"Articulate, witty and digitally native, the survivors of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, are using social media to debunk conspiracy theories and amplify their voices in a way the world hasn't seen before. With thoughtful tweets about gun control, a fearlessness for taking on politicians and sharply worded messages to shut down conspiracy theorists, the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are leading a movement. And in classic teenager fashion, they're doing it their way. "I tell my students, 'Don't ever let adults tell you what you are doing [on your smartphones] is a waste of time or it's silly or antisocial,'" said Jeremy Littau, an associate professor of journalism at Lehigh University. "When [this generation] has something to say, they now know how to use these tools in sophisticated ways. That would not have been happening if they hadn't spent last 10 years preparing themselves through these tools.""

"At least half of Happy Meals listed on menus in the United States will not exceed 600 calories and will have other other dietary restrictions, like limits on saturated fat and sodium percentages. In order to accomplish that, McDonald's is taking cheeseburgers off the Happy Meal menu (they are still available upon request), decreasing the amount of fries that come with the six-piece Chicken McNuggets meal, cutting the amount of added sugar in chocolate milk and adding bottled water onto the children's menu, according to the release."

"At least 17 people are dead following another school shooting on American soil, this one in the South Florida town of Parkland. Yesterday's tragedy is the US's third-deadliest school shooting, and one of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern American history. Coverage of the event followed a now-familiar pattern, with cable news shots of students being evacuated, and somber contributors speaking with anchors who seemed resigned to covering these sort of tragedies on a regular basis. Wrapping up an interview with a congressman, CNN's Wolf Blitzer said, "Let's hope it stops. But clearly it won't." One notable difference from coverage of past school shootings was the prevalence of social media postings from students still in the building. Videos of students sheltering in classrooms as gunshots echoed from offscreen provided a terrifying window into the experiences of those trapped in the middle of the chaos. Several outlets also shared text messages that students sent to loved ones. A common theme across the coverage was just how normal these mass casualty events feel. Every few months, it seems, early reports of a shooting-at a school, a church, a concert-lead to news bulletins and breaking coverage followed by hours of somber analysis, thoughts and prayers from some and calls to legislative action from others. But nearly two decades after Columbine, the only thing that's changed is the technology by which audiences experience the carnage. As Blitzer said, it's clear we will be back here."

"The average adult checks their phone 50 to 300 times each day, Greenfield says. And smartphones use psychological tricks that encourage our continued high usage - some of the same tricks slot machines use to hook gamblers. "For example, every time you look at your phone, you don't know what you're going to find - how relevant or desirable a message is going to be," Greenfield says. "So you keep checking it over and over again because every once in a while, there's something good there." (This is called a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. Animal studies suggest it makes dopamine skyrocket in the brain's reward circuity and is possibly one reason people keep playing slot machines.) A growing number of doctors and psychologists are concerned about our relationship with the phone. There's a debate about what to call the problem. Some say "disorder" or "problematic behavior." Others think over-reliance on a smartphone can become a behavioral addiction, like gambling."

"American adolescents watch much more pornography than their parents know - and it's shaping their ideas about pleasure, power and intimacy. Can they be taught to see it more critically?"

"Saying it's "the medias" fault confuses me. Is that your local meteorologist? The person who covers lifestyle news in the city newspaper? The video editor at CNN? The host of an opinion show? Me writing this article? You on social media? Your neighbor who just started a blog? I'm not quite sure who "the media" is (or are), but since everyone else is aware, for the sake of this post, I'll use the term. When people say news and media coverage is slanted and there's an agenda, I really don't see it. This is why."

"The annual Super Bowl game is one of the last appointment TV events: we still gather around the television at the time the game is played.  For weeks before the big game, the media has been abuzz about the commercials.  This website is designed to help you incorporate these ads into instruction, no matter what you teach. Use the links in the left hand column."

"Super Bowl Ad Analysis Worksheet  created by Frank W Baker, Copyright 2018 [permission is granted to duplicate for educational purposes]  See also "Using Super Bowl Ads In The Classroom""

"Everyone wants to be popular online. Some even pay for it. Inside social media's black market."

"Logan Paul's controversial dead body video is a watershed moment in YouTube's effort to grapple with a vast content moderation problem."

"The Atlantic piece "The Binge Breaker" explores Tristan Harris's plan to stop smartphone addiction. He's a former Google employee and the founder of Time Well Spent, an advocacy group that wants the world to disengage more easily from devices. In this interview with PBS Newshour, Harris explains how companies profit from keeping people entranced with their phones. "For any company whose business model is advertising, or engagement-based advertising, meaning they care about the amount of time someone spends on the product, they make more money the more time people spend," he says. "These services are in competition with where we would want to spend our time, whether that's our sleep or with our friends. There's this war going on to get as much attention as possible.""

"From President Donald Trump threatening members of the press to the tech platforms revealing they'd sold advertising to Russian operatives trying to sway the electorate, there was never a slow news day. Below are 10 of the biggest media stories from a year of very big stories."

"What is it that makes you...you? NPR's Shankar Vedantam explores new research that suggests the labels we use to categorize people affect not just who they are now, but who they'll be in the future."

Teens reveal perceptions and impact of misinformation - from PBS NewsHour

"Former Facebook vice president of user growth Chamath Palihapitiya said that social media is "eroding the core foundations of how people behave" and that he feels "tremendous guilt" about creating tools that are "ripping apart the social fabric." During a talk at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in November, Palihapitiya echoed the words of other Facebook dissenters who have recently taken their guilt and grievances public. (h/t The Verge) "You don't realize it, but you are being programmed … but now you got to decide how much you're willing to give up, how much of your intellectual independence," he warned the audience. He said he didn't want to be programmed himself, emphasizing he "doesn't use this shit" and his kids are not allowed to use "this shit" either-also recommending that everyone take a "hard break" from social media."

"The debate about mis- and dis-information has intensified, but, as our report argues, we're still failing to appreciate the complexity of the phenomenon at hand. The report refrains from using the term 'fake news' and urges journalists, academics and policy-makers to do the same. This is for two reasons. First, the term is woefully inadequate to describe the complexities of information disorder. Second, it has been appropriated by politicians worldwide to describe news organizations whose coverage they find disagreeable, and, in this way, has become a mechanism by which the powerful clamp down upon, restrict, undermine and circumvent the free press. Our new definitional framework introduces three types, elements and phases of information disorder. We describe the differences between the three types of information using dimensions of harm and falseness: Mis-information is when false information is shared, but no harm is meant. Dis-information is when false information is knowingly shared to cause harm. Mal-information is when genuine information is shared to cause harm, often by moving private information into the public sphere."

"I don't think we can have an honest conversation about sexual harassment and sexual assault right now without talking about all the ways we have taken women's bodies and turned them into vessels. We use them on billboards. We use them to sell gym memberships, plastic surgery, cars, magazines, liquor, bikini waxes, multivitamins, underwear, shampoo, perfume, bottled water and all-inclusive resorts."

"Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatise, and abuse children, automatically and at scale, and it forces me to question my own beliefs about the internet, at every level. Much of what I am going to describe next has been covered elsewhere, although none of the mainstream coverage I've seen has really grasped the implications of what seems to be occurring."