Mon 20 April 2026: Many people have compared the addictive nature of social media to cigarettes. Checking your likes, they say, is the new smoke break. Others say the unease over social media is just the next round of moral panic about new technologies. We are a pair of researchers who investigate how social media affects the mental health of […]
Continue Reading
Sun 19 April 2026: For years, big tech companies have placed the burden of managing screen time squarely on individuals and parents, operating on the assumption that capturing human attention is fair game. But the social media sands may slowly be shifting. A test-case jury trial in Los Angeles is accusing big tech companies of creating “addiction machines”. […]
Continue Reading
Sat 18 April 2026: An average of at least 47 women and girls were killed each day during the war in Gaza, according to figures published by UN Women on Friday, and the agency warned that deaths have continued six months into a fragile ceasefire. More than 38,000 women and girls were killed in Gaza […]
Continue Reading
Sat 18 April 2026: Plans to launch reflective satellites and up to 1 million additional spacecraft in low Earth orbit could disrupt human sleep, wildlife, and ecosystems, scientists have warned. “The proposed scale of orbital deployment would represent a significant alteration of the natural night-time light environment at a planetary scale,” said the presidents of […]
Continue Reading
Sat 18 April 2026: Is it possible to spot personality dysfunction from someone’s everyday word use? My colleagues and I have conducted research that suggests you can, and often sooner than you might expect. Whether in a quick text message, a long email, a casual chat with a friend, or a comment online, the words […]
Continue Reading
Fri 17 April 2026: Five widely used AI chatbots frequently produced problematic answers to health and medical questions, a new study revealed. Researchers in a study published in the BMJ Open on Tuesday tested Gemini, DeepSeek, Meta AI, ChatGPT and Grok with 50 prompts across five misinformation-prone categories. These included cancer, vaccines, stem cells, nutrition […]
Continue Reading
Fri 17 April 2026: With the internet and its widespread accessibility, many of us have front-row seats to widespread suffering and death across the globe for the first time in history, even when we are not directly affected. We’re living in what scholars describe as a “polycrisis” — a set of interconnected crises that compound and intensify one another. […]
Continue Reading
Thu 16 April 2026: In recent years, residents of Spain, France and the UK have looked up to see an eerie sight: deep orange sunrises and skies thick with a yellowish haze. These hazy skies often deposit “blood rain”, rust-colored precipitation that leaves a fine grit on cars and windows. These events are caused by […]
Continue Reading
Thu 16 April 2026: Scientists expect an asteroid the size of three football fields to pass near Earth in three years, making it possible for scientists to study the colossal space rock from close range, NASA said on Wednesday. The asteroid Apophis, named after the ancient Egyptian god known as the “God of Chaos,” will […]
Continue Reading
Wed 15 April 2026: Imagine you are planning the funeral music for a loved one who has died. You can’t remember their favourite song, so you try to login to their Spotify account. Then you realise the account login is inaccessible, and with it has gone their personal history of Spotify playlists, annual “wrapped” analytics, […]
Continue Reading
