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Some reasons for criticisms on Mark Zuckerberg

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Some reasons for criticisms on Mark Zuckerberg

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Interesting discussion on the importance of congruence

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I am stuck in the never-ending circle of TED-talks...

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Psychologist Philip Zimbardo says happiness and success are rooted in a trait most of us disregard: the way we orient toward the past, present and future. He suggests we calibrate our outlook on time as a first step to improving our lives.

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Brian Little's TED TALK on personality traits

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Brian Little's TED TALK on personality traits

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I remember reading Brian Little's articles in my personality class last year. This TED talk is a summary of what I learned, but better because of his humor!!

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Brian Little: Who are you, really? The puzzle of personality

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What makes you, you? Psychologists like to talk about our traits, or defined characteristics that make us who we are. But Brian Little is more interested in moments when we transcend those traits - sometimes because our culture demands it of us, and sometimes because we demand it of ourselves.

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Firefox's Collusion extension and internet tracking

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Firefox's Collusion extension and internet tracking

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Gary Kovacs: Tracking our online trackers

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As you surf the Web, information is being collected about you. Web tracking is not 100% evil -- personal data can make your browsing more efficient; cookies can help your favorite websites stay in business. But, says Gary Kovacs, it's your right to know what data is being collected about you.

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Interesting article on why we don't read privacy policies 

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Interesting article on why we don't read privacy policies 

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Social media has changed adviser-client relationships, helping advisers attract and retain clients, but leading to fewer face-to-face meetings or phone conversations, a study by Putnam Investments finds.

In its fifth Social Advisor Study, Putnam found that 86% of advisers who use social media for business reported it helped them gain clients, up from 80% in 2016. The vast majority of those who gained clients (88%) report that their use of social media has changed the nature of their client relationships a "great deal."

Two-thirds (67%) of those surveyed said they found it is now easier to share information with clients, and 59% reported having more frequent communication with clients overall, although 38% said they connect less frequently by phone or in person.

More than half (54%) of advisers surveyed said they now have a better professional relationship with their clients, and 50% said decision-making is faster and easier.

Nearly half (46%) of advisers surveyed claim to be social media "experts," while 41% say they "just get by," 5% are just getting started and 2% said they would like to get started but need help.

Putnam said it surveyed 1,014 financial advisers.

LinkedIn is overwhelmingly the network of choice of advisers for their business, with 73% reporting usage compared with 56% who use Facebook and 46% who report using Twitter for business. Use of other platforms for business is also growing: 42% of advisers indicate they use Yelp, 39% use YouTube and 34% use Instagram for business. Although LinkedIn continues to be the leading business site, advisers say they use Facebook an average of 22 times per month, versus only 16 for LinkedIn.

According to the study, fewer than 3% of advisers reported that they didn't use sociala media, either for professional or personal business. Advisers not using social media, on average, are 60 years old, have 24 years of industry experience and have $69 million in assets under management. By comparison, advisers who use social media for their business have on average $89 million in assets under management. Advisers who use social media for personal reasons only have $85 million in assets under management, on average, "suggesting that even a casual social media presence may result in additional business," Putnam said.

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Social media helps gain clients, but changes relationships, study finds

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Social media has changed adviser-client relationships, helping advisers attract and retain clients, but leading to fewer face-to-face meetings or phone conversations, a study by Putnam Investments finds. In its fifth Social Advisor Study, Putnam found that 86% of advisers who use social media for business reported it helped them gain clients, up from 80% in 2016.

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As more and more people decide to move away from Facebook after revelations of their grievous data mishandling, it begs the question: What's next? The demise of one behemoth doesn't deprive us of our need for social connection, and plenty of designers are ready in the wings to help us find new ways to scratch that itch.

I earlier wrote about some of the existing websites and apps that can help you fill that void-but there are a lot of social networking platforms that are yet to be built. I am excited to see a new era of community-driven platforms ushered in. Who knows-maybe you'll think up the next one.

Below are a few predictions of the apps you'll soon find on your future home screen.

Audio
Podcasts are enjoying a second coming. This may be due to Airpods removing hidden friction, the prevalence of mobile in the car, or a hundred other reasons. There are hours throughout the day where your eyes are preoccupied, but you still want to be entertained. I believe there's now room for a startup to be built around constantly feeding engaging audio to people.
Synchronous podcasts with voice memos. Imagine this: Every day, you open an app at the same time (e.g., 5pm) to listen in with everyone to Sam Harris. It's Game of Thrones, but audio only. Members send voice memos to each other while listening, and some are played out by the host. Text may work as well, but it's hard to produce when you're walking or driving, and voice memos are soaring in popularity on services like WhatsApp.

Audio.app. It's an app. It tells you what to listen to. Podcasts, Audiobooks, the news, meditation, whatever-and you can hear what other people are listening to, too. Anchor is a good start to this, but I think it still could be significantly expanded upon.

Sharing

If it can be measured and is interesting to others, it'll probably evolve into part of a network in time. In this way, we'll all become characters in The Sims. A lot of what we consider private today will also become public tomorrow. We already share "private" details about our lives: It's called gossip. There's value in structuring that.

Biobook. Sleep, weight, and even blood sugar can be continuously tracked. Envision something akin to Fitbit, but for all your body's metrics. Which of your friends gained the most weight this week? Which coworker slept the worst last night? Who had a donut for lunch?

Strava for sex. People gossip about intimate relationship details all the time-it's interesting to humans. It may sound crazy today that your sperm count will be auto-shared, but you'll remember that Facebook also sounded wild to many in 2008. ("Why would I post a photo every hour of myself?") Strap yourself in - the future is coming quickly.

Social mint.com. People love to gossip about career success. "How much money does she make?" or "Is he good at their job?" Humans forever need to know where they stand in the hierarchy. I'm certain over time your financial holdings, job success, or (gasp!) calendar availability will become public.

Communication
Much of Facebook's unbundling will go into messaging groups and apps. People will collapse into many small, niche online communities. There are two particularly interesting products you could build in this area.
PhpBB, for iOS. Remember the era of online forums? vBulletin? PhpBB? Good times. Many of the sites were tweaked individually for each community. Popular subreddits also have custom code. The startup cost of making a WhatsApp clone is high, but I bet if you reduced it, you'd start to see many mini "communities" develop their messaging apps, just like Discord did for the gaming niche.

The Batphone. Email used to work, then it got busy. Too many emails! Gah! No worries, if I really want to reach you, I'll use Slack. Wait! Too many Slacks! Can't keep track. No problemo - here's my number. WhatsApp me if you really need me. What's going to happen when that gets flooded? I'd imagine someone creates an app branded to be the most direct way to contact someone. There's a cap on the number of messages you receive per day, and you only hand it out to your spouse and close friends. Initially.

Verticals
Online networks are formed by individuals with a shared passion. There's always room to build a domain-specific network, as long as the shared interest is strong enough to overcome the hurdles of installing an app. Some examples:
Mindfulness. There are a few apps doing this already, but I don't think anyone has really built out a real peer-to-peer community around this. A leaderboard for mindfulness is an oxymoron of sorts, but I'm optimistic society will figure it out.

Women-only. My bet is a social network for women would succeed now when it wouldn't have earlier, given the monumental societal shift in 2017.

Pain. Much of what builds community is a shared sense of suffering. There are two types of pain: healthy (Peloton, Strava) and unhealthy (people trying to out- Jackass each other). Sadly, I think both will exist in an era rich with nihilistic kids who lack a leaderboard to maximize.

The speculation era
People love speculating. The oil futures market is much larger than the underlying asset. Cryptocurrencies make it really easy to speculate on anything that's tokenized, which everyone in the future will do.
Quora with a prediction market. Many are trying to build "Quora, but for crypto." That's hard to bootstrap. Instead, I'd suggest just skipping to the fun part: speculation. Here's how you do it. Scrape StackOverflow.com (or use an oracle). Launch SOCoin, mirrored after the actual values on the website. Sell contracts based on the future values of specific users. "Daniel just joined. He has a good Github bio. How much SOCoin will he have in a week?"

Personal details. A "crypto speculation market for everything" might get very crazy over time: "I'll sell you a contract that Daniel keeps his blood sugar below 150mg/dl this week." Speculating on "Strava for sex" would be... risque. But it'll happen in time. If you can measure it, you'll speculate on it.
If you find the intersection of psychology and software interesting, build a new social network! Or cult. Or religion. I'd love to help you if I can. My email is d@dcgross.com. You can follow Daniel on Twitter or his blog. Learn how to write for Quartz Ideas. We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.

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Innovative social media apps the world needs, according to Y Combinator's head of AI

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As more and more people decide to move away from Facebook after revelations of their grievous data mishandling, it begs the question: What's next? The demise of one behemoth doesn't deprive us of our need for social connection, and plenty of designers are ready in the wings to help us find new ways to scratch...

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Is Tinder ruining traditional dating, and replacing it with casual sex?

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Is Tinder ruining traditional dating, and replacing it with casual sex?

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According to Nancy Jo Sales's précis of Tinder in Vanity Fair this month, the online app prompts easy access to instant hook-ups and has created a generation of sex-obsessed commitment-phobes. "You're always prowling, you can swipe a couple hundred people a day," says a "handsome twentysomething man" she interviewed. The controversial article even made it onto Newsnight last week, when presenter Evan Davis asked a psychologist whether women were "disadvantaged" because of the hit-it-and-quit-it culture Tinder has allegedly invented. Is Sales's account brutal, or brutally honest? According to my male mates, yes, most men go on Tinder just to hook up. As Andrew shrugged: "Finding a girlfriend on Tinder is like trying to find one in Ibiza." But, if we're being brutally honest, it's not just men exploiting the app for their sexual gain. I think the idea that women are at any disadvantage is entirely patronising. Though most of my single, female friends use Tinder in the hope of meeting "a nice guy who won't just send me pictures of lubricant," I know several who are on it purely for casual dates, and some simply for casual sex. Every bloke I know on Tinder has had at least one proposition from a girl he's "matched" with on the app before they've even swapped phone numbers.

According to Nancy Jo Sales's précis of Tinder in Vanity Fair this month, the online app prompts easy access to instant hook-ups and has created a generation of sex-obsessed commitment-phobes. "You're always prowling, you can swipe a couple hundred people a day," says a "handsome twentysomething man" she interviewed. The controversial article even made it onto Newsnight last week, when presenter Evan Davis asked a psychologist whether women were "disadvantaged" because of the hit-it-and-quit-it culture Tinder has allegedly invented. Is Sales's account brutal, or brutally honest? According to my male mates, yes, most men go on Tinder just to hook up. As Andrew shrugged: "Finding a girlfriend on Tinder is like trying to find one in Ibiza." But, if we're being brutally honest, it's not just men exploiting the app for their sexual gain. I think the idea that women are at any disadvantage is entirely patronising. Though most of my single, female friends use Tinder in the hope of meeting "a nice guy who won't just send me pictures of lubricant," I know several who are on it purely for casual dates, and some simply for casual sex. Every bloke I know on Tinder has had at least one proposition from a girl he's "matched" with on the app before they've even swapped phone numbers.

You can spot very quickly the men who just want to get laid

But while there's no doubt Tinder has contributed to today's throwaway dating culture, it can't solely be blamed for it. The 50 women Sales interviewed were aged between 19 and 29 - no man over 30 crops up. The fact that twentysomething blokes want to sleep around is hardly Tinder's fault. And wasn't it supposed to be Sex and The City that encouraged modern women to get their stiletto-clad kicks in the bedroom back in 1996? I'd imagine that if Sales talked to 50 people aged 30-plus, her findings would be rather different. I know countless couples who met through Tinder, all in their thirties. It's not always the case, of course - I've dated a 27-year-old bloke who owned his own business, only ever had monogamous relationships and was desperate to settle down; and a 35-year-old man with the emotional maturity of a tadpole - but, generally, I think men in their 30s are slightly more comfortable with the idea of shared bank accounts and Sunday afternoons at the playground rather than the pub. This age group was actively dating pre-Tinder, so the concept of meeting people through friends, at work or - gasp! - in public, isn't totally obsolete, it's just slightly harder. My friend Josh, 33, who's engaged to Sarah, 32, says: "I slept around in my 20s without the help of Tinder. When it came along, it enabled us to meet loads of women that obviously resulted in some fun, but I dated loads of girls I actually liked, too - including Sarah." Single Stuart, 35, adds: "All my mates are now married or settled. Tinder does make sex readily available, but I'm kinda over that. I want a girlfriend."

I joined Tinder a year ago after a breakup and have had a love/hate relationship with it since. In the vulnerable post-breakup stages it can be a devastating minefield of mixed messages and rejection. I ended up flicking through images searching for a perfect replacement of my ex and, naturally, was bitterly disappointed. A month or so later I hopped back on with no expectations and met several fun, interesting men with whom I had great chat, lovely dates and no pressure of sex whatsoever. You can spot very quickly the men that just want to get laid. They tend to be over-zealous with emojis from early on, before a mis-spelt proposition ("u wanna snuggle!? Lol") wings its way over. Sometimes they'll send pictures of their unkempt torso or genitalia. We'll sigh, maybe laugh and show our mates, then "un-match" them, thus blocking further contact. Last week a profile popped up of my friend's boyfriend. The next showed nothing but a topless, faceless selfie with a phone number underneath. Despairing, I deleted my account. But, despite that, I still maintain that not all men go on Tinder just to have casual sex. Today's dating culture, where options are endless and no one has time to wait for pasta to boil, let alone find The One, is ruthless. Tinder certainly has its part to play, but it's not running the show.

The male view: Dean Kissick

After that Vanity Fair article about dating apps and the "hookup culture" that surrounds them, an unknown Tinder employee tweeted out a storm of protestations, including: "Our data tells us that the vast majority of Tinder users are looking for meaningful connections." Now as anyone who has ever used the app can tell you, that's just not true. Tinder is for finding casual sex, and everything about it is casual and its unique selling point is a parade of noncommittal sex partners to be pursued, or disregarded, by such a lackadaisical, non-committal gesture as a swipe. Many men swipe right - approving all before them - until they reach the upper limit of around 100 approvals every 12 hours. One of my mates wakes up and swipes right 100 times every morning, then repeats that in the evening; and occasionally he has a match, and after that a couple of hours of mechanical, loveless sex. Nothing much unusual about that. There's a lot of fishing for meaningless sex on Tinder; it's a hobby, like angling - a man sitting on his own in the rain waiting for a rainbow trout.

However, none of this means that the app is tailored to men, or somehow exploitative, because women are interested in casual sex, too, aren't they? Actually, I believe that women hold all the Tinder-power because they have so many matches, and most men don't. My female friends have hundreds of matches and so many unanswered messages, whereas I rarely receive anything, and neither do my mates. Our phones lie fallow, with neither chirrup nor ping. It's lonely, like one of those tragic restaurants that are always empty, and every time you walk by you wish - really wish - that there were customers inside, but there never are. It is rather emasculating like that.

Phones are passed around groups of young women at the pub and absurd messages are sent to strangers

I suppose most inhabitants of the Tinder-verse find what they're looking for - a meaningless, practical shag - but women have many more options to choose from. Back in 2013 three college students in Orem, Utah, started an account for an imaginary 21-year-old girl called Sammy, portraying her through found photographs of Miss Teen USA. They matched every man in the area and invited them out: "I'm going to yogurt shop called yogurtland tonight at 9 in Orem with some girl friends if you want to meet up)." That night they arrived at the frozen yoghurt sellers to find men, around 70 of them, consumed by lust and confusion, wandering aimlessly, like stags standing around a meadow waiting to fight.

Yesterday I spoke to a German banker - attractive, early 20s - at a birthday party and she explained that Tinder is very reassuring when you've just left a relationship, because you realise that there are thousands of other people out there, so much choice, so much opportunity to meet strangers outside your social circles. She also told me that it is frivolous, entertaining, and you can tease lascivious men in the messages, if you like. I've observed this, it's not at all uncommon; phones are passed around groups of young women (sometimes men) at the pub, and absurd messages are sent to strangers for a laugh, and it's cruel and also highly amusing. All of these apps are, essentially, forms of entertainment.

Vanity Fair 's article begins inside an upmarket bar in Manhattan's financial district in which everyone is Tindering; their rapt, aroused faces illuminated by the lights of their phones. Why would anyone do this, on an evening out drinking in New York? That's just crackers! What is wrong with us?! If we weren't staring into our phones constantly we might fall for a stranger walking past in the street, suddenly imagining what that other person might be like, what life we might lead together - maybe she's a cellist in the orchestra! - but all this magical speculation is rather undermined when you read a Tinder biography that says something like (an example from just this afternoon): "Travel, treehouses, festivals, food, sun, skiing, sausage dogs, steel drums, bike rides, canal boats, desert islands." How tiresome, and underwhelming. Because the whole point of falling in love is that you cannot choose who you fall in love with. Your sweet, sweet fantasy might be utterly impractical, pie-in-the-sky, totally unapproachable, but that's what's exciting; and Tinder just sucks all the joy and romance out of this.
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Is Tinder really creating a 'dating apocalypse'?

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The app became embroiled in a Twitter storm last week after a reporter accused it of being a forum for casual sex. So is Tinder really destroying romance? We asked two young people who have used it for their views

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How to protect your online data and be "safe" (or safer, at least)

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How to protect your online data and be "safe" (or safer, at least)

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When Tim Berners-Lee was designing the technology that has transformed our world, he looked for a noun that would describe what he had in mind. The one he eventually settled on was "web", which is how the world wide web got its name.

To its inventor, the noun must have seemed perfectly apposite: it described the intricate, organic linking of sites and pages that he had in mind. But "web" has other, metaphorical, connotations. Webs are things that spiders weave with the aim of capturing prey. And if you want a metaphor for thinking about where we are now with networked technology, here's one to ponder.

Imagine a gigantic, global web in which are trapped upwards of two billion flies. Most of those unfortunate creatures don't know - yet - that they are trapped. After all, they wandered cheerfully, willingly, into the web. Some of them even imagine that they could escape if they wanted to.

We are those insects. The only way of escaping our predicament is to renounce the world in the way that Trappist monks once did. Since we're not going to do that, we have to face the reality: we're trapped in a system in which everything we do is monitored and logged and in which privacy is a thing of the past. Everything that you do with modern communications equipment leaves a digital trail. And this trail is followed assiduously not just by giant corporations, but also by governments and their security services - as vividly illustrated by the revelations of Edward Snowden.

What's astonishing is how unconcerned many people appear to be about this. Is it because they are unaware of the extent and comprehensiveness of the surveillance? Or is it some weird manifestation of Stockholm syndrome - that strange condition in which prisoners exhibit positive feelings towards their captors? What we've learned above all from the Snowden leaks is that the scale and capability of the NSA surveillance are much greater than anyone imagined. Most people had assumed that most non-encrypted communications were vulnerable and some speculated that some encrypted communications (eg Skype) had a hidden backdoor for the NSA. But nobody realised that, as the latest revelations showed, all the encryption technologies routinely used to protect online transactions (https, SSL, VPN and 4G encryption), plus anything going through Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo, have been cracked.

What this means is that no form of electronic communication handled by commercial companies can now be assumed to be secure. In that sense, the NSA has really fouled the nest of the US internet industry . And it is even suspected that about 90% of communications routed through the TOR network are using encryption that may also have been hacked by the NSA. What can you do if you're someone who feels uneasy about being caught in this web? The honest answer is that there's no comprehensive solution: if you are going to use telephones (mobile or landline) and the internet then you are going to leave a trail. But there are things you can do to make your communications less insecure and your trail harder to follow. Here are 10 ideas you might consider.

1 Email

Rethink your email setup. Assume that all "free" email and webmail services (Gmail etc) are suspect. Be prepared to pay for a service, such as Fastmail,that is not based in the US - though some of its servers are in New York with backups in Norway. (My hunch is that more non-US email services will appear as entrepreneurs spot the business opportunity created by the Snowden revelations.) It would also be worth checking that your organisation has not quietly outsourced its email and IT systems to Google or Microsoft - as many UK organisations (including newspapers and universities) have.

The real difficulty with email is that while there are ways of keeping the content of messages private (see encryption), the "metadata" that goes with the message (the "envelope", as it were) can be very revealing, and there's no way of encrypting that because its needed by the internet routing system and is available to most security services without a warrant.

2 Encryption

Encryption used to be the sole province of geeks and mathematicians, but a lot has changed in recent years. In particular, various publicly available tools have taken the rocket science out of encrypting (and decrypting) email and files. GPG for Mail, for example, is an open source plug-in for the Apple Mail program that makes it easy to encrypt, decrypt, sign and verify emails using the OpenPGP standard. And for protecting files, newer versions of Apple's OS X operating system come with FileVault, a program that encrypts the hard drive of a computer. Those running Microsoft Windows have a similar program. This software will scramble your data, but won't protect you from government authorities demanding your encryption key under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), which is why some aficionados recommend TrueCrypt, a program with some very interesting facilities, which might have been useful to David Miranda.

3 Web browsing

Since browsing is probably what internet users do most, it's worth taking browser security and privacy seriously. If you're unhappy that your clickstream (the log of the sites you visit) is in effect public property as far as the security services are concerned, you might consider using freely available tools such as Tor Browser to obscure your clickstream. And to protect yourself against the amazingly brazen efforts by commercial companies to track your online behaviour you should, at the very minimum, configure your browser so that it repels many of these would-be boarders.

4 Cloud services

The message of the Snowden revelations is that you should avoid all cloud services (Dropbox, iCloud, Evernote, etc) that are based in the US, the UK, France and other jurisdictions known to be tolerant of NSA-style snooping. Your working assumption should be that anything stored on such systems is potentially accessible by others. And if you must entrust data to them, make sure it's encrypted.

5 File storage and archiving

An option that an increasing numbers of people are exploring is running their own personal cloud service using products such as PogoPlug and Transporter that provide Dropbox-type facilities, but on internet connected drives that you own and control. And if you carry around confidential data on a USB stick, make sure it's encrypted using TrueCrypt.

6 Social networking

Delete your Facebook account. Why do the CIA's work for it? And if you must use it, don't put your date of birth on your profile. Why give identity thieves an even break? And remember that, no matter what your privacy settings, you don't have control over information about you that is posted by your "friends".

7 Location data

Avoid using services such as FourSquare that require location information.

8 Wireless services

Have Bluetooth off by default in all your mobile devices. Only switch it on when you explicitly need to use it. Otherwise you'll find that even a dustbin can snoop on it. Similarly, beware of using open wifi in public places. At the very minimum, make sure that any site you interact with uses HTTPS rather than unencrypted HTTP connections. If you don't then anyone nearby can use Firesheep to see everything you're doing.

9 Personal security

Forget password, think passphrase - ie a meaningless sentence that you will remember - and do some transformations on it (first and third letters of every word maybe) so that you can generate a stronger password from it every time. Or use a password-management app like LastPass or 1Password. And if a service offers multi-factor authentication, make use of it.

10 Search engines

All the big search engines track your search history and build profiles on you to serve you personalised results based on your search history. if you want to escape from this "filter bubble" you need to switch to a search engine that does not track your inquiries. The most obvious one is the bizarrely named but quite effective DuckDuckGo.
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Internet security: 10 ways to keep your personal data safe from online snoopers

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The internet has changed our lives in countless positive ways, but it has a dark side. Personal privacy has been lost, leaving you at risk from shady individuals, companies and security agencies. But there are steps you can take to limit your exposure

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Podcast about the first text message sent

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Podcast about the first text message sent

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The First Text Message With Neil Papworth

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Summary The first text message (or, to be accurate, SMS message) was sent on December 3, 1992. It was sent by Neil Papworth, and it ...

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Facebook reported advertising revenue of $9.16 billion in the second quarter of 2017, a 47 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

In its quarterly earnings report released today, the social giant beat analysts' expectations with a total revenue of $9.3 billion-an increase of 45 percent year-over-year. Mobile now makes up around 87 percent of the company's overall ad revenue, up from 84 percent in second-quarter 2016.

Earnings per share for the second quarter totaled $1.32, up from 78 cents during the same period last year.

The company also reported an increase in both daily and monthly active users, with daily active users totaling an average of 1.32 billion in June for a 17 percent increase year-over-year. Monthly active users also increased 17 percent year-over-year to total 2.01 billion as of June 30. (Facebook officially announced last month that it had hit the 2 billion mark.)

"We had a good second quarter and first half of the year," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today in a statement. "Our community is now two billion people and we're focusing on bringing the world closer together."

Facebook also reported an overall growth in head count. As of the end of last month, the company had 20,658 employees-an increase of 43 percent year-over-year.

While second quarter earnings were plenty strong, it does show a bit of deceleration-the company reported a 59 percent increase in overall revenue between the second quarters of 2015 and 2016. That year-over-year deceleration falls in line with what a few notable agencies reported to Adweek late last month-slower growth in cross-client ad spend in the second quarter compared to previous years. (For years, the company has consistently reported an acceleration of revenue growth. Late last year, Facebook executives have warned that advertising revenue growth would slow, given the lack of room for ad load growth.)

"As for revenue, there are couple of things to look at," Forrester Research analyst Melissa Parrish noted ahead of today's earnings. "First, the leadership has been saying for a while to expect revenue growth to slow a bit as ad loads come down and I expect we'll get an update on those projections and some discussion of how much their recent efforts to improve the advertising experience-for both marketers and users-has affected these numbers. Second, Facebook is making a big push in video and with that product push comes costs."

Parrish also wondered how long it would before these pricey video ad products offset the costs associated with supporting them.

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Facebook Raked in $9.16 Billion in Ad Revenue in the Second Quarter of 2017

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Facebook reported advertising revenue of $9.16 billion in the second quarter of 2017, a 47 percent increase over the same quarter last year. In its quarterly earnings report released today, the social giant beat analysts' expectations with a total revenue of $9.3 billion-an increase of 45 percent year-over-year.

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Facebook believes the data of up to 87 million people was improperly shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica - many more than previously disclosed.

The BBC has been told that about 1.1 million of them are UK-based.

The overall figure had been previously quoted as being 50 million by the whistleblower Christopher Wylie.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said "clearly we should have done more, and we will going forward".

During a press conference he said that he had previously assumed that if Facebook gave people tools, it was largely their responsibility to decide how to use them.

But he added that it was "wrong in retrospect" to have had such a limited view.

"Today, given what we know... I think we understand that we need to take a broader view of our responsibility," he said.

"That we're not just building tools, but that we need to take full responsibility for the outcomes of how people use those tools as well."

Mr Zuckerberg also announced an internal audit had uncovered a fresh problem. Malicious actors had been abusing a feature that let users search for one another by typing in email addresses or phone numbers into Facebook's search box.

As a result, many people's public profile information had been "scraped" and matched to the contact details, which had been obtained from elsewhere.

Facebook has now blocked the facility.

"It is reasonable to expect that if you had that [default] setting turned on, that in the last several years someone has probably accessed your public information in this way," Mr Zuckerberg said.

New numbers

The estimates of how many people's data had been exposed were revealed in a blog by the tech firm's chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer.

The BBC has also learned that Facebook now estimates that about 305,000 people had installed the This Is Your Digital Life quiz that had made the data-harvesting possible. The previously suggested figure had been 270,000.

About 97% of the installations occurred within the US. However, just over 16 million of the total number of users affected are thought to be from other countries.

A spokeswoman for the UK's Information Commissioner's Office told the BBC that it was continuing to assess and consider the evidence before deciding what steps to take.

What is the controversy about?

Facebook has faced intense criticism after it emerged that it had known for years that Cambridge Analytica had collected data from millions of its users, but had relied on the London-based firm to self-certify that it had deleted the information.

Cambridge Analytica said it had bought the information from the creator of the This Is Your Digital Life app without knowing that it had been obtained improperly.

The firm says it deleted all the data as soon as it was made aware of the circumstances.

But Channel 4 News has since reported that at least some of the data in question is still in circulation despite Cambridge Analytica insisting it had destroyed the material.

During Mr Zuckerberg's press conference, Cambridge Analytica tweeted it had only obtained data for 30 million individuals - not 87 million - from the app's creator, and again insisted it had deleted all records.

The latest revelations came several hours after the US House Commerce Committee announced that Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, would testify before it on 11 April.

Facebook's share price has dropped sharply in the weeks since the allegations emerged.

Wide-ranging changes

In his Wednesday blog post, Mr Schroepfer detailed new steps being taken by Facebook in the wake of the scandal.

They include:

a decision to stop third-party apps seeing who is on the guest lists of Events pages and the contents of messages posted on them

a commitment to only hold call and text history logs collected by the Android versions of Messenger and Facebook Lite for a year. In addition, Facebook said the logs would no longer include the time of the calls

a link will appear at the top of users' News Feeds next week, prompting them to review the third-party apps they use on Facebook and what information is shared as a consequence

Facebook has also published proposed new versions of its terms of service and data use policy.

The documents are longer than the existing editions in order to make the language clearer and more descriptive.

Tinder users affected

Another change the company announced involved limiting the type of information that can be accessed by third-party applications.

Immediately after the changes were announced, however, users of the widely popular dating app Tinder were hit by login errors, leaving them unable to use the service.

Tinder relies on Facebook to manage its logins. Users reported that they had been signed out of the app and were unable to log in again.

Instead, the app repeatedly asks for more permissions to access a user's Facebook profile information. Many were quick to link the outage to the changes announced by Facebook.

Fake news

The Cambridge Analytica scandal follows earlier controversies about "fake news" and evidence that Russia tried to influence US voters via Facebook.

Mr Zuckerberg has declined to answer questions from British MPs.

When asked about this by the BBC, he said he had decided that his chief technology officer and chief product officer should answer questions from countries other than the US.

He added, however, that he had made a mistake in 2016 by dismissing the notion that fake news had influenced the US Presidential election.

"People will analyse the actual impact of this for a long time to come," he added.

"But what I think is clear at this point is that it was too flippant and I should never have referred to it as crazy."

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Facebook believes the data of up to 87 million people was improperly shared with the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica - many more than previously disclosed. The BBC has been told that about 1.1 million of them are UK-based. The overall figure had been previously quoted as being 50 million by the whistleblower Christopher Wylie.

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How much does Facebook make selling data?

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How much does Facebook make selling data?

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Over the course of a year that amounts to $16.04, or £13. This has increased from $11.88 a year 12 months ago.

So if you've been on Facebook for the last three years, you've made the company over $36. The amount that users are worth differs by geography.

In the US and Canada, for example, it was $15.65 in the last quarter, while in the "rest of the world" region - everything apart from North...

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How much money does Facebook make from you?

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Over the course of a year that amounts to $16.04, or £13. This has increased from $11.88 a year 12 months ago. So if you've been on Facebook for the last three years, you've made the company over $36. The amount that users are worth differs by geography.

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As this paper reported last week, ministers are considering changes in the law which would allow HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to sell taxpayers' data to third parties.

They are not, however the first to have this idea or to attempt to take advantage of what the World Economic Forum (WEF), of Davos fame, called a new asset type.

So how much is our personal data worth?

The WEF report says that 15bn devices will be connected to the internet by 2015 and 50bn by 2020. The amount of data stored on the internet is predicted to grow exponentially and looks set to be 44 times larger in 2020 than it was in 2009.

It is little surprise that internet revenue has also grown strongly over the last ten years, or that in 2013 it hit $42.8bn in the US.

Internet giants such as Google and Facebook have business models underlined by the use of personal data, but most people would have trouble knowing who exactly has access to the data trail they are generating across the internet.

One viewpoint is that such sharing of information helps economies and improves our own experiences online. The internet is a largely free service, and sharing personal data is the price we pay.

Others are not happy with this situation, claiming that the use of information with consent is a violation of privacy. Should people have the right to choose what to share and to be paid for their own information?

Dutch student Shawn Buckles has tackled the issue head on with his decision to sell his data soul at auction. He received £288 from website The Next Web. He says that the website will use his data to highlight privacy issues at their next conference.

Buckles' data bundle included all sorts of private information - everything from browsing data to email conversations.

A sum like £288 is obviously not to be sniffed at, but can anyone receive such a payoff?

Buckles told us:

I've read that a persons' data goes for under 50 cents at the moment, so I reckon I've added lots of value to my data. On the other hand, I've sold my most intimate information. I don't know if there's any fair amount for that.

Buckles is right: when your data is sold, no one receives that kind of money for it. This is because brands don't buy individual data, they buy individuals' data in bundles and that makes it very cheap.

What types of personal data are there?

The data that brands are interested in is roughly divided into three types:

Volunteered data - content created and shared by individuals, such as their social media profiles.

Observed data - captured by recording the actions of individuals, such as location data from using cellphones.

Inferred data - what brands can work out about you from the first two.

The inferred data is the type with real practical value, and the first two, unsurprisingly, don't cost much; they just help to build a picture of the third.

Personal data calculator

The Financial Times published a calculator allowing you to work out what your stats are likely to be worth as part of a bundle, and it's unlikely to net you early retirement. According to that, $0.083 is the rough cost of my data as one set in a bundle of 1,000.

I ran through various scenarios (pretending I was a rich CEO or a teacher) and it is hard to find a job and lifestyle that is worth more than one dollar. However, some factors do seem to make a big difference, such as a desire to get fit, medical conditions and a family.

Interestingly, a desire to exercise to lose weight makes about the same difference as having a house - roughly 10 cents.

So is it possible for everyone to eschew the bundle and sell personal data as an individual? This allows companies to get far more accurate details, rather than merely 'inferred' information.

Some startups have taken moves to re-appropriate saleable user data such as Handshake and Datacoup. These companies offer ways of cutting out the middleman and selling your data straight to third parties.

You won't make £288 though. Datacoup will only pay you $8 a month and while Handshake allows you to negotiate with brands wanting to buy your data, it is still in beta so it remains to be seen what money there is to be made there.

What about cutting out these middlemen too? Federico Zannier decided to sell his data for $2 a day using Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website, and easily surpassed his $500 goal.

He managed to make $2,733 but had to share his keystrokes, mouse movements and even provide a screenshot every 30 seconds.

The high prices paid for Buckles and Zannier's data were likely partially attributable to the novelty factor.

Even if you think $8 a month is better than nothing, before selling your data it is worth taking a look at exactly what companies can glean from it.

German politician Malte Spitz sued to get all the data his provider had on him and it is quite chilling what it revealed.

It was possible to track the Green party member as he travelled to conferences and see when and where he called people or sent a text.

It may not be your soul you're selling for $8, but you won't have much privacy left.

More open data
Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian
Development and aid data

* Search the world's global development data with our gateway

Can you do more with this data?
Topics

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As this paper reported last week, ministers are considering changes in the law which would allow HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) to sell taxpayers' data to third parties. They are not, however the first to have this idea or to attempt to take advantage of what the World Economic Forum (WEF), of Davos fame, called a new asset type.

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Zuckerberg on Connecting the world, and connectivity as a human right

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Zuckerberg on Connecting the world, and connectivity as a human right

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Is Connectivity a Human Right? | Facebook

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The vast majority of people in the world don't have access to the internet. We believe everyone deserves to be connected.

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Information dispersion through friends on facebook

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Information dispersion through friends on facebook

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Some people might think that online privacy is a, well, private matter. If you don't want your information getting out online, don't put it on social media. Simple, right?

But keeping your information private isn't just about your own choices. It's about your friends' choices, too. Results from a study of a now-defunct social media site show that the inhabitants of the digital age may need to stop and think about just how much they control their personal information, and where the boundaries of their privacy are.

When someone joins a social network, the first order of business is, of course, to find friends. To aid the process, many apps offer to import contact lists from someone's phone or e-mail or Facebook, to find matches with people already in the network.

Sharing those contact lists seems innocuous, notes David Garcia, a computational social scientist at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna in Austria. "People giving contact lists, they're not doing anything wrong," he says. "You are their friend. You gave them the e-mail address and phone number." Most of the time, you probably want to stay in touch with the person, possibly even via the social media site.

But the social network then has that information - whether or not the owner of it wanted it shared.

Social platforms' ability to collect and curate this extra information into what are called shadow profiles first came to light with a Facebook bug in 2013. The bug inadvertently shared the e-mail addresses and phone numbers of some 6 million users with all of their friends, even when the information wasn't public.

Facebook immediately addressed the bug. But afterward, some users noticed that the phone numbers on their Facebook profiles had still been filled in - even though they had not given Facebook their digits. Instead, Facebook had collected the numbers from the contact lists innocently provided by their friends, and filled in the missing information for them. A shadow profile had become reality.

It's no surprise that a social platform could take names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers and match them up with other people on the same platform. But Garcia wondered if these shadow profiles could be extended to people not on the social platform at all.

He turned to a now-defunct social network called Friendster. A precursor to sites like MySpace and Facebook, Friendster launched in 2002. In 2008, the social site boasted more than 115 million users. But by 2009 people began to jump ship for other sites, and in 2015 Friendster closed for good. Millions of abandoned public profiles vanished into the ether.

Or did they? The Internet Archive - a nonprofit library - has an archive of more than 200 billion web pages, including Friendster. Garcia was able to use that repository to get data on 100 million public accounts from the social media site. Garcia dug through the records in a process he calls Internet Archaeology, after a satirical video from The Onion in which an internet archaeologist announces that he has, ironically, discovered Friendster. "The time scale of online media is very fast, but it's still studying things in society that don't exist anymore," he explains.

Garcia hunted for patterns in the data. Most people don't have a random assortment of friends. Married people tend to be friends with other married people, for example. But people also have connections that complicate the ability to predict who's connected to who. People who identified as gay men were more likely to be friends with other gay men, but also likely to be friends with women. Straight women were more likely to be friends with men.

Using this information, Garcia was able to show that he could predict characteristics such as the marital status and sexual orientation of users' friends who were not on the social media network. And the more people in the social network who shared their own personal information, the more information the network received about their contacts, and the better the prediction about people not on the network got.

"You are not in full control of your privacy," he concludes. If your friend is on a social platform, so are you. And you don't have a choice in the matter. Garcia published his findings August 4 in Science Advances.

This does not mean that social platforms are creating shadow profiles of your social media-averse friends, Garcia notes. But with the information people give to social networks and with the platforms' computing abilities, they certainly could. To prevent the data being used this way, Garcia only used the most basic, public information. He didn't predict anything about specific people. He only checked to see if it was possible. Garcia also kept the power of his predictions low and very general. And he was careful to not construct an algorithm that could actually build a shadow profile, to make sure that others cannot misuse the findings.

But the results do show that information from your friends on a social network could accurately predict your marital status, location, sexual orientation or political affiliation - information that you may not want anyone to know, let alone in a social network you're not even on.

"It's a good illustration of an issue we have in society, which is that we no longer have control over what people can infer about us," says Elena Zheleva, a computer scientist at the University of Illinois in Chicago. "If I decide not to participate in a certain social network, that doesn't mean that people won't be able to find things about me on that network."

This means we might need to think differently about what privacy means. "We're used to thinking of having a private space," Garcia says. "We think we've got a room with keys and we let some people in." But a better image, he argues, might be to imagine ourselves covered in the wet paint of our personal information. If we touch someone else, we leave a handprint. "The more you touch other people, the more you leave on them," he explains. Touch enough people, and anyone who looks at those people and their paint-covered sleeves will be able to pick out your personal shade of teal.

And because we are no longer in full control of our privacy, Garcia notes, it also means that protecting privacy isn't something any one person can do. "In some sense it resembles climate change," he says. "It's not something you can solve on your own. It's everyone's problem or it's no one's problem."
Read another version of this story at Science News for Students

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On social media, privacy is no longer a personal choice

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Some people might think that online privacy is a, well, private matter. If you don't want your information getting out online, don't put it on social media. Simple, right? But keeping your information private isn't just about your own choices. It's about your friends' choices, too.

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Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you've been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/maps/timeline?...

Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You can see the time of day that I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one.

Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices.

Click on this link to see your own data: myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Google creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in one day?) and income.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/settings/ads/

Google stores information on every app and extension you use. They know how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with. That means they know who you talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep.

Click on this link to see your own data: security.google.com/settings/secur...

Google stores all of your YouTube history, so they probably know whether you're going to be a parent soon, if you're a conservative, if you're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, if you're anorexic ...

Click on this link to see your own data: youtube.com/feed/history/s...

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I've requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you've taken on your phone, the businesses you've bought from, the products you've bought through Google ...

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you've purchased, the Google groups you're in, the websites you've created, the phones you've owned, the pages you've shared, how many steps you walk in a day ...

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/takeout

Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents.

This includes every message you've ever sent or been sent, every file you've ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you've ever sent or been sent.

Click here to see your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467

Facebook also stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you've liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic "girl").

Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you've ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It's just a joke at this stage).

They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.

And they store all the applications you've ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I'm interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.

(Side note, if you have Windows 10 installed, this is a picture of just the privacy options with 16 different sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when you install Windows 10)

The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.

I got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information.

Here's the search history document, which has 90,000 different entries, even showing the images I downloaded and the websites I accessed (I showed the Pirate Bay section to show how much damage this information can do).

Here's my Google Calendar broken down, showing all the events I've ever added, whether I actually attended them, and what time I attended them at (this part is when I went for an interview for a marketing job, and what time I arrived).

This is my Google Drive, which includes files I explicitly deleted including my résumé, my monthly budget, and all the code, files and websites I've ever made, and even my PGP private key, which I deleted, that I use to encrypt emails.

This is my Google Fit, which shows all of the steps I've ever taken, any time I walked anywhere, and all the times I've recorded any meditation/yoga/workouts I've done (I deleted this information and revoked Google Fit's permissions).

This is all the photos ever taken with my phone, broken down by year, and includes metadata of when and where I took the photos

Every email I've ever sent, that's been sent to me, including the ones I deleted or were categorised as spam.

I'll just do a short summary of what's in the thousands of files I received under my Google Activity.

First, every Google Ad I've ever viewed or clicked on, every app I've ever launched or used and when I did it, every website I've ever visited and what time I did it at, and every app I've ever installed or searched for.

They also have every image I've ever searched for and saved, every location I've ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I've ever searched for or read, and every single Google search I've made since 2009. And then finally, every YouTube video I've ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.

This information has millions of nefarious uses. You say you're not a terrorist. Then how come you were googling Isis? Work at Google and you're suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just look up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.

This is one of the craziest things about the modern age. We would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But we just went ahead and did it ourselves because - to hell with it! - I want to watch cute dog videos.

A caption was corrected on 28 March 2018 to replace "privacy options in Facebook" with "privacy options in Windows 10".

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Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you | Dylan Curran

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Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it. Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone.

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Cambridge Analytica and its involvement in politics

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Cambridge Analytica and its involvement in politics

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Cambridge Analytica Uncovered: Secret filming reveals election tricks

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Facebook listening to your conversations?

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Facebook listening to your conversations?

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NEW YORK - Scrolling through one's Facebook newsfeed has become a daily part of life for so many. In between posts from friends, family and "liked" pages, there are the ads that seem to creepily correspond to one's thoughts and browsing history.

It's called target advertising. It's easily done - tracking you using so-called "cookies." Cookies are like markers, or breadcrumbs, you leave behind. It's essentially your search history. But could target advertising also be happening without a single keystroke?

WPIX found people all over social media sharing their stories and concerns that Facebook is listening in on their conversations by using the microphone or camera on smartphones, tablets, laptops.

Some examples:

@oliverwinston writes: "My roommates and I were talking about taking part in clinical trials. We then all saw ads for clinical trials."

@kelleyblythe_ writes: "I have been talking about getting a cat. I didn't post about it anywhere but I did start seeing ads for cat food."

"Hackers do this all the time, they've spied on people that they shouldn't have. They've recorded information by placing malwares to turn on or off microphones and cameras on computers remotely. So it's proven this can be done," Scott Schober, a cybersecurity expert, said.

His New Jersey-based company, Berkeley Varitronics Systems, designs wireless threat detection tools. Schober and his company have both been victims of hackers. He wrote a book, "Hacked Again," that details his experience and shares tips so others can protect themselves and their businesses.

Schober says target advertising is a big money maker.

"Typically when you go to your browser and you type in something if you're going to go to a particular URL, that information you're typing in is sold to upwards of 20 different companies," Schober said.

So hackers have the ability to spy. But what about the social media giant?

"Billions of dollars can be made. My opinion on this is it possible absolutely. Are they doing it? I think it would be extremely reckless if they did," Schober said. "They've said 'no we're not doing it.' To some degree, I have to believe them. Why? Because there's so much big data out there Facebook collects on an individual user plus from outside sources third parties that are data aggregates that are selling this data to Facebook."

Quite simply, Facebook doesn't need to. Schober says they already know enough about each of us. Through algorithms and analytics, they collect enough data and, what they don't have, they buy from third parties.

"They're buying that information and putting together, [in] a sense, a profile of you - what you're interested in. Now they can skillfully target ads toward you that is almost kind of that scary, spooky feeling, 'wow, how do they know I was thinking that or I said that or I searched that, that was a week ago,'" Schober said.

Some Facebook users are skeptical. They give accounts of never having searched a product, and only having discussed it verbally. Schober says the information may not have been collected via your device's camera or microphone, but rather in other ways.

"Likely it's probably something outside of Facebook that's actually collecting data. Were they at a popular retail store where they actually were browsing and perhaps based upon their mobile device, and the wi-fi associated to a presence in front of that and the (store's) camera system made a corollary they dwelled there looking at that particular display. That information is aggregated and sold with other big data that goes back to Facebook who then quickly sends up an ad," Schober said. "These things can happen almost instantaneous. It's almost like you're being spied upon, which is the feeling for sure."

In 2016, CEO and co-founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg created a frenzy when people noticed he taped over his microphone and webcam in a photo.

"If Zuckerberg puts a piece of tape over his microphone and camera what is that telling you probably one of the most powerful tech giants in the world Facebook and the CEO is doing it, he realizes that there truly is no privacy, be it from a hacker be it from a large tech organization be it from somebody spying on you," Schober said.

Schober says there are quick things you can do to protect your privacy. First and foremost, turn off the mic and camera on your devices. You can also go to your ad settings in Facebook and "hide all ads."

In a statement provided to WPIX, the Facebook team writes:

We do not use your device's microphone to listen in on real-life conversations in order to target people with relevant ads. People can find information about our ads and the information used to determine what they see here.

Of note, we only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. We do not access the microphone just because the app is opened nor do we use it when you're not in the app.

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Is Facebook listening in on your conversations?

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NEW YORK - Scrolling through one's Facebook newsfeed has become a daily part of life for so many. In between posts from friends, family and "liked" pages, there are the ads that seem to creepily correspond to one's thoughts and browsing history. It's called target advertising.

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Facebook using information from our phones' microphones

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Facebook using information from our phones' microphones

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If you ever feel want to stop scrolling meaninglessly through your uninteresting facebook newsfeed. This app literally erases facebook's newsfeed function, and saves you time that you can spend doing more useful things.

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Saves you time by getting rid of Facebook news feed.

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I recently decided to deactivate my instagram account, because I felt that it was a waste of time, and it became a mechanism to scroll through it meaninglessly. I didn't see the point of posting pictures just for the sake of posting them and showing only selected moments of my life. We all think that we couldn't live without social media sites like instagram, but I deleted it and did not miss it at all. Oh, and I also deleted snapchat ;)

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Social media. It's a huge part of all of our lives now, even though we don't want to admit it. We wake up and the first thing we do is check our phones and all of our social medias. What did I miss the 7 hours I was sleeping? Did I seriously dream that my BFF unfollowed me on Instagram? What a bitch.

It became clear to me after a while that I would pick up my phone and scroll through Instagram whenever I felt bored, bad, sad, happy, on edge, anxious, etc. And for a while I thought "What would I do without Instagram?!" like it was the source to all of my happiness. Yet, not to sound dramatic, it actually made me feel bad about myself. I found it hard to work through the day without wondering what I was missing on there, and when I did post I felt obligated to sit by my phone and keep checking if it got past 11 likes. Realistically, who gives a shit? I did and I hated that.

I wanted to be that person that didn't care, and that could go on Instagram two days after uploading and not give a shit how many likes the picture got because I was the one who liked it. But I wasn't and that needed to change. I felt unhappy, and going onto Instagram where I followed girls who posted beautiful selfies and bikini shots realistically made me feel even worse. As selfish as it sounds, I wanted to care about my own life and not care about creeping others. Creeping has become the cool thing to do, as well as screenshotting pictures and texting them to your friends. That became less and less positive, and I wanted to become more and more positive.

Around the beginning of November I felt like I had had enough. I hadn't posted in a while anyways, and definitely felt like I couldn't get through the work day without checking it 5+ times. So, I disabled my Instagram. It's a way of deleting it, but you can always get it back if you want. I said to myself that I should try just a week without Instagram, and of course the first few days were pretty bad. How lame is that? It's like a sugar detox, you feel weird and cloudy without it. As much as I hated it, I was dependent on looking at Instagram no matter what feeling I was feeling.

Well, I lasted that whole week. And the days passed and it was way easier to not care about what people were doing. I genuinely didn't give a shit anymore, didn't feel the need to creep people who made me feel bad about myself, or find things I didn't want to find. Now it's been 6 months without Instagram, and I don't plan on getting it back any time soon. I don't care about it anymore. The people I care about in life I talk to every day, and I know what they're up to without seeing it on a social media account. I feel like I get more work done, I'm way more confident, and not like I ever did but I genuinely don't give a shit what people think about me. I'm not buying an outfit so it will look good on an Insta pic. Deleting that app was so freeing, and definitely made me believe that the addiction to social media is 100% real.

I remember a week after I disabled my Instagram, Kendall Jenner was making headlines that her Instagram was suddenly gone. Yes, it was making headlines. I found that super weird. Yeah, I told a bunch of my friends that I didn't have it anymore, but I didn't feel the need to broadcast it everywhere. It's not like she was in a super bad accident and was making headlines, she just decided to take a break from it for a few days. I couldn't believe that was in the news, and was even more glad I had decided to get rid of mine.

Of course, Instagram can be innocent for so many people. It's a way to share your life, and definitely a way to connect to your creative side. However, there have been multiple stories of Instagram 'models' who have come out and said they hardly ate, were miserable and were putting on a show for their followers. To me, that's not okay. Your feed should be a representation of who you are, and not who you think you should be. I found myself wanting to do things to get an Instagram pic out of it, not so I would fully enjoy the moment.

Since disabling my Instagram, about 5 people have told me they've done the same. Saying it felt toxic, they needed a break, or they just felt they were comparing themselves to others who they didn't even know. It made me feel really good. Even if the only thing you get from this article is to take one day off a week from social media, then that's all that matters. My next step is to take one day off a week from my phone, which I'm hoping will be Sundays. I'm still that person that wakes up and checks their phone right away, but I want to change that as well.

I'm not writing this to tell everyone to not go on Instagram. But make sure that it's not making you feel bad about yourself, and understand that the only validation you need in life is your own. If you're not happy with yourself, you won't be happy after getting 600 likes on a photo. I remember if I got under 30 likes it would ruin my day. How messed up is that?! Of course I still get the urge to get my account back, but it's never for a good enough reason. The people who want to know what I'm up to will call me and ask, and that's all that matters to me.

https://twitter.com/AshleyMarieMTV/status/849449755847659522

Courtney Lundy Advertising and Marketing graduate. My personality is a mix between David Spade and Kourtney Kardashian. My passions included Jake Gyllenhaal and New York City. I don't trust people who like Monica more than Ross.

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Why Deleting My Instagram Account Was The Most Fulfilling And Freeing Decision Ever

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Social media. It's a huge part of all of our lives now, even though we don't want to admit it. We wake up and the first thing we do is check our phones and all of our social medias. What did I miss the 7 hours I was sleeping?

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Spain - International Women's Day strike

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Spain - International Women's Day strike

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The strike targets gender inequality and sexual discrimination. Women have stopped working for the day, and are encouraged to stop spending money and doing chores. This is pretty cool :)

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Women workers in Spain are marking International Women's Day with an unprecedented strike targeting gender inequality and sexual discrimination.

Unions said 5.3 million women had joined the 24-hour strike, backed by 10 unions and some of Spain's top women politicians.

Hundreds of thousands of women have joined street protests across Spain, shouting "if we stop, the world stops".

Events marking the day are being held in dozens of other nations.

What's happening in Spain?

Women taking part have stopped working and have been urged by organisers to spend no money and ditch any domestic chores for the day.

Police were called to stop protesters blocking main roads in Barcelona but some women pickets still brought areas to a standstill.

Public transport nationwide is available but at reduced services and flights have also been affected.

Evening marches in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valencia and a number of other cities are leading events in 200 Spanish locations.

"I lived under the dictatorship, I lived under democracy and we haven't made much headway," teacher Concha Noverges told Reuters news agency as she stood on a picket line at a public school in Madrid. "A lot remains to be done and we, in the education sector, have a big role to play."

Ana Reyes, a 37-year-old PR executive, told AFP news agency she was striking "in the hope that the importance of half of the population will be recognised and that it will bring about a real change".

More on International Women's Day:

The 8 March Commission is behind the strike. Its manifesto calls for "a society free of sexist oppression, exploitation and violence" and says: "We do not accept worse working conditions, nor being paid less than men for the same work."

A poll of 1,500 people for the El Pais daily suggested 82% supported the strike, while 76% thought women in Spain had harder lives than men.

Feminist groups only want women to strike to show how important their absence is but Spanish law does not allow for single-gender strikes and men were welcome to support it.

The two main unions had called for members to stop work for two hours in the morning.

What has the reaction been?

Some have opposed the strike. The ruling centre-right party, the Partido Popular (PP), said the action was "for feminist elites and not real women with everyday problems".

Two of the five female ministers in Spain's conservative government, Agriculture Minister Isabel García Teresina and the president of the Madrid region, Cristina Cifuentes, said they would work longer hours to show the capacity of women.

But well-known female presenters were absent from TV screens and radio airwaves.

Actress Penelope Cruz cancelled planned public events and said she would go on "domestic" strike.

The mayors of Madrid and Barcelona - Manuela Carmena and Ada Colau - are also backing the strike.

But the National Federation of Self-Employed Workers told El Pais that self-employed women remained overwhelmingly at work.

In Spain, women were paid 13% and 19% less than men in the public and private sectors respectively, data from the European Union's statistical provider Eurostat said.

You might also like:

What's happening elsewhere in the world?

Here's a round-up of some of the International Women's Day events:

In Saudi Arabia, women exercised a new freedom as restrictions on their freedoms were relaxed under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: they went jogging

A similar run took place in Mosul, Iraq - with women runners saying they wanted to win back their rights following the brutal occupation by Islamic State which was ended in July

A group of prominent Catholic women met in Rome to demand a greater say in Church governance. But the list of speakers angered the Church and Pope Francis has declined to attend or celebrate Mass. A former president of Ireland, Mary McAleese, described the Catholic Church as an "empire of misogyny"

Activists in China have been angered by the approach of retailers who have dubbed the day "Queens' Day" or "Goddesses' Day" and offered women customers discounts on goods such as cosmetics

Several female journalists in Ukraine started a Facebook drive called "I am not your darling", in response to President Petro Poroshenko's use of the term in a reply to a woman reporter

French daily paper Libération raised its price on Thursday - but only for men. Women pay the standard €2, while men have to cough up another 50 cents to highlight the gender pay gap. President Emmanuel Macron also pledged to "name and shame" companies that pay women less than men for doing the same work

Prince Harry and fiancée Meghan Markle went to Millennium Point in Birmingham in the UK to encourage young women students to pursue a career in maths or sciences

Irish Health Minister Simon Harris said it was fitting the country had on this day finalised the wording for a referendum on whether to liberalise abortion

While leaders across Africa praised the role of women, the government in Ivory Coast decided to update a list of jobs that women are banned from doing. The labour laws now preclude "work that exceeds the ability and physical capacity of women, or work that presents dangers which is likely to undermine their morality, for example, working underground or in the mines".

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Women workers in Spain are marking International Women's Day with an unprecedented strike targeting gender inequality and sexual discrimination. Unions said 5.3 million women had joined the 24-hour strike, backed by 10 unions and some of Spain's top women politicians. Hundreds of thousands of women have joined street protests across Spain, shouting "if we stop, the world stops".

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Educating children on how to use social media

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Educating children on how to use social media

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While this article is unnecessarily negative, in my opinion, it does mention something important: social media is taken for granted by younger generations (mine included), and a critical mind is key when it comes to using it. We have to be critical about the lack of privacy when using social medias like snapchat. Many assume that what we send disappears and doesn't matter, but a single screenshot can make a difference, and cause a lot of damage. Just because something is easy to use doesn't mean that it is harmless.

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In the weeks following the tragic shooting in Florida, it has become clear that this time Americans have had enough. There are many sides talking about what needs to be done to eliminate these school shootings, and the solutions are being debated in states across the country. It feels hopeless as a parent, but there are things that we can do today to help keep our children safe.

It's becoming clear that most of these shooters are isolated or feel bullied. While bullying is not new, social media platforms are. We have to be careful not to underestimate the power of social media and the role it can play in damaging children. I feel very fortunate growing up that we didn't have to deal with the negative aspects of social media.

More: Coombs: Learning to shed expectations and let your children be who they are meant to be

More: Apple's Tim Cook: I don't want my nephew on social media

More: 6 benefits included in a RGJ digital subscription

Children are measuring their social status by the number of "likes" they receive posting a picture. They feel embarrassed if they post something and few people notice. Their self-esteem is tied directly to what happens. Twitter is especially damaging. Teenagers and adults engage in an activity called subtweeting where they are talking negatively about a person but they don't use their name. Everyone chimes in about the person and it is harmful and clearly not anonymous as intended. Parents need to be aware and talk to their children about many dangers lurking in the world of social media:

1) There is nothing private about social media. Snapchat is probably one of the most dangerous applications that teenagers use and they feel safe sending inappropriate pictures because they disappear in seven seconds.

But a screen-shot takes just a second and whatever is sent is now captured on a cellphone. I probably have had 200 teenagers in and out of my home in the last eight years and have watched tears fall when a young lady realized that the naked picture she thought she was sending privately had circulated around the entire city.

Talk to your children about Snapchat and set high expectations. Ask them to imagine how they would feel if an entire group of strangers were looking at their private parts. Tell your teenagers they should not send these pictures nor should they ask for them. Your teenagers need you and they will listen to you if you explain the serious consequences of these behaviors. If you find out your child is engaging in this behavior, take their phone. Take it for a long time.

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2) Set clear boundaries on the types of posts your will tolerate from your teenagers. In my house, I didn't allow pictures in bathing suits and certainly forbid any degrading posts about another friend or student. If I found it, I shut down the application.

Don't let your children have applications like Twitter or Instagram unless you have the passwords. In the few times I found pictures I didn't like or a comment that seemed to be negative about another person, I changed the password so my children couldn't get into the app. Usually, the new password I would set would be something like "Ishouldn'tpostlikethat!" It was always a good reminder when they logged back on that I was going to be watching.

Parents need to be aware that their teenagers create fake Instagram accounts called Finstagrams. Ask your children. Look them in the eye and sit with them to discuss the dangers of such accounts. Teenagers are posting nude pictures on these accounts and the end result is damaged self-esteem and embarrassment. As parents, you must end the popularity contest with your children and guide them through this complex maze.

3) Facetime also presents a danger to children as parents can't monitor what children are talking about or doing live with another friend or classmate. I have always believed that if you establish respect with your children, they will listen to your advice; they don't want to let you down. Explain the do's and don't's of Facetime to your teenagers. Let them know your expectation and if you find out anything that goes against your rules, it is easy to keep the Wi-Fi password from them or take their devices.

A more respectful social media environment may not solve all of society's problems; however, if our children are being polite or courteous to everyone, perhaps it changes how they make others feel. Feeling picked on and socially isolated isn't fun at any age but especially in the teenage years when one is confused about so many things and trying to figure out who he or she is.

Our teenagers also can see if a person is posting something that doesn't seem right. Suicidal threats or threats to others need to be reported to parents immediately and those parents then need to contact the school or the police to get help. These shooters do snap one day. One day they may seem socially awkward and isolated, and the next day they could be in a school committing murder. If they are posting on social media, it is likely somebody can find something off and report it.

Suicide is also a huge concern in the teen years and it is important that our children do not pick on others and also look for warning signs to help friends in need.

Social media can be a horrible tool but it also can be a place where people find support if they are treated with compassion and care by teenagers and adults alike. Encourage your children to be good to all of their classmates and not make fun of people. They need to realize that while everyone is different, no one is better than anybody else. They are all struggling to fit in and they can use social media to make things better, not worse.
Katie Coombs is the host of the radio show "Uncommon Sense with Katie Coombs." You can reach her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UncommonSenseKC/.
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Empowering our youth with social media guidance: Katie Coombs

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CLOSE In the weeks following the tragic shooting in Florida, it has become clear that this time Americans have had enough. There are many sides talking about what needs to be done to eliminate these school shootings, and the solutions are being debated in states across the country.

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Interesting article about the fast spreading of fake news on social media.

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If it seems like fake news is everywhere, that may be because it is.

Falsehoods spread like wildfire on social media, getting quicker and longer-lasting pickup than the truth, researchers reported on Thursday.

A deep dive into Twitter shows that false news was re-tweeted more often than true news was, and carried further.

"Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information," the team, led bySinan Aral of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote in the journal Science.

"It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people."

And it wasn't bots spreading most of the falsehoods, they found. It was real people doing most of it. Usually ordinary people, too, they found: so-called 'verified' users and those with many followers were not usually the source of some of the most popular untrue viral posts.

It might be because false statements sound more surprising, they said.

"We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information," they wrote.

It should come as no surprise that the internet has spawned a resurgence of fake news. Congress and the FBI are investigating evidence that Russian and other foreign users deliberately flooded social media with untrue reports and posts intended to mislead people about political candidates.

And the term "fake news" has taken on its own life, referring not only to untrue reports but being increasingly used to dismiss reports that the user does not wish to agree with.

So Aral's team decided to use the term "false news" instead. They also used a broad definition of "news". "We refer to any asserted claim made on Twitter as news," they said.

The study started with PhD research by MIT's Soroush Vosoughi, who was struck by the false reports that spread rapidly after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, in which three people were killed and 264 injured.

"Twitter became our main source of news," Vosoughi said in a statement. "I realized that ... a good chunk of what I was reading on social media was rumors," he added.

"It took the truth about six times as long as falsehood to reach 1,500 people."

To objectively separate truth from lies or mistakes, Vosoughi and colleagues used sites devoted to fact-checking: factcheck.org, hoax-slayer.com, politifact.com, snopes.org, truthorfiction.com, and urbanlegends.about.com. The six sites agreed on which reports were true about 95 percent of the time, they said.

For the report, they examined 126,000 stories tweeted by about 3 million people more than 4.5 million times.

They found that false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories were.

Untrue stories also had more staying power, carrying onto more "cascades," or unbroken re-tweet chains, they found.

When they looked at who was spreading the wrong stuff, they found it was ordinary users of social media.

"We conclude that human behavior contributes more to the differential spread of falsity and truth than automated robots do," they wrote.

Why retweet that post before you know whether it's actually true?

Status, Aral said. "People who share novel information are seen as being in the know," he said.

But don't forget about the bots, argue Filippo Menczer of Indiana University and colleagues. They estimate that 60 million "bots" post automatic updates on Facebook and up to 48 million are on Twitter.

"The spreaders of fake news are using increasingly sophisticated methods," Menczer said in a statement.

Why do people fall for it, whether it's from a bot or a real friend?

"False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information," Aral said. Plus, people like to repeat information that seems to affirm their beliefs.

"People prefer information that confirms their preexisting attitudes, view information consistent with their preexisting beliefs as more persuasive than dissonant information (confirmation bias), and are inclined to accept information that pleases them," David Lazer of Northeastern University and colleagues wrote in an editorial.

And fact-checking can backfire, they noted. "Fact-checking might even be counterproductive under certain circumstances," they wrote. "There is thus a risk that repeating false information, even in a fact-checking context, may increase an individual's likelihood of accepting it as true."

They call for more high-quality research into the false news problem and what can be done about it, pointing to reforms in the early 20th century that gave rise to legitimate newspapers with ethics promoting objectivity and credibility out of the ashes of a boisterous yellow press.

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Want something to go viral? Make it fake news

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Fake news, lies and falsehoods spread like wildfire on social media, a new study confirms. People share wrong information faster than they pass along the truth.

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The science behind why something we view as cute can actually induce aggressive tendencies.

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Cute aggression is a particularly strange phenomenon. When we see something so cute, or even think about it - like a baby kitten, stumbling across the floor - we first experience a tsunami of positivity, an overwhelming accumulation of fuzzy happiness. Then, somewhat perplexingly, this feeling sometimes coexists with the urge to squeeze the kitten to death. This effect is recognized by scientists, and a study published earlier this year in the journal Psychological Science explains that this secondary, negative response may be trying to counteract the out-of-control positive one.

The research group from Yale University coined the term " cute aggression," and it is thought to belong to one of a series of paradoxical combinations of positive and negative emotions, which also include nervous laughter or tears of joy. These are known as "dimorphous expressions."

Cute aggression was first scientifically documented by Rebecca Dyer and Oriana Aragon in 2012. In their experiment 109 participants were asked to hold bubble wrap as a slideshow of animals with funny, cute or neutral expressions was shown. Although an uptick in bubble popping was expected for the cute animals, the researchers found that the participants went a little bonkers, popping far more bubbles than the other two groups.

Interestingly enough, this feeling is amplified when the cute animals in question aren't physically accessible. The same effect applies to pictures of babies, with further studies indicating that the younger and cuter the babies look, the greater the urge of the participants to experience both a positive emotion - explaining how they want to look after it - and an aggressive feeling, describing the urge to want to pinch its cheeks.
Image credit: We can't handle this. ANURAK PONGPATIMET/Shutterstock
For the latest study, several hundred participants were initially asked about a variety of dimorphous expressions, involving both cute (seeing baby kittens) and non-cute stimuli (crying during a piece of happy music), and asked to record how powerful each emotion was during these types of events.

For example, the participants had to decide whether or not they were the type of person that upon seeing something cute they often "clenched their hands into fists." This allowed the researchers to produce a numerical scale of dimorphous expression. The study then gave participants the baby test, which again showed that more infantile babies produced the most extreme cute aggressive response.

A puzzle unrelated to cute babies was then undertaken by the participants, before they took the baby test again. Although the same cute aggression effect was seen, those that initially showed the most aggression also showed the greatest immediate post-exposure decline in positive emotions. Essentially, those with the more aggressive response were able to more rapidly counteract their overwhelming positive emotional cascade.

But why would anyone want to temper this explosion of happiness? The authors think that the negative emotion is designed to "support the immediate well-being of the [participant]." Any emotional spike uses up considerable energy, so our brains have to be able to regulate their own emotional responses.

Anna Brooks, a senior lecturer in cognitive neuroscience from Southern Cross University, told Vice that "The ability to regulate one's strength of emotional response is highly adaptive: It stops us from investing too much energy into things."

So if you see a puppy and want to squash it to pieces, don't worry, you're perfectly normal - it's just your brain trying to stop itself exploding.

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Why Adorable Puppies Can Make You Feel Violent

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Cute aggression is a particularly strange phenomenon. When we see something so cute, or even think about it - like a baby kitten, stumbling across the floor - we first experience a tsunami of positivity, an overwhelming accumulation of fuzzy happiness. Then, somewhat perplexingly, this feeling sometimes coexists with the urge to squeeze the kitten to death.

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Social media and images of fitness - does it increase the viewers' exercise habits?

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Social media and images of fitness - does it increase the viewers' exercise habits?

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A somewhat unsatisfying article about the effects of images related to fitness on one's own habits. It's not as black or white, the article says. The article ends with: "The researchers found that people felt most concerned only when watching friends who were most like themselves in height, weight and body type". This raises an interesting question: given that social media encourages comparison to peers, what effect do friends' social media activity have on our perceptions of ourselves?

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A new report co-authored by a University of Arizona researcher has mixed news for users of social media.

The study found that some people become more self-conscious after seeing an exercise-related post, while others are motivated to do more physical activity as a result. UA communications professor Stephen Rains was an author behind the study. He noted the findings were similar to others looking at the impact of social media.

"Some of what we found is that social media in particular doesn't just have a black or white, good or bad effect, but it's nuanced," said Rains.

The researchers asked 232 people to count how many times they saw posts showing friends involved in exercise. Then the subjects answered a questionnaire that measured their concern about their own weight and general attitude about staying in shape.

"The thing that's unique about this is that I don't think people are seeking these posts out," according to Rains. "These posts are coming across one's feed, and one is randomly exposed to them."

The researchers found that people felt most concerned only when watching friends who were most like themselves in height, weight and body type.

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Do Social Media Posts About Exercise Motivate? It's Not Black or White, Study Says

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A new report co-authored by a University of Arizona researcher has mixed news for users of social media. The study found that some people become more self-conscious after seeing an exercise-related post, while others are motivated to do more physical activity as a result. UA communications professor Stephen Rains was an author behind the study.

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Social media use and face-to-face interactions: a study

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Social media use and face-to-face interactions: a study

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This article summarizes the results of a study that investigated the effects of social media use on face-to-face interactions. It found no significant effect on the face-to-face interactions. However, an interesting finding of the study is that those who used social media and lacked face-to-face interactions during that week felt more lonely. This makes a lot of sense, given that on social media we are constantly bombarded with images of  people and their social circles. These images might be exaggerated, but the viewer cannot know for sure, so they still invoke a feeling of loneliness.

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Social media use doesn't negatively affect our social interactions or social well-being in a significant way, a new study reports.

"The current assumption is that when people spend more time on apps like Facebook and Snapchat, the quality of their in-person social interactions decreases..."

The adoption of new technologies, such as television, smartphones, and social media, often leads to fears of the decline of face-to-face interactions and the potential for decreased happiness.

"The current assumption is that when people spend more time on apps like Facebook and Snapchat, the quality of their in-person social interactions decreases," says Michael Kearney, assistant professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. "However, our results suggested that social media use doesn't have a strong impact on future social interactions."

Kearney and the research team set up two studies, one long-term and one short-term, to test the theory. The first study, which followed the social media use of individuals from 2009 to 2011, found that change in social media use was not associated with changes in direct social contact. In addition, the participants' feelings of social well-being actually increased.

The second study, which surveyed adults and college students through text-messaging over the course of five days, found that social media use earlier in the day did not have any impact on future social interactions. However, the researchers also found that passive social media use led to lower levels of well-being if that person had been alone earlier in the day.

"People who use social media alone likely aren't getting their face-to-face social needs met," Kearney says. "So if they're not having their social needs met in their life outside of social media, it makes sense that looking at social media might make them feel even lonelier."

The aspect of time may be an important element to consider when it comes to studying the effects of social media, Kearney says. For example, while time spent using social media sites like Facebook doesn't take away from other social interactions, it is likely that using any type of media borrows time that could be used for face-to-face interactions.

"People are spending increased amounts of time using the internet and other media that may replace the time they could use for speaking face to face, but that doesn't mean that they are worse for it," Kearney says. "People must ultimately be responsible for maintaining their relationships, whether that's through social media or other means."

The researchers report their findings in the journal Information, Communication and Society.

The coauthors of the study are Jeffrey Hall, associate professor at the University of Kansas, and Chong Xing, a doctoral candidate at the University of Kansas.

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Social media doesn't hurt your face-to-face socializing - Futurity

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Social media use doesn't negatively affect our social interactions or social well-being in a significant way, a new study reports. "The current assumption is that when people spend more time on apps like Facebook and Snapchat, the quality of their in-person social interactions decreases..."

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YouTube recently announced that creators who have less than 1000 subscribers and less than 4000 hours of view time in the past year won't receive monetization for the content they put on YouTube. This worries small creators, who argue that their work isn't being valued by YouTube. Further, it makes succeeding on YouTube even harder than it already is. On the other side, YouTube is trying to maintain its relations with advertisers. Many think that YouTube favors its advertisers over its creators, which accounts for the many criticisms the platform has received over the past months.

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In an effort to regain advertisers' trust, Google is announcing what it says are "tough but necessary" changes to YouTube monetization.

For one thing, it's setting a higher bar for the YouTube Partner Program, which is what allows publishers to make money through advertising. Previously, they needed 10,000 total views to join the program. Starting today, channels also need to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of view time in the past year. (For now, those are just requirements to join the program, but Google says it will also start applying them to current partners on February 20.)

This might assure marketers that their ads are less likely to run on random, fly-by-night channels, but as Google's Paul Muret writes, "Of course, size alone is not enough to determine whether a channel is suitable for advertising."

So in addition, he said:

We will closely monitor signals like community strikes, spam, and other abuse flags to ensure they comply with our policies. Both new and existing YPP channels will be automatically evaluated under this strict criteria and if we find a channel repeatedly or egregiously violates our community guidelines, we will remove that channel from YPP. As always, if the account has been issued three community guidelines strikes, we will remove that user's accounts and channels from YouTube.

Muret also described changes planned for the more exclusive Google Preferred program, which is supposed to be limited to the best and most popular content. Vlogger Logan Paul was part of Google Preferred until the controversy over his "suicide forest" video got him kicked out last week - a story that suggests some of the limitations to Google's approach.

Moving forward, Muret said the program will offer "not only ... the most popular content on YouTube, but also the most vetted." That means everything in Google Preferred should be manually curated, with ads only running "on videos that have been verified to meet our ad-friendly guidelines." (Looks like all those new content moderators will be busy.)

Lastly, Muret said YouTube will be introducing a new "three-tier suitability system" in the next few months, aimed at giving marketers more control over the trade-off between running ads in safer environments versus reaching more viewers.

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YouTube tightens the rules around creator monetization and partnerships

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In an effort to regain advertisers' trust, Google is announcing what it says are "tough but necessary" changes to YouTube monetization. For one thing, it's setting a higher bar for the YouTube Partner Program, which is what allows publishers to make money through advertising. Previously, they needed 10,000 total views to join the program.

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This article highlights the increasing difficulty of quitting major social media sites such as facebook, snapchat, instagram and youtube. As predicted, people aged 18-24 have the biggest difficulty. This brings up issues regarding even younger generations and the increased likelihood of social media addiction. It would have been nice to include those in the article.

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Social media apps Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are shown on an iPhone. (Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, epa)

More Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to give up Facebook, Snapchat and other social media.

According to a survey published Thursday by the Pew Research Center, 40% of respondents said they would find it hard to give up social media, up from 28% four years ago.

ADDICTED? Here's how to take a break from Facebook

The Pew survey also found the younger you are, the harder it is to part ways with social media. More than half (51%) of social media users age 18 to 24 said it would be hard to give up social media, compared to 40% of users ages 25 to 29. Users over 50 had the easiest time logging off, with 66% saying it would not be hard to give up social media.

While Facebook remains among the most popular social media services, its growth appears to have flattened, according to Pew. About 68% of U.S. adults say they use Facebook, trailing only YouTube at 73%.

Instagram is a distant third at 35%, while Pinterest (29%) and Snapchat (27%) round out the top five.

However, the Pew survey shows a large majority of users between the ages of 18 and 24 use Instagram and Snapchat. Findings show more than three-quarters of U.S. adults in that age bracket use Snapchat, while 71% are on Instagram.

As more Americans rely on social media, these platforms face increased scrutiny for how they handle issues including false information, meddling from foreign entities and online abuse.

On Thursday, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged his platform's issues with harassment, noting the company is determined to find fair solutions to address them.

"We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and increasingly divisive echo chambers," wrote Dorsey in a series of tweets. "We aren't proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough."

Meanwhile, lawmakers continue to press Facebook over its role in exposing its users to Russian-linked ads during the 2016 presidential election. Last week, a Facebook official said the company has made ads placed on the platform ready for public view.

The Pew survey was based on interviews conducted between Jan. 3-10, 2018, and included 2,002 adults, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2oyq5JE

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Could you quit social media? Your answer may depend on your age

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More than half (51%) of social media users age 18 to 24 said it would be hard to give up social media, compared to 40% of users ages 25 to 29. Users over 50 had the easiest time logging off, with 66% saying it would not be hard to give up social media.

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Power of deception: fake restaurant becoming #1 on Trip Advisor 

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Power of deception: fake restaurant becoming #1 on Trip Advisor 

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I found this VICE video so interesting. A guy in London succeeded in making a restaurant that never existed first in Trip Advisor's London restaurants. It makes one think about the deceptive nature of trusted websites such as Trip Advisor. Fake reviews are not uncommon, and one wonders if the information that is supposed to be shared and created among the users is genuine. It also makes me think about the idea of "trendy" and how malleable that concept is. People are ready to accept anything as valuable as long as it's being talked about. It's not about quality, but about reputation.

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Il y a fort longtemps, bien avant que je commence à écrire des articles pour VICE, j'ai eu d'autres boulots. Il y en a un en particulier qui m'a marqué : rédacteur de faux avis sur TripAdvisor. Les gérants des restaurants me payaient dix euros pour que j'écrive une critique positive sur leur établissement, alors même que je n'y avais jamais mis les pieds. À la longue, je suis devenu obsédé par leur évolution dans le classement. Leur chance tournait, et elle tournait grâce à moi.

Cela a achevé de me convaincre que TripAdvisor est une illusion - que tous ces repas n'ont jamais été servis aux clients ; que tous ces avis n'ont jamais été écrits par quelque client que ce soit. Bien entendu, c'est faux - ils sont tous (ou presque) authentiques. En outre, un autre facteur me semblait impossible à imiter : les restaurants eux-mêmes. Alors je suis passé à autre chose.

Et puis un jour, assis dans ma cabane, j'ai eu une révélation : dans ce climat actuel de désinformation, avec cette volonté de la société de croire à tout et n'importe quoi, peut-être que l'idée d'un faux restaurant n'est pas si bête ? Peut-être que c'est exactement le genre d'endroit qui pourrait marcher ?

À partir de cet instant, c'est devenu ma mission. Une poignée de fausses critiques, un peu de mysticisme, quelques absurdités, et ma cabane deviendrait le restaurant le plus coté de Londres sur TripAdvisor.

MISE EN PLACE DE " LA CABANE À DULWICH " - AVRIL 2017

Tout d'abord, permettez-moi de vous faire faire le tour des lieux : une cabane située dans un jardin du sud de Londres.

Pour commencer, je dois être joignable, et pour ce faire, j'ai besoin d'un téléphone.

Dix euros plus tard et " La cabane à Dulwich " existe officiellement. Maintenant, il me faut une adresse - mais cela risquerait de faciliter la tâche des contrôleurs de données factuelles sceptiques. D'autant plus que, techniquement, je n'ai pas de porte. Au lieu de quoi j'indique la route et décrit La Cabane comme un " restaurant ne recevant que sur rendez-vous ".

Passons à ma présence en ligne : j'achète un domaine et crée un site web. Les hots spots reposant sur l'excentricité, il me faut un concept stupide. Du genre, servir des plats basés sur l'humeur des clients.

Maintenant, quelques images de ces mets délicieux.

Vous en mangeriez bien, pas vrai ?

À votre place, j'éviterai.

Trêve de plaisanterie. Qu'est-ce que vous dites de ça ?

Éponge recouverte de peinture accompagnée de ses quenelles de mousse à raser.

Ne vous fiez pas aux apparences.

Car c'est en fait un œuf posé sur mon pied.

Maintenant que j'ai le concept, le logo (merci, Tristan Cross) et le menu, le restaurant commence à prendre forme.

Je remplis le formulaire TripAdvisor et laisse le reste entre les mains de Dieu.

Le 5 mai 2017, je reçois un mail :

Bonjour,

Nous sommes ravis de vous informer que votre demande d'inscription a été approuvée et que votre annonce est disponible sur notre site.

[...]

Merci de nous donner l'opportunité de faire connaître La Cabane à Dulwich à la communauté TripAdvisor.

Meilleures salutations,

L'équipe TripAdvisor

Non, TripAdvisor, merci à vous de me donner l'opportunité de faire connaître La Cabane à Dulwich à la communauté.

DEVENIR NUMÉRO UN

Je démarre en 18 149e position du classement - à en croire TripAdvisor, mon restaurant est le pire de Londres. Il va donc me falloir beaucoup d'avis. De vrais avis, rédigés par de vrais gens, depuis différents ordinateurs, afin que la technologie anti-fraude de TripAdvisor ne ruine pas mon canular.

J'appelle mes potes pour les mettre à contribution.

GRIMPER DANS LE CLASSEMENT

Les deux premières semaines se déroulent sans encombre : j'atteins la 10 000e place en un rien de temps. Puis un matin, quelque chose d'extraordinaire se produit : le téléphone sonne. Surpris et en gueule de bois, je décroche.

" Bonjour ? C'est bien La Cabane ? "

"... Oui ? " Ma voix sonne comme un radiateur qui a besoin d'une purge.

" J'ai tellement entendu parler de votre restaurant... Je ne me fais pas d'illusion mais auriez-vous, à tout hasard, une table de libre pour ce soir ? "

Paniqué, je réponds : " Désolé mais nous sommes complets pour les six semaines à venir. " Je raccroche brusquement. Je suis abasourdi. Le lendemain, le téléphone sonne à nouveau : une réservation pour un 70e anniversaire. Quatre mois à l'avance. Neuf personnes.

Je vérifie mes mails : des dizaines de demandes de " rendez-vous " m'attendent. Un mec essaie d'utiliser le boulot de sa petite amie dans un hôpital pour enfants comme moyen de pression. Les directeurs de télévision utilisent leur adresse mail professionnelle.

Du jour au lendemain, nous passons à la 1 456e place. La Cabane à Dulwich est soudainement devenue branchée. Mais comment ?

Je comprends d'où vient cet engouement : les rendez-vous, le manque d'adresse et l'exclusivité générale de cet endroit sont tellement séduisants que les gens en perdent la raison. Au cours des mois qui suivent, le téléphone de La Cabane sonne inlassablement.

LES CHOSES DEVIENNENT UN PEU HORS DE CONTRÔLE

À la fin du mois d'août, nous sommes à la 156e place.

Et je ne suis plus tout à fait maître de la situation.

Tout d'abord, des entreprises envoient des échantillons gratuits à l'emplacement estimé de La Cabane sur Google Maps. Ensuite, des tas de gens m'envoient leur candidature. Puis je reçois un mail de la mairie, qui veut reloger le restaurant sur un nouveau site qu'ils sont en train de développer.

Enfin, j'ai une réunion Skype avec une agence de relations publiques, qui me promet de faire une pub pour La Cabane, diffusée sur le Mail Online, avec un lancement sur le thème de Batman. Le représentant me trouve " plutôt cool ", ce qui est sympa, mais je décide finalement de gérer la promotion du restaurant moi-même.

DERNIÈRE LIGNE DROITE

L'hiver est arrivé, et nous sommes 30e.

Impossible de monter dans le classement, peu importe le nombre d'avis que j'y ajoute.

Mais les choses prennent une autre tournure.

Sur la route, des gens me demandent le chemin jusqu'à La Cabane. Le téléphone sonne plus que jamais.

Le ton des mails change, des gens me contactent de partout dans le monde.

Et puis, un soir, je reçois un mail de TripAdvisor, avec pour objet " Demande d'informations ". Merde. Je me suis fait griller. Mes doigts tremblent en l'ouvrant : 89 000 vues dans les résultats de recherche la veille ; des dizaines de clients demandent de plus amples informations.

Pourquoi ? Parce que le 1er novembre 2017, soit six mois après la mise en ligne de mon annonce :

La Cabane est le meilleur restaurant de Londres.

C'est exact. Un restaurant qui n'existe pas est actuellement le mieux noté dans l'une des plus grandes villes du monde, sur le site d'avis le plus fiable.

Sur le site de TripAdvisor, la société affirme qu'elle consacre " beaucoup de temps et de ressources [pour] s'assurer que le contenu reflète les vraies expériences des vrais voyageurs ". Une fois le processus terminé, je prends contact avec eux afin de comprendre comment j'ai pu contourner leurs contrôles rigoureux aussi facilement.

" En général, les seules personnes qui référencent de faux restaurants sont des journalistes qui veulent nous tester ", me répond un représentant par mail. " Étant donné que les gens n'ont a priori aucune raison de créer un faux restaurant, ce n'est pas un problème que nous rencontrons souvent avec notre communauté habituelle. "

Ça se tient.

Le représentant ajoute que " la plupart des fraudeurs ne cherchent qu'à manipuler le classement des vraies entreprises ", de sorte que la " distinction entre la tentative de fraude d'une entreprise réelle, par opposition à la tentative de fraude d'une entreprise inexistante, est importante ". Pour choper ces gens-là, TripAdvisor utilise " une technologie de pointe pour identifier les modèles d'avis suspects ". Et lui de poursuivre : " Nous invitons également notre communauté à nous reporter toute activité suspecte. " Il cite ensuite une étude de 2015 dans laquelle " 93 pour cent des utilisateurs de TripAdvisor déclarent les avis conformes à leurs expériences ".

Et voilà. On y est.

SEUL AU SOMMET

Seulement, ça ne s'arrête pas là.

Je laisse le téléphone chez un ami et pars en week-end. Quand je le récupère, j'ai 116 appels manqués. Ça sonne. " Nous sommes complets. " Je mens. " Nous avons un baptême. " Encore un mensonge.

" Bonjour, La Cabane à Dulwich. "

" Oh mon Dieu, lâche une femme frustrée. J'ai réussi ! J'essaie de vous joindre depuis août ! "

Maintenant que j'ai créé cette réalité, il ne me reste plus qu'à la concrétiser. Dans quatre jours seulement, le meilleur restaurant de Londres prendra vie. Je vais ouvrir La Cabane à Dulwich.

LE GRAND SOIR

Mais comment ? Je n'ai jamais invité plus de trois personnes à la fois, encore moins servi le dîner à vingt personnes. Il n'y a qu'une seule façon de procéder : recréer l'endroit exact que les gens décrivent dans les avis depuis six mois.

La bouffe leur rappelle leur enfance ? Parfait, je vais leur servir celle qui a marqué la mienne : des plats surgelés.

Ils aiment l'ambiance rurale mais chic ? Très bien, vous voyez cette cabane de jeu ? Je vais la remplir de poules et les clients choisiront celle qu'ils préfèrent - l'équivalent de l'aquarium à homards dans les restaurants gastro.

Mais comment retrouver l'atmosphère incomparable d'un vrai restaurant ? En faisant venir un DJ, bien sûr.

Au boulot. La cabane de jeu ?

Elle fera office de poulailler. La pelouse ?

Elle est tondue. Les températures sont inférieures à zéro ?

C'est réglé. Des tables supplémentaires ?

Installées.

Mon pote Joe arrive. Il fera office de chef pour ce soir. Il a passé les dix dernières années à parcourir le monde et travailler dans de bons restaurants. Un homme digne de La Cabane. Maintenant, il ne reste plus qu'à faire les courses.

C'est fait, le tout pour la modique somme de 30 euros.

De retour à La Cabane, Phoebe est arrivée. C'est une serveuse intuitive, capable de saisir les nuances de notre menu - par exemple, lorsque nous servons du pudding dans une tasse, elle comprend que nous cherchons à reproduire l'expérience de ce que c'est que de manger du pudding dans une tasse.

En entrée, nous avons une minestrone di Verdure. En plats principaux, un mac and cheese à la truffe ou des lasagnes aux légumes. En dessert, un sundae au chocolat.

Ça y est, mon rêve est devenu réalité.

Les invités s'assoient sur le toit, sirotent des tasses de vin.

Les poules gloussent joyeusement dans la cabane de jeu, prêtes à se faire massacrer.

Les acteurs mâchent bruyamment leurs plats surgelés à 1 euro.

Un DJ passe de la musique.

Tout est parfait. Nous sommes prêts à accueillir nos deux premiers invités. Je me dirige vers le point de rencontre que je leur ai donné, sur la route. Ils sont à l'heure.

Voici Joel et Maria, qui nous viennent tout droit du soleil de la Californie. Ce sont leurs premières vacances en Europe. Hier soir, ils étaient à Paris. C'est la convention Pokémon de demain qui les amène à Londres.

Je leur demande de mettre un bandeau. Ils ont d'abord l'air terrifiés, mais après que les deux actrices qui sont arrivées en même temps obtempèrent, ils font de même.

Je les guide main dans la main jusque dans le jardin. Alors que nous approchons de la maison, Maria s'exclame : " Je peux entendre le bruit d'une cuisine ! " Non, Maria, tu ne peux pas. Ils détachent leur bandeau. Les Américains restent silencieux.

" Ici, nous servons des humeurs. Je vais interpréter les vôtres et vous apporter le plat adapté. Maria, il émane de vous une énergie chaleureuse. Joel ? Je vous sens "cool" ce soir, je me trompe ? "

Je me précipite dans la cuisine pour prévenir Joe. Sur ma demande, le DJ balance régulièrement des " dings " pour masquer le bruit du micro-ondes.

Je sers le couple, m'éloigne et, de loin, je les regarde regarder leur mac and cheese. Maria sort son portable pour prendre une photo, marque une pause, range son portable sans prendre de photo.

La soirée se poursuit. Joel repère les deux personnes installées sur le toit au-dessus de lui et ne peut s'empêcher de les regarder. Au bout de 40 minutes relativement calmes, le couple s'en va. Joel a l'air furieux.

Entre-temps, deux locaux arrivent et posent plein de questions. Je laisse Phoebe se prendre la tête avec eux, car de mon côté, j'ai une table de quatre à servir.

De retour dans la cuisine, j'entends un cri. Dehors, une femme court partout. Trevor - super, c'est l'occasion de présenter Trevor, le type que j'ai embauché pour s'occuper des poules - la suit en se débattant avec une poule.

J'arrache la volaille des mains de Trevor et la bourre dans la cabane de jeu. Alors que les choses se calment, les amis de la femme se mettent à rire. " Pourquoi avez-vous des poules ? " me demandent-ils. " Pour que vous puissiez choisir la vôtre ! Nous cuisinerons celle qui vous plaît le plus. " Leur visage se décompose. " Mais je croyais que c'était un restaurant végétarien ? Il est classé comme le meilleur restaurant végétarien de Londres. "

Mon cœur bat la chamade - je n'y avais pas pensé. " Le meilleur restaurant de tout Londres, vous voulez dire ! " Je souris. Je suis foutu.

Les gens semblent apprécier la nourriture, mais je n'arrête pas de penser à ce foutu poulet. Je dois rattraper le coup avec la table de quatre.

Je sens une tape sur mon épaule ; c'est l'un d'entre eux qui m'informe que c'est l'anniversaire de son ami. C'est l'occasion de les impressionner.

J'en touche discrètement un mot à mon amie et comédienne, Lolly Adefope, pour qu'elle chante " Joyeux anniversaire " à qui de droit. Elle fait taire les gens et se lance. C'est beau.

Mais pas assez. L'autre vraie table de deux part, et je vois notre quatuor. " Donc au sujet de la disponibilité, commence la dame. Maintenant que nous sommes venus une fois, ce sera plus facile la prochaine fois ? "

" Comment ça ? "

" Ouais, est-ce qu'on pourra réserver une table plus facilement maintenant ? " intervient son mari.

" Ouais, parce qu'on aimerait beaucoup revenir. "

Les bras m'en tombent.

" Euh, je vais voir ce que je peux faire. "

Ils me disent au revoir et disparaissent dans la nuit.

À ce stade, le classement du restaurant a considérablement diminué (la page a maintenant été supprimée, mais une version archivée est disponible ici). Nous sommes restés en tête du classement pendant près de quinze jours.

Je dévale le jardin et crie la nouvelle : " Ils veulent réserver à nouveau ! " Joe, Trevor - tout le staff - me regardent. On éclate de rire. " Ça ne m'étonne pas ", déclare Phoebe en me montrant les commentaires des clients, qui sont excellents - peut-être parce qu'ils n'ont rien eu à payer (la soirée était entièrement gratuite dans le cadre de notre passage dans " une émission de télévision "), mais peut-être aussi parce qu'ils ont vraiment passé un excellent moment.

Et voilà : j'ai invité des gens, je les ai installés sur des chaises de fortune rassemblées à la hâte devant ma cabane, et ils sont repartis en étant convaincus qu'il s'agit vraiment du meilleur restaurant de Londres, tout ça grâce à une note TripAdvisor. Vous pouvez vous montrer cyniques et argumenter que l'odeur d'Internet est si forte de nos jours que les gens ne savent plus utiliser leurs sens correctement. Mais j'aime être optimiste. Si je peux faire de mon jardin le meilleur restaurant de Londres, c'est que tout est possible.

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J'ai fait de ma cabane le meilleur restaurant sur TripAdvisor

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Il y a fort longtemps, bien avant que je commence à écrire des articles pour VICE, j'ai eu d'autres boulots. Il y en a un en particulier qui m'a marqué : rédacteur de faux avis sur TripAdvisor.

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As a beginner solo traveler, I found this video interesting. It touches on the subject of feeling lonely while traveling alone and how to deal with those feelings.

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The Big Solo Travel Chat - Loneliness, group tours, safety, feeling nervous and our top tips!

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Topics we discuss in this video... 0.18 - Why did we solo travel? 1.49 - Why should you solo travel? 3.12 - Loneliness 6.20 - Group tours 10.14 - Staying safe 13.09 - Feeling nervous 14.51 - Our top tips!

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TED talk on the science of sleeping. I like to watch this when I haven't had much sleep to remind myself of the importance of getting enough sleep.

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Psychology, addiction and the war on drugs

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Psychology, addiction and the war on drugs

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Really interesting TED talk about psychological experiments on addiction (in mice), and the factors that influence addiction in humans.

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Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong | Johann Hari | TED

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In preparation for my May travels... here are Croatia's most beautiful islands!

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Croatia's coast is pure, nearly all 2,000 kilometres and 1,200 islands of it, and is open to all. Verdant islands, bare karst-rock islands, tiny dots of islands with nothing on them but a lighthouse converted to accommodate isolated holidaymakers , naturist islands, islands with just deer and naturists feeding them, islands with cocktail bars attracting the VIP set, islands for windsurfers, islands for sculptors, islands for Tito's political prisoners, islands for Tito's collection of safari animals, islands so remote they're nearer to Italy, islands called home by a family of 120 dolphins, islands of age-old fishing traditions, islands with a particular cave in which the sunlight turns a brilliant blue for an hour each day, islands known for their wine, cheese or anchovy pasties. More than 80 per cent of Croatia's islands have no people on them at all.

If you're looking for an island worthy of a week's stay, some - like Brač - are expansive enough to have their own airports. If you're after daytrips and excursions, most can be reached by ferry from the mainland. Some of the tinier islands are determinedly deserted, meaning that overnight stays are banned - but you can still take boat trips to these Adriatic gems. There's plenty of island hopping to be done, here's our pick of the best in Croatia.
RECOMMENDED: 40 great things to do in Croatia.

The standout attraction here is not the island itself - although, as we've come to expect from Croatia, it is something of a dreamy haven - but the blue cave of Biševo that lurks, Aladdin-like, off its shores. Vis itself is the furthest afloat from the Croatian mainland, and from 1950 until 1989 it served as the Yugoslav National Army's base, out of bounds to foreign visitors. So it still has the air of an unspoilt paradise, and visitors are seduced by its rudimental beauty. Two towns - the northeast Vis Town and Komiža, in the southwest - vie for tourist attention, and you'll find several beachy enclaves in crevices along the rough coastline.

When the Greeks that originally set up camp on this island first landed, they were so struck by the dense, dark forests there that they called it Korkyra Melaina - Black Korčula. Now its famed for its white wine (the crispest, coolest kind made from its endemic posip grape) but those enchanting woodlands still exist, and the island - the second most populous in the Adriatic region - is a mix of quiet hamlets and vineyards tangled up in the woods, and fishing villages dotted along the winding coast. Korcula town is often dubbed 'Little Dubrovnik' because of its formidable medieval walls, but it has its own attractions to offer, too: you can visit a dedicated Marco Polo gallery (Croats claim he was born here; Venetians vehemently disagree; the museum is edifying either way), and a beautiful cathedral.

A short ferry trip away from coastal city Split, Brač is the largest of the central Dalmatian Islands, with a population of 13,956, its own airport (Bol), and the highest mountain on any Adriatic island. It attracts a less glitzy crowd than Hvar, and its main offering is its rich history (it's been inhabited since the Neolithic age) and its richer olive oil (olive cultivating is a local trade and tradition). A fairly arid place, Brac is characterised by rocky coastal spots, and its signature export is the natural white stone which gets architects from all over the world salivating.

Murter

Unlike most of the islands on the list, Murter's magic isn't in its unattainable tranquillity but in its effervescent party atmosphere. Since Tisno became the spiritual home of the Garden Festival, the rocky land has become host to a number of festivals, including Love International, Electric Elephant, Soundwave and SunceBeat. But for hedonists seeking a quiet corner in the midst of all the fun, the island's ports and olive groves are still untouched, and still mesmerising.

The standout attraction here is not the island itself - although, as we've come to expect from Croatia, it is something of a dreamy haven - but the blue cave of Biševo that lurks, Aladdin-like, off its shores. Vis itself is the furthest afloat from the Croatian mainland, and from 1950 until 1989 it served as the Yugoslav National Army's base, out of bounds to foreign visitors. So it still has the air of an unspoilt paradise, and visitors are seduced by its rudimental beauty. Two towns - the northeast Vis Town and Komiža, in the southwest - vie for tourist attention, and you'll find several beachy enclaves in crevices along the rough coastline.

When the Greeks that originally set up camp on this island first landed, they were so struck by the dense, dark forests there that they called it Korkyra Melaina - Black Korčula. Now its famed for its white wine (the crispest, coolest kind made from its endemic posip grape) but those enchanting woodlands still exist, and the island - the second most populous in the Adriatic region - is a mix of quiet hamlets and vineyards tangled up in the woods, and fishing villages dotted along the winding coast. Korcula town is often dubbed 'Little Dubrovnik' because of its formidable medieval walls, but it has its own attractions to offer, too: you can visit a dedicated Marco Polo gallery (Croats claim he was born here; Venetians vehemently disagree; the museum is edifying either way), and a beautiful cathedral.

A short ferry trip away from coastal city Split, Brač is the largest of the central Dalmatian Islands, with a population of 13,956, its own airport (Bol), and the highest mountain on any Adriatic island. It attracts a less glitzy crowd than Hvar, and its main offering is its rich history (it's been inhabited since the Neolithic age) and its richer olive oil (olive cultivating is a local trade and tradition). A fairly arid place, Brac is characterised by rocky coastal spots, and its signature export is the natural white stone which gets architects from all over the world salivating.

Murter

Unlike most of the islands on the list, Murter's magic isn't in its unattainable tranquillity but in its effervescent party atmosphere. Since Tisno became the spiritual home of the Garden Festival, the rocky land has become host to a number of festivals, including Love International, Electric Elephant, Soundwave and SunceBeat. But for hedonists seeking a quiet corner in the midst of all the fun, the island's ports and olive groves are still untouched, and still mesmerising.

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Croatia's coast is pure, nearly all 2,000 kilometres and 1,200 islands of it, and is open to all.

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Interesting article on mindfulness practices while using social media. It's an interesting perspective which reconciles two things that one would think are complete opposites. However, as the article mentions, social media is here to stay and we need to learn how to use it while staying mindful.

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How many times a day do you check into your social feeds? How many times do you hit refresh in one visit? Our need to be social can backfire on social media, when we accidentally activate the comparing mind, which is a source of much unhappiness. Of course, this can happen offline, too. But the toll looms larger online, with of all those perfectly curated images of people's lives inviting us to compare our insides to other people's projection of their outsides.

For teens and tweens, who are actually hardwired for self-consciousness, the constant comparing and curating, which used to end with the final bell of the school day, when kids could go home and put on their sweatpants, is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. Socializing and social comparison begins first thing in the morning and ends last thing at night. Predictably, psychology research consistently shows that social media is making kids unhappier and more narcissistic.

The sheer volume and instant nature of digital media means that when we log in, we are drinking from a fire hose of emotional stimulus. We can be anywhere in the world and be met by friends' posts that trigger joy, resentment, sadness, laughter, grief, jealousy, and more-all within moments. None of us, adults or children, are wired to take in that much emotional content at once without reacting.

Research also reveals that social rewards and punishments feel the same online and off. If someone interacts with us in a positive way online, we get the same neurochemical rewards in our brain as we would in person. When we (or our children) are rejected or ignored online, we get the same feeling of rejection as we would in person. More interestingly, the sense of emotional attack activates the same part of the brain as physical attack does. Emotional pain is just as painful, just as real, as physical pain, whether it comes from the virtual world or not.

None of us, adults or children, are wired to take in that much emotional content at once without reacting.

So, can we teach ourselves, and the young people around us, to approach social media feeds with mindfulness, even occasionally?

Mindful Social Media

Yes, social media is contributing to a new era of adolescent (and adult) social stress, but when we accept that it is here to stay, we can also see it as a new opportunity for connection and mindfulness, if we build it. Mindfulness tells us there is insight to be found in anything when we approach it with mindfulness, and that even includes social media.

Try this social media mindfulness practice to explore what your favorite sites are communicating to your subconscious:

1. Find a comfortable, alert, and ready posture. Shrug your shoulders, take a few breaths, and bring awareness to your physical and emotional state in this particular moment.

2. Now open your computer or click on your phone.

3. Before you open up your favorite social media site, consider your intentions and expectations. As you focus on the icon, notice what experiences you have in your mind and body.

4. Why are you about to check this site? What are you hoping to see or not see? How are you going to respond to different kinds of updates you encounter? By checking your social media, are you interested in connecting or in disconnecting and distracting?

5. Close your eyes and focus on your emotional state for three breaths before you begin to engage.

6. Opening your eyes now, look at the first status update or photo, and then sit back and close your eyes again.

7. Notice your response-your emotion. Is it excitement? Boredom? Jealousy? Regret? Fear? How do you experience this emotion in the mind and body? What's the urge-to read on, to click a response, to share yourself, or something else?

8. Wait a breath or two for the sensations and emotions to fade, or focus on your breath, body, or surrounding sounds.

9. Try this practice with one social media update, or for three or five minutes, depending on your time and your practice.

Noticing how social media makes you feel can help you discover how to use it more mindfully. As you become more aware of the emotions you're actually inviting into your day when you visit social media sites, you'll be able to make better decisions about how often to visit those sites.

And, keep in mind, the science of social media is more complex than we might think. For example, research shows that the more we look at others' carefully curated social media status, the worse we tend to feel. But, the opposite is also true: if we look back at our own updates, we often see the positive aspects of our life presented and tend to feel better. So consider scrolling through your own updates sometimes, as you look at everyone else's.

Technology does not define us, despite social media trying to put us into categories and reduce us to a series of likes and interests. Examining and changing our own relationship to technology opens the door for us teach through example and to practice new ways of making technology foster community and wellness.

This article was adapted from Dr. Christopher Willard's book Growing Up Mindful .

Subscribe to learn more about the best mindfulness practices.

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Before You Scroll, Try This Mindful Social Media Practice

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How many times a day do you check into your social feeds? How many times do you hit refresh in one visit? Our need to be social can backfire on social media, when we accidentally activate the comparing mind, which is a source of much unhappiness. Of course, this can happen offline, too.

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This is a blog post that answers a mother's concerns about her children using social media. She needs good reasons to limit their use of social media. The writer that answers her lists all negative social media outcomes on children's social and emotional development. I think the list brings up some important issues, but also overlooks many of the positive effects of social media. In general, when we speak of social media we shouldn't treat it as a black or white phenomenon. We should emphasize the nuances.

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Dear Dr. G.,

I heard you on the radio talking about social media and why too much use may be a problem for our teens. I'm kind of with you, because my teenage kids spend hours on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On the other hand, I don't have any compelling arguments to make to my kids about why they should get off the computer, etc. Can you help me, please? I don't like to get my kids angry at me, but I am willing to if I have good reasons. I grew up at a time when my mother made us go play outside and we didn't have all of this technology. I would appreciate any and all help from you.

A Mother In Texas

Dear Mother,

I believe that some social media use is fine. It becomes problematic, however, when teens are lacking balance in their lives and are texting, tweeting etc. to the exclusion of other activities like exercise, seeing their friends in person and getting out of the house.

Let me tell you my arguments and concerns so that you will be in a better position to persuade your teens to shut off their computers and see the sunshine.

1. I am concerned that our teens are losing out on the ability to learn about and read social cues. They cannot learn to read non-verbal behavior properly if most of their interacting goes on in the virtual world.

2. Part of learning to be a good friend, co-worker etc. is to learn how to cooperate with others. This is not a skill learned on the Internet.

3. Your teens need to learn to be inclusive rather than exclusive and cliquey. There are many more opportunities to learn to be inclusive in real life.

4. Your teens need to learn how to deal with free time without staring at a screen. With less screen time,they will have more opportunity to learn how to relax and use leisure time.

5. Social media creates excessive drama. This is because positive messages are read as more neutral than they are intended to be; neutral messages are read as more negative as they are intended to be and one can only imagine what happens with messages that are intended to be negative.

6. Our teens who are already sleep-deprived are becoming more sleep-deprived because many of them are up until the wee hours of the night texting.

7. Teens need to learn to be present in the moment. Too often, I see teens on their smartphones when they are in the company of their peers. They lose the ability to interact mindfully in the moment. Honestly, even adults do that to each other and it is quite upsetting.

AND

8. Teens are more aggressive and sexual when they feel anonymous and are communicating electronically. Things can get out of hand very quickly with both cyber-bullying and sexuality, as we are painfully aware.

These are some reasons why too much social media is a problem. Talk to your teens and feel free to put limits on their use of social media devices. I wish you luck. Please get back to me if you need more advice.

Dr. G.

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Dear Dr. G., I heard you on the radio talking about social media and why too much use may be a problem for our teens. I'm kind of with you, because my teenage kids spend hours on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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Interesting article on what is required of online communities and the people using them to induce behavior change.

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Editor's note: Sean Young is a family medicine professor and director of innovation at the center for behavioral and addiction medicine at UCLA. He writes about topics related to psychology, technology, and public health/medicine at seanyoungphd.com.

Is it just me, or is it impossible to talk to technology entrepreneurs without mentioning user engagement and behavior? I'm a behavioral psychologist, so that might be why I keep having conversations about engagement, but I don't think that's the only reason. I think it's because entrepreneurs have realized that behavior change and engagement is critical to technology development (and to everything else in our lives). Whether we're trying to get people to download or keep playing our fantasy sports applications, convince ourselves to avoid that extra scoop of ice cream, or get our neighbor to stop hitting her snooze button at 5:00, 5:10, and 5:20 a.m., we understand how difficult it can be to engage people and change behavior.

Before talking about how to do this, it's important that we're on the same page that being able to change behavior is a powerful skill that could be used for good and/or evil. As entrepreneurs seeking to improve the world, we first need to make sure that 1) the products we are creating will benefit (rather than harm) society, and 2) the behavior(s) we want to change to be able to help us achieve those objectives. Once we've gotten past those steps, how do we change behavior?

Fortunately, there's a science behind how to change behavior, and the answer to engagement and behavior change lies in understanding people's psychology. By addressing people's psychological needs and reasons for not changing behavior (including their social environments, cultural values, and emotions), we can be more effective at behavior change. Once we understand people's psychologies, then technologies - online communities in particular - become really useful as platforms to rapidly change behavior.

Changing behavior one social network at a time

Although social media and online communities might have been developed for people to connect and share information, recent research shows that these technologies are really helpful in changing behaviors. My colleagues and I in the medical school, for instance, created online communities designed to improve health by getting people to do things, such as test for HIV, stop using methamphetamines, and just de-stress and relax. We don't handpick people to join because we think they'll love the technology; that's not how science works. We invite them because the technology is relevant to them - they're engaging in drugs, sex and other behaviors that might put themselves and others at risk. It's our job to create the communities in a way that engages them enough to want to stay and participate. Yes, we do offer to pay them $30 to complete an hour-long survey, but then they are free to collect their money and never talk to us again. But for some reason, they stay in the group and decide to be actively engaged with strangers.

So how do we create online communities that keep people engaged and change their behaviors? Our starting point is to understand and address their psychological needs.

In most of the studies, we first need to answer their questions about privacy issues (what is being done with their data) and then build a trusting community. Unlike other communities, where people typically join out of interest, we need to create their interest and keep them engaged enough to want to stay and participate. To do this we have to slowly educate them about behavior change so that they feel comfortable and not pushed into changing. Little things such as liking a comment saying, "Everyone having a good day?" help them to feel safe and let them know they can be themselves and have fun connecting with others, without being forced to talk about health. After addressing these needs, we can then educate them and provide concrete, easy steps for how they could change their behavior.

You might think that most people wouldn't actively participate in an online community unless they wanted to be there in the first place and thought it was relevant to them. Well, results from our three-month study released this September in Annals of Internal Medicine, found that over 80 percent of people who joined our groups were actively involved, and people in the intervention study groups were more likely to change their behaviors compared to people who were not. Interestingly, we keep finding that these research groups become actual online communities; in our first study, the actual intervention ended over two years ago, but people continue to actively use the community to reach out and support each other.
The Core Components
Throughout our research, we find that newly created online communities can change people's behaviors by addressing the following psychological needs:

The Need to Trust. Sharing our thoughts, experiences, and difficulties with others makes us feel closer to others and increases our trust. When we trust people, we're more open-minded, more willing to learn, and more willing to change our behavior. In our studies, we found that sharing personal information (even something as small as describing what you did today) can help increase trust and change behavior.

The Need to Fit In. Most of us inherently strive to fit in.Social norms, or other people's attitudes and behaviors, heavily influence our own attitudes and behaviors. Each time a new online community or group forms, it creates its own set of social norms and expectations for how people should behave. Most people are willing to change their attitudes and/or behavior to fit these group norms and fit in with the community.

The Need for Self-Worth. When people feel good about themselves, they are more open to change and feel empowered to be able to change their behavior. When an online community is designed to have people support and care for each other, they can help to increase self-esteem.

The Need to Be Rewarded for Good Behavior. Anyone who has trained a puppy knows that you can get him to keep sitting as long as you keep the treats flowing to reward him, but if you want to wean him off the treats and really train him then you'll need to begin spacing out the treats to make them less predictable. Well, people aren't that different from animals in that way and can be trained with reinforcements too. For example, "liking" people's communications when they immediately join a network, and then progressively spacing out the time that their posts are liked (psychologists call this variable reinforcement) can be incorporated onto social network platforms to encourage them to keep posting content. Eventually, these behaviors become habits.

The Need to Feel Empowered. While increasing self-esteem makes people feel good about themselves, increasing empowerment helps them know they have the ability to change. Creating a sense of empowerment is one of the most powerful predictors of whether people will change their behavior. Belonging to a network of people who are changing their own behaviors, support our needs, and are confident in our changing our behavior empowers us and gives us the ability to change our behavior.

Throughout my research career I've found that understanding psychological needs is the core of behavior change and engagement across all domains. People are complicated, so this list is by no means comprehensive, but addressing these needs should get you a long way toward how you can use technologies to change and sustain behavior.

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The Science Behind Using Online Communities To Change Behavior

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Editor's note: Sean Young is a family medicine professor and director of innovation at the center for behavioral and addiction medicine at UCLA. He writes about topics related to psychology, technology, and public health/medicine at seanyoungphd.com. Is it just me, or is it impossible to talk to technology entrepreneurs without mentioning user engagement and behavior?

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Bar Luce in Milan - A Stunning Cafe Designed by Wes Anderson

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Italy has some of the world's most trendy bars and cafes. Located in Milan, Bar Luce is a stunning cafe designed by famous film director, Wes Anderson. At the cafe you can enjoy delicious Italian gelato, cakes, coffees and cocktails alongside retro jukeboxes and pinball machines all within a beautiful interior decor stylised by Wes Anderson.