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Why Many Digital Natives Choose Not to Give Their Kids Smartphones: A Parent’s Perspective

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In 2019, when Sophie* was 12 years old, her classmates shared “extreme and traumatic” videos featuring al-Qaeda beheadings, pornography, and bestiality. She recalls online games where adult players tried to persuade her to meet in person. Her father worked there, but reflecting back, she says, “There were no signs for my generation of parents.”

Now 18 and attending the University of Edinburgh, she didn’t permit her children to have smartphones until adulthood. “As a teenager, I would have been the strongest advocate for phone ownership, but my perspective changed completely,” she stated.

“You shouldn’t engage online until you’re an adult and understand the various ways people act respectfully to push their interests. It’s a fleeting message.”

Social media exacerbated bullying at Sophie’s school. Officials used an anonymous confession app to share hurtful comments. She also ponders what other time she might have wasted.

Sophie is one of many so-called digital natives who question the nearly unrestricted access to technology they grew up with. Recent polls indicate that nearly half of young people feel the internet is almost non-existent, with similar numbers favoring digital curfews; over three-quarters reported feeling worse about themselves after using social media.




Izzy Bouric, 24, with her flip phone, which helped her regain time and mental space. Photo: Magalidellport/Guardian

Meanwhile, the Netflix hit series has ignited discussions about the dangers children face on social media and the prevalence of online misogyny across different platforms.

Izzy Bourick, a 24-year-old artist from Brighton living in Paris, believes that platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Roblox have muddled the lines between children’s and adults’ spaces in recent years.

“I engaged with the online children’s game Club Penguin, where the environment was controlled to be child-friendly, banning inappropriate language.”

Nonetheless, Izzy stated, “I was definitely exposed to things I wasn’t ready for,” adding, “everyone from my generation has been in chat rooms with people much older than us.”

She permits kids to have smartphones from the age of 17. “It’s not fit for children, nor for those not equipped to handle it,” she explains, “it’s unsafe to navigate without guidance.”

She feels social media has become overwhelming, “cannibalized by advertising and businesses,” spreading misinformation on sensitive issues like mental health and neurological conditions. “Suddenly, my phone was inundating me with messages that I was doing everything wrong, only to turn around and pitch products to me.”

This shift left her anxious and frustrated, prompting her to choose a flip phone, which feels liberating and has helped her reclaim her time and mental clarity.




“I found myself in a moment of despair,” shares Tobias, 20, from Austria.

Tobias, 20 from Austria, got his first smartphone around 11 or 12, and noticed a change in his peers. “People would sit together but wouldn’t talk—everyone just scrolled on their phones.”

His school implemented a policy to turn off phones, but teachers quickly abandoned it. “There was always a buzz and the constant sound of notifications,” he recalled.

As a teenager, he found himself binge-watching videos on YouTube and Instagram. “After scrolling through short videos for hours and reflecting, ‘Wow, that was fast—I’m neglecting what I want to do,’ I recognized I was in a state of despair.”

Tobias became particularly concerned when his interest in first-person shooter games led to algorithm recommendations showcasing real firearms and violent content. He now believes, “It’s best for children and teens to limit their smartphone usage.”

Lethe, a 20-year-old paramedic student near Birmingham, England, allowed children to use smartphones only after age 16 and restricted their media access.

She received her first smartphone at 18 but quickly realized that it contributed to bullying among friends, reduced attention spans, and replaced meaningful conversations with endless scrolling on social media.

Two years after getting her first phone, she remarked, “It definitely changed me. I’m not good at being bored, and my attention span has decreased. I’m struggling to be present. Social media algorithms expose me to things I don’t wish to see.”

Nora, a project manager in Spain, restricts social media access until age 13 and limits usage while fostering open dialogue about risks with children. “When they encounter something distressing, I strive to create a trusting environment so they feel comfortable discussing it with me.”

She recalls a situation where, at 13, she and her peers began receiving messages from strangers on Google Messages, leading to inappropriate requests and a subsequent case of pedophilia.

She also remembers a classmate who bullied peers on messaging apps. “I faced some harsh messages myself,” she shared.

Nora later discovered that social media had worsened her struggles with eating disorders as she compared herself to other girls and engaged with harmful weight loss transformation videos. “Chasing likes on Instagram wasn’t healthy for me.”

Now, she worries about her 16-year-old brother. “His TikTok is filled with misogynistic concepts and toxic masculinity. His friends make harmful comments about women’s bodies. That wasn’t the environment for me and my friends.”

*Name changed

Source: www.theguardian.com

The Age of the Brain: How 13 Types of Proteins in the Blood Can Give Clues

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Researchers trained artificial intelligence model to measure people's age from brain scans

Laboratory/Alamy

The abundance of 13 types of proteins in the blood appears to be a strong indicator of how quickly the brain is aging. This suggests that blood tests could one day help people track and even improve their brain health.

Most previous studies have looked at protein markers of brain aging in the blood. Less than 1000 peoplesay nicolas seyfried from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, was not involved in the new study.

To get a broader idea of ​​the effects of these proteins, Liu Weishi Researchers from Fudan University in China analyzed MRI brain scan data from around 11,000 adults (approximately 50 to 80 years old at the time of the images) who took part in the UK Biobank project.

Liu's team trained an artificial intelligence model using data from 70% of the participants to determine features of brain images, such as the size of different brain regions and how different parts are connected to each other. The age of the participants was predicted based on When the model was applied to the remaining 30% of participants, its predictions were accurate to within 2.7 years of their actual age.

The researchers then used the model to predict the age of another group of about 4,700 people, with an average age of 63, who also underwent brain imaging for UK Biobank. The researchers calculated the difference between these participants' actual ages and their AI-predicted ages, called the brain age gap. “The higher the age predicted by the AI ​​compared to the actual age, the faster the brain ages,” Liu says.

The group also provided blood samples around the same time as the brain imaging. From this, the research team identified eight proteins that appear to increase in abundance as brain age increases, and five proteins that appear to decrease in abundance.

In an analysis of data from previous studies, researchers confirmed that these proteins are produced by brain cells and that their levels can influence the risk of dementia and stroke.

This suggests that blood tests for these proteins may reveal how quickly the brain ages. “These markers may be canaries in the coal mine that say, 'Hey, look, let's start doing interventions that slow brain aging while there's still plenty of time,'” Seyfried said.

But for this to be helpful, we need to know that these proteins can change with lifestyle changes. “If I run this much, I'll lose this much weight, if I change my diet, [then] We can correct these levels and bring them back into normal range,” Seyfried says.

Because the study was conducted primarily among wealthy white people, Seyfried said more research is needed to see if the results hold true for other populations with more diverse ethnicities and income levels.

The research team now hopes to conduct studies in animals to determine exactly how the 13 proteins affect the brain. For example, researchers might test whether disrupting levels of these proteins affects cognition or even the development of neurodegenerative conditions, Liu says. “In the coming decades, this could open up ways to target proteins to slow aging and disease.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

New study uncovers how African elephants give each other distinct names

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WASHINGTON — African elephants communicate through calls and respond to their own names, a behavior rarely observed in the wild, according to a new study published Monday.

These names are embedded in the elephants’ distinctive low-pitched vocalizations that carry across the savanna, suggesting that animals with intricate social structures, where family units frequently disband and reunite, are more likely to have individual names.

Ecologist Stuart Pimm from Duke University, who was not involved in the study, remarked, “If you’re managing a large family, you need to be able to call out, ‘Hey, Virginia, come over here!'”

The phenomenon of animals calling each other by name is exceptionally rare in the wild. Humans have names, allowing us to call out to others, and pets like dogs also respond to their names. Baby Dolphin Birds have their own unique names, known as signature whistles, while parrots may also utilize names.

These named species possess the ability to learn and produce distinct sounds throughout their lives, a skill elephants also share.

Biologists conducted research on wild ecology and evolution using machine learning to identify name usage in audio recordings of savanna elephant vocalizations captured in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park.

By observing the elephants from vehicles, researchers were able to determine which elephants were calling and responding to each other, such as a mother calling for her calf or an older female reaching out to a stray elephant later rejoining the group.

The computer model, analyzing the audio data likely containing names, accurately predicted the addressed elephant 28% of the time, compared to just 8% with meaningless data.

Lead author Mickey Pardo, a biologist at Cornell University, explained, “Like humans, elephants utilize names, but we can’t rely on them entirely as they likely don’t use names in the majority of their vocalizations.”

Elephants incorporate sounds beyond the human hearing range in their calls, leaving scientists uncertain about the specific vocal components that form an elephant’s name.

To validate their findings, researchers played the recordings to individual elephants. The elephants showed heightened responses, including ear flapping and trunk lifting, to recordings containing their names. Some elephants even disregarded vocalizations meant for other elephants.

“Elephants are highly social beings, constantly communicating and interacting, and this system of naming could be a fundamental aspect of their communication abilities,” noted co-author George Wittemyer, an ecologist at Colorado State University and a science advisor for Save the Elephants.

“We’ve provided a glimpse into the elephant’s cognitive world.”

Source: www.nbcnews.com

Gold Flecks Give Ultra-Clear Glass a Completely Opaque Appearance on One Side

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Objects visible through glare-free materials are clear, but traditional anti-glare films (right) blur the view.

Mu Wang et al/Nanjing University

Glare-free windows can be made from materials studded with billions of tiny metal patches. This leaves the one-way window matte – it looks opaque and reflects only 1% of the light from outside – but it is still transparent, so it doesn’t blur your view or significantly reduce the amount of light it lets in. You may be able to secure the privacy of your car or office without having to worry about it. They let them in.

Mu Wan Nanjing University in China and his colleagues have created a glass-like material with a matte finish similar to frosted glass, called transparent material surface (TMS). Unlike existing anti-glare coatings and films, objects can be viewed and photographed through TMS without blur.

Wang notes that matte and transparent are typically mutually exclusive properties. To accomplish both at the same time, he and his team coated the material with nanosized patches that scatter and reflect light in just the right way. They make these parts from reflective metals like gold and materials like silicon that conduct electricity poorly, which reduces the amount of light reflected. They then placed billions of them onto glass wafers.

They tested it by shining a light on it and found that a camera with a TMS wafer over the lens could reflect just 1.3% of the light while transmitting enough light to take clear photos. . The researchers also asked the AI ​​to identify a tennis ball on the other side, combined with a camera connected to the AI ​​that labels the object. The AI ​​was successful when viewing the ball through TMS, but labeled the ball as “unidentified” when viewing through the blur created by traditional anti-glare film.

“The most exciting part of the experiment for us was the interesting moment when we saw the freshly prepared 4-inch sample with our own eyes for the first time without any special equipment. The material became transparent when light passed through it. It was difficult to imagine that there would be no distortion in the image, but it would look dull when reflecting light,” says Wang.

Simon Horsley Researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK say the material is suitable for making “very large windows” and could help reduce light pollution. Reflections are a major source of light pollution, and this material helps minimize light pollution by reflecting soft, diffused light instead of annoying bright glare.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Give Your Proposal Materials a Refresh with These Tips

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The holidays are in full swing. So when people go on vacation, they might start receiving auto-reply emails.

But don’t let a relatively quiet holiday stop you from fundraising. According to DocSend’s report on funding trends, young startups don’t seem to be getting as much attention. This means that they have been trying to attract investors’ attention without success. For example, investors are spending less time on the “product” and “business model” slides, and significantly more time on the “competitor” slides.

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Now is the perfect time to brush up your pitch deck, practice your pitch, and be ready for when it starts again next year, writes resident pitch deck expert Haje Jan Kamps.

thank you for reading!

Karin

secondary, venture secondary,

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As I wrote last week, if startup IPOs pick up in 2024, as many predict, the secondary market could start to return to normal. But what are investors in the secondary venture market thinking now? One of the things venture reporter Rebecca Skutak found in her research is that LPs don’t actually want liquidity as much as you think.

Deep tech startups should use these 4 techniques when raising capital

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Roman Axelrod, founder of smart contact lens maker XPANCEO, knows a thing or two about raising capital for deep technology startups. His company just raised a $40 million seed round. He offers his four tips on what to focus on when raising capital for his own deep tech business.

Why internal platforms can undermine your business strategy

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That’s natural. It’s better to build tools in-house than to buy or subscribe to them from a vendor. Having control over every aspect of your business reduces costs and even increases efficiency.

But not so soon, says Asanka Abeysinghe, CTO of WSO2. Having complete control over everything is an “illusion” and “leads organizations down a path full of unforeseen challenges and constraints.” What may seem like a comprehensive solution at first, quickly becomes can turn into a quagmire of rising costs, lack of focus, and suffocating complexity. ”

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Startups need to master operations

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“While technological innovation gets most of the glory, operational innovation is the next big leap for companies looking to gain a competitive edge,” writes Accelsius CEO Josh Claman. He offers some tips on how companies should think about innovation rather than improvement and excellence.

Source: techcrunch.com