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In the years before the smart devices joined our life, people were using printed maps and compass' to find their ways.Since these tools could not get uptades,  it was hard for pilgrims to reach the places that they wanted to travel.Online maps which we use today made travelling way easier for everyone.In another side, getting educated was a luxury and belonged to a group who named themselves as nobles.Subsequently, some authorities have collapsed, and with the advancements of technology education has been able for almost everyone.Another subject which has changed is shopping.People lived before the Internet, maybe even before the fast transportation vehicles, were not able to afford, whether they had money for it or not, everything that they need to buy.Especially the Internet contributed vast revolutionary ways to how people shop.Today, whomever requires to buy something can find the materials in just seconds.

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Brain hubs, where educated and  creative scientists and entrepeneurs come together, has been accelerating the process of inventing and developing so far. Many projects and ideas have come true. It is because the money and idea , the basis of inventing, are together. Also, faster interaction is possible in brain hubs due to the opportunity of face to face interacting with many scientists. Moreover, exhibiting the inventions or projects help the scientist to fund their projects. So, the brain hubs provide scientists opportunities to conduct their studies on their projects and that is how they accelerate the process.

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Since we met technology, our lives have changed a lot. TV was invented, we started to waste our times. Internet was invented, we stopped searching information from books. For instance, i didn't use any of my textbooks to study when i had to study for the university entrance exam, i watched videos online.
To sum up, technology has shaped our lives,the way we learn,and spend time.

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1) Today, technology has a big importance in people’s lives by helping us in various areas such as learning , commuting and exploring etc. Thanks to technology people can have an access to more information quickly and easily.Apps in the mobile phones are the best examples of this situation.Due to this various apps people can organize their lives and more information is reachable. People can find the best restaurants and cafes around them easily and the comments about these cafes and restaurants can be seen too. It is very hard to be lost  for a person, who has  internet and a mobile phone. As a conclusion technology presents us more qualified information in a quicker and easier way

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Technology affects our life so much. Before, we learnt something through encyclopedia but now we are learning with just a click. In old days, we even couldn't find where we had to go without a person who knows but after digital maps there is no need to a person who knows. Shopping also sometimes can be really hard, but nowadays we can  just order on the net.

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Brain hubs are upgraded stage of 'invention factories' such as Edison has established. Brain hubs are cross field of both arts and science. Cooperation of artists or scientists lead to lots of creative, innovative, and useful creations. In past, inventors have been building and conducting projects by own themselves whereas they were limiting their ideas. As soon as they noticed that issue, they have started to gather and solve problems. This progress has been evolved up to now. Today, in spite of distinct differences between pioneers of brain hubs and contemporary ones, the main purpose is same: Creativity.

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Rather than designing video game systems that call for more powerful hardware, developers are turning to the cloud. Games don’t need to be limited by the memory on consoles or discs any more. The cloud enables games to be opened up to huge server-size limits where images are streamed to the user’s screen via the internet

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Farhad
Nowadays, technology has really changed our life . Firstly, with the help of it we can easily find what we are looking for and reach our destination.  In our modern society technology is wildly used by everybody. For example even small children can use technology for searching some interesting information . Without electronical devices our life will be more complicated and we will have some issues in searching or finding useful information.

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1. New metarials can make energy efficent electricity contact this means electronic devices will be more efficient and will not heat anymore. Also in electricity transmission between source to consumer will be easier and less energy loss.
3. I think it affect in a good way because teamworking of brains can produce more innovation. İnnovation factories are good for this.

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Technology has definitely made our lives more practical. We can reach any information with one click. People probably would not belive you when you say we can find any locations without wasting our effort. Ultimately, former people's dream has become true.

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before Internet’s invention, people used to communicate with each other to find their directions that they don’t know how to go. They could have ask shop managers or just randomly a person who were walking down the street. After Internet, people ask Google to find their directions. It is much easier than ask someone and you don’t lose your time to figure out, you don’t forget when you searched it on the web

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Technology has shaped our learning in innovative ways. Through technology you can reach everything when you require some help or have questions. Technology is the knowledge of creation of science .So, you can use your imagination in these fields. Technology is improving gradually nowadays and it can impact our knowledge in great ways to aware creativity.

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Technology has changed the way we learn. In the past it was not possible to learn the lesson by yourself at home without paying but now it is possible . You can just log in youtube and search for the subject you want to rewise or learn and then you can listen to a teacher. You can listen the subject again and again until you understand. It was realy hard to find places like restaurans or to get direction. In the past you had to either find somebody to ask or you had to follow the street signs to get there. Now you can use Google Maps or any other online map apps to find the place you want to go, it will just take 30 seconds. You will not get lost. You will find the place, shop or direction you are looking for much easier.

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" Blue Whale" ( Russian: Синий кит, Siniy kit), also known as the " Blue Whale Challenge", is a social network phenomenon dating from 2016 that is claimed to exist in several countries. It is a "game" reportedly consisting of a series of tasks assigned to players by administrators over a 50-day period, initially innocuous before introducing elements of self-harm and the final challenge requiring the player to commit suicide.

"Blue Whale" first attracted news coverage in May 2016 in an article in Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta that linked many unrelated child suicides to membership of group "F57" on the Russian-based VK social network. A wave of moral panic swept Russia. However, the piece was later criticised for attempting to make a causal link where none existed, and none of the suicides were found to be a result of the group activities. Claims of suicides connected to the game have been reported worldwide, but none have been confirmed.

Background

In November 2015, a Russian teenager posted a selfie with the caption "nya bye" before committing suicide; her death was then discussed in internet forums and groups, becoming mixed with scare stories and folklore. Further suicides were added to the group stories. Soon after, Russian journalist Galina Mursaliyeva first wrote about these "death groups" in an article published in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta in April 2016. The article described the "F57" groups on Russian social media site VK, that she claimed had incited 130 teenagers to commit suicide. Mursaliyeva's article was criticised at the time of its release for lacking credible data and balance, with the 130 cases of suicide cited being particularly problematic. The number was originally suggested by the father of one of the teenagers, Sergey Pestov, who came to the figure 130 by using Russian media sources to look for child suicides he believed were linked to online groups; He then produced a brochure which implied that foreign intelligence operatives were responsible for encouraging Russian children to commit suicide. After an investigation by Evgeny Berg for Meduza, Mursaliyeva responded by saying in fact there had been at least 200 suicides.

The origin of the name "Blue Whale" is uncertain. Some reports say that it comes from a song by the Russian rock band Lumen. Its opening lines are "Why scream / When no one hears / What we're talking about?" and it features a "huge blue whale" that "can't break through the net." Others believe it to be a reference to beaching, where whales become stranded on beaches and die.

The game is said to run on different social media platforms and is described as a relationship between an administrator and participant. Over a period of fifty days the administrator sets one task per day; the tasks seem innocuous to begin with ("get up at 4:30 am", "watch a horror movie"), and move on to self-harm, leading to the participant committing suicide on the final day. As professor at Russian State University for the Humanities, Alexandra Arkhipova found that the administrators were found to be children aged between 12 and 14, drawn to the story as it became widely reported and not, as the hysteria had intimated, predatory adults.

Social concerns

While many experts suggest "Blue Whale" was originally a sensationalised hoax, they believe that it is likely that the phenomenon has led to instances of imitative self-harming and copycat groups, leaving vulnerable children at risk of cyberbullying and online shaming. By late 2017, reported participation in Blue Whale was receding; however, internet safety organisations across the world have reacted by giving general advice to parents and educators on suicide prevention, mental health awareness, and online safety in advance of the next incarnation of cyberbullying.

"People join narratives to explain their experiences ... that is possibly why some children have said they participated in the rumoured challenge despite there being no proof of its existence."

-  Dr. Achal Bhagat, Delhi psychiatrist, BBC News India, September 19, 2017

American skeptic Ben Radford researched the phenomenon, calling it the "moral panic " and equating it to the Dungeons & Dragons controversies of the 1980s. Radford also states "this is only the latest in a long series of similar moral panics and outrages shared on social media ... the best antidote ... is a healthy dose of skepticism".

In 2016, Philipp Budeikin, a 21-year-old former psychology student who was expelled from his university, claimed that he invented the game in 2013. According to Budeikin, its purpose is to "clean society of biological wastes", as he intended to "clean" society from individuals who were deemed as having no value and considered as burdens. Although originally claiming innocence and stating he was "just having fun", Budeikin was arrested and held in Kresty Prison, Saint Petersburg, and in May 2016 pled guilty to "inciting at least 16 teenage girls to commit suicide". He was later convicted on two counts of inciting suicide of a minor. Commentators such as Benjamin Radford have pointed out that sensationalized stories in world news regarding the involvement of Budeikin have all linked back to just two Russian sources, with tabloid news outlets replicating the same information without elaboration.

In June 2017, postman Ilya Sidorov was arrested in Moscow, also accused of setting up a "Blue Whale" group to encourage children to self-harm and ultimately commit suicide. He claimed to have persuaded 32 children to join his group and follow his commands.

In June 2018, Russian financial analyst Nikita Nearonov was arrested for allegedly masterminding the Blue Whale game. Nearonov is suspected of grooming 10 "underage" girls in order to bring them to suicide, 2 of whom, aged 14 and 17, are known to have survived. As a financial analyst, Nearonov has been described as a "very smart" computer expert who held a large amount of contempt for teenagers, believing that they were "wicked" and "deserved to die". Police reports claim that Nearonov's involvement in the Blue Whale game was his "hobby".

Alleged incidents

According to news reports, the cause of death of 15-year-old Hrachya Nersisyan, who committed suicide, was the game "Blue Whale". According to the head of the department for the Protection of Minors' Rights and Combating Domestic Violence of the Main Criminal Investigation Department of the Armenian Police, Nelly Duryan, the Armenian segment of the Internet is flooded with messages about this "game", but there are no final conclusions on this issue yet.

Bangladesh

Despite many news reports published in Bangladeshi media attempting to link suicides with the game, no case has been officially confirmed.

In October 2017, Bangladesh Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan stated that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has been directed to investigate the Blue Whale game after reports of suicide around the country. BTRC released a notice urging people to call a specific number if any web link or any information related to the Blue Whale game were to be found. Later that month, the Bangladeshi High Court ordered a six-month ban on special night-time internet packages provided by various mobile operators across the country.

Despite several news reports in Brazilian media linking cases of child self-harm and suicide with Blue Whale and several ongoing investigations, none have been officially confirmed.

In response to the game, a designer and a publicity agent from São Paulo created a movement called Baleia Rosa (Pink Whale), which became popular. It relied on the collaboration of hundreds of volunteers. The movement was based on positive tasks that value life and combat depression. Another movement, the Capivara Amarela (Yellow Capybara), was created by Sandro Sanfelice, and proposed to "combat the Blue Whale game" and guide people seeking some kind of help. Participants were separated into either challengers, who are the people who need guidance, or healers, who are a kind of sponsor to the challengers. An Adventist school in southern Paraná, in partnership with other education networks, also sought to reverse the situation by proposing another charity game, the " Jonas Challenge" (referring to the biblical character Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale and vomited up three days later). Other games created in Brazil in response to the Blue Whale were the Baleia Verde (Green Whale) and the Preguiça Azul (Blue Sloth).

In Belo Horizonte and Recife metropolitan area in Brazil, many schools promoted lectures to talk about the Blue Whale game. On May 21, 2017, it was announced that the Brazilian police Specialized in High Technology Crime Repression in Piauí were preparing a digital primer to warn young people about the dangers of the game.

In May 2017, Tencent, China's largest Internet service portal, closed 12 suspicious Blue Whale-related network groups on its social networking platform QQ. It said that the number of this kind of groups is on the rise. The search results of related keywords were also blocked.

In April 2018, Egyptian news sources claimed a 12-year-old schoolboy had committed suicide by taking poisonous tablets to fulfill one of the challenges of the game. According to the media, the schoolboy was found with a scar in the shape of a blue whale on his right arm. In reaction to the growing media awareness of the game, Egypt's Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah uploaded a video on their YouTube channel claiming that the game is forbidden in Islam, and warning against it.

Throughout 2017, media in India reported several cases of child suicide, self-harm and attempted suicide alleged to be a result of Blue Whale, and in response, the Indian government's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, requested that several internet companies (including Google, Facebook, and Yahoo!) remove all links which direct users to the game. Some commentators accused the government of creating a moral panic. Indian internet watchdog the Centre for Internet and Society accused the coverage of effectively spreading and advertising a "game" for which there is little evidence. The Supreme Court asked the Indian Central government to ban the game, following which the government responded that since Blue Whale wasn't an application, it couldn't be banned. For a period of time several internet providers blocked Russian social network VKontakte over concerns about the "game" believed to originate on this Russian social network.

Finally in January 2018, after a full investigation the government reported there was no evidence that any death was as a result of Blue Whale saying "The committee analysed the internet activities, device activities, call records and other social media activity, other forensic evidences and also interacted with rescued victims associated with these incidents. Involvement of Blue Whale challenge game in any of these incidents could not be established."

In September 2017, the Iranian Minister of Information and Communications Technology posted a message in his official Instagram account to warn parents and teachers about the spread of the Blue Whale challenge among Iranian teens.

In Italy, press coverage of "Blue Whale" first appeared on 3 June 2016, in the newspaper , which described the challenge as "a bad joke". The debunking site BUTAC reported the total lack of evidence to affirm the game's existence. On 14 May 2017, a TV report by about 'Blue Whale' on the national channel Italia 1 linked the challenge to an unconnected suicide in Livorno. The report showed several suicide scenes, mostly from videos on LiveLeak depicting adults unrelated to the challenge. It incorrectly described the footage as evidence of teenagers playing the game. The report interviewed a schoolmate of the Livorno teenager, two mothers of Russian girls who supposedly took part in the game, and the founder of the Russian Center for the safety of children from internet crimes. Following the report, coverage of the challenge in the Italian media increased, with many outlets describing it as real. There was a sharp rise in Google searches for the challenge, and some panic.[citation needed ]

On 15 and 16 May, newspapers announced the arrest of Budeikin, without saying that it happened months before. His unconfirmed statements about his supposed victims being "genetical rubbish" were reported as real. Paolo Attivissimo, a journalist and debunker of hoaxes, described the game as "a death myth dangerously exaggerated by sensationalist journalism". Police received calls from terrified parents and teachers, and there were reports of teenagers taking part in the challenge. These included several cases of self-mutilation and attempted suicide. Most reports were considered to be false or exaggerated. Alleged participants were reported from all over Italy: Ravenna, Brescia and Siracusa.

On May 22, 2017, the Polizia Postale stated they had received 40 reports. On May 24 they raised the number to 70. On its website the Polizia Postale defines Blue Whale as "a practice that seems to possibly come from Russia" and offers advice to parents and teenagers. Several alleged cases have since been described by newspapers.

In July 2020, the Israeli Child Online Protection Bureau had announced they are collaborating with TikTok to "eradicate the Blue Whale phenomenon".

In March 2017, authorities in Russia were investigating approximately 130 separate cases of suicide related to the phenomenon. In February a 15-year-old and 16-year-old threw themselves off the top of a 14-story building in Irkutsk, Siberia after completing 50 tasks sent to them. Before they killed themselves together, they left messages on their pages on social networks. Also in February, a 15-year-old was in critical condition after throwing herself out of an apartment and falling on snow-covered ground in the town of Krasnoyarsk, also in Siberia.

On 26 May 2017, the Russian Duma passed a bill introducing criminal responsibility for creating pro-suicide groups on social media and in June 2017, President Putin signed a law imposing criminal penalties for inducing minors to suicide. The law imposes a maximum punishment of six years in prison.

Saudi Arabia

On July 15, 2018, the Saudi General Commission for Audio-Visual Media banned 47 video games, including , Grand Theft Auto V, Assassin's Creed II and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, that had online components that were alleged to be part of the Blue Whale game following the suicides of two teenagers that had been involved in it.

On March 12, 2018, the parents of seven Tunisian children who claimed their children had killed themselves due to the game requested a ban on Blue Whale from the Tunisian courts. A trial court in Sousse issued an interim judgment prohibiting Blue Whale and another supposed similar game named "Miriam".

In popular culture

Search Out is a 2020 South Korean thriller film written and directed by Kwak Jeong.

References

External links

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" Blue Whale" ( Russian: Синий кит, Siniy kit), also known as the " Blue Whale Challenge", is a social network phenomenon dating from 2016 that is claimed to exist in several countries.

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No, I have not.
I believe so.
To encourage people to do or try whatever they afraid of.
Presenting daily activities like a game in order to lower the stress.

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1)I have played guitar hero.
3)You can play while you are sitting.
4) I am not sure but it can be turning things into games or creating games from different topics.

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1-Yes I’ve . I tried nintendo wii and it was really funny.
2-Games can be good for everyone because you can interact with people a lot and meet people that you can’t meet them in real.
3-We are in technology age and everyone has technological devices that they can use it for fun .
4- multitasking for games

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1)I have 114 games in my steam account.When I was a child I was playing ps1 Gameboy Nintendo ds and psp I love to play Rainbow six siege Don't Starve Together and Rust
2)Playing Games is improving our decision-making skills ,reflexs and attention
3)Relaxing, reliefing  and amusing !
4)Gamemaking process.

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1- Yes, I have played The Witcher 3 and some of the Assassin's Creed games.
2 - Yes, We can act the way which we can not see in our real lives. We become the hero in the games.
3- It is more energy-friendly activity.

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1- I have played. Last time I played an interactive game was two days ago. Name of the game is The Last Of Us.
2- Games are absolutely good for people.
3- Games can be more enjoyable than entertainment and people can feel better when they put themselves into the character.

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1) I have been playing interactive games for two days and it is called Wolf Among Us (thx to cvt)
2)I reckon that games teach us in terms of English, overcoming problems skill and more
3)(no comment)
4)Gamification is a method to teach someone in a utilized way.

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2. Video games are good for brain devolopment and cognitive skills, reflexs

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Farhad
I think people have already being tired of PC games and that's why they start to like VR games which are more realistic

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1) No, i've never played one
2) Yes, they can be good. There are a lot of games to improve skills related to thinking.
3) Education and health are the possible reasons for playing games.
4) I don't know

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1)Yes,I have played tales from the borderlands,the wolf among us,the walking dead etc
2)I believe that games are just beneficial for relaxing,and of course some people can use them in education.
3)Progressing in English can be a reason.
4)In my opinion , gamification is a kind of turning everything into a game.

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1.Yes I have played Nintendo Wii for a long time when I was younger.
2.Yes they can be because you can exercise with them and you can improve your abilities you can try thing yo have never done before. In Acıbadem University we have VR for medicine practice.
3. It is easier, you dont need to go out.
4. It is the combination of words game+fiction=gamifaction

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1) I played Heavy Rain and Life is Strange. In these games, scenario shapes in respect of our choices and every choice has a consequence.
2) They can improve analytical solution skills.
3) b/c people do not waste their time when they play video games. It is efortless and after downloading the game they can enjoy it.
4) idk

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1.) I have played interactive video games on Xbox 360 but I didn't remember what the name was.

2.) I think it is. Because playing game proves our senses and intelligence skills

3.) Making new friends, improving attention, also if you playing historical game, you may learn some historic lnfo etc.

4.) I think it must be something like necessary things are given by games.