1 . For most of us, a large part of our work requires us to look at the screen for a long time.     1     Sadly, too much screen time can cause eye damage and affect our mood. While it is impossible to escape the screen completely, there are ways to reduce the time you place your eyes and brain under the screen strain.

    2     But constant chatting means our eyes are down on our phones and other devices for long. If possible, try and schedule phone calls with distant loved ones and make face-to-face catch-up with closer relatives. “In-person meetings provide a sense of connection and empathy that is difficult to replace via video,” Paul Axtell, corporate trainer and author of the book Meetings Matter, told The Washington Post.

Keeping up to date on your social media channels is fun and socially very important for many users. But these channels can also be a big time waster for many people.     3     The next step is to gradually reduce this, particularly on days when screen usage is high for other reasons.

If you live with someone else, you can try to take on your screen time together. Establish certain areas in your home, or time periods in the day, where you both agree to stay off of your phone.     4     Consider doing some hobbies together, like cooking dinner or playing a board game.

One of the biggest tech no-no’s that people commonly commit is bringing phones, computers, and more into bed with them. Don’t charge your phone next to your bed, as it will cause you to check for messages or even the time if you wake up during the night.     5    

2 . What Does Our Body Language Reveal

    1     People tend to judge us far more on our physical appearance, including our mannerisms, than by what comes out of our mouths. To give the right impression, it’s important to understand what we are conveying non-verbally and how our unconscious signals are being received by the people we interact with.

Smiling is a powerful tool in your body language collection. Perhaps you smile a lot in the hope of appearing friendly.     2     In some Asian cultures, smiling too much is seen as a signal that you’re not a serious person and may lose you some respect.

If you’re trying to hide nervousness you’d better avoid smiling too much, too. Also be aware that nervous people often hug themselves, rub their forehead, and shift their body weight from one foot to another to create a slight rocking motion.     3    

If you’re trying to show that you are listening sympathetically to what someone has to say, try tipping your head slightly and nodding very slightly. This gesture implies you are listening with interest. If you’re talking to someone and a third person joins, turn your body towards them slightly to include them and make them feel valued.     4     A single nod of the head is also a strong gesture of coolness when listening to another person.

To build trust quickly? Try mirroring. Adopting a similar stance (站姿) to the person you are engaged with indicates your interest and helps develop trust. Use this with caution, though.     5     Mirroring only works when they don’t realize what you’re doing.

3 . Social media truly can affect one’s life. Below are some ways how this new interactive technology can affect your life.

●Cyberbullying (网络暴力).

    1    . This has led to cyberbullying, where people use the electronic communication to send messages in a threatening nature.

Cyberbullying can be a serious issue where the victim can experience a huge amount of stress that leads to a decline in mental health. There are also cases where cyberbullying have led to suicide cases and caused death.

●Distraction (分心) and Drop In Productivity.

Do you know that social media is a huge distraction and it can interrupt your life in every level? Try to imagine you are writing an important article and suddenly someone gives you a call on Facebook, which will distract your focus. Many studies have found that the more people engage with social media, the less the person is able to focus on his work.     2    .

●Tiredness and Stress.

What do you think would happen if you stare at your computer screen or your cell phone for a long period?     3    . Plus, when you are checking social media, you are constantly switching from one task to another because there are so many things to check out and to see. This information overload will wear out your brain power and make you feel tired.

●Peer (同辈) Pressure and The Desire To Compare.

Another common way how social media can affect your life is through peer pressure. People are afraid to miss out and they love to compare themselves with other people.     4    . This is why you are using the social network in the first place.

●Other Related Health Issue.

Apart from all that being mentioned, there will be other related health issues such as blurry vision due to strain eyes as the result of long hours watching the screen.     5    , you may suffer back and neck pain issue as you have to consistently bend down your neck to look at your phone.

4 . Skeet shooting is a type of target sport in which the shooter uses a special gun to hit moving clay target, which are sometimes referred to as “clay pigeons (陶土飞靶)”. This target sport is an important, competitive sport in the Olympic games.     1    

Skeet shooting was invented by the bird hunter in the early nineteenth century under the original name of “clock shooting”. The game was changed slightly and reached a wider audience over the coming years. Once, a competition was held to determine a new name for this shooting game.     2     The term “skeet” is a Scandinavian word meaning “to shoot”.

Today, skeet shooting is as American as apple pie and McDonald’s. At first, fans of the sport were male, but now, a fair number of women also love skeet shooting.     3     For friends or families, skeet shooting at a sporting club can be a fun activity.

    4     Generally, people will need to purchase related equipment, including something guaranteeing personal safety such as safety glasses. And they’d better have a large, private yard. If the players have never done shooting of any kind before, they should also take a safety course, which will teach them about the proper use and storage of the equipment.

Like most skills, skeet shooting takes a lot of patience and practice.     5     But those folks are few and far between, especially if they’ve never picked up a shotgun before. If you aren’t a patient person, that’s okay because skeet shooting can help you develop patience.

5 . Gossip is the sharing of personal information about someone else who is not present. All of us have probably caught ourselves, from time to time, allowing ourselves to enjoy the pleasure of gossiping more than we would like to admit. Someone says the words, “Don’t tell this to anyone.”     1     We all know that we shouldn’t talk behind someone’s back, but gossip is so common.

Gossip has some characteristics (特点). First, gossip is an activity that is done with other people.     2     Second, the information shared is always about someone who is not present in the conversation, or about someone whom we believe to be absent. Third, when we gossip, we not only share facts, but also make some judgments about the person.

Researchers studied volunteers, including women and men, to find out some facts about gossip. They found that most gossip was neutral (不偏袒的).     3     Most of this gossip was about people they knew of. Negative gossip was twice as common as positive gossip. Over three-fourths of the gossip was simply discussing someone else.

    4     Outgoing people gossip more than quiet people. People who are wealthier and well-educated gossip more than people who have less money and education.     5     On average, people spent about 52 minutes a day gossiping. The study showed that gossip is everywhere.

6 . A lot of people assume the more work they put in at the gym, and the longer and harder they push themselves, the better their results will be.     1     But if you want to get the best gains, the key is to focus on the quality of the work rather than the quantity.

Your body is capable of making only tiny adaptations and improvements at any one time. Once you've given it enough push to make these changes, any additional work you do after that point won't be making you any better.     2     This is because you'll need longer to recover afterwards. Besides, you won't feel fresh when you start your next session. Ideally, it's just enough to do the smallest amount of work required to promote growth in every workout.     3     Thus the minimum amount of exercise brings the maximum physical gains.

    4     For example, if a new gym-goer wants to get stronger, he might start a squat (深蹲) Workout, which is made up of ten steps, each having five repetitions. In theory, it's a sensible way for building strength. If he's only attempted three steps in his previous exercise, it's far from enough. The fourth step would push him past his previous limit and force adaptation. But the subsequent steps are meant for more professional people.     5    

As a general rule, regardless of your experience, aim to only increase the volume of any exercise by one step from workout to workout.

7 . Eating more plants is a great move for your health and the environment.     1     There are some common mistakes people make when going meatless:

Not replacing meat with other protein sources. When you take something out of your diet, you take out the nutrients that food provided.     2     Some nutritionists recommend including protein sources like beans, soy foods, nuts and nut butters, seeds and seed butters, and whole grains.

    3     There are more choices than ever for plant-based burgers, sausage, and ground “meat”, and they seem like a no-brainer good choice. But man-made meats also tend to be heavily processed, which contain ingredients (成分) that offer zero nutrition such as preservatives and coloring.

Taking too much cheese. Limit your intake of refined carbohydrates (碳水化合物), sweets and cheese. Cheese is an easy way to get meat-free protein, but too much can end up adding a lot of saturated (饱和的) animal fat in your diet. People are suggested to get most of their protein from plant-based sources and use smaller amounts of cheese to give flavor.     4    

Not having enough vegetables. The point of eating more plant-based food is to eat more plants!     5     The trick is that no matter what you are eating, throw a handful of greens onto your plate or bowl.

8 . We’ve all been there — staring at a pile of books, desperately hoping that what we study will stick in our mind. Many of us have probably asked if there’s any way that we can get better at remembering things.     1    

Every student who has made flashcards knows that it can be helpful to go back over what they’ve studied before. The Learning Scientists, a group of cognitive scientists, have made a new discovery.    2     They say that trying to retrieve (找回) something from your memory after you have had some time to forget it will make it easier to remember in future.

    3     The Learning Scientists say this can help you build links between different ideas. Now, linking ideas and relating them to each other or to images are often suggested as good ways to memorise something. Former world memory champion Jonathan Hancock highlights how picturing pieces of information in different physical locations or linking them to memorable images makes them easier to remember. Linking new information to things that are easier to remember is a technique that many people use.    4    

There are also more general things that we can do to improve our memory. Hancock says that being generally organised makes things easier for your brain, while many other experts also recommend avoiding stress, alcohol and smoking, and that we should get a lot of rest and exercise.    5    

9 . The teenage years are a transformative period marked by great physical, psychological, and emotional changes.     1     They refer to the feelings that arise during interactions with others, such as gratitude, shame, sympathy, guilt, and pride.

Understanding and managing social emotions can help develop teenagers’ identities. Teenagers experience a wide range of emotions from social interactions, which significantly influences their self-understanding and social awareness. In the process, they learn to understand, and appropriately respond to both their own emotions and those of others.     2    

In academic settings, social emotional competencies like self-regulation, motivation, and social awareness directly impact a teenager’s ability to learn, participate, and engage in school activities.     3     Teenagers with strong social emotional skills are better equipped to handle stress, resist peer pressure, and avoid risky behaviors, reducing the likelihood of developing mental health issues.

Learning social emotions involves a combination of personal experience, guidance, and formal education.     4     This environment influences teenagers’ earliest understanding of how to communicate and manage their emotions. They feel safe and supportive to express their emotions freely and learn to manage them without fear of judgment. Schools also play a significant role through social emotional learning programs that teach these skills in a structured environment. Community involvement, extracurricular activities, and peer (同伴) interactions offer additional opportunities for teenagers to practice and refine their social emotional skills.

    5     It contributes to a teenager’s ability to manage their own emotions, understand others’ emotions, and face social complexities. This learning is a cornerstone for shaping their identity, influencing their interpersonal relationships, academic success, mental health, and future life outcomes.

10 . Keeping your home neat and tidy is a continual process that takes a lot of emotional energy and time. Here are some useful decluttering (清理) strategies.

    1    

If you have a lot of clutter in your house, ask yourself what has made it hard to get rid of. In many cases, it is due to the fact that you hope to hold on to the past or want a different reality than the one you’re living in.

Take the emotion out of it

Then comes the hardest part: figuring out what to get rid of.    2    . Go through it as though you’re helping a friend and none of your stuff means anything to you.

Start small

Don’t try to tidy up all your clutter in one afternoon. Instead, start with something less challenging, like one single bathroom drawer.    3    . This kind of work often takes the most time and emotional energy.

You can also work within short time periods. If you only have an hour to declutter your home this week, divide that time into three 20-minute periods. For the first 20 minutes, look for trash to throw away. For the next 20 minutes, identify anything you want to give away or donate.    4    .

Make it easy to stay organized

It’s easy to be organized the day after decluttering. But what happens when you come home from a trip and are too tired to unpack your luggage? Or when you get the flu and are too sick to clean up?    5    . For example, label storage containers on all four sides so they’re easier to spot. Make sure your most used items are always the easiest to reach.