Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Holiday cards vs. the never-ending barrage of social media

Teen girl reading unpleasant messages on mobile phone
Juan Algar/Getty Images
“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard

There was a time, not so long ago, when holiday cards were the means by which acquaintances updated us on their lives. Often featuring family photos with everyone dressed up, or perhaps casual with a seaside or mountainside backdrop, it was understood this was a “best shot” curated to feature everybody happily together.

Those holiday cards were eagerly opened, shared and even saved. Occasionally they might broach boundaries of good taste, perhaps featuring a photo of the sender’s new Lexus shining brightly as the Christmas star, or containing more pages than an IKEA assembly pack and listing the fifth grader’s achievements. But most of the time these cards conveyed the annual family update and welcome holiday cheer.


Now social media spreads such cheer throughout the year — holiday cards that do not stop. In the past, we were included on others’ card lists; now we are their “followers,” and they ours. Everyone spends lots of time exhibiting, checking likes, sending “stories,” updating statuses, etc. In other words, time alone with our phones.

Yet, in this constant barrage of “socialization” many feel isolated, even apathetic.

Playing to an audience is often fodder for personal discontent, despite large entourages. Besides, do we really care what our college roommate had for dinner last night when we haven’t seen her for 20 years? There is no real human connection through social media. We are not experiencing life first-hand, but rather in a fast-changing virtual reality.

It is a great irony of our age that, although we are more connected, we are less so. Look around at an airport, a waiting room, a grocery line. Most people are staring at their phones as if they’re magic mirrors, engaging only with the device in their hand.

And of course there’s this: What are you not doing while fixating on your screen?

Still, what’s the harm?

Plenty, according to social scientists, including increased depression and escalating suicide rates. Young people, whose social network is mostly electronic and whose validation depends upon it, are often taunted and preyed upon by those hiding behind online anonymity.

Teens’ unsophisticated willingness to buy into the glossy accounts of others’ fabulous lives causes increasingly low self-esteem, producing overriding dissatisfaction with their own lives. They compare their relatively tame — normal — lives with those of the more beautiful, more interesting, more sociable, which to their inexperienced eyes looks to be basically everyone else.

Increasing evidence of toxicity and damage is emerging, especially for our children. Johns Hopkins, Yale and others, have published articles on the detrimental effects of introducing electronic media too early, and the surgeon general has called for a warning label on social media platforms.

The surprising thing is that this is surprising. Cause and effect, and comparable to the one-child policy instituted in China in 1979 that resulted in too many baby boys (males, culturally preferred, females aborted.) Years later: not enough girls to marry the surplus of boys. Predictable. Facebook was launched in 2004, opening the door to social platforms, and we are just now starting to realize its detrimental effects?

In the great sweep of social media, illusion reigns with its inherent falseness, from the seemingly innocuous act of simple selection — not posting unflattering photos — to photo manipulation and digital Botox. Yet, have you ever, even once, heard anyone say, “Everyone loves her because she is so perfect”? It is never perfection we connect with: It is humanness.

Thanks to increasing access to this lightning-fast, but tinny, media, we now have young adults who would more likely leave their grandmother at the mall than their cell phone. Phones feel like their connection to the world. But are they? Listening to Grandma’s stories is likely a better, and certainly more rewarding, connection.

Life isn’t curated updates, not just “our story” playing out, but the stories we share, experiencing this time and this place together.

Rarely have we faced anything that so permeates the psyches of our lives, particularly those of the most vulnerable. Now, with brilliant AI breaking over the horizon, we tend to forget what is important. We may be able to find all the answers, but do we even know the questions?

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver

Curate it and post it? Or live it?

Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."

Read More

Biased Coverage Distorts the Historical Record We Later Inherit
white printer paper on black table
Photo by Ashni on Unsplash

Biased Coverage Distorts the Historical Record We Later Inherit

I used to enjoy doing my schoolwork in my college newspaper’s office. There is a series of tall library shelves filled with dusty books held together by loose binding that contain every article printed since our inception in the 1930s.

The book covers have lost the sharpness of their hues over time, and the thin old papers inside are yellow and torn, but inside those books lie almost 100 years of articles that tell the stories and history of the college town, Isla Vista, and UC Santa Barbara, as written by student journalists at the Daily Nexus.

Keep ReadingShow less
Medical Schools Are Falling Behind in the Age of Generative AI

"To prepare tomorrow’s doctors, medical school deans, elected officials, and health care regulators must invest in training that matches the pace and promise of this technology," writes Dr. Robert Pearl.

Getty Images, ArtistGNDphotography

Medical Schools Are Falling Behind in the Age of Generative AI

While colleges across the nation are adapting their curricula to harness the power of generative AI, U.S. medical schools remain dangerously behind.

Most students entering medicine today will graduate without ever being trained to use GenAI tools effectively. That must change. To prepare tomorrow’s doctors – and protect tomorrow’s patients – medical school deans, elected officials, and health care regulators must invest in training that matches the pace and promise of this technology.

Keep ReadingShow less
Bay Area Social Media Post Claims ICE Cannot Enter Library, Fuels Misinformation

South Novato Library, California

Pricila Flores

Bay Area Social Media Post Claims ICE Cannot Enter Library, Fuels Misinformation

Bay Area community advocates are cautioning community members to be wary of what they see, interact with, and post on social media regarding information about the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and immigration, following a rumor that targeted the Marin County Library.

‘South Novato Library has safe rooms that cannot be accessed by border patrol or ICE without a court order,’ an Instagram story post reads, with photos of a room in the library next to the text alongside the library address. The graphic claims Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not have the right to enter the pictured room without a court-ordered warrant.

Despite the graphic becoming a popular share among the local community of Novato, a Marin County city located just north of San Francisco, the information is false.

Keep ReadingShow less
AI Progress Delayed Is Progress Denied
Students in a college classroom.
Getty Images, Klaus Vedfelt

AI Progress Delayed Is Progress Denied

Earlier this summer, I recorded an episode of the Scaling Laws podcast with MacKenzie Price, founder of Alpha Schools—schools “where kids crush academics in two hours, build life skills through workshops, and thrive beyond the classroom.” The secret is AI, but likely not the sort of AI that comes to mind.

Students at Alpha Schools work with “adaptive AI” that allows 1:1 learning at the pace necessary to master a subject, moving at the speed of the student’s learning rather than that of the entire class. By relying on AI to set that tempo, the school shaves hours off the traditional classroom model and reallocates that time to activities that allow students to more fully explore their interests, from horseback riding to documentary filmmaking.

Keep ReadingShow less