Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 174
Posts 101 - 110

Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

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Newspaper | The Atlantic
Date | 0.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, cyberbullying, gender, smartphone, social media, threat, youth
Summary | A US study has conducted a large survey among teenagers and found out that smartphones are impacting their lives significantly. They sleep less, go out less, date less, are less likely to get (someone) pregnant, feel left out more, have more mental health issues, etc. Especially girls are more likely to feel left out because they spend more time on social media and because girls tend to bully each other by ostracization which is very easily achievable in cyberspace. Also, the teenage suicide rate has surpassed the teenage homicide rate for the first time in history.
Image Description | Two illustrations showing a woman falling with a tablet and a woman lying in bed at night looking at her smartphone. Charts showing the results from the US survey.
Image Tags | chart, female(s), smartphone, tablet

Emoji overload? Why we're ditching yellow smileys in favour of actual words

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 22.7.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, language threat
Summary | The author explain why she hates emojis. She dislikes the fact that people can now type a word and replace it with the correspondant emoji. Some technologies have significantly improved our lives, but our emotional communication didn't need to be improved like that, according to the author. Words were fine; there is no need to regress back to "hieroglyphics".
Image Description | Photograph of a young woman smiling and looking at her phone.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Sexting fears as more than a quarter of PRIMARY SCHOOL children have sent rude or sexually explicit messages

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 7.2.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | research/study, sexting, threat, youth
Summary | A study questioned parents and primary school children about sexting or sex and new media. Shocking numbers of children in primary school have already made experiences with sexting. Considerable percentages of parents do not monitor their children's online activity and/or do not talk to them about sex.
Image Description | Getty images of a girl using a smartphone with only part of her face visible in one of them.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), smartphone

Facebook warns developers against using users' data for 'surveillance' after snooping revelations

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 14.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | Facebook, marketing, privacy
Summary | Facebook have fouhnd out that some of their coders have been selling tools for surveillance that they have created with their users' data. Facebook has changed its terms and conditions so that this would no longer be possible. Organizations protecting the rights of activists and people of color demand that more needs to be done.
Image Description | Three Getty images of the Facebook logo on a smartphone, a computerscreen, on glasses that a woman is wearing and a browser window of Facebook.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, Facebook, logo, smartphone

Will emoji become a new language?

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Newspaper | BBC News
Date | 13.10.2015
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | emojis, grammar, language threat
Summary | Linguist Neil Cohn explains why emojis cannot be considered a new language and why they shouldn't be seen as a threat to language. Emojis don't have the same characteristics as other languages. Emojis are used to complement words, as we would use gestures along speech. Sometimes, people use long sequences of emojis to communicate, but they are not a language since they lack a grammar. Cohn talks about his book The Visual Language of Comics and explains what visual languages are. The visual language of comics does not work the same way as emojis; it's a language that has a grammar.
Image Description | Photograph of a series of emojis on a screen, photograph of a hand gesture, sreenshots of text message conversations with emojis, and photograph of a library of comic books.
Image Tags | emojis, hand(s), smartphone, text

Can a GIF Work Better Than Words?

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.9.2015
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | emojis, GIFs, language threat, word/writing
Summary | An interviewee claims that using GIFs allows her to express complex feelings and emotions in a a couple seconds. GIFs are becoming more and more popular (i.e. on Facebook, Tumblr, etc.). Words and emojis are becoming old-fashioned.
Image Description | GIF representing three men looking at their smartphone.
Image Tags | gifs, male(s), smartphone

Instagram ranked worst social network for young people's mental health

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 19.5.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, Instagram, research/study, youth
Summary | Recent studies show that young adults aged 14 to 24 find that Instagram and Snapchat incease their sense of anxiety and loneliness the most. The most positivity boosting platforms were YouTube and Twitter. Mental health professionals are trying to stay informed on what youth's life looks like today so that they can better connect with them in a mental health crisis. Social media are more addictive than alcohol and cigarettes.
Image Description | Alamy image of two women taking a selfie on a beach and an image of a smartphone screen showing the Instagram logo.
Image Tags | female(s), Instagram, logo, selfie, smartphone

Britain's iPhone generation might be tech savvy but they don't know how to change a lightbulb

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Newspaper | Mirror
Date | 21.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | research/study, threat, youth
Summary | The younger generations have trouble doing simple household tasks like changing a light bulb, bleeding a radiator, or putting up a wallpaper. They are however far more competent in using new technologies. Some run to their parents when they need something fixed around the house but the parent generation also runs to the younger one when they need help with their technological devices.
Image Description | Getty images of a woman holding a smartphone and of a man changing a light bulb.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone

Twitter brings IBM's AI machine Watson on board to fight abuse

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Newspaper | Telegraph
Date | 23.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, cyberbullying, Twitter
Summary | Twitter are responding to growing criticism about the mass of abuse happening on the platform. The are launching a new artificial intelligence helper to detect abuse. His name is Watson and he is very good at understanding subtle meanings and intentions as well as analysis images.
Image Description | Reuters image of silhouettes holding smartphones in front of the Twitter logo,
Image Tags | hand(s), logo, smartphone, Twitter

No, wealth isn't created at the top. It is merely devoured there

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 30.5.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politics, social media, threat
Summary | The new rising technology firms like Facebook, Airbnb, and Uber are the new class of rentiers. The do not create anything new, they claim control over goods and services and cash in on transactions made on the platform they provide. That is all they do: provide a platform. It is only profitable because people willingly share content and offer their services on these sites. But these firms also have not invented the technology (internet, computer devices, etc.): that technology was developed with the tax payer's money. So technically they are just selling and reselling already existing goods - like a rentier.
Image Description | Getty image of a protester, an iPhone, the Facebook campus, a bunch of bank signs, and a Mexcan capitalist.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text

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