This book examines how today's technology, as it includes smartphones, computers, and the internet, shapes our physical health, cognitive and psychological development, and interactions with one another and the world around us. Technology has become a ubiquitous part of modern life, but its impact on our physical, psychological, and social health and development runs just as deep as does our dependence upon it. How is the development of babies' brains affected by their playing with their parents' smartphones and tablets? How have computers altered the way we process and learn information? How have texting and social networking sites such as Facebook changed the way in which we interact with others? Can online dating lead to meaningful real-world relationships? From Smartphones to Social Media investigates these questions and many complex issues related to technology. Readers will discover what researchers know about how the use of technology affects us through accessibly written, thematic chapters. The main text is complemented by a collection of case studies and interviews with a variety of experts, providing insight into how technology's positive and negative effects manifest in our everyday lives and what we can do to mediate the negative ones.

This book examines how today's technology, as it includes smartphones, computers, and the internet, shapes our physical health, cognitive and psychological development, and interactions with one another and the world around us. Technology has become a ubiquitous part of modern life, but its impact on our physical, psychological, and social health and development runs just as deep as does our dependence upon it. How is the development of babies' brains affected by their playing with their parents' smartphones and tablets? How have computers altered the way we process and learn information? How have texting and social networking sites such as Facebook changed the way in which we interact with others? Can online dating lead to meaningful real-world relationships? From Smartphones to Social Media investigates these questions and many complex issues related to technology. Readers will discover what researchers know about how the use of technology affects us through accessibly written, thematic chapters. The main text is complemented by a collection of case studies and interviews with a variety of experts, providing insight into how technology's positive and negative effects manifest in our everyday lives and what we can do to mediate the negative ones.

Authors Imran Rashid and Soren Kenner have sparked an international debate by revealing the “mind hacks” Facebook, Apple, Google, and Instagram use to get you and your children hooked on their products. In Offline, they deliver an eye-opening research-based journey into the world of tech giants, smartphones, social engineering, and subconscious manipulation. This provocative work shows you how digital devices change individuals and communities for better and worse. A must-read if you or your kids use smartphones or tablets and spend time browsing social networks, playing online games or even just browsing sites with news and entertainment. Learn how to recognize ‘mind hacks’ and avoid the potentially disastrous side-effects of digital pollution. Unplug from the matrix. Learn digital habits that work for you.

A landmark insider’s tour of how social media affects our decision-making and shapes our world in ways both useful and dangerous, with critical insights into the social media trends of the 2020 election and beyond “The book might be described as prophetic. . . . At least two of Aral’s three predictions have come to fruition.”—New York NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY WIRED • LONGLISTED FOR THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD Social media connected the world—and gave rise to fake news and increasing polarization. It is paramount, MIT professor Sinan Aral says, that we recognize the outsize effect social media has on us—on our politics, our economy, and even our personal health—in order to steer today’s social technology toward its great promise while avoiding the ways it can pull us apart. Drawing on decades of his own research and business experience, Aral goes under the hood of the most powerful social networks to tackle the critical question of just how much social media actually shapes our choices, for better or worse. He shows how the tech behind social media offers the same set of behavior influencing levers to everyone who hopes to change the way we think and act—from Russian hackers to brand marketers—which is why its consequences affect everything from elections to business, dating to health. Along the way, he covers a wide array of topics, including how network effects fuel Twitter’s and Facebook’s massive growth, the neuroscience of how social media affects our brains, the real consequences of fake news, the power of social ratings, and the impact of social media on our kids. In mapping out strategies for being more thoughtful consumers of social media, The Hype Machine offers the definitive guide to understanding and harnessing for good the technology that has redefined our world overnight.

As seen in Time, USA TODAY, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and on CBS This Morning, BBC, PBS, CNN, and NPR, iGen is crucial reading to understand how the children, teens, and young adults born in the mid-1990s and later are vastly different from their Millennial predecessors, and from any other generation. With generational divides wider than ever, parents, educators, and employers have an urgent need to understand today’s rising generation of teens and young adults. Born in the mid-1990s up to the mid-2000s, iGen is the first generation to spend their entire adolescence in the age of the smartphone. With social media and texting replacing other activities, iGen spends less time with their friends in person—perhaps contributing to their unprecedented levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. But technology is not the only thing that makes iGen distinct from every generation before them; they are also different in how they spend their time, how they behave, and in their attitudes toward religion, sexuality, and politics. They socialize in completely new ways, reject once sacred social taboos, and want different things from their lives and careers. More than previous generations, they are obsessed with safety, focused on tolerance, and have no patience for inequality. With the first members of iGen just graduating from college, we all need to understand them: friends and family need to look out for them; businesses must figure out how to recruit them and sell to them; colleges and universities must know how to educate and guide them. And members of iGen also need to understand themselves as they communicate with their elders and explain their views to their older peers. Because where iGen goes, so goes our nation—and the world.

Ten Practical Steps to Overcoming Smartphone Addiction Do you have a smartphone? How often do you use it? And can you remember the last time you had to go a full day without your smartphone? Smartphones have changed our way of interacting with the world. What started as a simple device to make calls and text, has now become a necessary tool for all our daily needs. They have made our lives easier, one can argue, but at what price? You see, big tech companies fight for one and only thing: Your time! The more time you spend on their apps, the more money they make! And they spend millions of dollars each year on studies to understand your behavior. While your phone's battery is draining, your emotional and physical battery is draining, too. Luckily, we bring you a proven and tested recipe to regain control over your life. In "Social Media Detox", you will find: -How social media platforms are using psychology to manipulate you -A comprehensive 10 steps Guide to smoothly overcome smartphone addiction -Proven ways to reconnect yourself with life outside of the digital world -Tips and tricks to avoid relapsing after your digital detox And so much more.... So if you're ready to get your life back, and Reconnect with Yourself and the World around you in a more Authentic and Meaningful way, Grab your copy today!

With the rise of smartphones and the proliferation of applications, the ways everyday media users and creative professionals represent, experience, and share the everyday is changing. This collection reflects on emergent creative practices and digital ethnographies of new socialities associated with smartphone cameras in everyday life.

The Internet can be a scary, dangerous place especially for children. This book shows parents how to help digital kids navigate this environment. Sexting, cyberbullying, revenge porn, online predators…all of these potential threats can tempt parents to snatch the smartphone or tablet out of their children’s hands. While avoidance might eliminate the dangers, that approach also means your child misses out on technology’s many benefits and opportunities. In Raising Humans in a Digital World, digital literacy educator Diana Graber shows how children must learn to handle the digital space through: developing social-emotional skills balancing virtual and real life building safe and healthy relationships avoiding cyberbullies and online predators protecting personal information identifying and avoiding fake news and questionable content becoming positive role models and leaders Raising Humans in a Digital World is packed with at-home discussion topics and enjoyable activities that any busy family can slip into their daily routine. Full of practical tips grounded in academic research and hands-on experience, today’s parents finally have what they’ve been waiting for—a guide to raising digital kids who will become the positive and successful leaders our world desperately needs.

Social media shapes the ways in which we communicate, think about friends, and hear about news and current events. It also affects how users think of themselves, their communities, and their place in the world. This book examines the tremendous impact of social media on daily life. When the Internet became mainstream in the early 2000s, everything changed. Now that social media is fully entrenched in daily life, contemporary society has shifted again in how we communicate, behave as consumers, seek out and enjoy entertainment, and express ourselves. Every one of the new applications of social media presents us with a new way of thinking about the economy that supports technological development and communication content and offers new models that challenge us to think about the economic impact of communication in the 21st century. The Social Media Revolution examines the tremendous influence of social media on how we make meaning of our place in the world. The book emphasizes the economic impacts of how we use the Internet and World Wide Web to exchange information, enabling readers to see how social media has taken root and challenged previous media industries, laws, policies, and social practices. Each entry in this useful reference serves to document the history, impact, and criticism of every subject and shows how social media has become a primary tool of the 21st-century world—one that not only contributes to our everyday life and social practices but also affects the future of business. The coverage of topics is extremely broad, ranging from economic models and concepts relevant to social media, such as e-commerce, crowdfunding, the use of cyber currency, and the impact of freeware; to key technologies and devices like Android and Apple iOS, apps, the cloud, streaming, and smartphones and tablets; to major entrepreneurs, inventors, and subjects of social media, such as Julian Assange, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Marissa Mayer, Edward Snowden, Steve Wozniak, and Mark Zuckerberg.

Sexting. Cyberbullying. Narcissism. Social media has become the dominant force in young people's lives, and each day seems to bring another shocking tale of private pictures getting into the wrong hands, or a lament that young people feel compelled to share their each and every thought with the entire world. Drawing on a large-scale survey and interviews with students on thirteen college campuses, Freitas finds that what young people are overwhelmingly concerned with--what they really want to talk about--is happiness. The Happiness Effect is an eye-opening window into their first-hand experiences of social media and its impact on them.