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Is social media good for you, or bad? Well, it's complicated. A UC San Diego study of 12 million Facebook users suggests that using Facebook is associated with living longer -- when it serves to maintain and enhance your real-world social ties. Those on Facebook with highest levels of offline social integration -- as measured by posting more photos, which suggests face-to-face social activity -- have the greatest longevity. Online-only social interactions, like writing wall posts and messages, showed a nonlinear relationship: Moderate levels were associated with the lowest mortality. Facebook users who accepted the most friendships also lived longest.

The U.S. Supreme Court is tackling a question of increasing importance in the age of social media and the Internet: What constitutes a threat on Facebook? Anthony Elonis was convicted of threatening both his estranged wife and an FBI agent. After his wife left him, taking the couple's two children with her, Elonis began posting about her on his Facebook page. Elonis was indicted on five counts of interstate communication of illegal threats. At his trial, he acknowledged the violence voiced in his posts, but argued he was exercising his First Amendment free speech rights. Longtime federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, however, notes that most of the posts occurred after Elonis' wife had gotten a protective court order, and that Elonis posted his messages on his Facebook page without restriction. Thus, Fitzgerald contends that the husband reasonably foresaw what the reaction would be. "The wife would read this and think, this is not an artistic statement, this is not a political statement about a larger cause," says Fitzgerald. "This is trying to get inside her head and make her think there could be someone doing violence to her."

Emoticons - representations of facial expressions using colons, dashes, parentheses and other text symbols - originated in the days of the telegraph as a substitute for the facial expressions, hand gestures and vocal clues for different emotions that humans pick up during in-person meetings. Because printed words alone can't always convey the full emotional meaning of a conversation, emoticons have evolved into a separate language, especially with the world increasingly relying on texting, tweeting and e-mail. Called Stickers, Facebook's emoticons were born out of more than two years of research into the compassion of Facebook members, then fine-tuned by scientists specializing in human facial expressions. And while they were inspired by evolutionist Charles Darwin's studies in the mid-19th century, Facebook believes they could be a vital part of human-to-human relationships in the digital 21st century.

Providing new details about how it's trying to counter the spread of fake news on its services, Facebook says it's working with fact-checking groups to identify bogus stories - and to warn users if a story they're trying to share has been reported as fake.

Social media-from Facebook to Twitter-have made us more densely networked than ever. Yet for all this connectivity, new research suggests that we have never been lonelier (or more narcissistic)-and that this loneliness is making us mentally and physically ill. Social interaction matters. Loneliness and being alone are not the same thing, but both are on the rise. We meet fewer people. We gather less. And when we gather, our bonds are less meaningful and less easy. The decrease in confidants-that is, in quality social connections-has been dramatic over the past 25 years. In one survey, the mean size of networks of personal confidants decreased from 2.94 people in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10 percent of Americans said they had no one with whom to discuss important matters, and 15 percent said they had only one such good friend. By 2004, 25 percent had nobody to talk to, and 20 percent had only one confidant.

Our social media activity can give extraordinary - and often unintentional - insights into our mental wellbeing. Little wonder that professionals whose job it is to look after our emotional health are now exploring how they can use these signals to take the 'emotional pulse' of individuals, communities, nations and even the entire species. Apparently, the words that're said are less important than the category or the frequency of posts in re: painting user profiles.

With studies showing that one-third of married couples started their relationships online, finding romance via URLs is no longer as novel - and creepy - as it seemed when dating sites launched in the mid-1990s. But now the digital aisle to marriage is transforming, moving from dating sites to social networks, where couples say encounters are more revealing and, with witty tweets and thoughtful status updates, more like flirting in the analog world. And they're free.

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.

Social media users now number more than 1.4 billion - more than half of the Earth's Internet-using population. We share a lot of information on social media, but it turns out we are sharing far more than we think. Seemingly innocuous information, when analyzed against tens of thousands of other profiles, can reveal secrets you never intended to share.

Facebook shut down an Artificial Intelligence experiment shortly after developers discovered that the machines were talking in a language the machines made up that humans couldn't understand. The developers first programmed the chatbots so they could talk in English to each other when trading items back and forth. When the chatbots got into a long negotiation, they started talking to each other in their own language. Even though these chatbots were not highly intelligent, it is concerning that they went off on their own so quickly. In 2014, scientist Stephen Hawking warned that Artificial Intelligence could be the end of the human race. Hopefully the Matrix is science fiction, not science prediction.

This article talks about a Facebook AI that was shut down because it created its own language that only it understood. It used english words but didn't use the same grammar or definitions for the words. It wasn't close to taking over the world or anything but it was the first time something like that happened. It is a wary foreshadowing of what could happen into the future and possibly create a Terminator SkyNet situation.

This is an interesting correlation, but is it really causation?

Wouldn't the rigor of classes taken and other extracurricular activities also play a role in GPA? Wouldn't that also be a variable in their research? And a stalker button? Why would they even install that anyway?

Offering a written expression of condolence (from the Latin word condolere, to grieve or to suffer with someone) used to be a staple of polite society. "A letter of condolence may be abrupt, badly constructed, ungrammatical - never mind," advised the 1960 edition of Emily Post. "Grace of expression counts for nothing; sincerity alone is of value." But these days, as Facebooking, Snapchatting or simply ignoring friends has become fashionable, the rules of expressing sympathy have become muddied at best, and concealed in an onslaught of emoji at worst. Just over two and a half million Americans die every year, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, and we buy 90 million sympathy cards annually, a spokeswoman for Hallmark said. But 90 percent of those cards are bought by people over 40. Take-away tips from the article: 1. BEING TONGUE-TIED IS O.K. 2. SHARE A POSITIVE MEMORY 3. NO COMPARISONS 4. DON'T DODGE THE 'D' WORDS 5. GET REAL. 6. FACEBOOK IS NOT ENOUGH

Margaret Noori, a professor at the University of Michigan is exploring the implications of bridging the digital divide to use social media as a linguistic preservation tool. Noori's studies are centered around Anishinaabemowin, the native language of the Ojibwe, Michigan's indigenous population.

In this essay, D.E. Whittkower, in the Dept. of Philosophy at Old Dominion University, attempts to establish that social media communications constitute a secondary literacy, which shares many of the features of spoken language ("orality"). Whittkower's discussion of Facebook, in particular, is thought-provoking; he suggests that the site is a "remarkably well-suited site for the activity of friendship," providing opportunities for relationships and interests to grow and intensify and for participants to engage in linguistic and post-linguistic social grooming.