【推荐1】Technology has given people more ways to connect, but has it also given them more opportunities to lie?

This is a problem that social psychologists and communication scholars have always wanted to work out. The study conducted by communication researcher Jeff Hancock in 2004 is the first one to investigate the connection between deception (欺骗) rates and technology. In the study, Hancock had 28 students report the number of social interactions they had via face-to-face communication, the phone, instant messaging and email over seven days. Students also reported the number of times they lied in each social interaction. The results suggested people told the most lies per social interaction on the phone. The fewest were told via email.

The results are consistent with a framework Hancock called the “feature-based model”. According to this model, specific aspects of a technology — whether people can communicate back and forth seamlessly (无缝地), whether the messages are fleeting and whether communicators are distant — predict where people tend to lie the most.

Now, it has been almost 20 years since Hancock conducted his study. The ways we communicate have also shifted — fewer phone calls and more social media messaging. Does Hancock’s result obtained 20 years ago still hold up today?

To answer this question, I recruited a larger group of participants and studied interactions from more forms of technology. A total of 250 people recorded their social interactions and number of interactions with a lie over seven days, across face-to-face communication, social media, the phone, texting, video chat and email.

As in Hancock’s study, people told the most lies per social interaction over media that were synchronous (同步进行的) and recordless and when communicators were distant: over the phone or on video chat. They told the fewest lies per social interaction via email.

Though more work is needed to understand exactly why different media lead to different lying rates, it’s clear that certain media are better facilitators of deception than others. And there’s a low rate of lying across the board, which means most people are honest.

People often believe that just because we use technology to interact, honesty is harder to come by and users aren’t well served. But my study has shown that this perception is not only misguided, but also unsupported by practical evidence. The belief that lying is rampant (猖獗的) in the digital age just doesn’t match the data.

【推荐3】Growing up can sometimes seem like a roller coaster. There are ups and downs and unexpected turns. Abuse or neglect by adult can make the ride even rougher. But being bullied(欺凌) by another child can leave especially lasting scars. That's the finding of a new study.

Bullied kids face a high risk of mental health problems as teens and as young adults. Indeed bullied kids might be worse off than those who had suffered physical abuse or neglect, the study found.

Dieter Wolke works at the University of Warwick in England. Until recently, most studies of child victims focused not on bullying but on maltreatment, this psychologist says. Maltreatment includes physical or emotional abuse, neglect or other behaviors that can harm a child.

Wolke's team wanted to better understand how bullying's long-term effects compare to those due to maltreatment. They focused on 4,026 children in the United Kingdom and 1,420 more in the United States. Information about bullying and maltreatment was collected for American children to age 13.They collected the same information for British youth up to age 16. The researchers also gathered data on each individual's mental health as a young adult.

Among the Americans, 36 percent of bullied kids had mental problems later. Those problems included anxiety, which is a state of excessive worry. They also included depression. That is a feeling of hopelessness that can last a long time. Among kids who had been maltreated by adults, 17 percent later suffered mental health problems. That was less than half the rate seen in people who had been bullied as school kids.

In the U. K. group, the difference was less spectacular. Roughly 25 percent of the bullied kids reported mental health problems later, compared with about 17 percent who had been maltreated.

But however you look at it, the finding are disturbing, Wolke says. They show that bullied children have similar or worse mental health problems later in life. And that’s why he says schools, health services and other agencies must work together to end bullying.

【推荐1】Surfing the Internet for fun will make you a better employee, according to an Australian study.

The University of Melbourne study shows that people who use the Internet for their own reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive than those who do not. Study author Brent Coker said, “Surfing the Internet at times helps increase an employee’s attention.”

“People need to relax for a bit to get back their attention,” Coker said on the university’s website. “Having a short break, such as a quick surfing of the Internet, helps the mind to rest itself, and as a result, increases productivity ,” he said.

According to the study of 300 workers,70 percent of people who use the Internet at work surf the Internet for their own reasons during office hours. Among the most popular surfing activities are searching for information about products, reading online news, playing online games and watching videos. “Firms spend a lot of money on software to block their employees from watching videos, using social networking sites or shopping online,” said Coker. “That’s not always a good idea.”

However, Coker said the study looked at people who surfed the Internet in moderation (适度),or were on the Internet for less than 20 percent of their total time in the office. “Those who spend too much time surfing the Internet will have a lower productivity than those without,” he said.

【推荐2】Last year I ruined my summer vacation by bringing along a modern convenience that was too convenient for my own good: the iPad. Instead of looking at nature, I checked my email. Instead of paddling a small boat, I followed my Twitter feed. Instead of reading great novels, I stuck to reading four newspapers each morning. I was behaving as if I were still in the office. My body was on vacation but my head wasn’t.

So this year I made up my mind to try something different: withdrawal from the Internet. I knew it wouldn’t be easy since I’m bad at self-control. But I was determined. I started by giving the iPad to my wife.

The cellphone signal at our house was worse than in the past, making my attempts at cheating an experience in frustration. I was trapped, forced to go through with my plan. Largely cut off from e-mail, Twitter and my favorite newspaper websites, I had few ways to connect to the world except for radio and how much radio can one listen to, really? I had to do what I had planned to all along: read books.

This experience has had a happy ending. With determination and the strong support of my wife, I won in my vacation struggle against the Internet, realizing finally that it was I, not the iPad, that was the problem. I knew I had won when we passed a Starbucks and my wife asked if I wanted to stop to use the Wi-Fi. “I don’t need it,” I said.

However, as we return to post-vacation life, a harder test begins: Can I continue when I’m back to work? There are times when the need to know what’s being said right now is great. And I have no intention of giving up my convenience completely. But I hope to resist the temptation(诱惑)to check my e-mail every five minutes, which leads to checking my Twitter feed and a website or two.

I think a vacation is supposed to help you reset your brain to become more productive. Here I hope this one worked.

【推荐3】Just imagine you are browsing through your emails when you suddenly start daydreaming about where you can go for summer vacation. You are thus reminded to compare the cost of several fast food restaurants. Then you suddenly change your mind and decide to seek for some places to hold your birthday party.

It may occur to you that you are actually surfing the Internet in a bit absent-minded manner. There is one word, in fact, “wilfing”, which can explain the phenomenon. According to a survey for an economic column, almost eight in ten Internet users confessed that they had the newly-named habit. The survey of 2800 people implemented by OurGov indicates that over a quarter of online users wilf ---- a rough acronym of What Was I Looking For? ---- for Four days every month.

Kete Cohenmen, CMTV’s resident life trainer and motivator, commented, “Preventing yourself from wilfing takes a blend of delicate planning and strong willpower.” Recently, all manners of websites aiming to attracting our attention emerge. It’s time for online users to set themselves a clear goal and a correspondent time limit to change the current situation.

Shopping online, for example, is most likely to make users wilf amid all the online activities. It is more likely that men admit being wilfers than women. A third of the men surveyed said the habit of wilfing had damaged their relationships. But there is one piece of good news that wilfing is a habit people tend to break out of. Internet users aged 65 or over were four times less likely to wilf than those aged under 23.

Mison Lioyed, from money by money.com, said, “The Internet was intended to make it easier for people to have access to the information they need as quickly and conveniently as possible.” Despite the fact that people log on purposefully, they are now being provided so many choices and are distracted to such a degree that many forget why they are there, and instead, spend hours aimlessly wilfing. It’s critical that people realize the importance of reducing or even eliminating unnecessary online distractions to be on the right track when surfing online, as it can have an effect on people's productivity both at work and at home.

So, are you a wilfer who always found yourself engulfed by the Internet?