HCRHS Media Lit

"In the modern economy of tablets and apps, our attention has become the most valuable commodity. Tech companies have armies of behavioral researchers whose sole job is to apply principles like Skinner's variable rewards to grab and hold our focus as often and long as possible. But some people are starting to fight back. A small but growing number of behavioral scientists and former Silicon Valley developers have begun trying to counterprogram those news alerts, friend requests and updates crowding our waking hours."

" For Michael Kimmel, an author and professor at SUNY Stony Brook, where he founded the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities, the crisis involves one type of man-heterosexual, white ones-who feel like their power "is slipping." Tristan Bridges, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, agreed with Kimmel, adding that the crisis affects men who are now contending with "unchallenged entitlement." For the writer Thomas Page McBee, the crisis involves men who are hurting in the face of society's stereotyped expectations that they should be more inhumane than humane, more violent than empathic. For Joseph Derrick Nelson, a senior research fellow with the Center for the Study of Boys' and Girls' Lives, the crisis is hitting black boys who need support and the kind of unconditional love necessary to help them break free of certain damaging norms."

"According to a survey in 2017 by the Royal Society for Public Health, Britons aged 14-24 believe that Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter have detrimental effects on their wellbeing. On average, they reported that these social networks gave them extra scope for self-expression and community-building. But they also said that the platforms exacerbated anxiety and depression, deprived them of sleep, exposed them to bullying and created worries about their body image and "FOMO" ("fear of missing out"). Academic studies have found that these problems tend to be particularly severe among frequent users."

"In the summer of 2013, three women fanned out into metropolitan Boston and, for two months, spent their weekdays dining alone at fast food restaurants. They ordered meals and slipped into seats as discreetly as possible, so as not to arouse suspicion. Then they began to spy. They were looking for groups of diners that included an adult and at least one child under the age of 10. The three women, academic researchers from the fields of pediatrics, child development, and anthropology, needed to get close enough to their subjects to notice changes in facial expressions and tones of voice. They took copious notes. Their assignment was to observe, in the minutest detail, how children and their caregivers interacted with their personal mobile devices and also with each other. The resulting study was groundbreaking; it was the first to explore how parents were using personal devices around children. And its headline discovery was disturbing: The more caregivers were absorbed by their smartphones, the more harshly they treated the children they were with."

"The actor is not new to addressing toxic masculinity; he has been advocating against men's allegiance to harmful gender roles for years. His 2014 book, Manhood: How to Be a Better Man-or Just Live With One, traced the actor's experiences with living alongside an alcoholic father, admitting to a pornography addiction, and slowly abandoning the "Marlboro Man" ideal of masculinity. But now he has named himself as an affected party rather than just an enthusiastic ally."

"It is prom season, and also Pride Month, a calendric coincidence that has always felt problematic. After all, is there a more traditionally heteronormative event in an American teenage life than the high-school prom? But in recent years, students who see themselves outside the binary have begun to challenge the straightness of it all, turning prom on its head by attending openly."

"Last week, a study published in the journal Developmental Psychology found that helicopter parents - those who hover over their children - can diminish their children's ability to regulate emotions and behavior. Concerns like these have spurred a backlash against overprotective parenting, with some parents, psychology experts and lawmakers calling for a return to a more laid-back style of child-rearing, with less parental involvement and more autonomy for kids. (This is, of course, a choice of privilege; in impoverished neighborhoods where children regularly encounter unwanted danger and adversity, few parents would actively choose more risk.) The movement to give children more independence got a boost last month when Utah became the first state to put into effect a "free-range parenting" law."

"How can parents get children the support they might need while keeping in mind that adolescence is, by definition, a time of identity exploration?"

"In addition to the Checkology® virtual classroom, the News Literacy Project offers these resources and services for educators. Check them out!"

"WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Dystopia is here. It's not just the "imagined place" of the dictionary definition or a future state of dystopian novels. It is very real and right now, at least for those of us trying to follow national politics. And it's not just Donald Trump. It's Barack Obama, it's Ted Cruz, it's the New York Times, it's Breitbart News. It is an alternate universe detached from the world we live in but intruding into it in painful and dangerous ways. It is a media narrative of political conspirators colluding with a dictatorial archenemy, of an intemperate and delusional leader overturning the institutions of democracy, of a "deep-state" resistance to constitutional authority. It is a dystopia of rampant hypocrisy, where obstructing legislation, supporting a law-enforcement official who strays beyond the limits of his authority, or boycotting a president's appointments is evil and undemocratic until it's your party that wants to do it."

"We're not readers, but active participants-with the ability to rewrite the ending."

"Big government and big media are dominating American society and suffocating free speech. Who will rise up?"

"Young adult fiction is awash in projections of a dystopian future, yet we're still sliding into that future, and young adults are going along with it."

"Is it the end of times or does it just feel like it?"

"The history of television and film portrayals of people of color is pretty abysmal. Either we are not present, just in the background, stereotyped. Or we're cast as maids, gardeners, servants or the comic buffoon. In my lifetime, I have never been exposed consistently to characters who either look like me, act like me or reflect my reality of those around me. Notice I said consistently. There have been exceptions, but it seems we've had to wait patiently for portrayals that we recognize as being significant to our lives. So when a show like Vida comes around, it is worth taking time to examine what and who makes it worth watching."

"What do boys in America think about being boys today? What do they imagine is expected of them? Whom do they look up to, and how are they navigating the transition from being boys to becoming men?"

"Security experts warn that many Wi-Fi baby monitors - and other devices in the Internet of things - are vulnerable to hacking. In 2015, the security analytics company Rapid7 published a case study of baby monitors that found a number of security vulnerabilities. The risk is not just to privacy and peace of mind: A hacker could use a baby monitor to gain access to a home's network to get information off computers, possibly for financial gain."

"Members of the LGBTQ community and their allies sound off from all 50 states."

"No one picks up the phone anymore. Even many businesses do everything they can to avoid picking up the phone. Of the 50 or so calls I received in the last month, I might have picked up four or five times. The reflex of answering-built so deeply into people who grew up in 20th-century telephonic culture-is gone."

"YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat are the most popular online platforms among teens. Fully 95% of teens have access to a smartphone, and 45% say they are online 'almost constantly'"