The Blog Experiment | Technology Nonsense and Internet Tripe

Day after day of nothing to do other than scroll — on Insta, on TikTok, on YouTube. This was the reality for the teens of Social Studies, the FX docuseries that chronicled their lives as they slowly returned to the normalcy shattered by COVID. Esteemed photographer and documentarian Lauren Greenfield (THIN, The Queen of Versailles, Generation Wealth) followed a diverse group of L.A.-area kids as they tip-toed out of lockdown, exploring how each teen handled the overt sexuality and rampant materialism they’re fed on social media. Some of the kids pose suggestively for likes and reposts, others engage in unhealthy digital relationships, still others succumb to peer pressure and comparison culture. All the while, cameras roll and executive producer Greenfield probes her world-weary subjects with difficult questions — and often receives shockingly candid answers.To take part in the series, Greenfield required her cast to not only expose their lives, but also their phones. We see the teens scroll, text, and FaceTime while the audience — and, eventually, many of the subjects’ parents — realize this generation is living through an adolescence like no other. Greenfield talked with Mashable about her remarkable series, describing her biggest takeaway from spending a year and a half with the teens of the 2020s. Mashable: What was the impetus for Social Studies?Lauren Greenfield: It grew out of my very first project, which was a book about teenagers in Los Angeles called Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood. I was actually looking at…The secret online lives of high schoolers: FX's 'Social Studies' lifts the veil

What do you do when people aren’t taking the climate crisis seriously? You make them part of the problem. That’s the narrative-altering tack taken by Act of Man, a new nonpartisan climate coalition and social activation that’s shifting the vocabulary around so-called “natural” disasters to center the increasingly essential role of human climate change in extreme weather — weather that should more accurately be called “unnatural.” SEE ALSO: Online experts you can trust for Hurricane Milton info Getting real on the state of the climateThe scope and frequency of “unnatural disasters” is convincing enough for the linguistic shift. In 2022, Americans endured the most active year for extreme weather events ever recorded in the U.S. Among drought, wildfire, and winter storm crises, the country fielded nine severe weather events, two tornado outbreaks, three tropical cyclones (hurricanes), and one mass flooding event — these 18 events totaled $165 billion dollars in damage.This year, as two life-threatening hurricanes touched down on the southeastern United States in the span of just one month, the country has already broken that record. An August report from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information details 20 confirmed weather and climate disaster events. Those are just the disasters happening at large scale, each totaling more than $1 billion in damages. More important than the numbers: Communities from coast to coast are still dealing with the repercussions. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that this hurricane season — which has already led to the deaths of more than 200 people and displaced…Reaching people who believe extreme weather events are 'natural'

BlueSky isn’t trying to replace Twitter, all of a sudden. Instead, it’s making a pitch to replace Threads, Meta’s Twitter alternative. The social media platform created an account on Threads this week and immediately began pitching itself as an alternative to the site. Threads has come under fire lately for its haphazard content moderation and a rise in posts that are clear engagement bait. BlueSky was more than happy to claim it does a better job at all that Threads gets wrong. “heard people were talking about us … so we created an account to share some more information!” the BlueSky account wrote on Threads, before getting into its content moderation policies and how its platform works. Shade about Threads, on Threads. Credit: Threads / bluesky_social BlueSky pitched the idea that its moderation is largely left into the hands of users and that posts get engagement by…being actually engaging. It also noted in a different post that it wasn’t owned by someone like Mark Zuckerberg. It wrote: “we’re not like the other girls… we’re not owned by a billionaire.” Threads, BlueSky, and others all popped up as Elon Musk reimagined Twitter into what we now see on X. There really hasn’t been a collective migration to one site or another, but rather a gradual fracturing of the site Twitter once was. Though for many, there really has been no alternative to Twitter — it takes time to build that user-base and familiarity — and they’re sticking with the often-faulty X,…BlueSky is pitching itself as a Threads alternative now

Social media has been a part of Americans’ lives for well over a decade and, in part because of its newness, some people argue that there is a dearth of research about its effect on us — particularly its effect on young people.For the first time ever, the Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey assessed the frequency of social media use among U.S. high school students. Using that data, the organization drew some conclusions on the relationship between high school students’ social media use and bullying, feelings of hopelessness, and suicide risk. The findings show that most students use social media frequently and it significantly affects their mental health. SEE ALSO: Teens feel burnt out. Social media can make it worse. The study showed that the vast majority — 77 percent — of high school students use social media at least several times a day, which the CDC defines as “frequent social media use.” Female students use social media more — 81.8 percent — in comparison to male students’ 72.9 percent. Heterosexual students reported using it more frequently than lesbian and gay students, 79.2 percent to 67.7 percent, but bisexual and questioning students reported using social media more frequently than students identifying with any other sexual orientation with 82.2 and 82.6 percent, respectively. “Students who reported frequent social media use were more likely to be bullied at school and electronically bullied compared with less frequent social media users,” the report reads. “Frequent social media users also were more…CDC confirms link between teen social media use and mental health struggles

Social media has been a part of Americans’ lives for well over a decade and, in part because of its newness, some people argue that there is a dearth of research about its effect on us — particularly its effect on young people.For the first time ever, the Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey assessed the frequency of social media use among U.S. high school students. Using that data, the organization drew some conclusions on the relationship between high school students’ social media use and bullying, feelings of hopelessness, and suicide risk. The findings show that most students use social media frequently and it significantly affects their mental health. SEE ALSO: Teens feel burnt out. Social media can make it worse. The study showed that the vast majority — 77 percent — of high school students use social media at least several times a day, which the CDC defines as “frequent social media use.” Female students use social media more — 81.8 percent — in comparison to male students’ 72.9 percent. Heterosexual students reported using it more frequently than lesbian and gay students, 79.2 percent to 67.7 percent, but bisexual and questioning students reported using social media more frequently than students identifying with any other sexual orientation with 82.2 and 82.6 percent, respectively. “Students who reported frequent social media use were more likely to be bullied at school and electronically bullied compared with less frequent social media users,” the report reads. “Frequent social media users also were more…CDC confirms link between teen social media use and mental health struggles

Save $75: Walmart’s 10-foot-tall skeleton named Steve is on sale for $174, down from its typical list price of $249. It might just be the next best thing to Home Depot’s viral, sold-out giant skeleton. Opens in a new window Credit: Walmart Steve the Poseable 10′ Skeleton $174.00 at Walmart $249.00 Save $75.00 Get Deal Walmart might have the deal to make all your spooky season dreams come true. Its 10-foot skeleton decoration, dubbed Steve, is $75 off on the heels of Amazon’s Prime Day. Typically, Steve will run you a $249 but its price is reduced 30 percent to $174. Walmart’s giant, 10-foot skeleton is not the viral giant skeleton you might’ve seen everywhere for the past few years. Home Depot’s Skelly has become a Halloween staple since its debut in 2020. But Skelly, which retails for $299, is currently out of stock, meaning ol’ Steve might be your next best option. Still, Walmart’s Steve is pretty massive and can be put into different poses — so let your creativity run wild this Halloween season.A 10-foot skeleton named Steve is on sale at Walmart

Dateline: Woking, 10th October 2024.Do you think that getting rid of cash will reduce crime or increase it? We can look at Scandinavia for indicators, since there are a great many people in Scandinavia who cannot remember when they last used cash. Cash-related crimes such as bank robbery are down (twenty years ago Denmark had 200 bank robberies per annum, last year it had none) as is tax evasion. The Swedish black market appears to have contracted, just as cashless campaigner Bjorn (from ABBA) and others had hoped.Share In the future, everyone will be famous for 15MbDifferent Kinds Of CrimeThe presence of cash means the presence of criminals and many of them are violent. Not only guns, but all sorts of weapons. This guy did not smash his car through the doors of a grocery store in England to threaten staff and demand credit card receipts. He demanded cash.(It’s not a purely English problem. There were nearly 900 robberies using a vehicle as a weapon in the US in 2022.)In largely cashless Sweden, online crime has surged, with criminals taking more than $100m in 2023 through a variety of scams. Does this $100m make Sweden a “high crime” country as the article implies? No, it does not. I would think that Swedish citizens are more concerned about violent gang warfare and a tripling of the murder rate, but for comparison according to UK Finance the equivalent scams in the UK were well over $1 billion back in 2022.While cash attracts…Cash And Crime

Lydia Bach, a 15-year-old sophomore living in New York City, has a message for adults who think teens can’t possibly experience burnout.”If people want to find out what teens are burnt out about, they have to just take a look at the world,” Bach says, rattling off stressors like gun violence and global conflict, not to mention the “ever-looming threat that we actually won’t have a future because of climate change.” Now, she says, imagine you’re a high school student also trying to constantly “be better” and “do better,” because “productivity culture” demands regular self-improvement. Meanwhile, you’re painfully aware of the economic stakes of your high school career. Without a high grade point average, you might not get into the good college, which will set you up for the well-paying job with health insurance. Trying to meet high expectations set by parents, teachers, coaches, peers, and even themselves, teens have to also contend with social media. The unpredictable algorithmic force that is the internet often amplifies the different pressures that teens feel, according to a new report on grind culture from Common Sense Media, the Center for Digital Thriving at Harvard School of Education, and Indiana University. SEE ALSO: Why teens are telling strangers their secrets online For teens, these pressures include feeling like they need to have a “game plan” for their future; that they must rack up “exceptional” achievements; and that they should look and present themselves in a certain way. More than a quarter of the 1,545…Teens feel burnt out. Social media can make it worse.

Listen up, losers: We can tell when your posts are made with an audience in mind and we don’t like it. It sounds like ChatGPT, it is the lowest possible denominator of posting, and, worst of all, it’s boring.I come to you with a solution: Delete your drafts. It’s a strategy I learned with a fair bit of hesitance — why work so hard just to trash it all — but one that’s paid off. My journey in deleting began in 2022 when I attended a writers workshop in need of a creative reset. I was paralyzed not with fear but with an obligation to an imagined reader. After years of getting paid to write, I had stopped writing it for the good of the story and started writing it for an audience — the Mashable audience, the NPR audience, or some other invented audience that might enjoy the piece, take something from the piece, and, importantly, give me money for writing the piece. Soon enough, a good idea had been reduced to something boring, watered-down from its initial promise.  The pressure creatives feel to constantly produce content for an audience — and ultimately for validation — can ruin our ability to actually create interesting work.My mentor at the workshop recommended I try something new: Write the work and let my brain take it where it takes it, whether that’s with an audience in mind or not, and when I felt it was perfected — that moment I would typically send it to an…Have writer's block? Delete your drafts.

Another powerful hurricane is barreling towards Florida directly on the heels of the devastation wrought across multiple states by Hurricane Helene. Hurricane Milton has strengthened into a Category 5 storm that is all but certain to make landfall in Florida as soon as Wednesday. Mashable has the info on the latest projections for where and when the storm might hit via forecasting spaghetti models. But the long and short of it is that a major hurricane is once again heading for the state. “Milton can bring a variety of life-threatening dangers, including an extreme storm surge of 10-15 feet along and near the coast, including in the Tampa Bay area, destructive winds and major flooding to one of the most densely populated parts of Florida, the I-4 corridor, especially from Tampa toward Orlando,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter.  Tweet may have been deleted But, because the internet is the internet, there has been loads of fake information circulating about the dangerous storm. While Floridians should expect another damaging hurricane, they can also expect to see more misinformation about Milton. Milton is not a HAARP ‘weather weapon’ that ‘they’ can controlThis shouldn’t be something that we need to explain but, no, neither the government nor some nefarious “they” are able to generate a storm to unleash on its own citizens. But that is something that’s circulating online ahead of Milton’s landfall. Typically speaking, these sorts of conspiracy theories are coming from rightwing accounts that specialize in trafficking that kind of misinformation….Hurricane Milton: Debunking online conspiracy theories as the storm looms