goodness, I'm so sorry, You know, I wanted to make sure that I responded to you correctly.

So how are teens navigating this new minefield?

WSJ columnist Julie Jargon spoke to the journal's personal tech editor, Shara Tibkin, about these controversial new features.

So what exactly is half swiping?

Half swiping is the practice of partially opening a message on Snapchat so that you can

read the message without the sender getting a read receipt. So what that does is it enables someone to

take a little pause and decide when and how they want to respond without the other person knowing that they've read their

...