Twitter cliques might feel like high school, but their existence is tied to our human nature

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It will come as no surprise to anyone, but I was not cool in high school. Not even a little bit. 

Now that I’m a 30-year-old human masquerading as a grownup, I had hoped I’d put my desires to be part of the cool crowd to bed long ago. But years after this angst-ridden festival of self-consciousness, I have become uncomfortably reacquainted with the feeling of being on the outside of the clique. 

Over a decade since I put high school well and truly behind me, I now inhabit a virtual one. And I’d be lying if I said that I don’t feel a pang of those teenage feelings — of thinking I’m on the outskirts of Cool Town — anytime I scroll through my Twitter feed.  Read more…

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Consumer-focused healthcare can save lives by focusing on changing behavior

Vijay Pande Contributor Share on Twitter Vijay Pande, PhD, is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, as well as an Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University, where he continues to advise the Pande Lab — focused on tackling challenging problems in chemical biology, biophysics, and biomedicine. Everything we do in the $3 trillion healthcare […]

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Screen time inhibits toddler development, study finds

In news that will surprise few but still alarm many, a study has found that kids 2-5 years old who engage in more screen time received worse scores in developmental screening tests. The apparent explanation is simple: when a kid is in front of a screen, they’re not talking, walking, or playing, the activities by which basic skills are cultivated.

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Turns out the science saying screen time is bad isn’t science

A new study is making waves in the worlds of tech and psychology by questioning the basis of thousands of paper and analyses with conflicting conclusions on the effect of screen time on well-being. The researchers claim is that the science doesn’t agree because it’s bad science. So is screen time good or bad? It’s not that simple.

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We finally started taking screen time seriously in 2018

At the beginning of this year, I was using my iPhone to browse new titles on Amazon when I saw the cover of “How to Break Up With Your Phone” by Catherine Price. I downloaded it on Kindle because I genuinely wanted to reduce my smartphone use, but also because I thought it would be […]

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The unfortunate tenacity of the most common piece of litter

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Eight years ago, in the town of Van Buren, Missouri, newly retired resident John Pope walked six blocks and picked up 1,085 cigarette butts.

The unsightly, unpleasant litter problem — as we’re all acutely aware — isn’t confined to Pope’s quiet community in southern Missouri. 

Cigarette butts have the proud distinction of being the most common form of litter on America’s beaches. Some 6 trillion cigarettes are manufactured on Earth each year, and between 750 million to 1,500 million pounds of cigarette butt waste — largely made of a plastic-like material called cellulose acetate — are ultimately flung to the ground annually, according to the World Health Organization. Read more…

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Limiting social media use reduced loneliness and depression in new experiment

The idea that social media can be harmful to our mental and emotional well-being is not a new one, but little has been done by researchers to directly measure the effect; surveys and correlative studies are at best suggestive. A new experimental study out of Penn State, however, directly links more social media use to worse emotional states, and less use to better.

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‘Grit’ author Angela Duckworth on working smart versus working too hard, when it’s okay to pivot, and the impact of tech on grit

Today, in San Francisco, at a gathering of roughly 400 women organized by the young AllRaise — a growing group of female funders and founders who aim to accelerate the success of their peers —  we sat down with Angela Duckworth. Ducksworth is a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and has gained fame in recent years though […]

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Donald Trump’s election was a ‘traumatic experience’ for many college students

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To say that the 2016 presidential election had a profound impact on the American psyche might be an understatement. 

In fact, new research suggests that for many, the experience was actually traumatic. 

In a survey of roughly 800 college students, 25 percent reported such high levels of stress after the election that researchers likened it to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a new study published in the Journal of American College Health

Throughout the election, researchers noticed some pretty strong reactions in young adults. But the day after the election, lead researcher Melissa Hagan taught two classes where she saw that students were visibly upset — some were even crying.  Read more…

More about Science, Mental Health, Psychology, Presidential Election, and President Donald Trump

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Investors are waking up to the emotional struggle of startup founders

Mahendra Ramsinghani Contributor Mahendra Ramsinghani is the founder of Secure Octane, a Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity seed fund. More posts by this contributor Lessons from cybersecurity exits Is Symantec getting ready to buy Splunk? As the Gartner Hype Curve goes, from the peak of inflated expectations to the trough of disillusionment, so goes the founder’s emotional […]

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MIT researchers teach a neural network to recognize depression

A new technology by MIT researchers can sense depression by analyzing the written and spoken responses by a patient. The system, pioneered by MIT’s CSAIL group, uses “a neural-network model that can be unleashed on raw text and audio data from interviews to discover speech patterns indicative of depression.” “Given a new subject, it can […]

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