Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 6
Posts 1 - 6

E-Mails für verzweifelte Teenager

(Emails for desperate teenagers)

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 13.1.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, email, Facebook, youth
Summary | The volunteer project U25 provides peer counseling for suicidal teenagers. All volunteers at U25 are between 17 and 25 years old and they get extensive training before they are given up to three cases at a time. They exchange emails with the suicidal peers trying to counsel them into psychological stability. The volunteer counselors are not allowed to give out their cell phone numbers or befriend clients on Facebook for their own protection.
Image Description | Image of one volunteer counselor with a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, male(s), TV

Kein Whiskey für kleine Kinder

(No whiskey for little children)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, research/study, smartphone
Summary | Recent studies show correlation between early and/or excessive smartphone use in children and ADHD, deprived linguistic development, and obesity. These studies do not confirm causation, other factors certainly play into how one is affected by the digitalization. The addictive potential of digital devices is however beyond doubt.
Image Description | Keystone image of a girl staring at a smartphone.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Einfach mal abschalten

(Just turn it off for a little)

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Newspaper | die Weltwoche
Date | 27.4.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, childhood, smartphone, threat
Summary | Lots of adults are virtually tied to their smartphones, even when crossing the street. The children, naturally, imitate this and for the "head-down generation". One cannot blame the children for becoming addicted to smartphones because they can only form into what they learn from their parents. No wonder that we are dealing with epidemic-like amounts of ADHD diagnoses: children are tranquilized with screens and later the developmental tolls of this are treated with drugs.
Image Description | A collage-like illustration of parents drifting off into the ocean on rafts made of giant smartphones and the children left behind on an island.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone

Es flitzt der Rollstuhl

(The bolting wheelchair )

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 16.1.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, diversity, emojis
Summary | A German organization for the inclusion of people with disabilities into public life is offering a set of Inklumojis: emojis that depict people with disabilities. These include a man in a wheelchair with fire shooting out of the back suggesting speed, athletes with leg prosthetics, a romantic couple holding hands, one of them with a prosthetic arm, and many more. Emojis can normalize people with disabilities much easier than big advertising campaigns which is why they will attempt to have their emojis included by the Unicode Consortium.
Image Description | Emojis of people with diabilities.
Image Tags | emojis, female(s), male(s)

Der Mann zieht seine Nummer ab

(A man takes off his number)

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Newspaper | Sonntagszeitung
Date | 14.8.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, research/study, smartphone, technology-free
Summary | A 29-year old man has decided to live without a cell phone because it causes anxiety and is not as necessary as everybody thinks. Recent studies have shown that many smartphone users can effectively be labeled as addicts because they check their phones more than 60 times a day. This obsession, paired with the fact that push notifications effect the release of dopamine, confirm the claim that smartphones increase anxiety.
Image Description | Photograph of the 29-year old man, crouching.
Image Tags | male(s)

WhatsAppitis

(WhatsAppitis)

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Newspaper | Appenzeller Zeitung
Date | 15.4.2015
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | (mental) health, texting, WhatsApp
Summary | A myriad of new illnesses named after new technologies are reported in the media and in scientific journals. WhatsAppitis, for instance, is the tendinitis of the thumb. There is also the so-called text-neck and many other more or less serious neologisms like that.
Image Description | Photograph of the author Peter Abegglen.
Image Tags | male(s)

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