Welcome to 2025. May it be the most boring year ever.

Over the holidays, I taped a segment of “New Hampshire’s Business” with WMUR veteran Fred Kocher and Business NH Magazine editor Matt Mowry. It was time for Fred’s annual “crystal ball” episode, so we were prepped to talk about the year ahead.

The morning of the taping, I looked up last year’s episode to make sure I didn’t wear the same tie again. I also wanted a refresher on what we talked about. Big surprise: lack of housing, lack of child care — challenges that follow us into 2025.

I was also reminded that I participated remotely via Zoom for the December 2023 episode: I was in quarantine with my second case of COVID-19, though I suffered no symptoms (unlike my wife).

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the coronavirus pandemic, a worldwide outbreak blamed for the deaths of more than 7 million people, including 1.2 million in the United States and about 3,000 in New Hampshire.

COVID-19 upended every aspect of our lives. It shut down many businesses for months and spiked unemployment in New Hampshire to nearly 17%. We became instant converts to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex and Google Meet and dusted off Skype. Social distancing became our mantra. It seemed like every idle manufacturing plant started pumping out hand sanitizer.

We started working remotely from home and were distracted regularly by the sound of delivery trucks for Amazon, FedEx and UPS racing up and down our streets, dropping off important merchandise, like toilet paper and Lysol.

Fred, Matt and I didn’t have time to talk about the pandemic during the five-minute “New Hampshire’s Business” segment, a rapid-fire program where we try to pour a gallon of news into a tiny cup.

It’s been on my mind as USA 500, a business networking group I belong to, plans its annual ski day at Loon Mountain Resort. Five years ago this February, our group was gathered in a private meeting room during which the conversation was peppered with talk about a strange flu outbreak that was hitting nursing homes in the Pacific Northwest. It seemed so far away and hardly something for local concern.

COVID-19 never went away. We’ve just learned to live with it. Businesses, including restaurants, retailers and health care providers, are still grappling with a shortage of workers. Businesses and consumers are still battling high prices that spiked during the pandemic and are only now beginning to stabilize.

What will this year’s unknown factors be? Check out longtime columnist Brad Cook’s latest “Cook on Concord” column for a refresher on what President-elect Donald Trump has on his to-do list — any of which has the potential to have a major impact on the economy.

The issues we did touch upon during our TV talk included how new Gov. Kelly Ayotte and the Legislature will address state revenue shortfalls as they create the next two-year state budget, the state’s continuing battle with opioid addiction and homelessness, and business concerns about cybersecurity. On the upside, we noted the rise of New Hampshire’s life sciences industry and the importance of the state’s health care industry.

My wish for “the most boring year ever” means only one where we aren’t blindsided by world events. With two major wars that show no signs of ending and acts of terror becoming commonplace both abroad and in the Unites States, we know to brace ourselves for some level of chaos.

When I finished the first draft of this column, the L.A. fires that have destroyed more than 12,000 structures and killed at least 24 people had yet to ignite. Chaos, sadly, found California right away this year.

The challenges we face in New Hampshire are not easily solved but within reach if we keep trying. As the giant sign inside the Life is Good T-shirt production center in Hudson reminds me, they are, like most everything else, “figureoutable.”

Talking about housing

NeighborWorks Southern New Hampshire has invited me to speak at its annual breakfast, 7:30 to 9 a.m., March 27, at the Manchester Country Club in Bedford. (Check out nwsnh.org. for ticket information.)

So far, I have a title for my talk — “Homeward Bound: Housing — and lots of it — is key to NH’s future.”

NeighborWorks Southern New Hampshire has more than 500 apartments in its rental portfolio. The nonprofit serves 81 communities and has housed more than 1,600 people.

If you have some housing news or ideas you’d like to share, please send them along to mikecote@yankeepub.com.

Currently, only lower-income families earning up to 350 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible. That works out to about $112,525 for a family of four.

The first public hearing on House Bill 115, which has 10 Republican co-sponsors in the House, in addition to four Republican Senators, was held on Thursday. The bill would remove the household income criteria from eligibility requirements for the program.

“Proposals to expand the State’s over budget, unaccountable voucher program to more than $100 million per year are misguided and will only serve to further harm public school students by cutting into already limited State funds,” Zack Sheehan, executive director of the N.H. School Funding Fairness Project, said in a statement. “Heading into school budget season, I expect to hear a lot about rising costs associated with special education and the challenges of budgeting for those unpredictable costs. Meanwhile, the State barely makes a dent in fulfilling these mandated expenses, and was threatening to leave districts in the lurch for over $16 million in unreimbursed expenses.”

“The State is actively failing to fulfil its constitutional responsibility to adequately fund public education,” he said. “We should be focused on reducing property taxes by shifting more public school funding to the State, not expanding the voucher program.”

But the effort to open the program to more people has the support of Governor Kelly Ayotte.

During her inaugural speech last week, she promised to expand the program and make sure more families can put their children in the learning environment that is best for them.

“We strongly believe in public schools, but they don’t always fit for every child,” she said during a press conference Wednesday.

Ayotte said education freedom accounts have successfully helped children reach their full potential in a variety of learning environments. And while she said she supports universal Education Freedom Accounts, the timing for enacting that change remains hazy.

“I’ll work with the legislature on that as the ultimate goal and what we do over this biennium, I think regardless of whether we get to universal or not, we’ll be expanding those opportunities,” she said.

Efforts to expand the program failed last year.

State revenues are lagging and Republicans have said they are looking at possible areas where they can cut spending. Expanding education freedom accounts wouldn’t be a negligible expense, according to analysis from Reaching Higher NH, a nonprofit education think tank.

The organization’s analysis found universal eligibility for education freedom accounts could cost over $100 million per year. In the 2024-2025 school year, the program cost about $26 million. As of Wednesday evening, 502 people had logged their support of the bill, while 2,061 opposed it through the legislature’s website.

This story first appeared in Globe NH | Morning Report, our free newsletter focused on the news you need to know about New Hampshire, including great coverage from the Boston Globe and links to interesting articles from other places. If you’d like to receive it via e-mail Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.

Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.

Some TikTok users in New Hampshire are thinking about their next moves, in case the app is shut down in the coming days.

The future of the platform is uncertain, and it could be banned as soon as this weekend. Under a federal law passed last year, the Chinese company that owns the app must find a new owner for its U.S. operations by Jan. 19. If that doesn’t happen, it could shut down.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments from TikTok that such a ban would be unconstitutional, but it’s unclear whether the court will intervene before this weekend’s deadline.

NHPR spoke to several people in New Hampshire who’ve built large audiences on TikTok about how they use the app, and how they might be affected if they lose access to this social media platform.

An art teacher on the Seacoast

Sarah Jones, a high school arts teacher in Portsmouth, has been using TikTok since 2020. She’s found a big community there. She was teaching remotely during the pandemic, and the platform allowed her to connect with other teachers to figure out how to reach their students.

“Then I started sharing the student artwork, mainly as a way to connect with my students and to hype up their work and give them some praise in a medium that they recognize,” Jones said. “It took off and people really appreciated seeing the student artwork and just like the joy that the kids have working in art.”

Last May, her TikToks got the attention of The Kelly Clarkson show — Jones and several students were flown in to New York City, so that they could be interviewed. Separately, her followers helped to raise $50,000 for a colleague who lost his wife unexpectedly. She’s also secured brand partnerships to help stock classroom supplies.

“I think it’s unprecedented in the U.S. for us to see something like this, and it’s sad,” Jones said. “It’s a big loss of people’s ability to communicate freely with each other and to share their knowledge in such a powerful way.”

Jones is currently migrating her video content to YouTube, in case the ban goes through.

TikTok, she said, has a completely different feel than any other platform. Her content doesn’t get the same traction on Instagram and Facebook, and she also has concerns about supporting those platforms’ parent company, Meta. She said her personal art business account has been struggling to get traction on Instagram for the last 10 years or so.

“It’s really hard to kind of quantify how fast and how powerful it is. I’ve just never seen a quicker real-time connection,” Jones said, of her experience on TikTok. “When something happens, everybody knows about it very quickly on TikTok, and I don’t think that has much to do with what I do. I think my videos just make people happy, because they like seeing the student art, but if we’re trying to explain why people are sad about losing TikTok, it’s because the user experience is different.”

An environmental advocate in Nashua

Doria Brown typically posts environmental content from her home in Nashua, ranging from tips on gardening to practical advice on building resilience to climate change. She said the platform has helped her connect with people in Australia, Dubai and England — anyone who’s interested in environmental content might find her feed.

Brown has been trying to get her New Hampshire legislators to at least postpone the TikTok ban. She wants New Hampshire’s U.S. Senators to support Democratic Sen. Edward Markey’s legislation to extend TikTok for at least another 270 days.

“I’ve called both of my senators to see if they’d be willing to support just an extension of the deadline, so that maybe we can figure something out for the app as a country,” Brown said.

As she sees it, TikTok still has some room for growth — especially when it comes to helping more content creators of color to get recognized. In 2021, a group of Black TikTok creators went on strike because they were not getting credit for their role in starting many popular dances and trends that took off on the platform.

Brown, who is Black, said she’s also used TikTok to raise awareness around social justice issues. Back in 2020, she felt like she needed to bring attention to racial issues that were part of a broader reckoning after the murder of George Floyd.

She’s also gotten sponsorships and worked with companies about carbon neutral programs, which she finds exciting.

“I wouldn’t have been able to get the opportunities to work with those different brands and kind of have that extra income, which results in being able to monetize your account, if I didn’t get on TikTok in 2020,” Brown said.

Also in 2020, Brown joined EcoTok, a group of popular TikTok accounts who focus on environmental issues. She said the experience really helped her learn about how to monetize her account and how to create content more effectively.

“TikTok has brought a lot of communities like that together,” Brown said. “Whether it’s somebody who really likes to do makeup, or whether your activism is social justice, or if it’s climate change or something like that.”

Brown can still earn money by posting on Instagram, she said, but TikTok helped her grow her following there. If the ban comes, she’s thinking about expanding to YouTube, as well. She said she’s going to miss being able to catch up on breaking news — like the Los Angeles fires — and feels TikTok’s potential disappearance is happening at a crucial time.

“I would really hate to see it go during the time when people need that connection most,” Brown said.

A real estate agent in Salem

Kristin Reyes, who lives in Salem, has been using the app since 2022 to promote her real estate business under the account MoveMeToNH. For her, other platforms like Instagram have plateaued in terms of her reach.

Over time, she noticed that traditional realtor content – like high-resolution videos and still images — didn’t really pick up much attention on TikTok.

Instead, she noticed more interest when she started doing faster, more casual walk-throughs of properties, where she could point out her favorite features of a home. She also said she feels the culture of TikTok is more witty than other platforms and seems to offer “endless potential” of who she can reach with her posts, so she enjoys being there more.

Her followers include people already living in New Hampshire but also people who are interested in moving here. One TikTok of her describing New Hampshire has more than 800,000 views.

Last year, Reyes said she closed on six homes thanks to leads she got through TikTok, something that hasn’t happened with other platforms. The ban, for her, would mean the loss of an environment that made it easier to find people and explore lots of different topics. On her own personal feed, she says she’s getting updates about real estate, but also learning about buffalos in Montana and the latest updates on the California wildfires.

Reyes said she is looking at other apps, including Xiaohongshu or RedNote, but she noted that RedNote has also drawn concerns from the U.S. government because it’s owned by a Chinese company — a prime concern underlying the potential TikTok ban.

“If TikTok does get banned and goes away, we have to go somewhere, right?” Reyes said. “I think we’ve shown from the growth of TikTok over the last few years and from the amount of hours that people spend on it that people want this type of outlet, where you feel like you can learn things that are maybe censored out on other platforms and you can just get a lot more raw, unadulterated content that’s not ‘made perfect’ as it would be on another app.”