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1) What can Tik-Tok do as a platform to better help young people's mental health?
2) How might Tik-Tok and other social media apps effect a young person's mental health?

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A coalition of state attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, and more is investigating TikTok for its potential effect on young people's mental and physical health (). The group of AGs is looking to see if the way TikTok designs, operates, and markets its platform has a negative effect on children, teens, and young adults' health, according to a press release from Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts.

TikTok's algorithm determines what content users see, and has proven remarkably effective at keeping users engaged on the app. While the company has offered some insight into how it works, it's hard to get a grasp on exact details outside of leaks and educated guesswork. The attorneys general may be looking to change that, though - the investigation will focus on "the methods and techniques" TikTok uses to "boost young user engagement, including increasing the duration of time spent on the platform," according to Healey.

How TikTok keeps people watching and engaging with content is somewhat mysterious

TikTok has struggled in the past to meet the needs of its younger users - it had to pay $5.7 million to the FTC in 2019 to settle accusations that its predecessor, Musical.ly, didn't get proper permission from the parents of young children who signed up to use the app. The settlement also required TikTok to strictly limit how users under 13 could interact with content on the app. Recently, some researchers sounded the alarm about how few studies there were that looked into TikTok's potential health impacts, despite its massive user base.

TikTok spokesperson Ben Rathe told The Verge that the company "appreciate[s] that the state attorneys general are focusing on the safety of younger users," and looks forward to "providing information on the many safety and privacy protections" it has for teens.

The investigation could have an impact beyond just TikTok. Other social media companies like Meta and Snapchat have been taking cues from the short-form video platform when designing new features or discussing the future of apps. Other apps duplicating TikTok's short-form video model isn't surprising; Meta employees reportedly estimated that teens spent more than double the time on TikTok that they spent on Instagram, and one report estimated that US Android users spent more time watching TikToks than YouTube videos. But the copying could lead to other platforms receiving increased scrutiny if the TikTok investigation results in legislation or other actions.

As The New York Times points out, regulators have been paying extra attention to children's safety online. President Biden addressed the topic in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, calling on Congress to pass laws regulating privacy and advertising towards kids, and Facebook (now Meta) found itself at the center of congressional hearings last year after reports that it knowingly ignored internal research about Instagram's effect on teenagers' mental health. Meta is also facing its own investigation from state attorneys general, with a similar focus as the TikTok investigation announced Wednesday.

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TikTok faces investigation into its impact on young people's mental health

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A coalition of state attorneys general from California, Florida, Kentucky, and more is investigating TikTok for its potential effect on young people's mental and physical health (). The group of AGs is looking to see if the way TikTok designs, operates, and markets its platform has a negative effect on children, teens, and young adults' health, according to a press release from Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts.

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How does the use of the new DNA technology help in investigating and solving crimes?

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HAZLETON, Pa. - DNA and a 20-year-old genealogy expert helped state police identify the man who abducted, raped and murdered a young girl in a case that rattled a Pennsylvania coal town nearly six decades ago, officials announced on Thursday.

State police exhumed the long-dead assailant's body last month and said his DNA precisely matched DNA left on the jacket of the victim, 9-year-old Marise Ann Chiverella, who was snatched on the morning of March 18, 1964, as she walked to school in Hazleton, about 80 miles north of Philadelphia.

Her body was found that afternoon in a nearby waste coal pit. Authorities say she was raped and strangled.

Police identified her killer as James Paul Forte, a bartender with a record of violent sexual assault, who died of natural causes in 1980 at age 38. Police said Forte, who was 22 at the time of the murder, had no known connection to the little girl or her family.

New DNA technology aid investigation

Generations of state police investigators pursued Marise's killer - more than 230 members of the department were involved in the probe at one time or another - but Forte's name did not come up until 2020.

By that time, new DNA technology had established a distant family connection to Forte, and Eric Schubert, a college student and expert in genetic genealogy who had volunteered to work the case, put together an extensive family tree that helped investigators narrow their suspect list.

State police made the announcement at a news conference packed with current and retired investigators - including the trooper who first probed Marise's murder - and the little girl's four siblings and extended family.

Her siblings called Marise a sweet and shy girl who was learning to play the organ and aspired to be a nun.

"We have so many precious memories of Marise. At the same time, our family will always feel the emptiness and sorrow of her absence," said her sister, Carmen Marie Radtke. "We will continue to ask ourselves, what would have been, what could have been?"

She said their deceased parents never sought revenge, but justice.

"Thanks to the Pennsylvania State Police, justice has been served today," she said.

Thanks to Schubert, as well.

History student helps solve case

A history major at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and proprietor of ES Genealogy, Schubert developed an interest in the discipline as a young boy and had helped other police agencies crack their cold cases using genetic genealogy, which blends the use of DNA testing with traditional genealogical research.

He was looking for a new case to work on when he ran across Marise's story, and offered his services to the normally insular Pennsylvania State Police. He was pleasantly surprised when they accepted and spent the next two years on the case, working side by side with investigators.

"The investigation that went into all of this work was probably the hardest genealogy task that I've ever faced. This was probably the hardest thing that I've ever done in my entire life," he said. "And it means so much to me that I was able to be on the team that could provide answers to the Chiverella family."

At a certain point, he said, "I knew we were going to find the assailant."

State police Cpl. Mark Baron, the lead investigator, said it was believed to be the fourth-oldest cold case in the U.S. to be solved using genetic genealogy, and the oldest in Pennsylvania.

Baron, who choked up as he spoke, called it an important day for Marise's family and for a community that had long been haunted by her slaying.

"It's a vivid memory for everybody who lived through this, and it's a vivid memory for everybody who grew up in this area," he said. "What happened to her ushered in a change in this community. Whether you like it or not, the way you lived changed after March 18 of 1964 in Hazleton."

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Police solve 1964 rape and murder of girl with help of DNA and a student

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HAZLETON, Pa. - DNA and a 20-year-old genealogy expert helped state police identify the man who abducted, raped and murdered a young girl in a case that rattled a Pennsylvania coal town nearly six decades ago, officials announced on Thursday.

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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/02/10/1079859144/watch-these-robotic-fish-swim-to-the-beat-of-human-heart-cells
1. How can medical researches like biohybrid bot helps the scientists to understand and helps human body?
2. How can the technology and living cells combination helps medical field in the future?

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Scientists have built a school of robotic fish powered by human heart cells.

The fish, which swim on their own, show how lab-grown heart tissue can be designed to maintain a rhythmic beat indefinitely, a team reports in the journal Science.

"It's a training exercise," says Kit Parker, a professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Harvard. "Ultimately, I want to build a heart for a sick kid."

The tiny biohybrids, based on zebrafish, are built from paper, plastic, gelatin and two strips of living heart muscle cells. One strip runs along the left side of the robot's body, the other along the right.

When the muscle cells on one side contract, the tail moves in that direction, propelling the fish through the water.

The movement also causes the strip of muscle cells on the opposite side to stretch. This stretching, in turn, produces a signal that causes the cells to contract, which perpetuates the swimming motion.

"Once that cycle starts, these things just start motoring," Parker says.

The fish are equipped with a special cluster of cells that initiate the cycle of stretching and contracting, Parker says.

The robotic fish were assembled by a team of scientists including Keel Yong Lee of Harvard and Sung-Jin Park of Emory University and Georgia Tech.

The team tested some early samples by artificially activating the muscle cells, Park says. Then they put the leftover fish in an incubator and forgot about them for a couple of weeks.

When they finally opened the incubator, "all the fish were swimming by themselves," Park says.

The fish kept swimming for more than three months, sustained by nutrients added to the fluid around them.

When it came time to sacrifice the little swimmers, the scientists felt sad, Park says. "We have a kind of emotional attachment to the fish."

From synthetic fish to healing hearts

Showing that it's possible to produce human heart tissue that beats on its own is important because the body can't replace heart cells lost to disease or inflammation.

"Once you're born, about two days after you leave the womb, the number of cardiac muscle cells you have then is all you're going to have for the rest of your life," Parker says.

The team chose to test its lab-grown heart cells in robotic fish because of the similarities between swimming and the pumping action of a heart, Parker says.

In some ways, a fish is a pump, he says. But instead of pumping blood through the body, it pumps itself through the water.

"I really believe that there's a common design scheme, there's some fundamental laws of muscular pumps that are conserved from marine life forms to the human heart," Parker says.

In 2016, Parker's lab built a stingray powered by rodent heart cells. They used light to control the cells in a way that caused the robot's fins to undulate, propelling it through the water.

This time, his team used stem cell technology to transform human skin cells into cardiac muscle.

"The really interesting thing about these fish, which we weren't expecting, is how long they would swim and how fast they would swim in the dish," Parker says.

Heart cells stay health by constantly rebuilding themselves, a process that takes about 20 days, he says. Because the fish swam for more than 100 days, he says, "each cell has rebuilt itself in there about five times."

The muscle cells also became stronger with exercise the way cells in a human heart do. This suggests the cells could eventually be used to repair a failing heart.

What lies ahead for biohybrid bots

For now, though, this sort of research should help scientists understand how the heart works and test drugs for problems like heart failure, says Ritu Raman, a mechanical engineer at MIT.

"You really need to know how is something built in the native context, and how can we recreate that in the lab as closely as possible," Raman says.

Raman's own lab has produced robots powered by skeletal muscle, including one that could recover from an injury.

"This robot would get damaged and then we would heal it, and after a couple days it was able to move and walk around just as it had before," she says

Robots powered by living cells have raised questions about whether scientists are blurring the lines between machines and living creatures.

But those lines are still pretty clear with today's robots, Raman says. For example, they lack awareness and can't reproduce.

"All you're really doing is replacing an engine or a rotor or another piece that you would make in a machine," she says, "so I would not consider them living beings."

But as biohybrids become more sophisticated, Raman says, they may merit the same ethical consideration given to animals.

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Watch these robotic fish swim to the beat of human heart cells

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Scientists have built a school of robotic fish powered by human heart cells. The fish, which swim on their own, show how lab-grown heart tissue can be designed to maintain a rhythmic beat indefinitely, a team reports in the journal Science. "It's a training exercise," says Kit Parker, a professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Harvard.

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1) How does the development of air tags effect friendships, relationships with parents and relationships with spouses?
2) Are Air Tags going to soon become a threat to society and harm people more than help?

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Apple's AirTags were billed as a cheap and easy way to track everything from your keys and wallet to your backpack, but in recent months, there have been a number of reports of the small button-sized device being used by stalkers and thieves to track people.

Last December, Canadian law enforcement announced that AirTags were being found in luxury vehicles to later be stolen. Over recent months, numerous stories have surfaced on social media of people finding AirTags hidden in their belongings.

Hi friends. So something kinda terrifying happened to me last night-

someone attached an Apple AirTag to the underside of my front wheel well while I was inside a bar. (1/3)
- jeana jeana (@Sega__JEANAsis) December 18, 2021

In response, Apple issued a statement last week saying it was working with law enforcement on all requests and is planning to roll out additional software updates to help iPhone users become more aware of and locate unknown AirTags that were following them.

"Based on our knowledge and on discussions with law enforcement, incidents of AirTag misuse are rare; however, each instance is one too many," it said.

Old problem, new tech

The idea behind AirTags is not revolutionary, but there are some notable differences in the technology from older tracking devices.

AirTags do not have a built-in GPS system and instead piggyback off the location data of nearby Apple devices by emitting a continuous Bluetooth signal, which is then viewable by the tag's owner.

Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said she was alarmed even before the product's launch last spring.

"I was concerned ahead of their release as soon as I figured out how they worked. I was concerned very shortly after they were released when I started seeing reports of stalking and being contacted by people who were being stalked using these devices," she told NPR.

This isn't the first time a new device or technology has been used for malicious purposes, said Renee Williams, the executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.

"As technology becomes more sophisticated and advanced, as wonderful as that is for society, unfortunately, it also becomes much easier to misuse and abuse," she told NPR. "I wouldn't say that we've necessarily seen an uptick with the use of AirTags any more or less than any cutting edge technology."

Williams said that what was rare was a technology company taking the issue seriously and moving to address it.

"[Apple is] not only listening to the field, but actively reaching out at times to do safety checks. That in and of itself might sound like a very small step, but it's rare," she said.

Still, Galperin thinks that Apple should have done more to protect people ahead of time.

"The mitigations that Apple had in place at the time that the AirTag came out were woefully insufficient," Galperin said.

"I think that Apple has been very careful and responsive after putting the product out and introducing new mitigations. But the fact that they chose to bring the product to market in the state that it was in last year, is shameful."

How to know if an AirTag is following you

For Apple iPhone users, there are some safeguards in place, but for others, the options are more limited.

Currently, iPhone users will receive a notification if an AirTag is separated from its owner and is moving with them over time - if their phone is running on iOS 14.5 or later, and they have the correct settings on.

Android users cannot receive these notifications automatically, but Apple has released an application called Tracker Detect that will allow them to scan for an unknown AirTag nearby. However, Tracker Detect currently only operates when the app is open.

Anyone who is alerted to the presence of an unknown AirTag, either through Apple's notification system or by using Tracker Detect, can trigger an audible chime to help them locate the device.

AirTags will also randomly play this chime automatically when separated from the original owner.

Apple notes that receiving a notification of an unknown AirTag does not necessarily mean that you are being followed. The device and the item it's attached to may genuinely be lost.

However, if you do fear you are being maliciously tracked, AirTags can be deactivated by removing the battery. Doing so not only stops it from updating its current location but also alerts the device's owner. However, some law enforcement agencies have pointed out that removing the AirTag's battery could potentially contaminate it as evidence.

What you can do if you are being maliciously tracked

There are no hard-and-fast rules on what you should do if you suspect you are being tracked, said Jennifer Landhuis, the director of the Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center.

Apple recommends people contact local law enforcement, and Landhuis advises victims to be thoughtful about how to do so in the safest way possible.

"If the offender is monitoring the victim's actions and sees that the AirTag has now gone to the police station, that can escalate the situation and put a victim more in danger," she said, suggesting that finding a public place where you can safely contact police by phone and have an officer meet you might be a safer alternative.

Landhuis also suggested that people document the incident by taking screenshots and photos and keeping a log of notes in order to keep track of the details. But the most important thing for someone to do, she said, was to follow their instincts.

"The first thing that we always say to an individual who thinks they're being stalked is to trust your gut," she said. "Your instincts tell you one way or the other to follow those instincts, because their instincts are usually pretty spot on."

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AirTags are being used to track people and cars. Here's what is being done about it

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Apple's AirTags were billed as a cheap and easy way to track everything from your keys and wallet to your backpack, but in recent months, there have been a number of reports of the small button-sized device being used by stalkers and thieves to track people.

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1) How does technology affect the sleeping patterns of adolescent youth?
2) What affect does technology have on adolescent youth's education performance?

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JOE PALCA, host:

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, and I'm Joe Palca.

Did you know that 250,000 people fall asleep at the wheel every day? A quarter of a million people? Why can't we get enough sleep to stay awake during a life-and-death activity?

Well, a new poll by the National Sleep Foundation suggests one of the things keeping us up at night may be our smartphones, our laptops, our TVs, all that technology in the bedroom keeping us mentally engaged until later in the evening. Got to finish that episode, right?

And those devices may be impacting the chemistry of our brains, too, by exposing to the bright lights of those screens at nighttime, sort of pressing the reset switch on our sleep cycle.

The question is what to do about it, how to get more sleep, especially as you age, and your brain isn't as easily lulled into a nice snooze. And what about a midday siesta?

Well, those were questions that were raised in this poll, but there's also an interesting question that we're going to start with, and that is why skipping sleep may give you a more optimistic outlook on life. And that's from an article that appears in this week's Journal of Neuroscience.

The other is Scott Huettel. He's an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, sorry. It's somewhere out there. And he joins us by phone. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Huettel.

Dr. SCOTT HUETTEL (Duke University): Thank you for having me.

PALCA: So you were looking at a particular behavior in sleep-deprived people. What were you looking at?

Dr. HUETTEL: Well, our participants come to the laboratory either after a normal night's sleep or after a night in which we've kept them up, and so they're not able to sleep normally.

And what we do is, we put them into an MRI scanner, and we monitor brain activation while they make a series of choices in an economic gambling game. You can roughly think of it as chances where they can place their bets to win money or lose money.

And what we found was that people changed their preferences. They changed the way in which they approached the decision problem, such as they're more likely to weigh the positive outcomes heavily. They're more likely to bet on good outcomes.

And they actually downplay the chances of negative outcomes. They're basically - they're less loss-averse and more gain-seeking.

PALCA: I see - okay, go ahead, I'm sorry.

Dr. HUETTEL: And what we found that was sort of striking, was that the brain regions that we know from previous research actually shaped this gain-seeking or loss-minimizing behavior are respectively amplified. People's brain regions are more responsive to gains. And the normal loss aversion response is actually pretty much abolished.

PALCA: Really. So how is this related - I mean, what is it about missing sleep that's going to have this kind of effect on these centers in the brain?

Dr. HUETTEL: Well, one thing we know it's not, is it's not actually people just becoming less attentive because we can independently measure how attentive people are or how likely they are to sort of have lapses of attention. And that actually isn't predictive of how their behavior changed.

What we found is there's indications they're becoming a little myopic. That is, they're narrowing down on a smaller set of possible outcomes and not thinking as broadly about the decision problem.

PALCA: If you'd like to talk to us about sleep deprivation and some of the things it causes, you can call us at 800-989-8255. That's 800-989-TALK. We're talking with Dr. Scott Huettel. He's an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University.

So I'm guessing that there's some real-world implications of this finding. You must have thought about those.

Dr. HUETTEL: Yeah, one of the ones that's most, perhaps disconcerting, is to think about - think about a doctor who has to make, of course, many types of decisions that often involve weighing, say, potential good outcomes and potential bad outcomes.

Now, we naturally think that when doctors are sleep-deprived, we can do things that ameliorate their attentional deficits. So for example, they can take stimulants like caffeine, or they can just spend a little more time when they're making difficult decisions.

And what our results suggest is that, in fact, those may help improve their attention, but that wouldn't be sufficient for getting rid of this optimism bias, where they would be more heavily weighing the good information and less attentive to the bad information.

PALCA: I'd like to welcome another guest onto the show, right now. He's Dr. Charles Czeisler, the Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He's also chief of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital there. And Dr. Czeisler was one of the authors of this new - or the description of this new poll that was done by the Sleep Federation. Welcome to the show, Dr. Czeisler.

Dr. CHARLES CZEISLER (Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital): Hi, Joe, thank you.

PALCA: So how big a problem - we've just been talking about sleep deprivation. I know it's something that you've thought a lot. How big a problem is sleep deprivation in the American public from this poll that you've just completed?

Dr. CZEISLER: It's a huge problem. And most Americans report that they don't get enough sleep at night. They don't feel refreshed in the morning. And they report a variety of negative outcomes, including adverse effects on mood, adverse effects on family life, social life, school, work, performance.

And 66 percent of drivers under 30 admit to driving drowsy, 50 percent within the past month. As you mentioned, 250,000 people a day fall asleep at the wheel in the United States. It's a pervasive problem.

PALCA: I see. And it's interesting. Now, we've just been hearing from Dr. Huettel about this notion that you'd be more risk-seeking if you're sleep deprived, and I'm just wondering if that could be linked to drivers being more aggressive or more likely to try to cut - you know, get in front of somebody with a slim margin because they're in this sleep-deprived state.

Dr. CZEISLER: Yes, we know that people become fast and sloppy when they are sleep deprived so that instead of trying to preserve accuracy by slowing down, they'll keep going just as fast, even though they have - make more mistakes.

PALCA: Well, if you have questions about not getting enough sleep or even about getting too much sleep, call us at 800-989-8255. And let's go to our first call now, and go to Hogan(ph) in Sacramento. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.

HOGAN (Caller): Hello. Yeah, I had a quick question about sleep. I'm a 27-year-old who cares for his 92-year-old grandfather, who's recently - his health has deteriorated. And what this has meant is that my sleep has been incredibly drastically affected, where maybe I'm getting six to seven hours of sleep, tops.

But more severely than that, my sleep is just constantly interrupted. Like maybe I'm getting up every hour, sometimes several times in an hour. And I've heard differing things about the effect of lack of REM sleep on your functioning. And I was just curious about any results of the studies or just generally your knowledge about what the lack of REM sleep does to you.

PALCA: Dr. Czeisler, maybe you want to tackle that one?

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, first of all, the many interruptions of sleep that you're experiencing, as you do this important work for your grandfather, is going to affect your daytime performance. It's going to increase the risk of having lapses of attention and falling asleep, for example, at the wheel or being impaired in your work.

Interruptions of sleep, in and of themselves, can adversely affect the restorative value of sleep, even if you get the same amount of sleep. And the loss of rapid eye movement sleep can adversely affect your ability to solve problems, for example.

It seems that during rapid eye movement sleep, we're integrating the experiences that we've had during the day and helping to solve problems and understand the way the world works in a way that we don't get from other stages of sleep or from trying to analyze the problem when we're awake.

PALCA: Okay, let's take another call now and go to - let's see. We've got Tyson(ph) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Tyson, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

TYSON (Caller): Hi, thanks for taking my call.

PALCA: You bet.

TYSON: I was just in a psychology course, and they were talking about how an alternative therapy to depression is by skipping a night of sleep and how apparently that's one of the most effective ways to, like, instantly get rid of depression, which seems kind of related, right - the idea that we would become more positive with less sleep.

PALCA: Interesting question. Dr. Huettel, what do you make of that?

Dr. HUETTEL: So I think that our results would be consistent with that, in that what we effectively show is that after sleep deprivation, some of the brain regions that are most important for responding to positive outcomes become more responsive. And similarly, those regions that are more important for dealing with negative, aversive or risky outcomes are less responsive.

One thing, of course, to emphasize is that these are not panaceas in that there's many, as just was mentioned, many negative consequences that would probably have long-term effects on somebody's ability to do their job or interact with others that would probably, if this was repeated, counteract any immediate positive effects.

PALCA: So if you're seriously sleep deprived, is it best to, like, catch a short nap, or do you really need to stop and get eight hours of sleep, Dr. Huettel?

Dr. HUETTEL: Well, I think that my understanding is that these both will help. One of the key things that is shown, is that there is levels of deprivation, and different individuals have different tolerances. So we know that after extended deprivation, essentially everyone's affected, but the individual variation of how much sleep is necessary means that some people may have - may better benefit from either of those two options.

PALCA: Dr. Czeisler, is that your take on this, as well?

Dr. CZEISLER: Yes, and I think it's important to recognize, in terms of the effect on sleep loss on mood, that whereas there's a euphoria associated with acute sleep deprivation, as has just been described, and people sometimes feel punchy or slap-happy after they have been sleep deprived, and it can transiently be effective in reversing depressed mood, that chronic sleep loss has opposite effect. And people become burned out and have actually a higher risk for depression when they're chronically sleep-deprived.

PALCA: Okay. Interesting. Let's go now to Dee(ph) in Gainesville. Dee, are you there in Gainesville, Florida?

DEE (Caller): Yeah, I am. Hi.

PALCA: Hi. How are you? Give us your question.

DEE: All right. My question is how much is too much sleep? I go through having, like, maybe eight or nine hours of sleep a night to, like, maybe five. I mean, is there a limit to how much I should sleep to be able to function correctly during the day? I don't know...

PALCA: I'm not sure...

DEE: ...what is...

PALCA: I'm not sure it is 100 percent appropriate. But how old are you? I think that might relate to the answer to the question.

DEE: I'm 20 years old.

PALCA: Okay. Apologies for being ageist, but it does play a role in this answer, Dr. Czeisler.

DEE: No problem.

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, it does turn out that a lot of us, particularly when you describe that you're getting four, five hours a night of sleep per night on some nights, you begin to build up a sleep deficiency. And as that sleep deficiency builds, then you need a time to, sort of, recover that lost sleep.

And there was an interesting experiment done a number of years ago at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda by Dr. Tom Wehr in which he had people spend 14 hours a day - or a night in bed for a month. In the first week, they were sleeping 12, 12 and a half hours per night. And then it gradually dropped down, the next week, 10 or 11 hours and so on. Until finally, after they paid back this enormous sleep deficiency of about 32 hours, they finally settled down to about 8.2 to 8.3 hours of sleep per night.

DEE: That's interesting.

PALCA: It is. This whole business about - I have to say, my son, who's 16, managed to oversleep by six and a half hours the other week. And so I'm completely stunned at his ability both - I don't know when he went to bed. So maybe he was up until four in the morning. But six and half hours oversleeping was pretty remarkable to me.

Dr. CZEISLER: As we get older, we can't do that anymore so...

PALCA: Why is that? Why is it harder to sleep longer when you get older?

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, the depth of sleep is - we don't sleep as deeply when we get older, and we have many fewer - many more interruptions of sleep. We also have a much higher prevalence of sleep disorders. But setting the disorders aside, even when we study healthy, older people who do not have a sleep disorder, there's a much narrower window within the daily cycle at which they can maintain a consolidated bout of sleep. So it just we - we just can't sleep in until 2 o'clock in the afternoon typically when we're 70.

PALCA: We're talking about sleep, sleep hygiene, sleep disorders, sleeping too much. I'm Joe Palca. And this is TALK OF THE NATION from SCIENCE FRIDAY.

Anyway, let's take another call now and go to Todd(ph) in - oops, sorry -Tony(ph) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. How are you?

TONY (Caller): Hi. I'm doing very well.

PALCA: Great.

TONY: How are you?

PALCA: I'm well. So what's your question?

TONY: I had a question about - is there any consideration to the role of pharmaceuticals meant to help sleep disorders as they're advertised on TV? I guess, they're supposed to work great. I don't know if I can say any of the products, but I'm sure we're aware of them. Do they affect the dream cycle? And do they, in process, keep affecting sleep deprivation or being able to come back and sleep normally?

PALCA: Okay. Dr. Czeisler, I guess that's one for you.

Dr. CZEISLER: You know, many pharmaceutical products change the structure of sleep. So they may diminish the amount of deep, slow wave sleep, but increase the amount - the total duration of sleep, or some hasten the ability to fall asleep, but don't actually result in an increase in the total sleep duration.

So there are different types of products. Some of the over-the-counter products might, you know, help us to fall asleep for a couple of days. But then we build up tolerance to them and they no longer are effective, or we would have to have higher and higher doses to be effective. So there are a variety of different products out there but none that I know of that really induce the same kind of sleep that one would get, you know, for example, when you're 18 years old.

PALCA: Dr. Huettel, you said earlier - we were talking earlier about whether there are any things you can do, pharmaceutical agents - are there any agents that people who are sleep-deprived can do that will right them and keep them on the right course, or is really the only thing a night - a good night sleep or at least a certain amount of sleep?

Dr. HUETTEL: Well, I think that the different agents are going to have different affects, so that one common thing that many of us do is to take stimulants. And a stimulant has the wonderful feature of speeding up some behaviors and speeding up the brain mechanisms that underlie those behaviors.

Now, what that may end up doing is raise arousal levels and make you more effective to function in some circumstances. But as a number of studies recently, including ours, have shown that what that made, in fact, do is not change all behaviors. It can help you with, perhaps, keeping you awake and alert in some situations. But things like reasoning abilities, higher cognition and decision-making may be left unaffected.

PALCA: So - I mean, is the bottom line here for you, in terms of functioning appropriately, get the right amount of sleep? Is that what you're saying, Dr. Huettel?

Dr. HUETTEL: Yeah, I think so. And that what we want to do is not only get the right amount of sleep but recognize that when we aren't able to do that because of the pressures on modern life, to understand that we can't just solve the problem by taking a stimulant or by just giving yourself a little more time to make a decision. We're going - we want to recognize that sleep deprivation has these pretty subtle effects that can change our cognition.

PALCA: I see. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Huettel, for joining us and explaining about your study. That was a very interesting issue. And certainly -as we are talking about this, it's certainly one that people in Las Vegas are probably counting on to get people to behave a little less rationally than they might otherwise when they're gambling in the middle of the night and probably have been up for a while.

Dr. HUETTEL: Right, right. And, of course, there's lots of other ways they can take our money as well.

(Soundbite of laughter)

PALCA: Okay. That's Dr. Scott Huettel. He's an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

And, Dr. Czeisler, you're going to stay with us and talk some more about this sleep study that was just completed. This is like the 20th year the study has been conducted, right?

Dr. CZEISLER: That's correct. The National Sleep Foundation has been doing -conducting this poll for 20 consecutive years. And this particular poll is focused on the technologies that have invaded the bedroom and are responsible for a lot of the sleep loss that Americans experience.

PALCA: Okay. Well, we'll deconstruct that when we come back from this short break. We're talking with Dr. Charles Czeisler about sleep and sleeping and sleeping too much and not sleeping enough. So stay with us.

This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

(Soundbite of music)

PALCA: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Joe Palca.

We're talking this hour about groggy Americans and what we can do to rest a little easier with - at night. My guest is Charles Czeisler. He's the Baldino professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He's also chief of the division of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital there.

And we were talking about this poll of American sleep. And this year's poll focused on devices that we sometimes bring into the bedroom. What are we talking about? What kind of devices are we talking about here?

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, the TV was the first device that invaded the bedroom. And 80 percent of Americans report that they watch TV in the hour before going to sleep. And we know, for example, that teenagers with a TV in the bedroom spend eight and a half hours a day on recreational media of one sort or another, and those without a TV in the bedroom spend five and a half hours a day. So it's taking an extra three hours a day in those kids who have a TV in the bedroom.

And it's not just TVs anymore. That's how it started. And now people are bringing their cell phones. Four out of 10 Americans are bringing their cell phone into the bedroom. In fact, three out of four teenagers bring the cell phone with them to the bedroom. And many people keep it up during the night. So 25 percent of Americans leave the cell phones on all night. And about 20 percent of Americans under 30 are awoken at least a few nights a week by cell phone ringing, text messages, email coming through their cell phones.

So we've gone to - we've brought things to another level. People are playing video games before going to bed. One out of five Americans are, you know, all hyped up on online gaming or some sort of Internet or other type of computer game in the hour before sleep.

And a lot of these technologies have exposure to light associated with them, or the lights are on in the room as they're happening. And we know that that suppresses the release of the sleep-promoting hormone, melatonin, and shifts its release to a later hour, not just tonight, but the next night. So it's making it more difficult to fall asleep today, as well as tomorrow and the next day, because of the light exposure that is resetting our internal clock.

PALCA: And so is the message here don't do that?

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, I mean if - only 35 percent of Americans report that they are getting enough sleep at night. They recognize that it's having bad effects and that they're not getting enough. 70 percent say their work schedules allow them to get enough sleep and their school schedules, but they - more than half of them aren't getting that sleep that they could get.

And so then, when we look at why, it seems that the invasion of these technologies into the bedroom, they're so engaging and enticing that they, sort of, lock us in and get us going on some type of interactive activity or watching an exciting program, five - surfing 500 different cable channels. And the next thing you know, it's 2 o'clock in the morning.

PALCA: Yep. There you go. Okay. Let's take a call now from Chris(ph) in Columbia, Maryland. Chris, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

CHRIS (Caller): Hey, how are you doing?

PALCA: I'm good.

CHRIS: Yeah. I was calling about - I'm actually a combat veteran. I've been deployed two times to Iraq and once to Afghanistan. I just returned from Afghanistan in December, which was a pretty rough tour. But my question was - I know you're talking about sleep deprivation and some symptoms. I know one or -there's been times when I was in Afghanistan that I went days literally without sleep or maybe an hour here, an hour there.

And some of my symptoms were - like I actually started hyper-vigilance and seeing things that weren't there, like - I mean like crazy stuff, like a pink elephant or something. I'm like, whoa, whoa, what was that, you know, like when I kind of dozed off. And I'm wondering if, through your studies, have you seen symptoms like that from people who have been deprived over days at a time or people only got, you know, a couple of hours over two or three days?

PALCA: Oh, Chris, thanks for that call. What do you think of that, Dr. Czeisler?

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, that can occur as our, sort of, dreaming stages begin to occur when we're awake, and we have more difficultly separating out the difference between what's happening in the here and now and what's happening -that might be happening if we were asleep. So it does appear that part of the brain can begin to initiate sleep while another part of the brain is still awake.

And if you're driving a car and that happens, that might lead to a phenomenon that we call automatic behavior, in which you begin to forget or not remember how you got from point A to point B on the expressway. Or suddenly, you're trying to get into a house, and then you realize that it's not yours. These are the sorts of things that can happen when we are - when sleep pressure is high enough.

PALCA: Interesting. Well, thanks for that call, Chris. Let's take another call now and go to Lee in Savannah, Georgia. Lee, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.

LEE (Caller): Yes. My son, he started getting severe headaches when he was nine years old, and he is 13 now. He's been through all kinds of tests and all. And one of the symptoms from his headaches is he cannot sleep at night. He's been through several sleep studies.

They found, you know, this problem, that problem, and we've had a couple of surgeries such as tonsils and things like that. Nothing has seemed to help his headache.

CONAN: Let me see if Dr. Czeisler has any suggestions about that. I mean, it sounds like it's not a sleep-related problem so much as a medical problem that's affecting sleep.

Dr. CZEISLER: Yeah. It's hard to know without a bit more information. But sometimes sleep disordered breathing or sleep apnea, which can sometimes happen with large tonsils, can lead to morning headaches. They wouldn't typically last all day, and sleep deprivation itself can be associated with an increased risk of headaches.

But it sounds like the situation you were describing, the headaches may be the primary issue which are themselves interfering with sleep.

PALCA: Right. Right. So what, I mean, is - this - as you said, this study has been going on for 20 years. What's changed over the last 20 years about American sleep habits? Is it mostly these new electronic devices in the bedroom?

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, Americans are sleeping less and less. And there has - and we know that the consequences of this chronic under-sleeping are on many different aspects of health and performance. So as sleep duration at night has been decreasing, we know that one of the physiological consequences of that is a change in the hormones that regulate appetite and regulate the metabolism of sugar.

So we become less sensitive to insulin when we're chronically sleep deprived, and the hormones that regulate appetite are changed in a way that makes us crave more food and - particularly carbohydrate-rich foods. So as sleep duration has declined, there has been a concurrent increase in the waistline of Americans, as they have gained more and more weight.

And there's now research suggesting that there may be a causal link between this reduction in sleep duration and the increase in weight gain, and of course that then increases the risk of illnesses like diabetes and sleep apnea, and so on. So besides those kinds of effects, chronic sleep deficiency increases the risk of adverse effects on the cardiovascular system.

So blood pressure goes up when we don't get enough sleep, daytime blood pressure, as well as the risk of calcification of the coronary arteries increases in people who are not getting enough sleep. Even the immune system is adversely affected, so that people who chronically get an inadequate amount of sleep, for example, only have half the antibody response to a flu shot in the first week. And also, if they get exposed to the virus that causes the common cold, they'll be at several times greater risk of actually catching a cold.

PALCA: I'm sorry, but as we - as you were talking about this, it just occurred to me that somebody somewhere is going to come up with the sleep diet, which is going to be, you know, an extra eight hours of sleep a day to lose weight rapidly. I hope that doesn't happen.

Dr. CZEISLER: Well, the - as a way of preventing weight gain, I think that that would be - getting enough sleep could be the easiest way to begin to lose weight.

PALCA: There you go. That one would probably go down easy. Okay. Let's take another call now and go to Chris in Evansville, Illinois. Chris, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY. You're on the air.

CHRIS (Caller): Thank you very much. I'm enjoying the subject. It's just funny your guest mentioned about diabetes. My wife and I - actually for six years (unintelligible) almost never got a full night's sleep because our oldest son is diabetic, so we're constantly getting up in the middle of the night to check him.

But we were also finding that we weren't getting enough sleep because we had a, you know, TV in the bedroom, and of course with satellite, you know, so many channels to choose from.

And after we realized, you know (unintelligible) don't have enough energy or anything, we finally disconnected the satellite box in the TV in our bedroom, and the shows that we would normally stay up watching, we actually started to DVR them and...

PALCA: You mean record them, yeah.

CHRIS: Yes. And watch them much earlier and set ourselves - you know, kind of like you would do with your children, set ourselves a bedtime so that we could, even though it's interrupted, still get a lot more sleep. So we kind of disconnected the technology, so to speak, that was keeping us from sleeping as much as we could.

PALCA: No, I like that because you're using technology to overcome technology. So that's good.

CHRIS: (Unintelligible)

PALCA: It's very good. Chris, thanks for that. Is that - does that strike you as a good plan, Dr. Czeisler?

Dr. CZEISLER: It does. In fact, I set my own cell phone to have a bedtime alarm in the evening so that it begins to alert me that it's time to wind things down and get ready for bed. And I find that to be very helpful.

The - what the caller described is actually - it has been studied that the parents of children who have either a medical condition or some other condition that disturbs the child's sleep and therefore disturbs the parents' sleep, that those parents are at greater risks for medical problems as well as mental health problems in having to cope with the sleep interruption that's associated with raising such kids.

PALCA: I see. So just - I mean, what are the rules? One of the best - people -everybody says, oh, I just wish I could get a good night's sleep. I just wish -I mean, is there a few straightforward things that people could do that would really help?

Dr. CZEISLER: You know, there are some simple tips. First of all, having a cool, dark, quiet place to sleep; secondly, setting aside an adequate amount of time for sleep. So it takes eight to nine hours in bed to get enough sleep for the average adult. Teenagers need at least nine to 10 hours of sleep. So you got to figure out when you have to get up in the morning. They're getting up between six and 7 o'clock in the morning. So you've got to work backwards and say, okay, I've got to go to bed nine to 10 hours before that in order to get enough sleep; and then trying to have a regular schedule.

So some people, you know, on the weekends they're up till 2:00, 3 o'clock in the morning, and then they're trying to go to bed at 10 o'clock at night on weeknights. So that's like traveling back and forth from London back to the East Coast every time you want to try to go to bed on a weeknight, and that's going to make it much more difficult to fall asleep at night. And people are going be tossing and turning and thinking they can't fall asleep because they're going to work the next day. It's actually because they're trying to make a trip that's equivalent to flying to London, and then they're suffering from social jetlag, as we call it.

PALCA: Social jetlag, I like that.

Dr. CZEISLER: And so having a regular schedule will improve sleep and then getting all this technology out of the bedroom, as the last caller has described, so that - I mean, you'll find that these shows and games and so on are less enticing the next day when you have plenty of other things to do than they are in the evening. And so if you can actually get them out of the bedroom and not bring - amazingly, about a quarter of people or a third of the people are now using their cell phone as an alarm clock.

PALCA: Hmm.

Dr. CZEISLER: And they're not necessarily switching into alarm clock-only mode. So now they are tied to having a cell phone there in order to get up in time for their morning and that begins to create a vicious cycle. Just get the cell phone, the charger, the video games, the laptops, all these things out of the bedroom so that it can be a sanctuary for sleep.

PALCA: It sounds like a plan. Well, thanks for joining us on this topic, Dr. Czeisler. You know it's one that's close to my heart.

Dr. CZEISLER: Thank you, Joe.

PALCA: Charles Czeisler is the Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He's also a chief of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital there.

I'm Joe Palca. And this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

Copyright © 2011 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio record.

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TV And Smart Phones May Hamper A Good Night's Sleep

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Nearly half of American adults say they rarely - or never - get a good night's sleep, according to a poll by the National Sleep Foundation. Sleep researchers Charles Czeisler and Scott Huettel discuss how sleep deprivation affects the brain, and why bedtime technology use may be partly to blame.

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1. How is texting and driving affecting the Tesla drivers.
2. Is it right to be charged if the autopilot is misused.

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DETROIT - California prosecutors have filed two counts of vehicular manslaughter against the driver of a Tesla on Autopilot who ran a red light, slammed into another car and killed two people in 2019.

The defendant appears to be the first person to be charged with a felony in the United States for a fatal crash involving a motorist who was using a partially automated driving system. Los Angeles County prosecutors filed the charges in October, but they came to light only last week.

The driver, Kevin George Aziz Riad, 27, has pleaded not guilty. Riad, a limousine service driver, is free on bail while the case is pending.

The misuse of Autopilot, which can control steering, speed and braking, has occurred on numerous occasions and is the subject of investigations by two federal agencies. The filing of charges in the California crash could serve notice to drivers who use systems like Autopilot that they cannot rely on them to control vehicles.

The criminal charges aren't the first involving an automated driving system, but they are the first to involve a widely used driver technology. Authorities in Arizona filed a charge of negligent homicide in 2020 against a driver Uber had hired to take part in the testing of a fully autonomous vehicle on public roads. The Uber vehicle, an SUV with the human backup driver on board, struck and killed a pedestrian.

By contrast, Autopilot and other driver-assist systems are widely used on roads across the world. An estimated 765,000 Tesla vehicles are equipped with it in the United States alone.

In the Tesla crash, police said a Model S was moving at a high speed when it left a freeway and ran a red light in the Los Angeles suburb of Gardena and struck a Honda Civic at an intersection on Dec. 29, 2019. Two people who were in the Civic, Gilberto Alcazar Lopez and Maria Guadalupe Nieves-Lopez died at the scene. Riad and a woman in the Tesla were hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

Criminal charging documents do not mention Autopilot. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sent investigators to the crash, confirmed last week that Autopilot was in use in the Tesla at the time of the crash.

Riad's defense attorney did not respond to requests for comment last week, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office declined to discuss the case. Riad's preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 23.

Federal safety regulators have been investigating Autopilot misuse

NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board have been reviewing the widespread misuse of Autopilot by drivers, whose overconfidence and inattention have been blamed for multiple crashes, including fatal ones. In one crash report, the NTSB referred to its misuse as "automation complacency."

The agency said that in a 2018 crash in Culver City, California, in which a Tesla hit a firetruck, the design of the Autopilot system had "permitted the driver to disengage from the driving task." No one was hurt in that crash.

Last May, a California man was arrested after officers noticed his Tesla moving down a freeway with the man in the back seat and no one behind the steering wheel.

Teslas that have had Autopilot in use also have hit a highway barrier or tractor-trailers that were crossing roads. NHTSA has sent investigation teams to 26 crashes involving Autopilot since 2016, involving at least 11 deaths.

Messages have been left seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its media relations department. Since the Autopilot crashes began, Tesla has updated the software to try to make it harder for drivers to abuse it. It's also tried to improve Autopilot's ability to detect emergency vehicles.

The company has said that Autopilot and a more sophisticated "Full Self-Driving" system cannot drive themselves and that drivers must pay attention and be ready to react at anytime. "Full Self-Driving" is being tested by hundreds of Tesla owners on public roads in the U.S.

Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina who studies automated vehicles, said this is the first U.S. case to his knowledge in which serious criminal charges were filed in a fatal crash involving a partially automated driver-assist system. Tesla, he said, could be "criminally, civilly or morally culpable" if it is found to have put a dangerous technology on the road.

Donald Slavik, a Colorado lawyer who has served as a consultant in automotive technology lawsuits, including many against Tesla, said he, too, is unaware of any previous felony charges being filed against a U.S. driver who was using partially automated driver technology involved in a fatal crash.

The families of Lopez and Nieves-Lopez have sued Tesla and Riad in separate lawsuits. They have alleged negligence by Riad and have accused Tesla of selling defective vehicles that can accelerate suddenly and that lack an effective automatic emergency braking system. A joint trial is scheduled for mid-2023.

Lopez's family, in court documents, alleges that the car "suddenly and unintentionally accelerated to an excessive, unsafe and uncontrollable speed." Nieves-Lopez's family further asserts that Riad was an unsafe driver, with multiple moving infractions on his record, and couldn't handle the high-performance Tesla.

Separately, NHTSA is investigating a dozen crashes in which a Tesla on Autopilot ran into several parked emergency vehicles. In the crashes under investigation, at least 17 people were injured and one person was killed.

Asked about the manslaughter charges against Riad, the agency issued a statement saying there is no vehicle on sale that can drive itself. And whether or not a car is using a partially automated system, the agency said, "every vehicle requires the human driver to be in control at all times."

NHTSA added that all state laws hold human drivers responsible for operation of their vehicles. Though automated systems can help drivers avoid crashes, the agency said, the technology must be used responsibly.

Rafaela Vasquez, the driver in the Uber autonomous test vehicle, was charged in 2020 with negligent homicide after the SUV fatally struck a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in 2018. Vasquez has pleaded not guilty. Arizona prosecutors declined to file criminal charges against Uber.

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A Tesla driver is charged in a crash involving Autopilot that killed 2 people

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DETROIT - California prosecutors have filed two counts of vehicular manslaughter against the driver of a Tesla on Autopilot who ran a red light, slammed into another car and killed two people in 2019.

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1. How has the role of media improved teens creativity during the pandemic compared to before?

2. How does the role of media during the pandemic influence teens creativity?

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As the pandemic wears on, parents, caregivers, and educators have continued to worry about how much time kids are spending with media. But new research shows that media of all types -- entertainment, social, creative -- has played an incredibly important role in helping kids get through a very tough time.

Our latest report from the Common Sense Census -- The Role of Media During the Pandemic: Connection, Creativity, and Learning for Tweens and Teens -- took a closer look at how tweens and teens have been using entertainment media to keep their connections and their creativity alive when their worlds are so disrupted. And as it turns out, they've been using media to boost their moods, connect with friends, and even learn new things outside of school.

The data in this report reinforces why it's so important to point kids toward the very best of media, like the shows, games, apps, and books that engage, inspire, and represent everyone equally. And it also serves as a reminder that when kids turn to media, they need to enter spaces that are safe, healthy, and free of hate speech and misinformation. But the data also shows that no matter how engaging media has been for kids during this time, they're ready for a return to in-person connections and a more "normal" media balance.

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The Role of Media During the Pandemic: Connection, Creativity, and Learning for Tweens and Teens

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As the pandemic wears on, parents, caregivers, and educators have continued to worry about how much time kids are spending with media. But new research shows that media of all types -- entertainment, social, creative -- has played an incredibly important role in helping kids get through a very tough time.

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How does the increase in technology used in classrooms effect the grade point average in high schoolers?  How does standardized tests online effect the studying habits of high schoolers?

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Starting in 2024, U.S. students will take the SAT entirely online

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The College Board, the organization behind the test, also announced that the exam will shrink from three hours to two, and students will be able to use a calculator for the math section.

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1) Should social media companies change their policies to protect children under 16 from being exposed to sensitive topics?

2) Does seeing advertisements about illegal activities for minors (like alcohol and tobacco) influence the likeliness that they will illegally participate in those activities?

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Senators are introducing a bill aimed at keeping kids safe online amid mounting frustrations that popular apps including Instagram and YouTube don't do enough to protect their youngest users.

The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is a grab bag of new rules and safeguards covering some of the biggest concerns that have emerged among lawmakers in the last year, as child safety has become a rare point of cross-party agreement.

"Big Tech has brazenly failed children and betrayed its trust, putting profits above safety," Blumenthal said in a statement. "The Kids Online Safety Act would finally give kids and their parents the tools and safeguards they need to protect against toxic content - and hold Big Tech accountable for deeply dangerous algorithms."

The law would require apps to create stricter safety measures for users under 16 by default, including tools to protect against stalking, exploitation, addiction and "rabbit holes of dangerous material." They would have to build parental supervision tools and dedicated channels to report harm. Kids would be able to turn off recommendations based on algorithms that use their personal data.

Tech companies would have a "duty of care" to protect kids from content that promotes self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse and sexual exploitation. They would be barred from showing ads to kids for products that are illegal to sell to them, like alcohol and tobacco.

The bill follows a series of contentious hearings on Capitol Hill over the role of social media in fueling a teenage mental health crisis and exposing kids to harms from bullying to drug abuse to predators.

"Senator Blumenthal and I have heard countless stories of physical and emotional damage affecting young users, and Big Tech's unwillingness to change," Blackburn said in a statement. She said the bill would set "necessary safety guiderails" and "give parents more peace of mind."

Concerns over kids' safety escalated last year with news that Facebook parent Meta was building a version of its Instagram app for 10 to 12 year olds and reached a crescendo with subsequent revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen that Instagram has researched how the app can be toxic for some of its youngest users. Lawmakers have also grilled executives from other apps popular with kids, including Snapchat, TikTok and Google's YouTube.

Attracting the next generation of users is a matter of existential importance for social media companies, and in particular for Meta, which is seeing growth slow at Facebook, the world's biggest social network.

Under pressure from lawmakers, regulators and advocacy groups, Instagram paused development of its kids' product last fall. But the app's head, Adam Mosseri, told lawmakers that the company still believes building an app for kids, with parental supervision, is the right thing to do.

Meta has said it supports new regulations on tech companies, and Mosseri has said the industry should come together to propose safety standards for kids on social media.
Editor's note: Meta pays NPR to license NPR content.

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Senators aim to rewrite child safety rules on social media

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Senators are introducing a bill aimed at keeping kids safe online amid mounting frustrations that popular apps including Instagram and YouTube don't do enough to protect their youngest users. The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen.

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TikTok sees a surge of misleading videos that claim to show the invasion of Ukraine Kiichiro Sato/APTikTok sees a surge of misleading videos that claim to show the invasion of UkraineFebruary 25, 2022 • A flurry of conflict-themed videos has inundated TikTok, sending countless videos depicting military action unrelated to the war in Ukraine to millions of viewers.

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TikTok sees a surge of misleading videos that claim to show the invasion of Ukraine Kiichiro Sato/APTikTok sees a surge of misleading videos that claim to show the invasion of UkraineFebruary 25, 2022 • A flurry of conflict-themed videos has inundated TikTok, sending countless videos depicting military action unrelated to the war in Ukraine to millions of viewers.

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1) What can TikTok do to make sure misleading information is not posted?

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https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1080944193/apple-airtags-theft-stalking-privacy-tech

1) Do Apple's AirTags put people at risk for stalker and unwanted tracking of their whereabouts?
2) Should Apple's AirTags be flagged and be terminated due to it easily being manipulated to put people in dangerous situations?

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Apple's AirTags were billed as a cheap and easy way to track everything from your keys and wallet to your backpack, but in recent months, there have been a number of reports of the small button-sized device being used by stalkers and thieves to track people.

Last December, Canadian law enforcement announced that AirTags were being found in luxury vehicles to later be stolen. Over recent months, numerous stories have surfaced on social media of people finding AirTags hidden in their belongings.

Hi friends. So something kinda terrifying happened to me last night-

someone attached an Apple AirTag to the underside of my front wheel well while I was inside a bar. (1/3)
- jeana jeana (@Sega__JEANAsis) December 18, 2021

In response, Apple issued a statement last week saying it was working with law enforcement on all requests and is planning to roll out additional software updates to help iPhone users become more aware of and locate unknown AirTags that were following them.

"Based on our knowledge and on discussions with law enforcement, incidents of AirTag misuse are rare; however, each instance is one too many," it said.

Old problem, new tech

The idea behind AirTags is not revolutionary, but there are some notable differences in the technology from older tracking devices.

AirTags do not have a built-in GPS system and instead piggyback off the location data of nearby Apple devices by emitting a continuous Bluetooth signal, which is then viewable by the tag's owner.

Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said she was alarmed even before the product's launch last spring.

"I was concerned ahead of their release as soon as I figured out how they worked. I was concerned very shortly after they were released when I started seeing reports of stalking and being contacted by people who were being stalked using these devices," she told NPR.

This isn't the first time a new device or technology has been used for malicious purposes, said Renee Williams, the executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime.

"As technology becomes more sophisticated and advanced, as wonderful as that is for society, unfortunately, it also becomes much easier to misuse and abuse," she told NPR. "I wouldn't say that we've necessarily seen an uptick with the use of AirTags any more or less than any cutting edge technology."

Williams said that what was rare was a technology company taking the issue seriously and moving to address it.

"[Apple is] not only listening to the field, but actively reaching out at times to do safety checks. That in and of itself might sound like a very small step, but it's rare," she said.

Still, Galperin thinks that Apple should have done more to protect people ahead of time.

"The mitigations that Apple had in place at the time that the AirTag came out were woefully insufficient," Galperin said.

"I think that Apple has been very careful and responsive after putting the product out and introducing new mitigations. But the fact that they chose to bring the product to market in the state that it was in last year, is shameful."

How to know if an AirTag is following you

For Apple iPhone users, there are some safeguards in place, but for others, the options are more limited.

Currently, iPhone users will receive a notification if an AirTag is separated from its owner and is moving with them over time - if their phone is running on iOS 14.5 or later, and they have the correct settings on.

Android users cannot receive these notifications automatically, but Apple has released an application called Tracker Detect that will allow them to scan for an unknown AirTag nearby. However, Tracker Detect currently only operates when the app is open.

Anyone who is alerted to the presence of an unknown AirTag, either through Apple's notification system or by using Tracker Detect, can trigger an audible chime to help them locate the device.

AirTags will also randomly play this chime automatically when separated from the original owner.

Apple notes that receiving a notification of an unknown AirTag does not necessarily mean that you are being followed. The device and the item it's attached to may genuinely be lost.

However, if you do fear you are being maliciously tracked, AirTags can be deactivated by removing the battery. Doing so not only stops it from updating its current location but also alerts the device's owner. However, some law enforcement agencies have pointed out that removing the AirTag's battery could potentially contaminate it as evidence.

What you can do if you are being maliciously tracked

There are no hard-and-fast rules on what you should do if you suspect you are being tracked, said Jennifer Landhuis, the director of the Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center.

Apple recommends people contact local law enforcement, and Landhuis advises victims to be thoughtful about how to do so in the safest way possible.

"If the offender is monitoring the victim's actions and sees that the AirTag has now gone to the police station, that can escalate the situation and put a victim more in danger," she said, suggesting that finding a public place where you can safely contact police by phone and have an officer meet you might be a safer alternative.

Landhuis also suggested that people document the incident by taking screenshots and photos and keeping a log of notes in order to keep track of the details. But the most important thing for someone to do, she said, was to follow their instincts.

"The first thing that we always say to an individual who thinks they're being stalked is to trust your gut," she said. "Your instincts tell you one way or the other to follow those instincts, because their instincts are usually pretty spot on."

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AirTags are being used to track people and cars. Here's what is being done about it

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Apple's AirTags were billed as a cheap and easy way to track everything from your keys and wallet to your backpack, but in recent months, there have been a number of reports of the small button-sized device being used by stalkers and thieves to track people.

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http://proxy-tu.researchport.umd.edu/login?ins=tu&url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=psyh&AN=2017-10858-048&site=ehost-live&scope=site

Article Title: Case study on how high school teachers incorporate technology in the classroom to meet 21st century student learning needs.

Research Questions:

What are the benefits of teachers encouraging the integration of technology in a secondary education level classroom?

How can 21st century learning skills related to technology be developed through secondary level lessons/curricula?

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1) What does Crypto Currency, specifically bitcoin, look to be heading in the next 5 to 10 years?

2)How has the convenience of trading bitcoin led to high and low price points, and how does mining for Crypto affect the environment.

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1)What additional forms of content regulation can Tik Tok implement in order to not lead adolescent users into believing the misinformation spread on the app and improve the digital literacy of teens?

2)How does short form content like Tik Tok influence teens to believe misinformation posted about intricate topics such as politics that they are not knowledgeable about?

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TikTok sees a surge of misleading videos that claim to show the invasion of Ukraine

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A flurry of conflict-themed videos has inundated TikTok, sending countless videos depicting military action unrelated to the war in Ukraine to millions of viewers.

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1) What is the effect of Apple AirTags being used to track people and cars, in relationships?

Apple AirTags are being used to track people. Here's what is being done about it : NPR

2) What is the effect of exes sharing social media login info?

A breakup doesn't always mean the end of a shared Netflix account : NPR

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NEW YORK - Emily Taffel didn't pull the password plug when she divorced her first husband, and she didn't cut off the boyfriend who followed. Now remarried with four stepchildren, she continues as a model of civility when it comes to exes and logins.

The 41-year-old in Coral Springs, Florida, and her first husband didn't have kids, much money or own a house when they divorced. What they did have were subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu.

"We each paid for one of them and share. That was literally our divorce agreement," Taffel said. "It was written right in there. We're still doing it."

When boyfriend Sam came along but the romance ended three years later, they maintained close ties and joint custody of additional services, sharing logins and the cost to this day among themselves and Taffel's ex-husband. Taffel and her current husband have added more and shared down the line over a decade after her first marriage ended.

"I know it seems crazy," she said. "The ex-boyfriend and the ex-husband aren't friends, but through me everybody is very amicable."

In this era of cybersecurity concerns and calls for multifactor lockdown of all things digital, that approach points to a thorny issue when love goes wrong: What to do about the logins?

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans who are in a relationship share passwords across nearly every digital platform, ranging from social media to email and cell phone to mobile wallets, said Harold Li, vice president of the encryption service ExpressVPN.

"In the digital era, sharing passwords is a sign of trust and affection akin to the gift of a letterman jacket or an exchange of school locker combinations," he said. "However, while it may seem like a romantic gesture at the moment, it poses serious risks to your personal privacy, which even the closest of relationships need."

And when relationships end, whether romantic or of the friendship variety, he recommends a thorough "digital divorce."

It can be like returning the sweater an ex left behind

Sisi Cronin, 33, in Napa, California, is still logged in to her college boyfriend's Netflix account, with her own profile. While they don't live near each other, they remain friendly after going their separate ways when she was 23.

"One time about three years ago he sent me a kind of funny message saying, hey, Netflix has decided to limit how many people can be on, would you mind getting your own? And I just wrote back saying I'd rather not. We haven't talked about it since," she said. "When you've got all these different subscription platforms it's ideal to not be paying for all of them yourself, right?"

Nick Leighton of the etiquette podcast "Were You Raised by Wolves" equates the changing of shared passwords after a breakup to returning the sweater left behind by the ex.

"Be mindful of the fact that when a person discovers their login no longer works, it'll be a clear reminder that the relationship is indeed over, which may cause hurt feelings," he said. "In a relationship, asking someone for their password can make some people uncomfortable, so it's often better to wait until they volunteer to share rather than putting them on the spot. It should also be noted that sharing passwords might possibly violate the terms of service."

Experts advise against sharing passwords, regardless of your relationship status

Things don't always go swimmingly when logins aren't cut off post-breakup.

"Change the password. In the age of perpetual watch histories being widely available, nobody wants to know that their ex just watched `The Notebook' on Netflix. It stirs up all sorts of emotions," said John Capo, an assistant professor of communications at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

"Were they thinking about me when they watched it? Who did they watch it with? Why were they awake at midnight, anyway? Remember when we used to watch `The Notebook?'"

Brian Penny, 40, in Tucson, Arizona, doesn't have the heart to leave an ex out in the cold on his HBO Max and Hulu accounts.

"She's struggling with work and it doesn't cost me anything, but it does show her name because she added herself as a profile," he said. "I do wonder what the next girlfriend will think about seeing another woman's name in my account. I've already reasoned I would say it's a cousin or friend."

Hari Ravichandran, founder and CEO of the digital safety provider Aura, noted the prevalence of password sharing among some, but warned against it.

"It's no secret that password-sharing is a way for consumers to get around the cost of paying for multiple services," he said in a statement. "What consumers aren't considering is that these behaviors make them vulnerable to digital crime when people outside your household - even ones you trust - have your passwords on their devices."

Guest profiles are one of the ways exes keep logins after the relationship ends

Researchers have found a variety of reasons people maintain streaming ties after a breakup - convenience, finances and post-breakup friendships among them. A downside: When a vindictive ex deliberately wreaks havoc with algorithms to mess up ads and suggested viewing, or creates a profile to rile up a current love interest. One sharer said the parents of an ex stayed logged into one of his sites for two years after they broke up and sent him a gift card out of the blue as thanks.

Chandler Sterling in Los Angeles shows up as a generic "guest" profile on the Netflix and Hulu accounts of a former long-term girlfriend. He also uses his parents' cable TV subscription with his Apple TV for access to pretty much anything, including sports.

"Yes, I'm 34, and yes, I make over six figures at my job, but I won't pay for something if I don't have to," he said. "My ex has never directly confronted me about the guest profile on Hulu. On Netflix, she changed the guest account's profile picture to the guy from the show `Lucifer,' so I think she's sending me a message about how she feels. ... I have zero guilt for all this cloak and dagger mooching."

Penny said he wasn't sure if or when he would remove his ex.

"Our relationship didn't end well at all," he said. "I think a part of me leaves it alone so she leaves me alone. The peace of mind is worth it."

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When it comes to love and logins, some exes keep sharing passwords

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NEW YORK - Emily Taffel didn't pull the password plug when she divorced her first husband, and she didn't cut off the boyfriend who followed. Now remarried with four stepchildren, she continues as a model of civility when it comes to exes and logins.

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1. How can social media platforms such as Youtube and Instagram protect younger users from sensitive content?
2. How does Tiktok cyberbullying affect youth self-esteem?

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Senators are introducing a bill aimed at keeping kids safe online amid mounting frustrations that popular apps including Instagram and YouTube don't do enough to protect their youngest users.

The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is a grab bag of new rules and safeguards covering some of the biggest concerns that have emerged among lawmakers in the last year, as child safety has become a rare point of cross-party agreement.

"Big Tech has brazenly failed children and betrayed its trust, putting profits above safety," Blumenthal said in a statement. "The Kids Online Safety Act would finally give kids and their parents the tools and safeguards they need to protect against toxic content - and hold Big Tech accountable for deeply dangerous algorithms."

The law would require apps to create stricter safety measures for users under 16 by default, including tools to protect against stalking, exploitation, addiction and "rabbit holes of dangerous material." They would have to build parental supervision tools and dedicated channels to report harm. Kids would be able to turn off recommendations based on algorithms that use their personal data.

Tech companies would have a "duty of care" to protect kids from content that promotes self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse and sexual exploitation. They would be barred from showing ads to kids for products that are illegal to sell to them, like alcohol and tobacco.

The bill follows a series of contentious hearings on Capitol Hill over the role of social media in fueling a teenage mental health crisis and exposing kids to harms from bullying to drug abuse to predators.

"Senator Blumenthal and I have heard countless stories of physical and emotional damage affecting young users, and Big Tech's unwillingness to change," Blackburn said in a statement. She said the bill would set "necessary safety guiderails" and "give parents more peace of mind."

Concerns over kids' safety escalated last year with news that Facebook parent Meta was building a version of its Instagram app for 10 to 12 year olds and reached a crescendo with subsequent revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen that Instagram has researched how the app can be toxic for some of its youngest users. Lawmakers have also grilled executives from other apps popular with kids, including Snapchat, TikTok and Google's YouTube.

Attracting the next generation of users is a matter of existential importance for social media companies, and in particular for Meta, which is seeing growth slow at Facebook, the world's biggest social network.

Under pressure from lawmakers, regulators and advocacy groups, Instagram paused development of its kids' product last fall. But the app's head, Adam Mosseri, told lawmakers that the company still believes building an app for kids, with parental supervision, is the right thing to do.

Meta has said it supports new regulations on tech companies, and Mosseri has said the industry should come together to propose safety standards for kids on social media.
Editor's note: Meta pays NPR to license NPR content.

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Senators aim to rewrite child safety rules on social media

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Senators are introducing a bill aimed at keeping kids safe online amid mounting frustrations that popular apps including Instagram and YouTube don't do enough to protect their youngest users. The bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act, introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen.

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1) How does social media affect body dysmorphia seen with adolescents?

1) How does social media contribute to unrealistic beauty standards in today's society?

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The Relationship Between Social Media and Body Dysmorphia | D'Amore

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Part of having a healthy body image of yourself requires knowing the role of social media. Here is the relationship between social media and body dysmorphia.

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How government seizures of bitcoin from hackers are effecting the people who originally owned it?
Is bitcoin trading as secure as owners and experts portray it to be?

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DOJ arrests New York couple and seizes $3.6 billion in bitcoin related to 2016 hack

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Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were arrested Tuesday in Manhattan on money laundering and conspiracy charges.

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1) Does longterm quarantine affect the usage of technology among college students?
2)How has online education affected overall student performance (specifically grades and attendance)?

Link:
https://www.theverge.com/web/2013/2/1/3940280/maria-bustillos-on-mooc-udacity-higher-learning

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Proponents of online education have long branded it as a way to bring free knowledge to the masses, but in a thought-provoking piece for The Awl, Maria Bustillos argues that the rise of so-called...