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"Maybe you are. How exactly would you know? The digital police aren't going to flag you when you've met your technology threshold. On the other hand, constant use has become normalized. The toddler tinkering with a tablet, the teen locked away in their room tied to their computer, and to the adult buried in their phone at a social engagement are just a few examples of ordinary use. In our present day, the increase in popularity and integration of technology in our daily lives prompts one to ponder the potential of developing an addiction to technology. At what point are we at risk for crossing the fine line from general use to problematic use?"

"Imagine that you could open an app, while you're riding on the subway or sitting at a bar, that could tell you everything about everyone sitting around you. Using facial recognition software, it could tap into social networks and databases to show you each person's name and occupation. It could tell you whether you share mutual friends or common interests. It could even pull up their financial or criminal records. The potential for abuse is so dire, even Microsoft's president recently called on the government to regulate the technology. Judith Donath, a social technology researcher who has spent decades studying online culture at MIT and Harvard, believes this sort of advanced facial recognition technology is inevitable. But whether it turns into the ultimate icebreaker or a digital panopticon, she says, is entirely up to us."

"Immersion can already put you inside a giant redwood and a cell in Maine State Prison, and developers are building ways to holographically transport us into 3D digital worlds and allow us to live the experiences of another person. But how far can this go-and how will it change us? We talked to five immersive technology pioneers working across journalism, filmmaking, storytelling, and scientific research. Their ideas offer a range of perspectives about the potential of immersive technologies. What they all have in common, however, is the belief that immersive technology can be a positive force for the future - depending on what the rest of us choose to do with it."

"When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But I want to show you where it might do the opposite. Where does technology exploit our minds' weaknesses? I learned to think this way when I was a magician. Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people's perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people's buttons, you can play them like a piano. And this is exactly what product designers do to your mind. They play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention. I want to show you how they do it."

"eople are known to walk, talk, and eat while sleeping. Increasingly, sleep texting is joining the list. A study from Villanova University found that the habit of using smartphones to message friends while still asleep - and having no memory of doing it - is a common technology trend among adolescents and young adults. The paper, "Interrupted sleep: College students sleeping with technology," was published last month in the Journal of American College Health. The study is the first nursing article to look at sleep texting. Researchers concluded it was a growing trend in the college student population."

" People have been addicted to substances for thousands of years, but for the past two decades, we've also been hooked on technologies, like Instagram, Netflix, Facebook, Fitbit, Twitter, and email-platforms we've adopted because we assume they'll make our lives better. These inventions have profound upsides, but their appeal isn't an accident. Technology companies and marketers have teams of engineers and researchers devoted to keeping us engaged. They know how to push our buttons, and how to coax us into using their products for hours, days, and weeks on end."

"People have been addicted to substances for thousands of years, but for the past two decades, we've also been hooked on technologies, like Instagram, Netflix, Facebook, Fitbit, Twitter, and email-platforms we've adopted because we assume they'll make our lives better. These inventions have profound upsides, but their appeal isn't an accident. Technology companies and marketers have teams of engineers and researchers devoted to keeping us engaged. They know how to push our buttons, and how to coax us into using their products for hours, days, and weeks on end. Tracing addiction through history, Alter shows that we're only just beginning to understand the epidemic of behavioral addiction gripping society. He takes us inside the human brain at the very moment we score points on a smartphone game, or see that someone has liked a photo we've posted on Instagram. But more than that, Alter heads the problem off at the pass, letting us know what we can do to step away from the screen. He lays out the options we have to address this problem before it truly consumes us. After all, who among us hasn't struggled to ignore the ding of a new email, the next episode in a TV series, or the desire to play a game just one more time?"

"It's easy to blame adolescent angst on technology. After all, the suddenness of technology's sheer ubiquity makes it the obvious culprit. But isn't it also possible that technology just amplifies all of the world's other problems-like climate change, gun violence, the difficulty of getting into college, and more? Plus, technology provides youth a place to escape from these problems and to commiserate with peers. It's complex and there's still a lot we don't know."

"Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks alarmed by a race for human attention"

"I know, it sounds like I might be about to join the cacophony of grand claims around immersive media technologies, such as those relating to behaviour change, empathy development, and bias reduction. Meanwhile, a commonly heard concern is that digital media technologies distract us, take us out of the "here and now"- affixing our attention to a mobile phone perhaps, or isolating us behind a head mounted display. Notwithstanding these fraught debates, it seems clear that one of the affordances of immersive media, and VR in particular, is the creation of a sense of presence, of "being there." So why take a user out of the "here and now" and attempt to situate her somewhere else?"

"Technology helps us run our lives, do our jobs, get directions and keep track of our calendars. Right? Or, is technology taking control of our lives - stealing our time, and shattering our attention into a thousand pieces?"

" Despite dramatic changes in the form, the basic premise of advertising has remained unchanged-strangers with an agenda attempt to co-opt your attention and guide your thoughts. But technology has fundamentally changed the extent to which we experience advertising. Empowered by technology's inexorable expansion into every facet of our lives, modern advertising has become so ubiquitous that it is unavoidable. Every new technology has advertising potential, and the brands of our brave new world hate nothing more than wasted potential."

"Technology has always promised a better future … eventually. Somehow the real breakthroughs have always seemed to be just around the corner. But somehow, when we weren't quite paying attention, the future actually arrived. Thanks to forward-thinking researchers calling on advances in genomics, artificial intelligence, food science, and drug hacking, a more resilient, enlightened, and cognitively-, physically-, and sexually-enhanced human already walks among us. (And her skin is amazing.) Here, eight exciting new health technologies - and where they're heading next."

"That itch to glance at our phone is a natural reaction to apps and websites engineered to get us scrolling as frequently as possible. The attention economy, which showers profits on companies that seize our focus, has kicked off what Harris calls a "race to the bottom of the brain stem." "You could say that it's my responsibility" to exert self-control when it comes to digital usage, he explains, "but that's not acknowledging that there's a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain." In short, we've lost control of our relationship with technology because technology has become better at controlling us."

"The curriculum is broken into six sections: historical perspective social media writing process engagement social media writing structure media analysis law/ethics Even though technology is constantly advancing, I believe these sections can be adapted for any type of technology or new social media network that will be developed."

"Are you addicted to technology? I'm certainly not. In my first sitting reading Adam Alter's Irresistible, an investigation into why we can't stop scrolling and clicking and surfing online, I only paused to check my phone four times. Because someone might have emailed me. Or texted me. One time I stopped to download an app Alter mentioned (research) and the final time I had to check the shares on my play brokerage app, Best Brokers (let's call this one "business")."

"Let's put something to rest: Facebook isn't spying through your phone's microphone to serve you ads for sweatshirts and seltzer water. It probably couldn't even if it wanted to. But if the social network isn't listening to you, that doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't watching. Advertisements in the real world are becoming more technologically sophisticated, integrating facial recognition, location data, artificial intelligence, and other powerful tools that are more commonly associated with your mobile phone. Welcome to the new age of digital marketing. During this year's Fashion Week in New York, a digital billboard ad for New Balance used A.I. technology to detect and highlight pedestrians wearing "exceptional" outfits. A billboard advertisement for the Chevy Malibu recently targeted drivers on Interstate 88 in Chicago by identifying the brand of vehicle they were driving, then serving ads touting its own features in comparison. And Bidooh, a Manchester-based startup that admits it was inspired by Minority Report, is using facial recognition to serve ads through its billboards in the U.K. and other parts of Europe as well as South Korea. According to its website, Bidooh allows advertisers to target people based on criteria like age, gender, ethnicity, hair color, clothing color, height, body shape, perceived emotion, and the presence of glasses, sunglasses, beards, or mustaches. We've been on the path here since at least a decade ago when the New York Times reported that some digital billboards were equipped with small cameras that could analyze a pedestrian's facial features to serve targeted ads based on gender and approximate age. "

"For the past couple years, I've been complaining rather emphatically about the way digital technology has been used to desocialize us - how platforms like Facebook and YouTube turn us against one another by emphasizing our differences and encouraging us to behave like threatened reptiles. This is indeed lamentable, but in many ways, it's nothing new. Our media and technologies have been undermining our social bonds for centuries. So, what's different now? Is this digital alienation the same thing amplified, or is something else going on? Only when we understand how tech has been working all along can we begin to reckon with what's different about the digital landscape in which we're living."

"Fake news videos aren't new, but they are on the rise and more realistic than ever due to technological advances. What used to be a fairly big production and cost thousands of dollars can now be achieved with a selfie stick and a smartphone. That may not sound like a big deal, but when politics, propaganda and bad intentions enter the fray, the potential to cause harm is staggering and potentially irreparable.   ASU Now spoke to Dan Gillmor and Eric Newton , who launched News Co/Lab in October, a collaborative lab inside the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication that aims to help the public find new ways of understanding and engaging with news and information. They believe fake videos soon will be "trivially easy, inexpensive, and all too believable.""

"Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who became a household name after conducting the Stanford prison experiments, argues that our online culture is disproportionately harming boys, who watch more pornography, waste more time playing video games, and are increasingly bored with their sedentary office jobs.  The cause, Zimbardo explains in his new book "Man (Dis)connected: How Technology has Sabotaged What it Means to Be Male," is biological in nature. Men have what psychologists call "single-cue arousability," meaning one mere stimulus brings them closer to happiness, such as a naked person on a screen, when compared to women who require more complex stimuli to become aroused."

"How technology affects our well-being partly depends on whether it strengthens our relationships."