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The pressure and anxiety involved in replying/not getting a response to our messages instantly.

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Conversation has reached a weird place in 2015, where they don't start and finish but go on for days, months and years in fragmented blasts.

A neurotic side-effect of this is that some of us desire to be answered as soon as a message has been seen.

In the good old days (a couple of years ago) you could communicate without knowing where the other person/people was/were in the conversation, but since Facebook introduced the 'seen' function every correspondence is awaited with baited breath.

Whether you're a keen ignorer or simply busy and don't want to be misconstrued as one, it's actually very easy to get rid of the feature:

On desktop

Get the Facebook Unseen extension for Chrome.

It basically just removes the line of code when you're on Facebook that marks your posts with read receipts.

On mobile

Download Unread from the app store.

Chances are you use Facebook more on your phone than laptop now so this may come in handy. It does the same job, except the only down side is that you can't use it to send messages, only to check up on them.

So there's a fix for now - at least until Facebook has the sense to let you turn off the read receipts in settings like Whatsapp did with its blue ticks (though only on Android).
The Independent's bitcoin group on Facebook is the best place to follow the latest discussions and developments in cryptocurrency. Join here for the latest on how people are making money - and how they're losing it.
Reuse content

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Conversation has reached a weird place in 2015, where they don't start and finish but go on for days, months and years in fragmented blasts. A neurotic side-effect of this is that some of us desire to be answered as soon as a message has been seen.

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Chinese city has phone lane for people who are concentrating on their devices while walking

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Chinese city has phone lane for people who are concentrating on their devices while walking

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In Chongqing, China, with a degree of seriousness that has yet to be determined, the city authorities have designated a 30 metre (100ft) "cellphone lane" for people who use their phones while walking. "First mobile phone sidewalks in China," declares a notice next to it.

In fact, the Chongqing phone lane seems to be almost a direct copy of one that was painted on to 18th Street, Washington DC, in July. The Washington version was created for an experiment into crowd behaviour by the National Geographic TV channel. Which is a clue that the seriousness of the Chinese version may be below 100%.

The scheme also raises some fairly obvious questions. How will people so distracted by their phones that they are bumping into lampposts manage to stay within the lines of the lane? Even if they do, why will they not bump into each other all the time, or walk straight into the road when the lane finishes? How, for that matter, will they even notice the existence of the lane in the first place? Casual observers of the Washington experiment suggested that many phone-users just ignored it, but perhaps annoying Chinese people will prove more law-abiding than annoying Americans.

And yet there does seem to be some pressure building behind the idea that "distracted walking", as it is known, is a real problem. In 2012, the city of Philadelphia announced what it called an "e-lane" for smartphone users. In fact the pilot scheme turned out to be an April fool, albeit one designed to raise a serious public safety issue.

In 2013, a study at the Ohio State University found that distracted walking injuries in the US are rising fast, with 1,506 recorded in US emergency rooms in 2010, up from 256 in 2005. The young were especially likely to be affected.

Solutions, however, are less straightforward. Stanford University has displayed warning posters around campus. In 2012, the Utah Transit Authority claimed to be seeing real improvements following the introduction of a $50 fine for distracted walking in the vicinity of trains. Just last year the Guardian's own Oliver Burkeman proposed a campaign of deliberate near misses - a kind of passive-aggressive resistance movement on the part of the well behaved.

Eventually perhaps smartwatches might deliver us from the menace of smartphones, by vibrating whenever the wearer is about to crash into something, although that day does not yet seem close. We await news from Chongqing with interest.
Topics

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Chinese city opens 'phone lane' for texting pedestrians

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In Chongqing, China, with a degree of seriousness that has yet to be determined, the city authorities have designated a 30 metre (100ft) "cellphone lane" for people who use their phones while walking. "First mobile phone sidewalks in China," declares a notice next to it.

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Film where a man falls in love with his operating system. 'Symbolizes concerns that machines could be more attractive than humans' (Baym5). Film makes you realise how possible it could be to get to this stage, however weird it seems.

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Social networks will help education connect

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Social networks will help education connect

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This article was first published in the November 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

This article was taken from the preview of The WIRED World in 2016. In November, WIRED publishes its fourth annual trends report, a standalone magazine in which our network of expert writers and influencers predicts what's coming next. Here's a small selection of what to expect.

Facebook and LinkedIn have been around for more than a decade. Twitter is almost as old. In 2015, social networks are so all-
encompassing it's hard to imagine how we lived without them. Similarly, it's easy to imagine that the ones we currently use are enough. How many different places do you really need to present your digital self to the world -- especially when that self is built around your actual name in most instances. Three? Five? Ten?

Obviously, it varies for each individual. But there are still major networks to create. So, I predict that, in 2016, we will see at least one education network go mainstream.

In education, people maintain unique identities and relationships, and optimal outcomes are key to one's overall quality of life.
As such, it can benefit from the efficiencies, amplifications and accelerations that networks create.

To fully appreciate the value an education network can unleash, just think about the critical role that more general networks already play in how we identify important new ideas and innovations, and spread them faster. Ten-plus years ago, the key competitive edge to winning in business involved accessing information more efficiently than one's competitors. Those who did this were better informed, had more context and could see more clearly where things were heading.

Today, all this holds true. But how you achieve this competitive edge has shifted. We've entered what I call the Networked Age: an era where what you know is framed by who you know.

In the Networked Age, our friends and colleagues find and filter information that is most useful to us. Networks make it possible to engage in extremely high numbers of interactions and transactions, in part by aggregating and redistributing trust. You may not know the eBay seller who is promising you an item. But you do know that 479 other buyers in eBay's marketplace have rated that seller favourably, so you proceed with the transaction.

I'm keen on many networks, because people are complex, with many different facets. We engage in a variety of pursuits, in a variety of environments, and often the relationships we maintain in these environments are unique to that realm. One way to get a sense of how many identities people maintain is to simply look in their wardrobes. We have different clothing for different facets of our identity and different modes of behaviour. You can think about social networks as digital clothing. They're what we "wear" to present different versions of ourselves online, as we engage in different pursuits.

Of course, many of these networks aspire to be the shirt you can wear anywhere. But there is still a significant need and a demand for much more targeted networks and platforms. Although you might be able to pull off a high backhand volley in a tuxedo, you're likely to perform much better in a tennis shirt.

Networks are the same: general-purpose networks are obviously valuable, but there's a growing role for more specialised ones. In 2005, we hit one billion global internet users, a benchmark that helped usher in the era of social networks. Just ten years later, we're at more than three billion global users, many of whom access the internet via phones and tablets.

In other words, more people are using the internet more often, in more places than they were ten years ago. That's creating an opportunity for a whole new generation of networks that cater to various aspects of personal identity and the relationships associated with them.

Roughly speaking, Facebook is where you maintain personal relationships. My company LinkedIn is for your professional life. Twitter is for what's happening now. Pinterest, Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram are venues for sharing your creativity.

These are generalisations and there's overlap in many of these networks, but they're all fairly broad and flexible, and in part that's why I think there's so much growth left. Magazines didn't stop at Time or Life. Television didn't stop at the BBC and ITV. In the cable era, we saw the rise of hundreds of "specialised" channels that can still reach hundreds of millions of people.

Over the next decade, we'll see a similar trajectory play out with platforms that are explicitly built around networks. NextDoor, for example, where I serve on the board, is built around a person's identity as a member of a specific geographic community. Edmodo, where I'm also a board member, is an education-oriented network that caters to people's identities as teachers, students and parents of students. I was involved in the first round of funding for Change.org, which is a network where people establish and maintain their identities as participants in civil society. Kiva.org (I'm a board member) is a micro-finance network where lenders provide zero-interest loans to entrepreneurs.

In the Networked Age, technologies shift overnight. Opportunities span the globe, but so does competition. As I wrote in my book, The Start-up of You, individuals must cultivate an adaptive, entrepreneurial mindset to survive. Education is the key to success -- starting at the K-12 level (pre-school to year 13 in the UK) and continuing throughout one's life. In developing countries, this dynamic is even more pronounced -- smartphones are often the only device for knowledge acquisition.

The more people recognise that education equates to prosperity and security in the Networked Age, the more they'll recognise the importance of using networks to enhance their education. Think about the current landscape. Schools have spent billions investing in laptops and tablets for their students. Thousands of content creators are producing courseware, ebooks, video, study apps and tools. As platforms such as Khan Academy, Udacity, Coursera, Alt.school and Lynda.com (which LinkedIn acquired for $1.5bn in April) come online, the opportunities to pursue education at all stages of life are becoming
more flexible.

To utilise these abundant resources most effectively, it helps to have a network of trusted peers and allies providing context, recommendations and other kinds of information and feedback, collectively and in real-time. Ultimately, education is a highly social activity. Humans learn by modelling the behaviour and internalising the experiences of others. When people learn in social settings they retain information better. That's why educational networks make so much sense.

Also critical is the fact that education is a realm where people have very distinct identities and relationships that they'd like to maintain apart from the rest of their lives. For example, if you're a student, your Facebook friends probably include fellow
classmates -- but not your teachers or your principal. If you're a parent, your Facebook friends may include other parents whose children go to the same schools yours do -- but not many.

And even then you may not consider Facebook the most appropriate domain to engage in an in-depth way about specific and confidential school-related issues. Education, in short, is a domain where a more topic-specific network can deliver much more value than a general-interest one.

An education network gives students a focused venue where they can discuss homework assignments and find tools and materials that can help them. It gives teachers a place to share recommendations about new courseware. It allows parents to follow what their children are learning on a more informed basis.

Education networks also make physical classrooms both more intra-connected and more extensible. Students in the same physical class can work collaboratively inside and outside the classroom, but these networks also allow students to find resources and peers outside of their own physical class who are studying the same topics.

Any classroom that is simply using its connectivity to allow students to all participate in the same massive open online course at 11am each day is only scratching the surface of what computers and networks can actually provide.

To get the most out of a highly connected, digitised world, you need platforms that emphasise personal interconnectivity. The success of platforms as varied as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, eBay, Uber, Dropbox and Airbnb has shown how networks can increase, amplify and accelerate positive outcomes of all kinds. In 2016, I believe the education world will embrace this fundamental lesson -- let's call it Networks 101 -- and matriculate to the Networked Age.

This article was first published in the November 2015 issue of WIRED magazine

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Social networks will help education connect, says Reid Hoffman

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This article was first published in the November 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online. This article was taken from the preview of The WIRED World in 2016.

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Google auto-complete providing a unique peek inside the collective consciousness?

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Google auto-complete providing a unique peek inside the collective consciousness?

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'If you did something and you didn't Instagram it, did it really happen?'

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'If you did something and you didn't Instagram it, did it really happen?'

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'Pics or it didn't happen' - the mantra of the Instagram era

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The long read: How sharing our every moment on social media became the new living

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Is catching up with someone the same when we already have constant updates?

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Is catching up with someone the same when we already have constant updates?

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Man who took a grinning photo with the Egyptian plane hijacker described it as 'the best selfie ever'.

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The man who took a grinning photo with the Egyptian plane hijacker has explained why he did it. However his mother has since pointed out that the picture wasn't even a selfie as it was taken by...

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Mark Willis on the changes to social norms due to rise in online communities (2012)

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The Online Community-A New Paradigm: Mark Wills at TEDxSanLuisObispo

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Rheingold - the new power of collaboration 

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Rheingold - the new power of collaboration 

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Howard Rheingold: The new power of collaboration

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Howard Rheingold talks about the coming world of collaboration, participatory media and collective action -- and how Wikipedia is really an outgrowth of our natural human instinct to work as a group.

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Excerpt from Alone Together - we struggle to give each other our undivided attention 

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Excerpt from Alone Together - we struggle to give each other our undivided attention 

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Technology makes us better social beings

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Technology makes us better social beings

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“people who use sites like Facebook have more close relationships and are more likely to be involved in civic and political activities.''

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Sociologist Keith Hampton believes technology and social networking affect our lives in some very positive ways

smithsonian.com

About a decade ago, Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, wrote a book called Bowling Alone. In it, he explained how Americans were more disconnected from each other than they were in the 1950s. They were less likely to be involved in civic organizations and entertained friends in their homes about half as often as they did just a few decades before.

So what is the harm in fewer neighborhood poker nights? Well, Putnam feared that fewer get-togethers, formal or informal, meant fewer opportunities for people to talk about community issues. More than urban sprawl or the fact that more women were working outside the home, he attributed Americans' increasingly isolated lifestyle to television. Putnam's concern, articulated by Richard Flacks in a Los Angeles Times book review, was with "the degree to which we have become passive consumers of virtual life rather than active bonders with others."

Then, in 2006, sociologists from the University of Arizona and Duke University sent out another distress signal-a study titled "Social Isolation in America." In comparing the 1985 and 2004 responses to the General Social Survey, used to assess attitudes in the United States, they found that the average American's support system-or the people he or she discussed important matters with-had shrunk by one-third and consisted primarily of family. This time, the Internet and cellphones were allegedly to blame.

Keith Hampton, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, is starting to poke holes in this theory that technology has weakened our relationships. Partnered with the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, he turned his gaze, most recently, to users of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

"There has been a great deal of speculation about the impact of social networking site use on people's social lives, and much of it has centered on the possibility that these sites are hurting users' relationships and pushing them away from participating in the world," Hampton said in a recent press release. He surveyed 2,255 American adults this past fall and published his results in a study last month. "We've found the exact opposite-that people who use sites like Facebook actually have more close relationships and are more likely to be involved in civic and political activities."

Hampton's study paints one of the fullest portraits of today's social networking site user. His data shows that 47 percent of adults, averaging 38 years old, use at least one site. Every day, 15 percent of Facebook users update their status and 22 percent comment on another's post. In the 18- to 22-year-old demographic, 13 percent post status updates several times a day. At those frequencies, "user" seems fitting. Social networking starts to sound like an addiction, but Hampton's results suggest perhaps it is a good addiction to have. After all, he found that people who use Facebook multiple times a day are 43 percent more likely than other Internet users to feel that most people can be trusted. They have about 9 percent more close relationships and are 43 percent more likely to have said they would vote.

The Wall Street Journal recently profiled the Wilsons, a New York City-based family of five that collectively maintains nine blogs and tweets incessantly. (Dad, Fred Wilson, is a venture capitalist whose firm, Union Square Ventures, invested in Tumblr, Foursquare and Etsy.) "They are a very connected family-connected in terms of technology," says writer Katherine Rosman on WSJ.com. "But what makes it super interesting is that they are also a very close-knit family and very traditional in many ways. [They have] family dinner five nights a week." The Wilsons have managed to seamlessly integrate social media into their everyday lives, and Rosman believes that while what they are doing may seem extreme now, it could be the norm soon. "With the nature of how we all consume media, being on the internet all the time doesn't mean being stuck in your room. I think they are out and about doing their thing, but they're online," she says.

This has been of particular interest to Hampton, who has been studying how mobile technology is used in public spaces. To describe how pervasive Internet use is, he says, 38 percent of people use it while at a public library, 18 percent while at a café or coffee shop and even 5 percent while at church, according to a 2008 survey. He modeled two recent projects off of the work of William Whyte, an urbanist who studied human behavior in New York City's public parks and plazas in the 1960s and 1970s. Hampton borrowed the observation and interview techniques that Whyte used in his 1980 study "The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces" and applied them to his own updated version, "The Social Life of Wireless Urban Spaces." He and his students spent a total of 350 hours watching how people behaved in seven public spaces with wireless Internet in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Toronto in the summer of 2007.

Though laptop users tended to be alone and less apt to interact with strangers in public spaces, Hampton says, "It's interesting to recognize that the types of interactions that people are doing in these spaces are not isolating. They are not alone in the true sense because they are interacting with very diverse people through social networking websites, e-mail, video conferencing, Skype, instant messaging and a multitude of other ways. We found that the types of things that they are doing online often look a lot like political engagement, sharing information and having discussions about important matters. Those types of discussions are the types of things we'd like to think people are having in public spaces anyway. For the individual, there is probably something being gained and for the collective space there is probably something being gained in that it is attracting new people." About 25 percent of those he observed using the Internet in the public spaces said that they had not visited the space before they could access the Internet there. In one of the first longitudinal studies of its kind, Hampton is also studying changes in the way people interact in public spaces by comparing film he has gathered from public spaces in New York in the past few years with Super 8 time-lapse films that were made by William Whyte over the decades.

"There are a lot of chances now to do these sort of 2.0 versions of studies that have been ongoing studies from the '60s and '70s, when we first became interested in the successes and failures of the cities that we have made for ourselves," says Susan Piedmont-Palladino, a curator at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Hampton spoke earlier this month at the museum's "Intelligent Cities" forum, which focused on how data, including his, can be used to help cities adapt to urbanization. More than half of the world's population is living in cities now and that figure is expected to rise to 70 percent by 2050.

"Our design world has different rates of change. Cities change really, really slowly. Buildings change a little faster, but most of them should outlive a human. Interiors, furniture, fashion-the closer you get to the body, the faster things are changing. And technology right now is changing fastest of all," says Piedmont-Palladino. "We don't want the city to change at the rate that our technology changes, but a city that can receive those things is going to be a healthy city into the future."

About Megan Gambino

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How Technology Makes Us Better Social Beings

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smithsonian.com About a decade ago, Robert Putnam, a political scientist at Harvard University, wrote a book called Bowling Alone. In it, he explained how Americans were more disconnected from each other than they were in the 1950s.

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87% of millennials admitted to missing out on a conversation because they were distracted by their phone

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It's something everyone suspected, but now it's official: The under-30 crowd is addicted to their cell phones.

Those are the findings of a new survey, which showed that as millennials spend more time engaged on social media platforms, it's causing them to be less social in real life. The study, conducted by Flashgap, a photo-sharing application with more than 150,000 users, found that 87 percent of millennials admitted to missing out on a conversation because they were distracted by their phone. Meanwhile, 54 percent said they experience a fear of missing out if not checking social networks.

Nearly 3,000 participants were asked about how they felt about social media in social settings, and found that the guiltiest culprits are often females. The study found 76 percent of females check social media platforms at least 10 times when out with friends, compared with 54 percent of males.

The most commonly used apps mentioned in social settings among millennials were Snapchat, Tinder, Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.

Julian Kabab, co-founder of FlashGap said that people are too focused on looking at social media when they're out at events, and it may be costing them in social interaction. "People miss out on parties because they want to see what's going on, on social networks, take beautiful selfies and add filters to their pictures," he told CNBC.

It especially becomes a problem when there is alcohol involved and regrets the next morning. The survey found that 71 percent of users regret posting a picture on a social network after more than three drinks.

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How social media is making us less social: Study

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It's something everyone suspected, but now it's official: The under-30 crowd is addicted to their cell phones. Those are the findings of a new survey, which showed that as millennials spend more time engaged on social media platforms, it's causing them to be less social in real life.

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"If they're at a concert or something, I'm like, 'Man, I wish I was there.' "

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Is Facebook really a network of friends? Or does your news feed make you feel otherwise?

A new study from the University of Michigan suggests the social network site is a place to constantly compare lives, which leads to sadness.

"Sometimes, I do and sometimes I don't," said student Hannah Smith. "If they're at a concert or something, I'm like, 'Man, I wish I was there.' "

The study looked at college students. It found those that socialize the most outside of Facebook, seem to feel the saddest. That's because they're more aware of what others are doing, that includes on social media.

Some McNeese State University students might compare, but said overall, their feelings are neutral.

"Oh yes and no," said student Andrew Guillotte. "I see those adventurous friends I guess, but then I realize how much I have to be thankful for."

"I don't get sad, I'm just like, 'Maybe I'll do that,' " said Smith. "I'll add that to the list of things to do."

And others said logging on to Facebook doesn't upset them at all.

"I feel like I'm happy with what I've accomplished so I don't need to compare my life with other people," said student Olivia Babineaux.

"I like looking at social network and seeing what everyone has to say or post," said student Katie Mefford.

The study also found that jealousy is increased in relationships with social media.

Read more about the study HERE.

Copyright 2013 KPLC. All rights reserved.

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Study finds using Facebook makes us sad and lonely

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Is Facebook really a network of friends? Or does your news feed make you feel otherwise? A new study from the University of Michigan suggests the social network site is a place to constantly compare lives, which leads to sadness. "Sometimes, I do and sometimes I don't," said student Hannah Smith.

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John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!

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Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John McWhorter posits that there's much more to texting -- linguistically, culturally -- than it seems, and it's all good news.

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Ted talk - how social media can make history 

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Ted talk - how social media can make history 

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The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. e.g. Arab Spring

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While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

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Netflix and the normalisation of the TV binge 

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Netflix and the normalisation of the TV binge 

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From weekly allotments of entertainment to binging on three series at once. DiSalvo asks: have we lost something valuable in the binge?  Does it matter how we watch TV?

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With season two of Netflix's breakout hit Orange is the New Black now airing, I'm struck by a profound change in the psychological calculus of entertainment. Netflix has changed the game, and I don't just mean the game of how shows are served to hungry eyes. I mean the game going on behind our eyes - the dynamics of restraint and gratification that our brains have for decades been trained to tacitly obey.

In case you haven't watched the show, or other shows original to Netflix (like House of Cards), let me briefly explain. Netflix films an entire season of the show and then-against every convention inscribed onto the holy tablets of television-releases the entire season... all at once. When season two of Orange is the New Black aired on Friday, June 6, the whole season aired, front to back.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of fans waiting for the new season were free to binge on every episode-and I'm willing to bet that by now a hefty percentage of those fans have re-binged, with many warming up for a third gorging.

Before Netflix introduced this format, we were still in the mode of weekly allotments of entertainment. HBO long ago christened Sunday nights as the time to receive our weekly dose of quality, commercial-free shows of choice, whether it's The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Sex in the City, or more recently Game of Thrones (to name just a few of many legendary shows). All of the major cable and traditional networks offer something similar, but only the premium channels can offer the premium prize of hour-long, commercial free entertainment.

For all of those shows, we were (and largely still are) forced by the format to exercise delayed gratification. Even if you pirate episodes of the shows online, you are still, for the most part, restricted to imbibing only the shows that have already aired. Is that because HBO and Showtime and other networks are busy shooting the shows as the season rolls along? No. With few exceptions, seasons of those shows have already been shot from start to finish. The imposed restraint all of us viewers must obey is exactly that- imposed.

Think about that for a moment in terms of a laboratory experiment. If researchers wanted to test ways of increasing rats' ability to delay gratification, they would place the rats in some sort of observational lab environment and provide them with disincentives for charging after a treat. Since all rats like a good treat, they would start with virtually zero ability to resist the urge to pounce on whatever tasty morsel is within eye or scent shot. But, with time, and with the right combination of disincentives (like slowly convincing the rats that the longer they wait to pounce, the more of the treat they'll receive), even hungry rats can be trained to delay gratification.

In a sense, that's what the Sunday night entertainment dosing model is for humans: delayed gratification linked to quality. We wait for the best shows on our weekly docket because we've come to believe that they are worth waiting for. An hour of well-written, well-acted, commercial-free entertainment is our weekly prize, and we've been trained to steady our appetite until it arrives.

For the sake of argument, I'll submit that the standard delayed gratification model is a good thing for a few reasons. First, it provides us with something to look forward to each week, thus injecting a little more light into each of our days by knowing we'll see our favorite shows come Sunday. That sense of anticipation provides a neurochemical boost -a sort of naturally occurring antidepressant.

Our continued desire for scheduled servings also keeps us involved-and it keeps us talking to others about the shows. As a catalyst for social interaction, the weekly dose brings us together. We are communally caught up in the narratives, and I think a sound argument could be made that even though the topics are fictional, we feed from the communal energy of knowing that thousands of people are thinking through the same plot lines we are.

Then there's the more basic upside of not spending hours linked together like sausages watching every episode of the season (but on that point I'll concede that whether we spend the hours all at once or once a week, we're still spending them in front of the screen).

So what happens when Netflix releases an entire season of shows every bit as good as anything on premium cable channels? It's as if all of the disincentives enforcing delayed gratification in our hypothetical lab rats have suddenly disappeared. The boundaries are cast to oblivion. The tasty treat is right there for the taking, and in a quantity that hardly any rat can resist.

Let me be clear: I love Orange is the New Black, and I'm nearly as big a fan of House of Cards. And to be frank, I'm personally struggling with the desire to binge on season two of Piper's compelling travails. This is where I'm torn. Am I merely reacting to my years upon years of training to wait for my weekly reward, or is there something valuable lost in the binge?

For me, this is an intriguing if not troubling psychological spot. So let's open the floor to opinions. Is entertainment binging a liberating break with decades of delayed gratification training, or are we giving up something worthwhile by dispensing with the restraint structure that dominated television until only recently? Is having it all upfront the way it ought to be, or a little too good for our own good?
You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter @neuronarrative, at his website The Daily Brain, and on YouTube at Your Brain Channel. His latest book is Brain Changer: How Harnessing Your Brain's Power To Adapt Can Change Your Life.

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How Netflix Is Changing Our Brains, And Why That May Not Be All Good

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With season two of Netflix's breakout hit Orange is the New Black now airing, I'm struck by a profound change in the psychological calculus of entertainment. Netflix has changed the game, and I don't just mean the game of how shows are served to hungry eyes. I mean the game [...]

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Algorithms - from Netflix to doing our online shop, our computers know what we will like 

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Algorithms - from Netflix to doing our online shop, our computers know what we will like 

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'If we depend on algorithms to manage our daily decisions — when do we start to lose control?'

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Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world

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We live in a world run by algorithms, computer programs that make decisions or solve problems for us. In this riveting, funny talk, Kevin Slavin shows how modern algorithms determine stock prices, espionage tactics, even the movies you watch. But, he asks: If we depend on complex algorithms to manage our daily decisions -- when do we start to lose control?

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Scottish independence referendum - politics and social media

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Scottish independence referendum - politics and social media

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Social media more influential information source than newspapers

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Mainstream media coverage assisted only 28 per cent of voters in Scotland when making a decision on the issues they considered most important in the Scottish independence referendum last month, according to YouGov research commissioned by News UK.

The figures showed that despite 71 per cent of respondents saying they had gathered general information on referendum issues from TV and radio and 60 per cent from newspapers and their websites, more than two thirds (68 per cent) of voters said that mainstream media coverage of the issues concerning them most in the referendum debate had not helped them reach a decision.

More than half of respondents (54 per cent) said they got general information on social media and other websites, and 44 per cent said they took information directly from the Yes and No campaigns.

However, when asked about information that did influence decisions, more people said they'd used information from social media and other websites (39 per cent) than newspapers (34 per cent), although TV and radio was the strongest source (42 per cent), and nearly a third (30 per cent) said they used information from the Yes and No campaigns when deciding how to vote.

The figures were unveiled by News UK chief executive Mike Darcey at Press Gazette's News On The Move event in London on Thursday. The poll had 1,268 respondents.

Darcey said the referendum campaign highlighted the role newspapers play in political polls.

"A great example of how newspapers can really foster a debate is the recent independence referendum in Scotland," he said.

"It was the Sunday Times poll, for better or worse, showing the Yes camp ahead, that threw the No campaign into turmoil and sparked an entirely new debate about the sort of powers that would be devolved if Scotland voted to retain the union."

The Scottish independence referendum debate sparked media controversy when protests erupted outside the BBC's Scotland HQ in Glasgow amid accusations from voters that there was a pro-union bias in mainstream media coverage.

Of the mainstream newspapers, weekly title the Sunday Herald was the only publication to back Yes, while the Scotsman and Guardian declared in favour of a No vote and the Scottish Sun and Daily Record did not take a stated position.

During the week of the referendum, The Drum investigated the rise of Scotland's new media and spoke to the editors of alternative news websites Bella Caledonia, Newsnet Scotland and Wings Over Scotland, and gathered views from mainstream titles including the Sunday Herald, Scotsman and STV.

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Social media more influential information source than newspapers in Scottish independence referendum, YouGov finds

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Mainstream media coverage assisted only 28 per cent of voters in Scotland when making a decision on the issues they considered most important in the Scottish independence referendum last month, according to YouGov research commissioned by News UK.

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Teenagers 'more confident talking to each other via smartphones than face-to-face'... and have more freedom

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Teenagers 'more confident talking to each other via smartphones than face-to-face'... and have more freedom

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The research suggests that with the rise of mobile technology and smartphones, many teenagers actually prefer to communicate with each other online, rather than in person.

But this isn't necessarily a bad thing; three quarters of teenagers feel that having a mobile phone makes them closer to their mothers and fathers, the study finds.

Half of teenagers surveyed said they even felt sorry for the "dull lives" their parents had growing up without mobile phones, suggesting they believe that interacting with each other online is often more rewarding than face-to-face

A similar number also enjoy the privilege of being "able to do more" because their parents know they can contact them if they need to, the study of 502 people aged between 12 to 21 found.

Almost all of the teenagers said they felt safer leaving the house with their mobile phone, and 76 per cent said that was because they could get hold of their parents at the drop of a hat.

Read: Oh for ... Are our parents deliberately embarrassing us on social media?

Cindy Rose, consumer director of Vodafone UK, which conducted the study, said: "The digital world is often painted as a picture of doom and gloom but this research tells us quite a different story."

She claimed mobile media is "strengthening family bonds" even though young people could be losing the art of conversation as they prefer to talk to each other virtually.

Of the under 18s surveyed, 75 per cent said their relationship with their families is closer because of their phones, while 69 per cent said the first they do in the morning and the last thing they do at night, is check their phone.

Young people also felt having a mobile made them closer to their friends, with 89 per cent saying it helped improve their friendships.

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Teenagers 'more confident talking to each other via smartphones than face-to-face' - study

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The research suggests that with the rise of mobile technology and smartphones, many teenagers actually prefer to communicate with each other online, rather than in person. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing; three quarters of teenagers feel that having a mobile phone makes them closer to their mothers and fathers, the study finds.

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Young people feel socially supported by having large networks of online friends. Supports Wajcman (2009) argument

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The typical teenager has 300 Facebook friends and 79 Twitter followers, the Pew Internet and American Life project found in its report, Teens, Social Media, and Privacy.

And some have many more.

The 2013 study also says the norms around privacy are changing, and the majority of teens post photos and personal information about themselves for all their on-line contacts to see.

More recent survey data released last week by the Canadian non-profit digital literacy group MediaSmarts shows Canadian youth do take some steps to protect their privacy - for example, by not posting their contact information on social media.

How do you help kids manage or curb their screen time? Kids, what do you think it would it be like to put down your screens for a week? Send your tips and suggestions to community@cbc.ca or tweet us with the hashtag #CBCRewired.

But the paper, Online Privacy, Online Publicity, also points out that most kids have only a limited understanding of things such as privacy policies, geo-location services and the implications of sharing their passwords.

The research contributes to an emerging picture of how teens' ideas about friendship and intimacy have been influenced by their immersion in the on-line world, says Patricia Greenfield, a UCLA developmental psychologist and the director of the Children's Digital Media Center @ LosAngeles.

In her own research, Greenfield has found that young people feel socially supported by having large networks of on-line friends, and these are not necessarily friends they ever see face-to-face.

"We found in our study that people, college students, are not getting a sense of social support from being on the phone. They're getting social support through bigger networks and having a sense that their audience is large."

The result is a decline in intimate friendships, Greenfield says. Instead, many young people now derive personal support and affirmation from "likes" and feedback to their postings.

"The whole idea behind intimacy is self-disclosure. Now they're doing self-disclosure to an audience of hundreds."

Other research at UCLA shows teens' increasingly preferred mode of communication with their friends, texting, makes them feel less connected and bonded than face-to-face communication.

Graduate student Lauren Sherman studied various forms of communication between pairs of friends. She found the closer the experience was to in-person conversation, the more emotionally connected the friends felt. For example, video chat rated higher than a phone call, but the phone created a closer connection than texting.

"I don't think digital communication in itself is a bad thing," said Sherman, "but if we're losing out on opportunities to connect with people as well as we can, that's a problem."

Studies have estimated teens typically send more than 3,000 texts a month.

Greenfield says that indicates kids are opting for efficiency of connection over intimacy.

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'Screen time' affecting teens' concept of friendship, intimacy | CBC News

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The typical teenager has 300 Facebook friends and 79 Twitter followers, the Pew Internet and American Life project found in its report, Teens, Social Media, and Privacy. And some have many more. The 2013 study also says the norms around privacy are changing, and the majority of teens post photos and personal information about themselves for all their on-line contacts to see.

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...but have we always found distractions?

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...but have we always found distractions?

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The longer someone spends on Facebook, the worse their mood gets. Study supporting Turkle

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27 Feb 2015

Posted by Luis Reyes

"People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude." These are the words of professor and psycholinguistic Sherry Turkle in her book "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other" in which she argues that even though with our technology we are more connected than ever the reality is that we aren't less alone than before and in some cases but be even more isolated than before. But, how true are her concerns?

Well, one study by Ethan Kross from the University of Michigan suggests the longer someone spends on Facebook, the worse their mood gets.

"Our results indicate that Facebook use predicts negative shifts on both of these variables over time. The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time."

In a similar route and much more controversial study, Facebook helped alter the news feeds of users and the balance of positive and negative content. The conclusion drawn was that users moods where affected by the content they saw so those that saw positive messages where inclined to respond likewise and those who saw more negative content would also post more negative content.

Pretty damning stuff when you look at it. Who would think our virtual interactions would produce such results? Though the real question to answer is: Is our social media making us lonely and isolated whether by choice or not?

Well first off, you probably have some type of social media account and so do your friends. Why shouldn't you? It's a popular and effective way to communicate?.Let's just look at the problems that arise whether you have an account or not.

If you don't, it may sometimes feel like you don't belong or excluded from things. Friends will mention things that have happened on social media that you won't have a clue about. This is where a lot of the time party invite lists are first created. Maybe a friend will ask if you've been invited but you still haven't because of the fact that there is a delay because of your lack of social media.

Though that scenario may seem silly, it spawns a legitimate concern in which instead of cliques in your everyday life, it's a clique in virtual space.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, what happens when you're logged on? You scroll through posts and leave one of many comments or someone messages you, most likely because of boredom. I'm not saying these conversations aren't meaningful or can't be it's just on the lower end of the spectrum rather than the higher. How many times have you engaged in conversation in Social Media with someone that you rarely speak to or someone that annoys you only out of boredom? I'm betting at least once.

While all these things are fairly innocuous, what greater effect do they have? While social media is great as cliché as it is as with all things used in moderation. A friend is having a birthday. What about instead of a Facebook Birthday message, you give them a call if you can? Having a party why not try calling people up or sending out invites. On occasion such gestures will be appreciated and make your friends and family feel special.

So does social media makes us lonely? In a lot of cases yes. So what do we do about it? While yes it is your life and friends you just have to remember that what happens or doesn't happen on social media much like in meatspace aren't the end of the world.

Email Luis Reyes at luis.reyes@cardinalpointsonline.com

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Social media causes isolation, alienation

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27 Feb 2015 Posted by Luis Reyes "People are lonely. The network is seductive. But if we are always on, we may deny ourselves the rewards of solitude."

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Article graph > comes from - gives details about the normalisation of online dating: low cost, efficiency, removal of stigma, use on mobile apps ...

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In the more than two decades since the launch of commercial dating sites such as Match.com, online dating has evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry serving customers around the world. A new Pew Research Center study explores how dating sites and apps have transformed the way Americans meet and develop relationships, and how the users of these services feel about online dating.

Here are 10 facts from the study, which is based on a survey conducted among 4,860 U.S. adults in October 2019:

2A small share of Americans say they have been in a committed relationship with or married someone they met through a dating site or app. About one-in-ten U.S. adults say this (12%), though these shares are higher among LGB adults, as well as those ages 18 to 49.

Pew Research Center has long studied the changing nature of romantic relationships and the role of digital technology in how people meet potential partners and navigate web-based dating platforms. This particular report focuses on the patterns, experiences and attitudes related to online dating in America. These findings are based on a survey conducted Oct. 16 to 28, 2019, among 4,860 U.S. adults. This includes those who took part as members of Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses, as well as respondents from the Ipsos KnowledgePanel who indicated that they identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB). The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 2.1 percentage points.

Recruiting ATP panelists by phone or mail ensures that nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. This gives us confidence that any sample can represent the whole U.S. adult population (see our Methods 101 explainer on random sampling). To further ensure that each ATP survey reflects a balanced cross-section of the nation, the data are weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories.

For more, see the report's methodology about the project. You can also find the questions asked, and the answers the public provided, in this topline.

3Roughly six-in-ten online daters (57%) say they have had an overall positive experience with these platforms, including 14% who describe their experience as very positive and 43% who say it was somewhat positive. Fewer users - though still about four-in-ten - describe their online dating experience as at least somewhat negative, including 9% who describe it as very negative.

People's assessments of their online dating experiences vary widely by socioeconomic factors. Around six-in-ten online daters with a bachelor's or advanced degree (63%) say their experience has been very or somewhat positive, compared with 47% among those who have a high school diploma or less. The ratings online daters give their overall experience do not vary statistically by gender or race and ethnicity.

4While online daters generally say their overall experience was positive, they also point out some of the downsides of online dating. By a wide margin, Americans who have used a dating site or app in the past year say their recent experience left them feeling more frustrated (45%) than hopeful (28%).

Other sentiments are more evenly balanced between positive and negative feelings. Some 35% of current or recent users say that in the past year online dating has made them feel more pessimistic, while 29% say these platforms left them feeling more optimistic. Similarly, 32% say online dating sites or apps made them feel more confident, whereas 25% say it left them feeling more insecure.

For example, women who have ever used a dating site or app are more likely than men to say they have found it very or somewhat difficult to find people they were physical attracted to (36% vs. 21%) or who like someone they would want to meet in person (39% vs. 32%). By contrast, male users are more inclined than female users to say it was at least somewhat difficult to find people who shared their hobbies and interests (41% vs. 30%).

Other gender differences - such as the importance of users including their hobbies and interests, their racial or ethnic background or their political affiliation - are more modest.

Roughly six-in-ten men who have online dated in the past five years (57%) say they feel as if they did not get enough messages, while just 24% of women say the same. Meanwhile, women who have online dated in this time period are five times as likely as men to think they were sent too many messages (30% vs. 6%).

8Younger women are especially likely to report having troublesome interactions on online dating platforms. About three-in-ten or more online dating users say someone continued to contact them on a dating site or app after they said they were not interested (37%), sent them a sexually explicit message or image they didn't ask for (35%) or called them an offensive name (28%). About one-in-ten (9%) say another user has threated to physically harm them.

These rates are even higher among younger women. Six-in-ten female users ages 18 to 34 say someone on a dating site or app continued to contact them after they said they were not interested, while 57% report that another user has sent them a sexually explicit message or image they didn't ask for. At the same time, 44% report that someone called them an offense name on a dating site or app, while 19% say they have had someone threaten to physically harm them.

Public perceptions about the safety of online dating vary substantially by personal experience. A majority of Americans who have ever used a dating site or app (71%) see online dating as a very or somewhat safe way to meet someone, compared with 47% of those who have never used these platforms.

Among the public as a whole, women are far more likely than men to say dating sites and apps are not a safe way to meet people (53% vs. 39%). Views on this question also vary substantially by age, educational attainment and race and ethnicity.

At the same time, half of Americans say online dating has had neither a positive nor negative effect on dating and relationships. Smaller shares say these platforms have had a mostly positive (22%) or mostly negative effect (26%).
Note: Here are the questions used for this report, along with responses, and its methodology.

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10 facts about Americans and online dating

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In the more than two decades since the launch of commercial dating sites such as Match.com, online dating has evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry serving customers around the world. A new Pew Research Center study explores how dating sites and apps have transformed the way Americans meet and develop relationships, and how the users of these services feel about online dating.

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Young adults not associated with it in past. Is it a change in social norm or just that it's easier? More efficient?

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Ambient intimacy. We have networks through an ever expanding range of channels. Can post about one thing in many different ways... Is this enhanced? Or annoying?

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If our favourite films had mobile phones... 

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If our favourite films had mobile phones... 

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...they would be a lot shorter. Highlights how the way we communicate has affected our relationships and how we navigate situations we find ourselves in.

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Your favorite films just got a lot shorter. Free CHTV video podcast on iTunes: http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=268957390 CH Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CollegeHumor/6363207806 Watch this on CHTV and view credits at http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1832002

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Taking selfies for a living - short documentary 

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Taking selfies for a living - short documentary 

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Jacqui was a penniless single mum until she started making money from her selfies. Highlights how this phenomenon has become a much more significant, and powerful, part of society than we often like to think.

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Selfie Addicts: Selfie Addicts - On Demand

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Living life to the full and obsessively photographing every moment

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Social media causing a decline in teen pregnancy?

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Social media causing a decline in teen pregnancy?

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Can social media have such an influence on young peoples behaviour? Is this a positive thing? Or making young people more isolated?

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The rate of teenage pregnancy in England and Wales has halved in 16 years and currently stands at its lowest level since records began 50 years ago.

Newly released figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 23 young women under the age of 18 out of every 1,000 became pregnant in 2014, compared with 47 out of 1,000 in 1998. The estimated number of teenage pregnancies fell from 24,306 in 2013 to 22,653 in 2014.

So teenagers appear to be having less unprotected sex. But why?

The impact of technology

One theory put forward to explain the drop is that teenagers are spending more time in their bedrooms on social media and less time meeting up, getting drunk and doing things they may later come to regret.

Prof David Paton, an economist at Nottingham University Business School, told the Telegraph: "It does potentially fit in terms of timing. People [appear to be] spending time at home - rather than sitting at bus stops with a bottle of vodka they are doing it remotely with their friends ... Nobody really knows why we've got this sudden change around about 2007 to 2008."

Clare Murphy, director of external affairs at the abortion provider British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas), added: "The plummeting level of teenage drinking, for example, may be reducing the likelihood of unprotected sex, and teenagers are also increasingly socialising online, limiting the opportunities for sexual activity."

Teenage drinking levels

The drop in teenage pregnancies is accompanied by evidence of decreases in drinking and drug-taking in the UK, particularly among those aged 16 to 24. The proportion of young adults who reported that they did not drink alcohol at all increased by more than 40% between 2005 and 2013.

The rise of social media

Ofcom said last year that 16-24-year-olds spent more than 27 hours a week on the internet - almost three times the amount it was in 2005.

Nearly three-quarters of internet users aged 16 and above said they had a social media profile, compared to 22% in 2007.

This was not a trend confined to young people, though. There was a rise in internet use among all age groups, with the use of social media tripling since 2007.

Four in five social media users said they logged into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram or Tumblr at least once a day, up from 30% in 2007.

The proportion of mobile phone users using instant messaging also rose from 38% in 2013 to 42% in 2014, driven by services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

The spike in social media use among young people has even led to the government launching a language guide for parents. Translations include get naked on cam (GNOC) and age, sex, location (ASL) - often used by young people on anonymous chatrooms to disclose their personal details. Other abbreviations included were IWSN (I want sex now) and LMIRL (let's meet in real life).

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The proportion of mobile phone users using instant messaging rose from 38% in 2013 to 42% in 2014. Photograph: imageBroker/Rex/Shutterstock

Elsewhere on Earth

In the US, a report published in November by Common Sense Media found that teenagers spend nine hours a day using media for their enjoyment. That's more time than they typically spend each day sleeping. Tweens (children aged eight to 12) spend about six hours on average. "I think the sheer volume of media technology that kids are exposed to on a daily basis is mind-boggling," James Steyer, chief executive officer and founder of Common Sense Media, said.

He added: "It just shows you that these kids live in this massive 24/7 digital media technology world, and it's shaping every aspect of their life. They spend far more time with media technology than any other thing in their life. This is the dominant intermediary in their life."

Japanese media, meanwhile, has coined the term sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome", which is considered a looming national catastrophe.

Japan has one of the world's lowest birth rates, with a population projected to plunge by a further third by 2060. A survey by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

Ai Aoyama, a sex and relationship counsellor in Japan, told the Observer this was because the country was experiencing "a flight from human intimacy". Other explanations include a growing preoccupation with digital technology.

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A sex tutorial at Bletchley Campus College, Milton Keynes. Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

What else could be going on?

Other explanations for the drop in teenage pregnancy rates include improved programmes of sex and relationship education, as well as changing attitudes to young motherhood and the impact of immigration.

Alison Hadley, director of the Teenage Pregnancy Knowledge Exchange at the University of Bedfordshire, said: "This is an extraordinary achievement in addressing a complex public health and inequalities issue affecting the lives of young people and their children. Many people thought the goal was unattainable and that high rates were an intractable part of English life.

"This shows that committed senior leadership, dedicated local practitioners, effective education programmes and easier access to contraception equips young people to make informed choices and brings down rates even in deprived areas."

Lucy Emmerson, coordinator of the Sex Education Forum, said there was compelling evidence that where good quality sex and relationships education (SRE) was available it led to a reduction in teenage pregnancies.

"Yet nearly a quarter of young people rated the SRE they received at school as bad or very bad," she said, "and four in 10 young people are unsure where to find their local sexual health clinic. So the education on offer is far from standard."
Topics

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Are teenagers having less sex - and is social media the reason why?

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The rate of teenage pregnancy in England and Wales has halved in 16 years and currently stands at its lowest level since records began 50 years ago. Newly released figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 23 young women under the age of 18 out of every 1,000 became pregnant in 2014, compared with 47 out of 1,000 in 1998.

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Chambers (2013) Social Media and Personal Relationships

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Chambers (2013) Social Media and Personal Relationships

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Arguing that in a networked society, there exists new intimacies and meanings of friendship.

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Lyon (2014) 'Surveillance, Snowden and Big Data'

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Lyon (2014) 'Surveillance, Snowden and Big Data'

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Governments collect data that users put on social media for ‘national security’ and policing purposes

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The NSA, GCHQ etc. can:
- intercept data flowing online
- search everything a user has done on the internet
-  infiltrate links connecting Yahoo and Google data centres

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Image: Barton Gellman/Getty Images

One year ago, the Guardian published its first bombshell story based on leaked top-secret documents showing that the National Security Agency was spying on American citizens.

At the time, journalist Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian never mentioned that they had a treasure trove of other NSA documents, nor that they came from one person. Then three days later, the source surprisingly unmasked himself: His name was Edward Snowden.

Image: John Minchillo/Associated Press

When asked if more revelations were in the pipeline, Greenwald always used to respond that yes, many more were coming - and he wasn't kidding. Over the next year, explosive stories began to trickle out of those documents. Here are the top 10 revelations of the year.

1. Secret court orders allow NSA to sweep up Americans' phone records

The very first story revealed that Verizon had been providing the NSA with virtually all of its customers' phone records. It soon was revealed that it wasn't just Verizon, but virtually every other telephone company in America.

This revelation is still one of the most controversial ones. Privacy advocates have challenged the legality of the program in court, and one Judge deemed the program unconstitutional and "almost Orwellian," while another one ruled it legal.

The uproar caused by this first story has led President Barack Obama to endorse a reform to the program, and the House of Representatives to pass the first law that tries to change it.

2. PRISM

The existence of PRISM was the second NSA bombshell, coming less than 24 hours after the first one. Initially, reports described PRISM as the NSA's program to directly access the servers of U.S tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, among others.

Its reality was slightly different.

PRISM, we soon learned, was less less evil than first thought. In reality, the NSA doesn't have direct access to the servers, but can request user data from the companies, which are compelled by law to comply.

PRISM was perhaps as controversial as the first NSA scoop, prompting technology companies to first deny any knowledge of it, then later fight for the right to be more transparent about government data requests. The companies ended up partially winning that fight, getting the government to ease some restrictions and allow for more transparency.

3. Britain's version of the NSA taps fiber optic cables around the world

The British spy agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), taps fiber optic cables all over the world to intercept data flowing through the global Internet, we learned. The GCHQ works closely with the NSA, sharing data and intelligence in a program that's codenamed Tempora.

Tempora is one of the key NSA/GCHQ programs, allowing the spy agencies to collect vasts troves of data, but for some reason, it has sometimes been overlooked. After a couple of months from the Tempora revelation, a German newspaper revealed the names of the companies that collaborate with the GCHQ in the Tempora program: Verizon Business, British Telecommunications, Vodafone Cable, Global Crossing, Level 3, Viatel and Interoute.

4. NSA spies on foreign countries and world leaders

Image: Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

Over the months, countless stories based on Snowden documents have revealed that the NSA has spied on numerous world leaders and foreign governments.

The German newsweekly Der Spiegel revealed that the NSA targets at least 122 world leaders.

Other stories over the past years have named specific targets like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brazil's President Dilma Roussef, and Mexico's former President Felipe Calderon, the French Foreign Ministry, as well as leaders at the 2010 G8 and G20 summits in Toronto.

5. XKeyscore, the program that sees everything

XKeyscore is a tool the NSA uses to search "nearly everything a user does on the Internet" through data it intercepts across the world. In leaked documents, the NSA describes it as the "widest-reaching" system to search through Internet data.

6. NSA efforts to crack encryption and undermine Internet security

Encryption makes data flowing through the Internet unreadable to hackers and spies, making the NSA's surveillance programs less useful. What's the point of tapping fiber optic cables if the data flowing through them is unreadable? That's why the NSA has a developed a series of techniques and tricks to circumvent widely used web encryption technologies.

The NSA, however, isn't able to compromise the encryption algorithms underlying these technologies. Instead, it circumvents or undermines them, forcing companies to install backdoors, hacking into servers and computers, or promoting the use weaker algorithms.

In any case, technologists were alarmed.

"Even as the NSA demands more powers to invade our privacy in the name of cybersecurity, it is making the Internet less secure and exposing us to criminal hacking, foreign espionage, and unlawful surveillance. The NSA's efforts to secretly defeat encryption are recklessly shortsighted and will further erode not only the United States' reputation as a global champion of civil liberties and privacy but the economic competitiveness of its largest companies," Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said at the time.

7. NSA elite hacking team techniques revealed

The NSA has at its disposal an elite hacker team codenamed "Tailored Access Operations" (TAO) that hacks into computers worldwide, infects them with malware and does the dirty job when other surveillance tactics fail.

Der Spiegel, which detailed TAO's secrets, labelled it as "a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked." But they can probably be best described as the NSA's black bag operations team.

TAO comes in for specific, targeted operations when the NSA can't find intelligence or needs more detailed information on a target through its bulk surveillance programs. Before Snowden, most of their operations and techniques were shrouded in secrecy, and their secrets make for one of the most fascinating revelations.

8. NSA cracks Google and Yahoo data center links

When bulk collection or PRISM fails, the NSA had other tricks up its sleeve: It could infiltrate links connecting Yahoo and Google data centers, behind the companies' backs.

This revelation was made famous mostly by a Power Point slide that included a celebratory smiley face.

This story truly enraged the tech companies, which reacted with much more fury than before. Google and Yahoo announced plans to strengthen and encrypt those links to avoid this kind of surveillance, and a Google security employee even said on his Google+ account what many others must have thought privately: "Fuck these guys."

9. NSA collects text messages

It's not just about Internet data though. The NSA, following its unofficial motto of " collecting it all," intercepts 200 million text messages every day worldwide through a program called Dishfire.

In leaked documents, the agency described the collected messages as a "goldmine to exploit" for all kinds of personal data.

Here is what the NSA automatically extract from text messages *every day*: http://t.co/WyJnSX4Qui pic.twitter.com/DucMOOrdkK

- James Ball (@jamesrbuk) January 16, 2014

Other documents also revealed that the NSA can "easily" crack cellphone encryption, allowing the agency to more easily decode and access the content of intercepted calls and text messages.

10. NSA intercepts all phone calls in two countries

The NSA intercepts and stores all phone calls made in the Bahamas and Afghanistan through a program called MYSTIC, which has its own snazzy logo.

The Bahamas was revealed by The Intercept, Greenwald's new website, while the second was revealed by WikiLeaks, which protested The Intercept's decision to withhold the second country's name.

The NSA also collects all phone calls' metadata in Mexico, Kenya and the Philippines.

Bonus: Edward Snowden's first in-person interview with an American news outlet

(H/T to the site Free Snowden, which has an extensive and detailed list of all the NSA revelations.)

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Edward Snowden: The 10 Most Important Revelations From His Leaks

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One year ago, the Guardian published its first bombshell story based on leaked top-secret documents showing that the National Security Agency was spying on American citizens. At the time, journalist Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian never mentioned that they had a treasure trove of other NSA documents, nor that they came from one person.

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Interesting research study looking at how some people are incapable or unwilling to broaden their social network outside of the offline world. Shows many still see offline relationships as 'real' relationships.

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"2015 saw a rise in cosmetic dentistry, because people don’t like their teeth in selfies."

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"2015 saw a rise in cosmetic dentistry, because people don’t like their teeth in selfies."

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Article in The Guardian asking whether we are living in a narcissism epidemic

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'They unconsciously deny an unstated and intolerably poor self-image through inflation. They turn themselves into glittering figures of immense grandeur surrounded by psychologically impenetrable walls. The goal of this self-deception is to be impervious to greatly feared external criticism and to their own rolling sea of doubts." This is how Elan Golomb describes narcissistic personality disorder in her seminal book Trapped in the Mirror. She goes on to describe the central symptom of the disorder - the narcissist's failure to achieve intimacy with anyone - as the result of them seeing other people like items in a vending machine, using them to service their own needs, never being able to acknowledge that others might have needs of their own, still less guess what they might be. "Full-bodied narcissistic personality disorder remains a fairly unusual diagnosis," Pat MacDonald, author of the paper Narcissism in the Modern World, tells me. "Traditionally, it is very difficult to reverse narcissistic personality disorder. It would take a long time and a lot of work."

What we talk about when we describe an explosion of modern narcissism is not the disorder but the rise in narcissistic traits. Examples are everywhere. Donald Trump epitomises the lack of empathy, the self-regard and, critically, the radical overestimation of his own talents and likability. Katie Hopkins personifies the perverse pride the narcissist takes in not caring for others. ("No," she wrote in the Sun about the refugee crisis. " I don't care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don't care.") Those are the loudest examples, blaring like sirens; there is a general hubbub of narcissism beneath, which is conveniently - for observation purposes, at least - broadcast on social media. Terrible tragedies, such as the attacks on Paris, are appropriated by people thousands of miles away and used as a backdrop to showcase their sensitivity. The death of David Bowie is mediated through its "relevance" to voluble strangers.

It has become routine for celebrities to broadcast banal information and fill Instagram with the "moments" that constitute their day, the tacit principle being that, once you are important enough, nothing is mundane. This delusion then spills out to the non-celebrity; recording mundane events becomes proof of your importance. The dramatic rise in cosmetic surgery is part of the same effect; the celebrity fixates on his or her appearance to meet the demands of fame. Then the vanity, being the only truly replicable trait, becomes the thing to emulate. Ordinary people start having treatments that only intense scrutiny would warrant - 2015 saw a 13% rise in procedures in the UK, with the rise in cosmetic dentistry particularly marked, because people don't like their teeth in selfies. The solution - stop taking selfies - is apparently so 2014.

The compelling epidemiological evidence comes from The Narcissism Epidemic, in which the American academics Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell found that narcissistic personality traits rose just as fast as obesity from the 1980s to the present, with the shift in women particularly marked. Scores have risen faster since the turn of this century.

Campbell is also the author of a meta-analysis of three cohort studies that found increases over the generations in the Rosenberg self-esteem scale among US middle school, high school and college students in the two decades to 2008. By 2008, a score of 40 (perfect self-esteem) was the modal response of college students, chosen by 18% of participants; 51% scored 35 or over. At this point, the test has to change or the measurement has to stop: the self-esteem of nearly one in five college students could not get any higher.

One study, sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health, looks at lifetime prevalence: you'd expect any trait to become more pronounced over time, since people who have lived longer have more time to develop it. In fact, narcissistic traits afflict almost 10% of people in their 20s, compared with 3% of people in their 60s. Older people have more formed personalities and are less influenced by socio-cultural pressures; when they were young, these pressures simply didn't exist.

'The best-case scenario is disillusionment'

Most of the traits have at their core the belief that one is extraordinary. The problem is obvious immediately: most people are not extraordinary.

The problem with narcissistic traits is that they're unrealistic; the belief in one's own extraordinariness will sooner or later abut the world, and the result will be disillusionment in the best-case scenario or ever-greater fake grandeur in the worst. "Especially when you're talking about traits and not the disorder, it's correlated in youth with less depression, less anxiety," says Twenge. "It wasn't until middle age that narcissists became depressed, because of their failed relationships."

Your immediate worry, obviously, is that you have narcissistic traits yourself. Experiencing this anxiety means you don't, since true narcissists know it - and freely admit it. Another major figure in the narcissism field, Brad Bushman, has shown that agreeing with the statement, "I am a narcissist" correlates highly with narcissistic traits. They are proud of it: they would say it helps them succeed. They also relate proudly, in surveys, that they're low on empathy and caring isn't their thing. There's not much guilt in narcissism.

If you're still anxious, or just curious, you should take the narcissistic personality inventory (NPI). "I made my husband take it on our fourth date," says Twenge. "I'm not joking." And he passed with flying colours? She laughs. "Yes. You don't have to score zero. A little above or a little below the average, you're fine. It's when people start scoring a 20 or above [out of 40] that there's some potential to worry." It has seven strands: authority, self-sufficiency - a belief that you've achieved everything on your own - superiority, exhibitionism, exploitativeness, vanity and entitlement. I scored 11, mostly on exhibitionism. Now I'm worried that it's narcissistic even to tell you that. God, it's a swamp.

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Photograph: Jana Barsova/Getty Images/EyeEm

The damage narcissism brings can be quite amorphous and ill-defined. "Much of our distress," MacDonald notes, "comes from a sense of disconnection. We have a narcissistic society where self-promotion and individuality seem to be essential, yet in our hearts that's not what we want. We want to be part of a community, we want to be supported when we're struggling, we want a sense of belonging. Being extraordinary is not a necessary component to being loved."

The full-blown disorder is associated with harsh, critical parenting, but a mass rise in narcissistic traits is partly ascribed by MacDonald to lax and indulgent parenting: "[With] parents seeing their children as extensions of themselves - they want to be mates, the boundaries aren't set - the child gets very confused: 'You're great, you're terrific.' Maybe we're not, maybe we need to know we're just ordinary."

This has been evinced - again by Bushman, alongside Eddie Brummelman - in a longitudinal study that found overpraised children showed narcissistic traits six months to a year later. It's not so much a new kindness in parenting as a kind of lackadaisical positive assertion, where self-esteem can be conjured out of thin air simply by the people around you saying it's so. To a degree, MacDonald traces the new style of parenting back to new media: "You see mums relating to the non-human other, the smartphone, not the baby. The child is not getting a sense of self." But the impact of social media is more pronounced - currently, at least - in the adult with narcissistic traits. "There's a good accumulation of evidence that narcissists have more friends on Facebook," Twenge says. "We can't make the case definitively that social media causes narcissism, although it does certainly call for a certain type of attention-seeking. If you look at Twitter, and the quest for followers, that has a narcissistic ring to it."

'Our collective narcissism is destroying the planet'

There is a context even broader than Twitter: a competitive culture in which asserting one's difference, one's specialness, is the bare minimum for being market-ready. Twenge is cautious: "The market stuff hasn't been as closely examined. Certainly, individualism tends to be correlated with materialism, and so is narcissism. Economic prosperity does seem to be linked to individualism." Yet, it is hard to conceive of this mantra - you're special, you're worth it, you're different - arriving unrelated to the call of competitiveness; the idea - popularised by monetarist politicians since the late-70s - that self-interest is beneficial, and that all of us acting in our own self-interest will create better outcomes for all.

In a way, this is easier to see played out in group narcissism. "Take, for example, members of parliament," MacDonald says. "It's not individual greed, is it? It's a culture of: 'Let's grab it when we can.' You walk into that culture when you become an MP, when you become a banker. Group narcissism is huge. And the worst thing our collective narcissism is doing is the destruction of the planet. Together, we're wiping out species after species after species, fuelled by consumerism, fuelled by our self-importance. Our narcissism may destroy us in the end."

One long-term study of narcissists and those with prominent narcissistic traits found that they do the most significant damage to those around them, over time. Among those with the full-blown disorder, this would relate to their failure to consider another person on an intimate level, seeing them only relationally: what can they do for me, or, in the case of their children, how do they reflect on me, or how have they disappointed me in what they've failed to reflect? Don't forget that, in the original myth, Narcissus is punished with a terminal fascination for his own reflection in revenge for his treatment of Echo, whom he despises for loving him. It is properly understood not as self-love but emotionally monogamous self-love. Those with narcissistic traits may be more capable of considering others as discrete people, and it is this tendency to overreact to criticism that causes the damage over time.

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Photograph: Tobias Tiebes/Getty Images/EyeEm

So, let's say you have taken the NPI, haven't lied (because narcissists don't - at least, not about their own narcissism) and have scored relatively highly, and that this correlates with your observation that your high expectations of yourself are often not met, your relationships fail and people who like you initially like you less four months later. All is not lost. MacDonald picks out five principles of self-improvement: gratitude, modesty, compassion (for self and others), mindfulness and community. Some of these are obvious - modesty as an antidote to self-love - and some have a practical application.

"If, for example, you write down at the end of the day three things you're grateful for, that can go a long way to reverse your narcissism," he says. (This is huge in psycho-self-help at the moment: stimulating grateful thoughts also allays guilt. Hebb's law - neurones that fire together, wire together - suggests that your brain will always choose the more familiar pathway.) As for compassion, "if we can remain more humble, we become kinder, too", he says, but this is a two-way street. "We need to have compassion for ourselves, as well; compassion for others will follow."

The interesting thing, as their prevalence increases, will be seeing whether society rebels against or accommodates narcissistic traits. "There's a natural human tendency to think that things are getting worse, or at least they're not getting better, and you have to fight that tendency," says Twenge. "But you also have to fight the tendency to stick your head in the sand and say: 'The kids are great and there's nothing wrong.'"
Topics

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Me! Me! Me! Are we living through a narcissism epidemic?

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'They unconsciously deny an unstated and intolerably poor self-image through inflation. They turn themselves into glittering figures of immense grandeur surrounded by psychologically impenetrable walls. The goal of this self-deception is to be impervious to greatly feared external criticism and to their own rolling sea of doubts."

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'Our devices matter to us as much as food and shelter'

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'Our devices matter to us as much as food and shelter'

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TED Talk on the 'digital now' which Dawesar argues  threatens the completeness of our selves.

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One year ago, Abha Dawesar was living in blacked-out Manhattan post-Sandy, scrounging for power to connect. As a novelist, she was struck by this metaphor: Have our lives now become fixated on the drive to digitally connect, while we miss out on what's real?

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Student fined $675,000 for illegally downloading music

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Student fined $675,000 for illegally downloading music

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We often assume we can get away with things online that can't in an offline context. The new, complicated relationship between the law and the internet have been really interesting in recent years.

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A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels.

Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.

Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum's case was $4.5 million.

Jurors ordered Tenenbaum to pay $22,500 for each incident of copyright infringement, effectively finding that his actions were willful. The attorney for the 25-year-old student had asked the jury earlier Friday to "send a message" to the music industry by awarding only minimal damages.

Tenenbaum said he was thankful that the case wasn't in the millions and contrasted the significance of his fine with the maximum.

"That to me sends a message of 'We considered your side with some legitimacy,'" he said. "$4.5 million would have been, 'We don't buy it at all.'"

He added he will file for bankruptcy if the verdict stands.

Tenenbaum's lawyer, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, said the jury's verdict was not fair. He said he plans to appeal the decision because he was not allowed to argue a case based on fair use.

The case is only the nation's second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial.

Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, must pay $1.92 million, or $80,000 on each of 24 songs, after concluding she willfully violated the copyrights on those tunes.

The jury began deliberating the case Friday afternoon.

After Tenenbaum admitted Thursday he is liable for damages for 30 songs at issue in the case, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the jury must consider only whether his copyright infringement was willful and how much in damages to award four recording labels that sued him over the illegal file-sharing.

In his closing statement Friday, Nesson repeatedly referred to Tenenbaum as a "kid" and asked the jury to award only a small amount to the recording companies. At one point, Nesson suggested the damages should be as little as 99 cents per song, roughly the same amount Tenenbaum would have to pay if he legally purchased the music online.

But Tim Reynolds, a lawyer for the recording labels, recounted Tenenbaum's history of file-sharing from 1999 to 2007, describing him as "a hardcore, habitual, long-term infringer who knew what he was doing was wrong." Tenenbaum admitted on the witness stand that he had downloaded and shared more than 800 songs.

Tenenbaum said he downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by Nirvana, Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins and other artists. The recording industry focused on only 30 songs in the case.

The music industry has typically offered to settle such cases for about $5,000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders. Cases already filed, however, are proceeding to trial.

Tenenbaum testified that he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said his two sisters, friends and others may have been responsible for downloading the songs to his computer.

Under questioning from his own lawyer, Tenenbaum said he now takes responsibility for the illegal swapping.

"I used the computer. I uploaded, I downloaded music ... I did it," Tenenbaum said.

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Jury orders student to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading music

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A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels.Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide...

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The internet's effect on the music industry 

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The internet's effect on the music industry 

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Will the illegally downloading of music ever stop?  Allen believes Tidal will cause even more people to swarm back to Torrent etc., rather than encouraging legal purchasing of music online.

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The industry debate over ad-supported 'free' music (and Tidal's place within it) continues to rage. Now we have some interesting comments on the subject from a prominent artist - Lily Allen.

But first, a catch-up: as part of their current streaming licence renegotiation, Universal, Sony and Warner are believed to be putting pressure on Spotify to reduce its free offering to fans.

Meanwhile, the majors are also understood to be arranging timed exclusive ('windowed') releases on paid-for Spotify alternatives - particularly Apple's upcoming a la carte streaming service, expected to launch in June.

"Taylor Swift owns her recording rights. Most of us don't. Yet."

Jay Z's Tidal is another such a premium-only service, which is already benefitting from 'windowed' exclusives from artists including Rihanna and Beyonce.

But there is a strong counter argument to this tactic: harm the offering freemium services like Spotify, say some parties, and you'll push a generation back towards YouTube or, worse, well-known torrent sites.

Lily Allen has now posted a series of tweets on the topic, expressing her concern that Tidal could result in "people swarming back to pirate sites in droves".

Below you can read a collection of her thoughts on the matter, including her responses to followers who questioned her concerns ('fan' questions are underlined).

I love Jay Z so much, but TIDAL is soon expensive compared to other perfectly good streaming services. He's taken the biggest artists & made them exclusive to TIDAL (am i right in thinking this ?), people are going to swarm back to pirate sites in droves sending traffic to torrent sites.

Up and coming (not yet millionaires) artists are going to suffer as a result. Maybe I'm missing something, and really it's amazing and will change everything for the better.

[Allen then suggests she wanted to learn more about the service before making up her mind. But the sight of 16 of the world's richest artists taking equity in Tidal clearly riled her.]

WE COULD JUST STRIKE TILL THE LABELS GIVE US OUR FAIR SHARE OF STREAMING REVENUE,NOT TAKE ADVANCES, NOT DELIVER MUSIC, FOR THE FUTURE ARTIST... A REAL REVOLUTION YEAH........... GUYS............ GUYS............. USHER?.......... MADGE....... DAFT PUNKS ?? GUYS ???? *WAVES AT YACHT*

I really don't give a fuck about the music industry, well, I care about a few good eggs that work within it and am grateful to the people who have helped me develop as an artist. My concern is that Tidal may set emerging artists back.

Hosting exclusive consent from the biggest stars on the planet on a paying platform: while I agree with its intention, I fear it will send people back to pirate/torrent sites.

[The official Tidal account then confirms that 75% of its revenues would be paid back to artists - a slightly higher payout than Spotify's 70%.]

Wow, so if you're a co-owning artist you see a cut of the 25% profit, and let's face it, probably a larger chunk of the 75% than most artists.

Let's face it Jigga dropped 60 mill on a website, he probably has good long term intentions, he is a business man though.

He managed to find some people self important and delusional enough to spiel that 'for the artist' crap while clawing bk some capital.

Let him take care of his business damn, I hear you cry. Or ........... "Let them eat Drake" , thank you thank you.

All the people yelling at me saying I'm just jealous cause I'm not as rich or relevant as the 'Tidal16' . I've been in this business 10 years. If I wanted to be relevant or as rich as the Tidal16, I wouldn't still be working in music. Or I would have shut up and played the game long time ago.

Spotify pay out the but the artists aren't getting the money, so where is it going I wonder ?? Spotify is not the enemy of the artist

"I'm not against tidal... Just don't try and mask it as some charitable offering like you're 'giving something back' when [you] could be sending more traffic to pirate sites."

I normally agree with you but but I just don't agree music should be free at artist's detriment

I don't think music should be free, at all. But I'm afraid that we have to adapt as the world and technology advances.

I care about the future of music, I care not for the current business structure.

Both [Spotify and Tidal] follow the same business model, it's up to the labels to pay the artist. Why attack tidal?

BECAUSE THEY SOLD A WHOLE BUNCH OF ARTISTS CURRENTLY IN DEALS OUT, IN THE NAME OF ART.

SPOTIFY AREN'T CLAIMING TO BE ANYTHING OTHER THAN A STREAMING SERVICE, WHY SHOULD THEY, THEY'RE A STREAMING SERVICE.

At the end of the day, the labels get the money. So why is she against Tidal?

Again, I'm not against Tidal - anyone can start a business, just don't try and mask it as some charitable offering like you're "giving something back" " taking a stand" "protecting the art", when actually they could be sending more traffic to pirate sites.

[Tidal's] hosting "exclusive content" from the biggest stars on the planet. If you can't afford Tidal and you really wanna see Kanye's new video, are you gonna wait a week till it goes everywhere or go get it now?

Don't you think artist should have control of their content?
YES of course I do, but they spoke for Artists and MUSIC but only consulted rich ones with nothing to lose.
Why don't you use your affiliates to find out more about [Tidal] and what they can offer you?
I have done, and I'm not remotely impressed. It's not new, not right now anyway, and I've got two kids and a great big mortgage to think about, and I've spent enough time talking about it now. I'm going to have a bath.
[A follower argues it's not up to Lily Allen where her music ends up. Another follower replies: 'Yes it is. Taylor Swift did it w/ Spotify.']

Taylor Swift owns her recording rights, most of us don't. Yet.

[Allen also retweeted the following comment: 'Are labels really necessary in 2015? Maybe we should just ditch them and self release']

Spotify pays 70% of its revenues to rights holders. Renegotiate your contract instead of having a tantrum.

I'm fine with my rate thanks.

Music Business Worldwide

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Lily Allen: Spotify is not the enemy - Tidal may boost pirate sites - Music Business Worldwide

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The industry debate over ad-supported 'free' music (and Tidal's place within it) continues to rage. Now we have some interesting comments on the subject from a prominent artist - Lily Allen. But first, a catch-up: as part of their current streaming licence renegotiation, Universal, Sony and Warner are believed to be putting pressure on Spotify to reduce its free offering to fans.

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Social media has afforded us a unique opportunity to build a very visible, permanent record of ourselves.

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While we're busy creating new communities around ourselves online, sharing different aspects of our lives and building a visible record of ourselves for anyone to see, we don't often stop to think about the implications of this for the concept of identity. Let me start by saying that this is not an easy concept. It is something that continues, and will continue to, split opinion, with some seeing social media as the saviour and some seeing it as the devil. Though there may be no easy solution for the implications of social media and identity, it isn't something we can afford to ignore, as it is shaping our everyday lives, the world over.

This is me then, and now

There is an issue of identity that is discussed by philosophers, known as the synchronic problem of identity. That is to say, what exactly is it that makes the person we were five years ago the same person we are today. It can't really be explained by space or time; you will only occupy one place at one time once in your life.

So can it be explained through biology? That a person is the same because they contain the same collection of cells; or can it be explained by the mind? That the person before you today has the same memories, experiences and thoughts as the person five years ago? Some may brush this off as too simplistic a problem, but when you distill it and try to find an answer for the 'essence' of you, it's not so easy. What exactly is it that makes us who we are? It's a problem we are (largely unwittingly) exploring and possibly solving through social media.

Social media has afforded us a unique opportunity to build a very visible, permanent record of ourselves, albeit through a digital medium. It is, in a way (though many may argue against it), re-inventing the notion of identity, with far-reaching consequences. Not only is it providing the very tools to (re)create our identities, but it is also speaking to an innate human fear. That we'll be forgotten by others and that our own memories will begin to fade, changing the person that we are. Throw Facebook into the mix however, and our problems seem to be solved. Here is a summation of our lives to this date, for as much as we want to share. And remember that we are just at the beginning since it's a record of our identity for as long as social media has existed.

Fast forward 20 years and try to get your head around the amount of content of YOU that will be available online. And then go back to the synchronic problem of identity. Can the answer be contained within something as seemingly trivial as a Facebook profile? That that is actually who we are? And if it is, what if identity can then be explained in the downloadable self. That the content I've created about myself online could lead to a collection of memories that can be copied into another brain and placed inside another person. If you could have a downloadable you, would you really want one?

Why now?

There is of course the question of why this seems to be happening now, in the way that it is. For centuries individuals have found a way of cementing their identity or guaranteeing a lasting memory of themselves by publishing books, writing plays, creating pieces of art etc. But we have never had the accessibility that we have now. Consider the handful of published authors you may have in one year, vs the vast number of 'published' (i.e. available online) Facebook profiles you have in that same year.

The advancements in technology are colliding with what some argue is an increasingly fragile sense of the self as we are forced to evaluate our position in the world by having increasing access to knowledge of the world itself. This occurring alongside a threat of invasion of our privacy which is the ultimate threat to the loss of the 'self' has made the appetite for social media tools such that they have become an essential way to establish our identity and so form relationships with others.

Is it really worth looking your best in an outfit, eating the tastiest meal or looking at the most beautiful sunset if you can't then share that moment with your friends online, simultaneously creating a record for yourself? It is these actions which are changing the way we approach identity. It is much less about identity through ourselves, and more about the self through others. More so now than ever before.

The rise of pseudonyms

What is worth considering is how the tools of social media have established and cemented techniques for re-inventing our identity, masking it or even allowing for no identity at all. Consider the rather odd rise of the use of pseudonyms online. Why would you want to say something if people have no idea it came from you, or why would you feel the need to create an online persona for yourself that is different to your 'offline' or other self. The fact is that people do, to a startling degree.

Pseudonyms aren't always used to preserve anonymity of course, but the decision to use a type of name other than that printed on your birth certificate is a very conscious one. It is saying that this person commenting or sending a tweet isn't exactly identical to that other you. In something as significant as the very collection of symbols that is used to differentiate you from one person to the next.

As we noted on the blog, Disqus have provided some interesting findings into this. They analyzed the data of commenters within their system and found that the majority were using pseudonyms, accounting for 65%, followed by anonymous commenters at 35% and real identity way behind at 4%

True, the pseudonym used might be little more than a shortening of your name, but this shouldn't be underestimated. Often online I use the name 'Loz Fisher'. Hardly a stretch from Lauren Fisher, but I use this because it's an identity I've come to like. It's what my family and closest friends call me. It is not the name on my birth certificate and this says something about how we approach the construction of our identities online.

Firstly in the very fact that this is a choice we get to make. We don't have to keep the identity that's followed us around up to now, but we get the chance to make a new one. The extent to which we take advantage of this obviously differs greatly. Why, for example, would a middle-aged, married American man pose as a lesbian blogger from Syria? As unethical as many took this to be, here is an example of someone who took the opportunity for re-invention to the extreme. Not for fame, not for fortune but for some unknown reason many of us will fail to empathise with.

Where does this leave us?

What then, does this mean for the notion of identity? On the one hand social media affords us an opportunity to create a more permanent, public version of ourselves, so solidifying the idea of our identity, and on the other it has made identity fragile, to the point where it can be completely 'fake'. Is social media strengthening identity or eroding it? The answer, it seems, is neither. What it is doing is changing the idea of identity to something that we have not quite yet got our heads around.

But we are starting to. Whether we realise it or not, the adeptness we are developing with the use of social media tools, how we know the ways in which we can construct an identity that is either completely true to ourselves, or is in fact a different identity that we want to project to the outside world is evidence of this changing sense of identity. Both are acceptable forms of identity. What we need to do is to begin to understand that these opportunities in social media are not a bad thing. Why shouldn't someone have the chance to use a different name than the one they were given, to project an alternate version of themselves or a completely fake one? It is all coming from you, and is being perceived by others. That is the most exciting sense of self we have had yet.

It is not an easy concept to understand or accept. In 1984, Orwell warned that the electrification of identity essentially made identity vulnerable, that it could be erased at any point by whoever had the power; in this case by the government. And while this may have its merits, it is not the way in which we should view identity. Is there a fragility in an identity that depends entirely on digital technology, that can no longer exist simply at the flick of a switch? Maybe. But to ignore and refuse the opportunities and advantages this gives us is a mistake. Identity will always be fragile because it doesn't in fact, exist. So why not have a go at establishing your identity right here and now, in the media that exists for us at an increasing rate? It is the most real identity you can have, right now.

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Why social media is leading to a new era of identity

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Is social media eroding the concept of identity, or solidifying it? The truth is that there is no easy or right answer, but we should look to social media as essentially changing the concept of identity if not for good, then at least for now.

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Marketing and business in the digital era

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Marketing and business in the digital era

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Emergence of user generated content and pro-sumer culture has completely changed the world of marketing. Some great examples

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Transform data into insightful, impactful experiences.

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Go beyond standard models and create custom dimensions and metrics tailored to your specific brand needs. See which emojis fans are using when mentioning your new product, or find out what competitors are mentioned most in comparison shopping. Sprinklr Display's data editor empowers brands with multiple data modeling options including filters, dimension, metrics, group-by's, and much much more.
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Data Visualization & Digital Signage Solution: Sprinklr Display

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Transform data into insightful, impactful experiences. Go beyond standard models and create custom dimensions and metrics tailored to your specific brand needs. See which emojis fans are using when mentioning your new product, or find out what competitors are mentioned most in comparison shopping.

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Article on use of ICT technologies by homeless. Proves wrong many of our assumptions surrounding those who are excluded from society and their access to the digital world.

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It's complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

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It's complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens

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danah boyd lecture covering themes from book including:  expression through texting, technological affordances on SNSs, SNSs as a place of freedom (early on), visual literacy/attention, identity and networks.

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danah boyd: It's Complicated - The Social Lives Of Networked Teens

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Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome social media scholar and youth advocate danah boyd for a discussion of her latest book, It's Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. What is new about how teenagers communicate through services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram? Do social media affect the quality of teens' lives?

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Argue that the yes/no nature of app mean we no longer have a concept of 'maybe' - but do we really think like that? perhaps 'Yes' can mean maybe?

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There is no doubt the emergence of dating apps such as Tinder have completely changed the way people meet and date.

But Tinder may have also changed the way we think by teaching us that "nothing matters unless you want it to matter".

In an essay for The New Inquiry, titled 'Tinderization of Feeling', authors Alicia Eler and Eve Peyser explore the concept that Tinder teaches people "emotional disassociation".

Ms Eler and Ms Peyser, both writers based in the US, suggest Tinder is not just a dating app, but also a "metaphor for speeding up and mechanising decision-making", therefore making humans robotic.

According to them, Tinder users, mostly millenials, are required to make decisions fast when using the app that it almost turns the process into a game.

The 'yes/no' nature of the app has turned into a culture of its own, over-simplifying the decision-making process until the idea of "maybe" is but a mere inconvenience.

In the phenomenon dubbed "Tinderization", people escape fostering real intimacy and vulnerability by avoiding confrontation, which the app allows them to do.

The authors say this traps people in a cycle of: "Swipe right, match, date, f**k, unmatch, rematch, repeat".

Distancing oneself from potential intimacy can also be seen as "chill", a romanticised state of passivity that "rationalises self-centredness as an acceptable by-product of too many choices".

The authors argue that being too "chill" is a sign of not having the "emotional energy" to socialise or deal with people, and seems only to be a good thing on-screen.

"Away from the screen, chill seems less chill and more like a sad wish that people were more robotic, without needs or feelings, hermetically self-fulfilling and self-fulfilled," they write.

However, we can break away from "Tinderization" simply by "including" people in our everyday lives.

The importance of intricacy in human relationships become more apparent when you allow the people in your life, the "rescuers", to participate in it.

They write: "To be without intricacies is to be without emotional boundaries, to disregard whoever whenever.

"[Best friends] are your heart, and they transcend any efficiency that the Tinderization Bestie Robot attempts to offer you in its binary fantasy."

However, the suggestion here is not to give up on Tinder completely, but to allow yourself "emotional accountability" once the app has facilitated your first date.
The Independent's Millennial Love group is the best place to discuss to the highs and lows of modern dating and relationships. Join the conversation here.​

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There is no doubt the emergence of dating apps such as Tinder have completely changed the way people meet and date. But Tinder may have also changed the way we think by teaching us that "nothing matters unless you want it to matter".

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Self-presentation processes in an online dating environment (2006)

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Self-presentation processes in an online dating environment (2006)

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Ellison et al

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Enter your email address below. If your address has been previously registered, you will receive an email with instructions on how to reset your password. If you don't receive an email, you should register as a new user

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Tinder knows how desirable you are (but they won't tell you)

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Tinder knows how desirable you are (but they won't tell you)

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People on your Tinder not as attractive as you would like? Turns out the app uses an internal "desirability" score to pair people...

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If the people you're matching with on Tinder aren't quite as attractive as you would like, it turns out there's a reason for it: the app creates an internal "desirability" score and uses that to pair people.

The internal scores, called Elo scores, after the chess term used to rank players' skills, were revealed by Fast Company, when one of its journalists was allowed to see their rating. For those that want to know how they rank, however, the scores are secret and there's no intention to make them public.

Tinder, which has more than 50 million users, claims that its matches aren't just based on how attractive a person is. The company says as there's more than just photos on a person's profile and not all right swipes are based on these (although, if we're honest with ourselves most swipes are based on how someone looks).

"It's not just how many people swipe right on you," Tinder CEO Sean Rad told Fast Co. "It's very complicated. It took us two and a half months just to build the algorithm because a lot of factors go into it."

Tinder isn't the first company to have built internal ratings for its users. In much the same way that customers can rate their Uber drivers, drivers also rate their passengers. On Uber it is possible to request to see an average rating.

The company didn't provide many details on how its algorithm works but it is likely it is based on information included on a user's profile. It's possible that the more details -- education, the number of photos on a profile, how much the app is used -- are taken into account when the score is worked out.

As such Rad says they are "desirability" scores rather than attractiveness.

However, a large part of the scores are likely to be based on swipes as it is the most common interaction on Tinder. The company has previously said that 10 billion matches have been made on the app, which will have produced a huge amount of data about the desirability of everyone on the service.

Tinder data engineer Tor Solli-Nowlan said: "Every swipe is in a way casting a vote: I find this person more desirable than this person, whatever motivated you to swipe right. It might be because of attractiveness, or it might be because they had a really good profile."

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Tinder knows how desirable you are (but it won't tell you)

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If the people you're matching with on Tinder aren't quite as attractive as you would like, it turns out there's a reason for it: the app creates an internal "desirability" score and uses that to pair people.

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Sites like CouchSurf allow us to trust strangers

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Sites like CouchSurf allow us to trust strangers

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Facilitated by the fact community members read/write reviews about each other.
But are we not relying on/trusting the fact that such sites are managed and regulated?

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Technology is making it easier to trust strangers

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Technology is making it easier to trust strangers

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Tinder, Uber, Airbnb - apps on our phones are enabling us to trust strangers in ways we never have before.

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This article was taken from The WIRED World in 2016 - our fourth annual trends report, a standalone magazine in which our network of expert writers and influencers predicts what's coming next. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
During a recent family dinner to celebrate the engagement of my cousin Anthony, the happy couple ceremoniously picked up their phones and deleted Tinder, the dating app on which they met. "We've gone from hook-up to chuppah in less than six months," Anthony declared in his toast. Intrigued, I asked them how many messages they exchanged before they met face-to-face. It turned out they had sent more than 150 texts to each other, over the course of three days. "I started to share genuine things about myself that I would normally keep hidden for some time," his fiancée told me. "I felt like I didn't just know him, but actually trusted him."

Anthony and Emily essentially met the person they plan to spend the rest of their lives with by swiping right. Their engagement represents not just a digital-age acceleration of intimacy but a world in which the speed and nature of trust is being fundamentally redefined.

Tinder and other dating apps are a green shoot in our understanding of how trust formed between people online can transfer into the real world. On the flip side, we are in the early stages of seeing how real-world interactions could change trust online. Take Alan, a 42-year-old Airbnb guest I recently met, who was highly sceptical of renting a home from a stranger. The place turned out to be much better than he expected. "The experience changed my assumptions," says Alan. "I was clearly wrong."

That one good travel experience could effectively be the gateway to persuasion, positively influencing Alan's trust in the online world and changing his behaviour around everything from believing strangers' reviews on products and services to trusting cryptocurrencies that have no traditional entity to trust.

A new trust framework is emerging, fuelled by social, economic and technological forces that will profoundly change not just how we are trusted in the world, but how we view trust in the world.

Understanding of, and research into, the interaction between technology and trust is still in its nascent stages. Stanford University sociologists Paolo Parigi and Karen Cook are studying communities that include couch-surfing and dating sites. "We have some preliminary research confirming the idea that people's levels of trust towards others can be modified through the experience of participating in this relatively new form of collective action," says Parigi. "If confirmed in subsequent research, the implication is that trust can be engineered and that technology can play a crucial role."

As I researched platforms that depend on person-to-person trust, I saw that there is a common pattern. In the first layer, people have to trust that a new idea will work and is safe. The next layer is trusting the platform or third party facilitating the exchange. And the third layer is trusting the other user. I call this process the trust stack.

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Technology is making it easier to trust strangers

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Online, person-to-person interactions are setting the stage for more honest offline human behaviour

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When your private Instagram pictures are uploaded by another person...

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When your private Instagram pictures are uploaded by another person...

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This goes against our common understanding today that social media accounts are replications of real people and their lives.

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Leah Palmer was a hard girl to pin down. She worked in fashion and had a jet-setting lifestyle that took her around the world. She would often enthusiastically arrange to meet her friends and male admirers, only to pull out at the last minute. She'd get ill at the worst moments, or have family crises.

"Whenever we had arranged to meet, there was always an excuse," says Justin, a semiprofessional athlete who developed a friendship - and then a relationship - with Leah. (Justin is not his real name; he spoke to BuzzFeed News under condition of anonymity.)

"Given her apparent career in fashion, she was supposedly away a lot with work," he says. "She pulled at the heartstrings a little, claiming the death of her brother, and various other family tragedies, throughout the time we were in contact. So I often gave her the benefit of the doubt when it came to meeting up."

The pair started flirting in July 2012 and tweeted each other several times a day. They spoke regularly on the phone and would use Skype - but never via a video call, because Leah's camera was invariably broken. Leah would occasionally put her mother Scarlett on the phone to speak to Justin.

He knew, he tells BuzzFeed News, that something didn't add up. "She always seemed to have answers and was able to cover her tracks rather well - speaking to friends, having an international dial tone when away, being very knowledgeable about her industry, posting things on social media. But obviously the fact that you could never tie her down to a time and place to meet would sound alarm bells."

But they obviously didn't ring loudly enough. Sonja, a 24-year-old law graduate, began dating Justin in autumn 2012. It lasted for a few months, but it wasn't particularly serious.

While they were together, she noticed the same person - Leah Palmer - kept popping up on his Twitter timeline.

"He and I were exchanging Twitter messages - Twitter was very big that year, we were social media crazy - and I had seen that she had replied to him as well and been on his feed and I thought, OK this is interesting, he's obviously seeing someone else," she tells BuzzFeed News.

As Sonja looked through Leah's tweets, she noticed that she kept being mentioned - as the "bitch" or "slut" who was stealing Leah's man.

"She was calling me a slut and saying that I was a bitch for stealing her boyfriend, just making fun of me," she says. "These things when you read them, especially for someone you don't know, feels very creepy to me. I had chills running down my spine when I read it because I thought, You don't even know me. Why are you so obsessed? "

"In the end it got so vitriolic I went to the police to ask if there's anything they could do about it. They said, 'No it's online, it's not really harassment, there's no legislation.'"

Sonja confronted Leah on Twitter - and Leah claimed that Justin was her boyfriend. "This was odd," she says, "because he never told me he was in a relationship with anyone or that he was even seeing anyone else."

Then, in December, came the moment when Justin left Sonja for a woman he'd never met.

"I remember saying to him at the time, 'Have you actually ever met this girl?' And he said 'Yeah, yeah I have.' I didn't believe him at the time. But I think that's the thing when you get into this kind of relationship online. He didn't want it to seem like it was just one of these casual things," says Sonja.

"I said to him, 'Are you sure she exists? Are you sure there's not something suspicious about her?' He said the same thing - that he met her in a bar, that they'd hung out; he had this whole story."

Justin and Leah remained in contact for months. Their respective Twitter accounts show them sending affectionate messages back and forth, although the frequency gradually dips over the course of 2013. He told her he loved her, sent her a Valentine's Day message saying how much he looked forward to seeing her in a few days' time.

But the meetings never came. Leah's behaviour was erratic; she would "disappear for a few days at a time", Justin says, at which point Scarlett would get in touch to ask if he had heard anything of her whereabouts.

Justin says Leah claimed to have depression and to be seeking therapy. "As you can imagine, if someone tells you that, your natural instinct is to try and be supportive and helpful if you can."

By the start of 2014, the relationship had seemingly petered out. But it was not until a year later, in January 2015, that Justin received a message via Instagram from a woman called Ruth Palmer. As Palmer recalls, it said: "I don't know who you've been speaking to, but I think you need to give me a ring." It was accompanied by Leah's picture - or rather, Ruth's.

Ruth Palmer, whose married name is Graves, is a 25-year-old account manager for a multinational firm. Originally from Brighton, she now lives in Dubai with her husband. She's pretty, happy, and has a tight-knit group of friends. She has the sort of life many people would want for themselves. As it turns out, someone did.

Between the start of 2012 and January 2015, "Leah Palmer" stole more than 900 pictures from Ruth's private Instagram account, and uploaded them as if they were her own. Leah had a Facebook page, several Twitter accounts, and even a Tinder account - all in Leah's name, all using Ruth's pictures. She would switch from one Twitter account to another without warning; the accounts would switch from public to private, apparently at random.

Ruth knew nothing until a university friend told her one night in January: "Have you seen this picture of you on Instagram? The picture belongs to you but this is a person called Leah."

At first she thought nothing of it - it's the kind of weird thing that happens on the internet, she thought. But then the friend insisted Ruth take a look for herself. She realised it wasn't about someone taking a few pictures. Someone was stealing parts of her life.

Ruth's real-life friends would become part of Leah's world and appear in her posts. Ruth's memories, her fun holiday snaps and selfies, her tender pictures with her husband - they all became part of Leah's fantasy. One of Ruth's close friends became a single mother; Leah would post pictures of the child, stolen from yet another unknown Instagram account. Ruth's husband was explained away as an "ex".

On one occasion, Ruth posted an Instagram picture from a bar in Dubai. A few days later, Leah posted about her own trip to the same venue.

"That's when I knew that whoever this person was or who these people were, they were scanning across my entire social network, trying to get any information that they could," Ruth tells BuzzFeed News, speaking by phone from Dubai.

"It wouldn't have been so weird if she hadn't have used my friends' real names and hadn't known where I'd been and what I'd been doing, and things about my family.

"That was kind of the weirdest part to me. You kind of know when you put stuff on social media that it doesn't then actually belong to you; it's in the public domain. I've known people who've had this happen to them and it's been a couple of pictures, but never to this extent."

Ruth asked Instagram to shut down Leah's account, submitting her passport as proof of identity.

"When it was shut down a few weeks later, I was like, 'Phew! OK, I can get on with things again,'" says Ruth. "And then my friends were like, 'Have you seen that she's done it again?'"

Another account had popped up, again using Ruth's pictures.

Now Ruth started to worry: This was obsessive, stalker-like behaviour. She tried to investigate who the culprit was, and even obtained the mobile phone number Leah gave out to people - a couple of times someone answered and said "Hi", before quickly hanging up. They would never answer again; the mobile numbers Leah used are both now out of service.

Ruth went to the police, but they couldn't help because taking someone's online pictures - aside from being a possible breach of copyright laws - isn't illegal. She also spoke to her old local newspaper, the Brighton Argus, to warn others of the dangers of online identity theft. And she got in touch with Justin, via Instagram and then Skype, to tell him the truth.

"I Skyped him and it was awful. This poor guy saw that I was with my husband and it's just a weird situation to be in. He very quickly had to come off the Skype call and said, 'This is a bit weird for me'."

Looking back on the experience, Ruth says: "It was properly intense. This was someone who had more than enough time to sit and live this life online. There is reels and reels of this stuff. I was probably just scratching the surface of stuff that she'd done."

Everyone knows that on the internet, it's possible to pretend to be someone you're not. For many people, that's part of the appeal. There's a whole TV series, MTV's Catfish, based on people using false personas to lure others into handing over their cash, or their heart.

But the case of Leah Palmer is extreme - and bizarre - by any standards. For three years, someone lived out a fantasy double life using pictures they had stolen. They built up thousands of social media followers, and developed real friendships and at least one romantic relationship.

It wasn't just Justin: Several more men had varying degrees of contact with Leah, including a non-league footballer, a DJ who plays around the world, and a former Big Brother contestant, all of whom exchanged direct messages, texts, and phone calls with her. "I know of one other guy who had also arranged to meet with her and she was a no-show, and came up with an excuse as she did with me several times," says Justin.

To sustain the illusion, the person behind the Leah accounts didn't just create one fake life, but several. There were Twitter accounts for Leah's fictional mum, @ScarlettPalmer3, and a fictional best friend, @KateHarvey89, the "single mother" who is based on one of Ruth's friends. All three accounts would share, like, and comment on one another's Twitter posts and Instagram pictures.

Scarlett described herself as a mother of three who joined Twitter "to pass the time".

Scarlett would comment on Leah's Instagram pictures with encouraging messages, such as "It's your mum here - you are beautiful inside and out" and "I am so blessed with you."

Leah's cover story involved working in fashion: She variously told people she worked at Harvey Nichols, as a PA to Marc Jacobs, and as Cheryl Cole's personal stylist. Combing through the thousands of tweets sent by and to Leah's accounts, it becomes clear that women wanted to be like her and men wanted to be with her.

Leah exchanged tweets daily with one friend, Tara Kelly (BuzzFeed News repeatedly approached Tara for comment for this article, but was unable to reach her). The pair sent each other written letters and spoke about meeting one day.

Leah contacted a prominent fashion blogger based in London to ask for advice and exchanged messages with TV presenter Dawn O'Porter.

Not everyone was taken in. Fenton Gee, a British DJ, also began talking to Leah online, in early 2013. The pair spoke on the phone occasionally, but he sensed something was wrong.

He tells BuzzFeed News: "I first came across her in 2012, after the O2 Wireless Festival, and I'd just become single. Apparently she lived near me [in London] but she never wanted to meet up - she was always travelling, working in fashion.

"There was once some bullshit story about being in hospital in Brighton. I got someone to check and there was no person with that name who'd been hospitalised."

Some of those who became suspicious set out to find out who Leah really was. One of them was Sonja Polimac - the woman dumped by Justin for Leah - who enlisted the help of her friend, Charlotte Fletcher. They quickly found the inconsistencies on her Instagram pictures: Some images, shot from the neck down, showed someone with tattoos that Ruth doesn't have. Then there were selfies taken in the bath where the length of Leah's toes changed from shot to shot.

"Things like hands and nails and body types and hair and all this different stuff would change in every single photo. It was just crazy to me that people didn't see that," says Sonja. "But I suppose that if you're emotionally involved, and you think that this person is your best friend or your girlfriend, then you don't want to see what's right in front of you."

But the question remains: Who was Leah Palmer?

Most of those involved in the story speculate that it is a young woman, perhaps someone who might "hero-worship" Ruth and want be like her. The irony is not lost on Ruth that the person impersonating her, and who so badly wanted to be like her, had many more online followers than she does: "I know, she had more friends than I did! She had a couple thousand on Twitter and I don't really know how to use it. If you don't laugh about it then it would really drag you down."

What everyone agrees on is that the person behind the fake accounts is a troubled individual. Leah would tell friends and followers online that she'd been in hospital, and also claimed to Justin that her brother had died.

At one point in 2013, Leah texted a notable fashion blogger about her depression, after originally getting in touch to ask for advice for her fashion career.

The blogger, who asked to remain anonymous, says: "She started texting me and then saying, 'I'm so depressed because my boyfriend is away.' Why would you start talking to a random stranger about your depressive problems and how you're driving around for hours and hours, crying?"

The obvious conclusion is that the culprit is a friend of Ruth's, or least in her circle of acquaintances. Her social media accounts are private and almost always have been, apart from when she first joined Facebook aged 18. But Ruth is adamant that she can't imagine any of her friends doing that to her. "People say it must be someone you know," she says. "But I don't know anyone who has that amount of time."

Then there is the mystery of Scarlett, Leah's mother. Apparently, their voices were clearly distinct: So did Leah have an accomplice?

Leah's accounts have all either been suspended, closed, or remain private. BuzzFeed News has had to reconstruct much of her online presence from traces and fragments. But her true identity remains unknown: Even when Sonja and Charlotte enlisted the help of a hacker with links to the hacktivist collective Anonymous, they were unable to track down the culprit.

The story may not be over. Ruth says she would "put money" on there still being fake accounts out there still using her images. And in any event, this particular case of catfishing is only an extreme of a practice that is much more widespread than people realise. Several people BuzzFeed News spoke to who have tried to track down Leah Palmer themselves admitted to having created a fake social media account at some point, using pictures of someone else, whether it was due to teenage boredom, curiosity, or vanity.

DJ Fenton Gee has a world-weary take on people pretending to be what they're not online: "I think it comes with the job or whatever, but I believe everyone is fake until I meet them. This isn't the first time it's happened to me - she's probably the third or fourth who's done this."

But that still leaves the question unanswered of what happens to the victims - both those fooled by the fakers and those whose identities are stolen.

"People have said it's my fault because I put those pictures out there," says Ruth. "And maybe it is. But aren't those social media sites there so you can do that [post pictures]? Shouldn't they make it so you can do that securely?

"I get that if you put things on a public domain, they're not yours; I get that completely. But why should it be the case that you put them on there and you have to be fearful that that they might get taken and used for this, that, and the other?"

Perhaps the real lesson is the simplest. Like Justin, we all have a tendency to see what we want to see and believe what we want to believe. Especially when it's accompanied by a beautiful face.

Got a confidential tip? Submit it here.

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This Is What It's Like To Fall In Love With A Woman Who Doesn't Exist

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Leah Palmer was a high-flying fashionista with a jet-setting lifestyle and a host of admirers on social media. But her entire existence was a fraud - a multiyear hoax that depended on stealing someone else's life. BuzzFeed News tells the extraordinary story.

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Dolphin calf dies after tourists pass it around for selfies

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Dolphin calf dies after tourists pass it around for selfies

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'There isnt much humans wont destroy to make their Facebook friends jealous'.

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There isn't much that humans won't destroy to make their Facebook friends jealous, it seems.

Reports of people losing their phones, their freedoms and even their lives in the pursuit of a good selfie have been rising steadily since 2014, when the first "selfie-related deaths" were reported by news outlets.

According to the data crunchers at Priceonomics, 49 people made headlines during that span of time for dying while attempting to take smartphone self-portraits - the majority of them falling from heights trying to capture an "extreme" moment for posterity or the promise of "likes."

Animals, too, have been threatened by this behaviour in the past. However, there hadn't been any widely reported cases of selfies actually killing wildlife until this week.

Argentinean animal rights organization Fundación Vida Silvestre, an arm of The World Wildlife Foundation, published a statement on Tuesday decrying the behaviour of tourists in Buenos Aires.

According to the statement, two Franciscan dolphins were swimming near a resort last week when they were taken from the water and "manipulated by tourists to photograph."

Footage shared by Vida Silvestre and local news sources shows a mob of tourists passing around one of the tiny dolphins, which are vulnerable to extinction according to the International Union for Conservation, while swarming to take photos of it and with it.

"One of them ended up dying," reads the English translation of Vida Silvestre's statement on Facebook. "Like other dolphins, they can not stay long out of the water because its thick skin provides internal heat, quickly causing dehydration and death."

News of the incident spread quickly online thanks to social media, international news coverage and celebrities including British comedian Ricky Gervais, who referred to the tourists with an obscenity on both Instagram and Twitter.

"This terribly unfortunate event is an example of the casual cruelty people can inflict when they use animals for entertainment purposes, without thinking of the animal's needs," a spokeswoman for Australia's arm of World Animal Protection told ABC News.

"At least one of these dolphins suffered a horrific, traumatic and utterly unnecessary death, for the sake of a few photographs. Wild animals are not toys or photo props. They should be appreciated - and left alone - in the wild where they belong."

Many on Twitter expressed similar disdain for what appeared to be happening in photos and videos of the Buenos Aires beach mob.

Don't think I can read that dolphin-selfie story without hating all of mankind for ever and ever.
&mdash; @jojomoyes

We are officially boycotting all live commitments in Argentina until the selfie-taking scum who killed that baby dolphin are held to account
&mdash; @_real_lies

Maybe now people will think this selfie culture has gone too far. Dead baby dolphins. <a href="https://t.co/JVrJ3bkEzV">https://t.co/JVrJ3bkEzV</a>
&mdash; @jamietarabay

On Thursday, a tourist who reportedly took the original beach photos told an Argentine television station the dolphin was dead when it arrived on the beach.

He said that several dolphins had already washed ashore due to the heat that day, and that tourists took pictures with the dolphin for approximately five minutes.

"We took him back to the sea and he didn't swim back out," he said to Telefe Noticias, though this information has not been confirmed.

"They should have just called the authorities," said Verónica García of Vida Silvestre during an interview with CBC Radio's As It Happens, noting that people should never interfere with wild animals, even if they're dead or sick.

García says hundreds of dolphins die each year from the nets local fisherman use.

Her organization has also been receiving stories from other concerned animal lovers since publicly condemning the dolphin-selfie tourists.

"A guy took a dolphin from the water to show to the public and then threw it into the garbage," García said, quoting a tip she had read.

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Selfie-taking tourists kill rare dolphin calf on Argentina beach | CBC News

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There isn't much that humans won't destroy to make their Facebook friends jealous, it seems. Reports of people losing their phones, their freedoms and even their lives in the pursuit of a good selfie have been rising steadily since 2014, when the first "selfie-related deaths" were reported by news outlets.

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Skype: WW2 vet reunites with wartime girlfriend from London

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Skype: WW2 vet reunites with wartime girlfriend from London

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Relationships that would have been distant memories no longer are - not limited by geography and space

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70 years later, a D-Day vet reunites with his wartime girlfriend

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Two young lives - briefly connected by war - took separate paths once the fighting was done. Now, in their twilight years, their paths have converged again. http://www.pilotonline.com/news/military/veterans/years-later-virginia-beach-vet-rekindles-a-wwii-romance/article_ce316543-c14b-5587-a5b6-127b66fc2d75.html

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Selfies produced and published by young females more often use visual codes of subordination. Are gender differences just more obvious online?

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Book exploring the same concept in depth. Really accessible, written more like a story with lots of anecdotes.

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Consider Facebook-it's human contact, only easier to engage with and easier to avoid. Developing technology promises closeness. Sometimes it delivers, but much of our modern life leaves us less connected with people and more connected to simulations of them.In Alone Together, MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle explores the power of our new tools and toys to dramatically alter our social lives.

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Reconfiguring friendships: social relationships and the internet

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Reconfiguring friendships: social relationships and the internet

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How internet is used to form new relationships. Online dating good example

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''As long as [Romeo and Juliet] talked or texted in private, neither the Montagues nor the Capulets would know...'' They would also have to watch what they put on their SNSs... brings up issues with privacy/parents/freedom as discussed by boyd below

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By Wellman and Rainie

One of the most inspired writing ideas that we embraced in Networked came from Lee's boss, Andrew Kohut, CEO of the Pew Research Center. Kohut's notion was that a fun and powerful way to remind people how much the world had changed since the arrival of mobile phones would be to use popular culture references to life mobile connectivity had become a widespread consumer reality.

At the time he suggested this idea, Kohut had just watched a rerun of the 1970 movie, The Out of Towners, a Neil Simon farce starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis as suburbanites who run into a series of problems in New York City when they try to have a getaway weekend. Unable to get to a landline phone, the couple hold their hotel room reservation and the room is given to someone else; call ahead and reschedule Lemmon's crucial job interview when they run into trouble; check on a con artist's false story; summon help or seek follow-up assistance when they are mugged twice, kidnapped, and abandoned in Central Park; or let their children know where they are.

We took the idea and expanded it in Chapter 4 of our book to include several more examples. Barry adapted the notion to the plot of Romeo and Juliet and has now amplified it even more in a new article for the important, new journal, Mobile Media & Communication, and our friend, Rich Ling. He and his many insights about the mobile age are featured throughout our book.

With the journal's permission, we run the article below:
If Romeo and Juliet Had Had Mobile Phones
Remember Juliet's cry in the balcony scene, "Romeo, O Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?" (II, 2, 33). It's the precursor of networked individualism as Juliet wonders why Romeo, a Montague, is moving beyond group boundaries to woo her, a Capulet.*

Modern readers might understand Juliet's cry as "where are you?" Both meanings suggest how the Triple Revolution-the turn to social networks, the pervasive internet, and the always accessible mobile phone-have changed the ways in which we connect with each other. Nowadays, Juliet would routinely text or call Romeo via their mobile phones: "what are your feelings about me?, can you get away from your family?, and when will you be coming?" It's not like the days when people called each other on their wired-in ("landline") phone at home or work-they knew exactly where those people were and had a pretty good idea of the social and physical context in which they were operating.

In our Networked book (Rainie & Wellman, 2012), we have thought about how the pervasive adoption of mobile phones-and more recently tablets and highly portable laptop computers-has affected our lives. Among other things, the Mobile Revolution has promoted networked individualism-connectivity that is not bound up in solidary groups-and connectivity that paradoxically provides both location awareness ("where are you?") and facilitates communication without regard to location-I can connect with you wherever you are. Although our focus has been on the United States and Canada, we think our findings hold true for much of the developed world and increasingly large segments of the less-developed world. We argue that mobile phones have revolutionary social affordances: technologies that provide possibilities and constraints for our lives.
You Can Take It With You
The most obvious affordance is that mobile phones are mobile. In the early days, that meant 35-kilogram phones were so heavy that they had to be mounted in cars. Yet, even one of those would have helped Brad and Janet in the Rocky Horror Picture Show escape from the aliens when their car got stranded (O'Brien and Sharman, 1975). Of course, phones have slimmed down: at first to 1 kilogram, unreliable, analogue bricks that required holsters or bulging purses, and now to small, sleek easily-pocketable digital units weighing only 140 grams-a decrease of 99% from the original car phones. They would have easily fit into bodices and codpieces. Indeed, Leopoldina Fortunati (2003), Romeo and Juliet's Verona neighbor, notes that the mobile phone is now our third skin. The number of U.S. mobile subscriptions has grown from 340,000 in 1985 to more than 302 million in 2011, comprising 83% of the adult population and 75% of teenagers (Rainie and Wellman, 2012).

While the internet made communication personal and less constrained by distance, it has been bound to physical locations, be it the house, office, or a WiFi-equipped coffee shop. Having their own mobile phones-along with tablets and light notebooks-would have allowed Romeo and Juliet to move around, liberated from locale and parental surveillance. They would have been less worried about their families when they were figuring out where to meet. At the same time, their parents would have felt reassured because they could call their children and ask where they were and what they were doing. But, would Romeo and Juliet have told the truth? A location-aware app would also have been useful for parents in tracking them. Or they might have prowled friends' Facebook updates or photo albums for clues.
One Phone to Rule Them All
Today, Romeo and Juliet could connect with each other because mobility means accessibility and availability. They'd be on each other's top-five speed dial. And they would probably have had a location-aware app that that showed exactly where each other were: no wandering the streets of Verona looking for each other. Rather than using separate phones at home and at work-not to mention payphones at gas stations and on the street, people carry one phone that integrates all of their roles. Mobile phones have become versatile accessories that are always at hand with many thousands of apps to communicate, identify bird songs, and locate secret trysting spots: "tryst.com" actually exists. Indeed, many young adults sleep with their mobiles near them, either on their beds or on their night tables: "I don't want to miss a text; it's my alarm clock". If Romeo or Juliet had a voice-recognition app such as Siri, it might have echoed Ruth's words to Naomi (1:16): "Whither thou goest, I will go".

For a while, the constant availability of mobile users meant that they annoyed others with ringing phones in public. In 1992, co-author Wellman was shocked when a Hong Kong concert audience was asked to turn off its mobile phones: he hadn't thought about such issues back then. By 2003, he sympathized when concert pianist Andrea Schiff stormed off the stage in Rome after a mobile phone rang twice in the audience. Nowadays, accessibility has become more silent. As phones increasingly vibrate rather than ring, people exchange text messages rather than talk. The percentage of texters in the adult population has nearly doubled from 31% in spring 2006 to 59% in spring 2011 (Rainie and Wellman, 2012). Public spaces have become more silent, as people concentrate on their text messages, while downwardly-peering texters have limited eye contact.

Constant availability can be annoying in other ways. People can be contacted by unwanted others. Imagine Romeo making plans to meet Juliet in the park, but his father calls to say that he has to come home immediately. At least, the mobile connection would have allowed Romeo to alert Juliet to his role conflict and possible absence. Or they might suffer social overload as they feel normative pressure to remain connected when they'd prefer not to be: if Juliet kept insecurely texting Romeo, she might have driven away.
The Personalization of Communication
Romeo and Juliet's exchanges would have been personal, a revolutionary change from landline telephone communication that came into the entire household.As long as they talked or texted in private, neither the Montagues nor the Capulets would know - unless, of course, they snuck peeks at the list of previous calls and texts on the phones. Instead of a phone ringing in a home-where all would hear it and possibly become part of the conversation-internet communication and mobile communication are usually exchanges between two individuals. Juliet could ask privately "wherefore art though?" about Romeo's state of mind as well as his location.

By contrast, in the not-so-olden days, when someone called the household, all family members could gather around the speakerphone or pick up extensions around the house. But the increasing absence of home landline phones means that when modern Juliets call home they reach only the one family member whose mobile phone they are calling. Thus, the absence of landlines hinders conversations with the entire household.

This dance of the personal and the household happens in real life, as many teens will tell you. For example, some Arab Israeli young men give mobile phones to the women they are dating. But they control the bill. "Use the phone only in your own room, and put it on silent vibrate when I call at 10PM. And don't call anyone else, because I can see it when I get the bill" (Hijazi-Omari & Ribak, 2008).
The Networked Family
The shift from household phones to personal mobile phones is part of the shift away from solidary families to networked families(Kennedy & Wellman, 2007; Rainie, Wellman & Kennedy, 2012). Homes were refuges for Romeo and Juliet-and their families. There were strong boundaries between households and the public, problematic streets. As late as the 1960s, mothers would stay home while fathers would go off to work.

Homes now have permeable boundaries. Mom as well as Dad usually goes off to work, and each family member has a separate agenda. There is more need to use their mobile phones to communicate and coordinate the mundane aspects of life: who will pick up the kids from soccer practice? If they cannot get their employers' permission to phone or text each other at work, they'll use their lunch and bathroom breaks.

Mobile contact has become multigenerational, as teens-and even children-are increasingly getting their own mobile phones. This affords people of all ages opportunities to become more autonomous agents. Many parents lend their young children mobile phones or tablets to use as pacifiers. In this way, children learn digital skills before they go to school, playing Angry Birds or Angelina Ballerina. The big step is personal possession. In 2009, most Canadian children had their own mobile phones by the age of 13; it undoubtedly is lower now (Wellman, Garofalo and Garofalo 2009). As they grew up, Romeo and Juliet had gotten past their childhoods of being household and neighborhood bound. They made contact by encounters in public places. Teens still do that-the shopping mall is the new agora-but their mobile phones also afford continuous contact with their homes and distant friends.
Networked Individuals Interconnect Mobile, Internet and In-Person
Some pundits fear that mobile users rarely look up to engage with each other in person (Turkle, 2011). If they are right, Romeo and Juliet might never look up from their mobile phones to see each other. Or, would the course of true love have led them away from their screens and into each other's arms?

Yet, such fears are not based on systematic evidence. Instead, a variety of research shows that mobile phones-and the internet, for that matter-are integrated into people's face-to-face interactions (Hampton, et al., 2009; Wang and Wellman, 2010; Rainie, et al., 2006, Rainie and Wellman, 2012).

It is not as if there are few separate realms of online and in-person contact. Rather, we are networkedindividuals, and our personal networks integrate the internet, phones, and in-person encounters. People intertwine mobile, internet, and in-person contact into a seamless whole.

For example, Rhonda McEwen's study of how university students use mobile phones nicely shows the intricate dance that the internet, mobile phones, and in-person contact make. Students first set up get-togethers on the internet. Then, as they get close to the time and place of meeting, they phone or text each other: "I'm a little late". "Which corner are you standing at?" The get togethers are, of course, in person, but afterwards there are almost immediate follow-up calls and texts: what the French call "L'esprit de l'escalier"-the "spirit of the staircase" when afterthoughts come to mind. If it was a group gathering, emails and Facebook posts provide collective reinforcement (McEwen & Fritz, 2010).
From Group to Network
The story of Romeo and Juliet is the story of two individuals escaping the bounds of their densely knit groups. It is a story of the social network revolution that began well before Facebook: the move from group-bound societies to networked individuals.This turn to networked individualism transforms communication from being place-based to person-based.

Mobile phones have played a key role in the developed world's transformation from group-bound societies to networked societies in which people move among sparsely knit networks of diverse others. Consider the mutually-exclusive groups of Montagues and Capulets. Nowadays, people have partial memberships in multiple clusters of ties (Castells, 2000; Rainie and Wellman, 2012). And when trouble develops, they use their mobile phones to call for help from whatever networks seem most appropriate. Smart networked mobs form through viral word-of-mouth communication by mobile phone and the internet, as well as via traditional in-person contact (Lane, 2011; Rheingold, 2000).

Thus, in little more than a decade, mobile phones have become the concrete instantiation of the turn away from groups to networked individualism. Romeo and Juliet would have used them-and loved them almost as much as they loved each other. With their mobile phones, the course of their true love would have been more connected-and perhaps would have run more smoothly. If only Romeo and Juliet had had mobile phones, they might have lived happily ever after.

* We made a modernist mistake in the first version of this article. Shakespeare's "Wherefore" does not translate as "Where." It means "Why." Juliet's cry is not to know where her lover is. Her cry is one of the heart. "Why do you come from the enemy clan?" We are indebted to correspondent Adam Babcock for pointing this out - and doing so pretty gently.
References
Castells, M. 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. 2 nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.

Fortunati, L. 2003. "Front stage/back stage: mobile communication and the renegotiation of the social sphere." Pp. 1-16 in Mediating the Human Body: Technology, Communication, and Fashion, edited by L. Fortunati, J. Katz and R. Riccini. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hampton, K.N., L.F. Sessions, E.J. Her, and L. Rainie. 2009. Social Isolation and New Technology. Pew Internet & American Life Project: Washington. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/18-Social-Isolation-and-New-Technology.aspx.

Hijazi-Omari, H. and Ribak, R. 2008. Playing with fire: on the domestication of the mobile phone among Palestinian teenage girls in Israel. Information, Communication and Society, 11(2), 149-66.

Kennedy, T. and Wellman, B. 2007. The networked household." Information, Communication and Society 10 (5), 647-70.

Lane, J. 2011. "'Twitter is maaade for trouble': Violence and status on the digital street." Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, April.

McEwen, R. & Fritz, M. 2011. "EMF social policy and youth mobile phone practices in Canada." Pp. 133-156 in Mobile Communication, edited by J. Katz. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction.

O'Brien, R. and Shanahan, J. 1975. Rocky Horror Picture Show. Los Angeles: 20 th Century Fox.

Rainie, L., Horrigan, J., Wellman, B. and Boase. J. 2006. "The strength of internet ties." Pew Internet & American Life Project: Washington. http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2006/The-Strength-of-Internet-Ties.aspx

Rainie, L. and Wellman, B. 2012. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rainie, L. Wellman, B. , and Kennedy, T. "Networked Families." Chapter 6 in Rainie, L. and Wellman, B. Networked: The New Social Operating System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Rheingold, H. 2003. Smart Mobs. New York: Basic Books.

Shakespeare, W. 1597. Romeo and Juliet.

Turkle, S. 2011. Alone Together. New York: Basic Books

Wang, H. and Wellman, B. 2010. "Social connectivity in America: changes in adult friendship network size from 2002 to 2007." American Behavioral Scientist 53 (8): 1148-1169.

Wellman, B., Garofalo, A. and Garofalo, V. 2009. "The Internet, Technology and Connectedness." Transition 39, 4 (December): 5-7

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By Wellman and Rainie One of the most inspired writing ideas that we embraced in Networked came from Lee's boss, Andrew Kohut, CEO of the Pew Research Center. Kohut's notion was that a fun and powerful way to remind people how much the world had changed since the arrival of mobile phones would be to use popular culture references to life mobile connectivity had become a widespread consumer reality.

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We no longer give the people we are with our full attention, we are half there, half with our devices.

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As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication -- and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have.

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Facebook introduces tools to help you stop stalking your ex online

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Facebook introduces tools to help you stop stalking your ex online

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Our digital worlds often contain updates we would usually stop receiving in an offline context. What are the consequences of this on our understandings of our relationships?

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Facebook introduces tools to help you stop stalking your ex online

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Social network trials 'take a break' tools, offering a quick option to hide posts and pictures from a former partner after a user changes their relationship status

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Colorado park closes because people can't stop taking selfies with bears

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Colorado park closes because people can't stop taking selfies with bears

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Risking safety to get a good selfie - what makes people care this much? Brings forward concepts of presentation of self and identity online.

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Image: Design Pics/AP Images/Associated Press

Your selfie game might be strong, but you're ruining it for everyone else.

That's the case for some visitors to Waterton Canyon in Denver, Colorado, anyway. In fact, the overabundance of selfies with bears at the park has caused officials to shut it down for the foreseeable future.

"The current situation is not conducive for the safety of our visitors or the well-being of the wildlife," Brandon Ransom, recreation manager for Denver Water (which manages Waterton Canyon's recreation area) wrote in a blog post earlier this month.

"We've actually seen people using selfie sticks to try and get as close to the bears as possible, sometimes within 10 feet of wild bears."

#WatertonCanyon still closed this weekend because, #bears. More: http://t.co/0u1v9GPyIX @COParksWildlife pic.twitter.com/wSdPYz7tg7

- Denver Water (@DenverWater) September 11, 2015

In the interest of safety, the park managers have closed the park until bear activity subsides. According to The Denver Channel, the closure first went into effect on Aug. 28 because two mother bears - each with twin cubs - along with other bears, were using the canyon to forage for food. However, with the abundant selfie-taking and apparent ignorance of safety measures, the closure has been extended until further notice.

"It is a poor choice from our perspective, A) to get that close to wildlife and B) to turn your back, particularly on bears," said Matt Robbins, a spokesman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife told The Denver Channel.

Personal safety takes a backseat to the selfie game all too often - the U.S. Forest Service had to issue a request for visitors to keep their distance from wild bears in Lake Tahoe last year when too many visitors charged up closer to bears to get a photo in front of them.

Earlier this summer at Yellowstone National Park, a woman was flipped by a bison after she posed for a selfie with it. She survived, with minor injuries.

Here's hoping the Waterton Canyon's closure is a reminder that no matter how great the selfie opportunity may seem, it's never worth it to ignore the conventional wisdom of keeping your distance from a wild animal.

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Colorado park closes because people can't stop taking selfies with bears

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Your selfie game might be strong, but you're ruining it for everyone else. That's the case for some visitors to Waterton Canyon in Denver, Colorado, anyway. In fact, the overabundance of selfies with bears at the park has caused officials to shut it down for the foreseeable future.

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Archivist-artist-filmmaker-photographer Dick Jewell's fascination with our desire to increasingly capture 'the moment' or 'the impending moment' around us and share it with, most often, complete strangers bathing in the glow of a Facebook feed, is, in itself, fascinating. In what feels like a 21st century extension of his 1978 book Found Photos - where, for a decade, he collected discarded photo booth images found in Brighton and London - his new book four thousand threads pedantically links 4,000 'threads' (or images) in an intriguing narrative that weaves photo phenomena like 'bombing', 'cat bearding' and 'planking' with selfie sticks, President Obama and sink holes.

Tracing how such photo phenomena influences our behaviour as a society both online as well as in real life, Jewell writes in the book: "The urge to capture an instant seems to have become influenced by the opportunity to share it with the world", adding, "The shared digital image is encouraging not only more photography but also new behaviours in its subjects."

He continues: "What was once photographed and posted for its uniqueness and novelty becomes normalised through reconstruction and reiteration, or that maybe the captured behaviour is the normality in some instances and merely a revelation of a foreign culture."

Below we speak with him about the painstaking process of mining the internet and making sense of it all, ahead of his talk at the ICA with curator David Campany on 2 December, 2015 in honour of four thousand threads' release.
How did you go about collecting these images and where did you find them?
Dick Jewell: I'd been in the habit of searching the web for images for my photo montages over the last couple of decades. I drift about on it, sometimes I'd find a site that's image bound, for instance Urod. I couldn't read Russian, so instead I'd found where they bank their images for the site and then trawl through that instead, this way I can browse thousands of images a day. But in doing the book I found sites like Flikr, which again I like for the density of images, basically I tended to look wherever I can browse a lot of images quickly and then I'd do it for months on end!

"We are looking at humanity through their lenses" - Dick Jewell

How long did the process take to collect, to curate and then to edit them?
Dick Jewell: From start to finish the process took me two years, but when I began I didn't have a book in mind. I began with the intention of doing a moving montage using flashcards and a dozen digital picture frames on the subject of the capture of dramatic instances. Having loaded up a few flash cards and then watching them play, I realised the importance of the order that the images were in and how they juxtaposed (one another). It was in the process of putting them in an order, seeing them beside each other in folders on the computer screen, that I thought, 'okay it's a book'. The curating took a long time, some days I'd look through the story so far and find a thread missing and more often than not, to join the two unrelated images would take another dozen images and a day's work.

After about a year I had a book which I titled three thousand threads and I started to look for quotes from printers. Basically the prices were scary but one printer was kind enough to mention that if my book was 15mm less wide it would save me £4,000, so I started to lay it out again. In doing so I totally changed the beginning narrative, then found more broken threads, as well as pictures that I realised had to have been shopped... six months later I ended up with a book called four thousand threads.
There's 'four thousand threads' here but what is the overarching story for you, or that you want to tell?
Dick Jewell: There's not one overarching story as we're looking at four thousand stories here, we are looking at humanity through their lenses and the book falls between narrative and reference. So saying the story I wanted to tell was how the proliferation of digital cameras and the sharing of images online was not only influencing what people shot but also human behaviour and I wanted to tell the story in reference to now, 2015, as these changes occur and move on so rapidly.
Do you have a particular favourite photo or thread?
Dick Jewell: Oh, that is impossible. There are simply too many extraordinary instances captured in the book and on so many levels: some of my threads I'm pretty pleased with!
Jewell shares some of his favourites below. For more information on four thousand threads, click here

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This new book explores our obsession with oversharing online

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Archivist-artist-filmmaker-photographer Dick Jewell's fascination with our desire to increasingly capture 'the moment' or 'the impending moment' around us and share it with, most often, complete strangers bathing in the glow of a Facebook feed, is, in itself, fascinating.