When you are looking for stories with the words “college application help”, Google’s search engine identifies over 500 million examples on the World Wide Web. It is hard to say how long it would take to look at all 500 million, but no one has that kind of time. Now, five higher education groups are trying to make the college application process simpler.

The five started a website with the goal of providing all the college information students need in one place. It offers help to students and their parents as they learn about and complete the college application process. The website’s address is www.steps 2college.org.

The site provides information about important dates in the college admission process, help with application forms and sources of financial aid. The site offers ideas on how to avoid the kind of problems students often face when preparing for college.

For example, one report examines what is known as “summer melt”. That is the term used to describe students who are accepted at a college and pay the required deposit, but do not show up for the first day of class. The report says college administrators had long believed “summer melt” students decided to change schools. But researchers found that many failed to attend classes anywhere that school year. The report goes on to say that it is likely that many students just were not aware of all the paperwork required before the start of classes.

The website also has information on how students can choose the best college. A few weeks ago, the site offered a “virtual college fair” of 100 colleges and universities. The event gave students and parents a chance to question officials and students from 100 schools. Many high school graduates say they would like the website to provide a “time-line” — one that organizes all steps needed to successfully complete the application process.

A new study’s findings warn that smart phones are seriously messing with your quality of life.

The study looked at the responses of 256 smart phone users. Researchers found that 13 percent of participants were addicted to their smart phones, spending 3.6 hours per day on the devices. Social networking sites were the No. 1 time wasters with 87 percent of users, while instant messaging apps at 52 percent and news apps at 51 percent.

Almost 25 percent of the people admitted that their smart phones caused “communication issues” in their real lives, including less conversation with family and friends. What’s worse, the majority of users said “their   smart phone use   caused distraction(精神不集中)   from   many aspects of   their lives, including employment, hobbies and studies.”

“People need to know the potential addictive properties( 性质) of mobile phones,” a researcher said. “There should be a warning before people purchase them or before they download an app. If you’re downloading a game, there should be a warning saying that you could end up playing this for hours and you have other responsibilities that could be ignored.”

Screen-addicted teens are unhappy

A new study explored the link between adolescent life satisfaction and screen time. Researchers found that teens who spent more time in front of screen devices -- playing computer games, using social media, texting and video chatting -- were less happy than those who invested more time in non-screen activities like sports, reading newspapers and magazines, and face-to-face social interaction.

Total screen avoidance doesn't lead to happiness either. The greater unhappiness among those with no screen exposure could be due to several factors, Twenge, the leading researcher said. “It could be that they are left out of the social scene of high school, that it’s very difficult to carry on friendships in high school these days without texting at all or being on social media.” It is also possible that those kids are outliers, Twenge said — teens with special needs or in special education, or those whose screens have been taken away from them by parents.

The key to digital media use and happiness is limited use. The happiest teens used digital media a little less than an hour per day. But after a daily hour of screen time, unhappiness rises steadily along with increasing screen time, the researchers report in the journal Emotion.

"Make effort to spend no more than two hours a day on digital media, and try to increase the amount of time you spend seeing friends face-to-face and exercising -- two activities reliably linked to greater happiness." Twenge said.

"By far the largest change in teens' lives between 2012 and 2016 was the increase in the amount of time they spent on digital media, and the following decline in in-person social activities and sleep," the leading researcher said. "The arrival of the smartphone is the most reasonable explanation for the sudden decrease in teens' psychological well-being."