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13 year old Trisha Prabhu of Naperville, IL, is a finalist in Google Science Fair 2014. Prabhu's project focuses on preventing cyber-bullying. Excerpted from her project summary statement: "Cyberbullying may result in depression, low self-esteem and in rare cases suicides in adolescent victims(12-18). Research shows that, over 50% of adolescents and teens have been bullied online and 10 to 20% experience it regularly. Research also shows that adolescents that post mean/hurtful messages may not understand the potential consequences of their actions because the pre-frontal cortex, the area of brain that controls reasoning and decision-making isn't developed until age 25. I hypothesized that if adolescents(ages 12-18) were provided an alert mechanism that suggested them to re-think their decision if they expressed willingness to post a mean/hurtful message on social media, the number of mean/hurtful messages adolescents will be willing to post would be lesser than adolescents that are not provided with such an alert mechanism. In order to check if my hypothesis was true, I created two Software systems: 1) Baseline 2) Rethink. "Rethink" system measured number of mean/hurtful messages adolescents were willing to post after being alerted to rethink, while the "Baseline" system measured the same without the alert. Results proved that adolescents were 93.43% less willing to post mean/hurtful messages using a "Rethink" system compared with "Baseline" system without alert."

A start-up, Eterni-Me, is looking at ways of using artificial intelligence to keep us alive virtually - long after we're gone. The company collects data that you've curated from Facebook, Twitter, e-mail, photos, video, location information, and even Google Glass and Fitbit devices., and processes this huge amount of information using complex artificial intelligence algorithms. Then it generates a virtual YOU, an avatar that emulates your personality and can interact with, and offer information and advice to your family and friends, even after you pass away.

This article talked about why reader's now-a-days aren't struggling because electronics, but more because of lack of knowledge. Our Reading comprehension over the years hasn't been getting any better, especially high school seniors. Many people blame the rise in social media and electronics, preventing our development, but it's more related to how people don't have enough basic knowledge.

Linguist David Crystal opines that one of the oldest forms of punctuation may be dying. The period - the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages - is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the digital age. The conspicuous omission of the period in text messages and in instant messaging on social media, Crystal says, is a product of the punctuation-free staccato sentences favored by millennials - and increasingly their elders - a trend fueled by the freewheeling style of Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter.

LONDON - One of the oldest forms of punctuation may be dying The period - the full-stop signal we all learn as children, whose use stretches back at least to the Middle Ages - is gradually being felled in the barrage of instant messaging that has become synonymous with the

Article explores the possible reasons behind word aversion: the unpleasant strong reactions triggered by the sound, sight, and sometimes even the thought of certain words. Reasons may include 1. Social interactions and media coverage 2. Connecting the properties of an especially repellent thing to the word that represents it, e.g. rats are associated w/ filth 3. Words sound ugly

"Phubbing" is the practice of snubbing others in favor of our mobile phones. Research is revealing the profound impact this sort of snubbing can have on our relationships and well-being. There's an irony here. When we're staring at our phones, we're often connecting with someone on social media or through texting. Sometimes, we're flipping through our pictures the way we once turned the pages of photo albums, remembering moments with people we love. Unfortunately, however, this can severely disrupt our actual, present-moment, in-person relationships, which also tend to be our most important ones. The article details several deleterious effects of phubbing.

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut once opined, "There is no reason why the simple shapes of stories can't be fed into computers. They are beautiful shapes." Thanks to new text-mining techniques, this has now been done. Researchers at the University of Vermont's Computational Story Lab have analysed over 1,700 English novels to reveal six basic story types - you could call them archetypes - that form the building blocks for more complex stories. They are: 1. Rags to riches - a steady rise from bad to good fortune 2. Riches to rags - a fall from good to bad, a tragedy 3. Icarus - a rise then a fall in fortune 4. Oedipus - a fall, a rise then a fall again 5. Cinderella - rise, fall, rise 6. Man in a hole - fall, rise The researchers used sentiment analysis to get the data - a statistical technique often used by marketeers to analyse social media posts in which each word is allocated a particular 'sentiment score', based on crowdsourced data. Depending on the lexicon chosen, a word can be categorised as positive (happy) or negative (sad), or it can be associated with one or more of eight more subtle emotions, including fear, joy, surprise and anticipation. For example, the word 'happy' is positive, and associated with joy, trust and anticipation. The word 'abolish' is negative and associated with anger. Do sentiment analysis on all the words in a novel, poem or play and plot the results against time, and it's possible to see how the mood changes over the course of the text, revealing a kind of emotional narrative. While not a perfect tool - it looks at words in isolation, ignoring context - it can be surprisingly insightful when applied to larger chunks of text

Thought-provoking video reminding us how much our and other people's online presence is not truth/reality, but the act of "framing"--presenting a particular, curated, portrait of yourself that you desire others to see, whether in images or words.

For anyone who's ever dated, or maintained any kind of relationship, in the digital age, you have probably known a breadcrumber. They communicate via sporadic noncommittal, but repeated messages - or breadcrumbs - that are just enough to keep you wondering but not enough to seal the deal (whatever that deal may be). Breadcrumbers check in consistently with a romantic prospect, but never set up a date. They pique your interest, of that prospective job, perhaps, by reminding you repeatedly that it exists, but never set up the interview. Breadcrumbers are one step shy of ghosters, who disappear without a trace, but are in more frequent contact than a person giving you the fade. On the hierarchy of digital communication, the breadcrumber is the lowest form. "It really is a cousin of the 'friend zone,'" said Rachel Simmons, an author and leadership coach at Smith College. "It's about relegating a person to a particular dead end, but one that still keeps them hanging on in some way."

Writer Jessica Bennett shares the perks, perils and absurdities of the way we communicate via social media. Entertaining and informative reading.

This article talks about how social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit have helped researchers track the dynamic of a relationships of people who have broken up. There are signs you might be able to detect when a relationship is about to end, even before either person consciously aware of this. The subtle changes in language leading up to a breakup, such as the use of "I"-words, talking more about other people than ideas, and referencing their partner quite a bit (because their identities are still so strongly knit), for example, can be seen as evidence of an impending split.

Essayist Ligaya Mishan (one of my best friends from Punahou!) examines "cancel culture"--the practice of publicly ostracizing a person, whether it's professionally, personally, or in the digital/social media world--historically contextualizing the phenomenon, which is not recent, but something that has existed in many cultures, past and present, and examining the reasons behind it. This essay is also a Words R Us special in its use of etymology: examining the origins and evolution of different words related to cancel culture.

In order to evade government censors blocking free expression, Chinese social media posters utilize homophonic (same sound) and logographic (character) resemblances in order to voice controversial/politically-charged content.

This article examines the origin, history, and evolving use of the pejorative term "Karen" on social media. The label publicly lambasts whiny, middle-aged white women who shamelessly display entitlement, privilege, and racism - and who tend to call the police when they don't get what they want.

Over the past few months, the online word game Wordle has skyrocketed in popularity, with cryptic grids of gray, green and yellow squares appearing on social media.The game is challenging, but simple: Once a day, players have six guesses to identify a new five-letter word (all players receive the same word on a given day). Each guess provides color-coded hints: a letter turns green if it is in the correct spot, yellow if it is part of the word but in a different spot, and gray if it is not in the word at all. In Wordle, the process of intuiting a target word from color-coded clues provides a window into our subconscious understanding of how language works, according to UChicago linguist Jason Riggle. In effect, it turns everyone into a linguist, forcing us to wrestle with sound fragments and stitch them together according to probability distributions.

Journalist Nicholas Kristof explores contemporary buzzwords and changing social sensibilities regarding language and journalistic style norms, for example, the shift from "women" to "people with uteruses" or "homeless" to "houseless." Kristof examines the reasons behind these recent adoptions, but also raises the issue of how some peopleʻs use of well-intentioned, more sensitive, and "inclusive" language may ironically be alienating other sectors of society. For example, while the media and corporate (white) America mayʻve adopted the term "Latinx," a Pew survey found that only 3 percent of Hispanics themselves use the term.

Curse word like the 'c-word' and 'f-word', once considered unspeakable, have become less taboo. This may be due to social media, COVID-19 pandemic, and public swearing by individuals such as Donald Trump.

This article focused on the impacts that technology has had on the writing for younger generations. The style of writing that is used for social media has become known as "Netspeak" and typically consists of shorter sentences and phrases, as well as shortening of words through abbreviations or substitutions. ie. lol for laughing out loud, or w8 for weight. These came about as ways to fit the short character limits set by many sites, however this style of writing has been observed to start affecting other more formal forms of writing. Although this is something that some people have become aware of, there are still many people who do this without thinking, and don't realize that they have started to use netspeak in writing for papers

Artificial intelligence can make adults nervous, but experts say exploring it as a family is the best way to understand its pros and cons. It's important to understand how a chatbot works, employing a "neural network": a mathematical system that learns skills by analyzing large amounts of data. The chatbot works by scraping the internet for digital text or images. It gathers information from a variety of places, including websites, social media platforms and databases, but it does not necessarily choose the most reliable sources. In other words, even though chatbots may appear authoritative, rigorous and trustworthy, they are not always reliable and can produce content that is offensive, racist, biased, outdated, incorrect or simply inappropriate.

The author delves into the nuanced role of swear words, exploring how they can forge social bonds and emphasize points in conversations. However, how acceptable these words are varies based on how they are used, as there are a number of reasons one may swear.