【推荐1】Today’s grandparents are joining their grandchildren on social media, but the different generations’ online habits couldn’t be more different. In the UK the over-55 s are joining Facebook in increasing numbers, meaning that they will soon be the site’s second biggest user group, with 3.5 million users aged 55-64 and 2.9 million over-65s.

Sheila, aged 59, says, “I joined to see what my grandchildren are doing, as my daughter posts videos and photos of them. It’s a much better way to see what they’re doing than waiting for letters and photos in the post. That’s how we did it when I was a child, but I think I’m lucky I get to see so much more of their lives than my grandparents did.”

Interestingly, Sheila’s grandchildren are less likely to use Facebook themselves. Children under 17 in the UK are leaving the site - only 2.2 million users are under 17 -but they’re not going far from their smartphones. Chloe, aged 15, even sleeps with her phone. “It’s my alarm clock so I have to,’ she says. “I look at it before I go to sleep and as soon as I wake up.”

Unlike her grandmother’s generation, Chloe’s age group is spending so much time on their phones at home that they are missing out on spending time with their friends in real life. Sheila, on the other hand, has made contact with old friends from school she hasn’t heard from in forty years. ”We use Facebook to arrange to meet all over the country,” she says. “It’s changed my social life completely.”

Parents have an important role to play if they want their kids to spend more time in real life. Peter, 38, who spends most of his time in front of a screen, is recently determined to set a better example to his kids. In the evening or at weekends, he would leave his smartphone home and take his kids out to nature.

【推荐2】China’s popular “Singles’Day”, better known as “Double Eleven”, started out as a day to celebrate singles symbolized by the four number ones on the date of November 11.

With time that meaning has changed. In 2009, China’s e-commerce leader Alibaba set the day as a lucky shopping day for online sales as the date was both easy to remember and perfectly timed as it hit between the consumer spending lull (间歇) between National Day and Chinese New Year. It soon became a hit, and Double Eleven became a buying frenzy (疯狂) spread across the world’s second largest economy.

In 2019, the Double Eleven Shopping Festival entered its eleventh year. During this decade, Alibaba, Chinese e-commerce giant, and other e-commerce platforms, together with consumers, have co-created a very big shopping event whose heat has swept the world. Foreign readers share their ideas on Singles’ Day in China:

GhostBuster (UK) I think Double Eleven is unbelievable. It is not a religious festival that people of the same religion but living in different countries share. As an e-commerce faithful fan, I really love the shopping festival.

Emanreus (Australia) I work in Shanghai. Many of my young female colleagues are still single. They simply haven’t time to date, as they tend to work long hours then travel two hours by subway to get to and from work. Single’s Day is a day when they give themselves a treat with online shopping.

BlondeAmber (Ireland) There is not hing to be proud of to be in a country that spends so much online on a particular day. It does nothing more than show the superficiality (肤浅) of the temporary pleasure of shopping, and produces nothing more than a mountain of environmental waste. I bet there is plenty of buyers’ deep regret after this day.

Ionstar (US) Singles Day became a big deal for Valentine’s Day not for the singles! Well, Alibaba’s 11. 11 has become more famous and important than that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

【推荐3】Be black or white, the exact color of a person’s skin is determined by a combination of his parentage and random chance and it affects how every single person treats you. You can’t take your skin off, even if you’re terrified or ashamed to wear it, even if you’re sick and tired of wearing it.

Freddie Gray, who was arrested in 2016 for possessing a legal knife and died in police custody(拘留), was born Black. Tamir Rice , who barely lived more than one being Black, was shot at the age of 12 for playing with a toy gun in 2014. Breonna Taylor, who was shot and killed in March when two plainclothes police officers entered her apartment unannounced, didn’t choose to be Black. But the police officers who shot her chose their careers. They chose to shoot her, too. Police across America also chose to shoot 336 other unarmed Black people from 2013-2019.

Each of these victims did not possess a weapon at the time of their murder, and in all but few of the cases they lost their lives because someone "thought" they were reaching for a gun that turned out to be a wallet, cell phone or nothing at all. This is absolutely unacceptable. We're not saying they shouldn't have been captured with all necessary force and imprisoned accordingly. A criminal is a criminal and should be handled as such. But even a criminal, as long as he lives in this great country, is an American worthy of justified handling and a fair trial.

Black people don’t get to sign up for lives of discrimination and terror. They often found themselves moving through wave upon wave of white faces that usually mirrored the same emotions—shock, disbelief and anger. It is the fear of black skin that plays a part in each of these murders. African Americans can no longer tolerate the unjustified killings of their loved ones. As a country, it’s time to start effective dialogues to end this pitiless trend. It has to be a long struggle and pain before Black people overcome prejudice to win the chance of being understood by white ones.