1 . South Korea has the biggest rate of Internet addiction in the world and it is increasingly the country’s children who are spending every waking moment immersing themselves in fantasy role plays or gaming In the remote mountains of South Korea, teenage Internet addicts are turning up for a 12-day boot camp.

Kyle Won’s addiction is out of control. He spends 10 hours a day on the Internet. Now Kyle’s smartphone is taken away. The teachers here do what they can to get them socializing again; for many, the only friends they have had are online. “I have relationships on the Internet and a real distance has gown with my real-life friends and I know it’s not good,” Kyle said. The teachers show them other possibilities and bring back dreams and hopes that have been buried by their addictions. “We teach them methods of managing their desire to use the Internet so that they can continue to use it when they go back home,” Shim Yong-school, a teacher here, said. After just two days Kyle said It was helpful. He’s set a good example to others though he hasn’t reached the goal completely.

Sout Korean psychiatrists (精神病专家) are urging more/action as they are finding evidence that too much screen time is a barrier to the developing minds. Professor Kang Seak Young from Dankook, University said the addiction was damaging critical thinking. “It affects the frontal lobes (额叶) which are important to critical analysis” Professor Kang said. “Reading a book and guessing what happens in the story next show activity in frontal lobes but playing popular computer games for a long time shows no activity.”

South Korea is one of the most wired nations on Earth, but it does have a cost. One in every ten kids is an addict so the country is now learning how to manage its high-tech future to avoid more serious consequences.

Each time I take the underground I find myself     1     (surround) by dozens of passengers playing smartphones. They almost won’t even give a glance at the outside world. You may think it is normal to play smartphones     2     (kill) time. What’s worse, when I talk with some of my     3     (friend), they talk as playing, which is really an annoyance.

I really miss the old days when I chatted with some passengers on the train. Now things are     4     (difference). Everyone just concentrates     5     their smartphones. When talking with them, it seems that you are disturbing their playing smartphones. I could not just blame them for I am moving to be one like them. Sometimes I just feel we     6     (large) ignore our neighbors and want to keep in touch with distant strangers through the Internet. We care about the things far away     7     pay no attention to the needs nearby.     8     ridiculous the situation is! In a way we     9     (control) by smartphones. Are you     10     (experience) the same situation like me? Do you have any ways to avoid that?

On Monday morning, I was on my way to school when suddenly as I saw a boy knocked down by the car. In a hurry, I ran over and found the boy was serious hurt with much blood on his face. Immediately, I call an ambulance and the boy was taking to the nearest hospital. To my relief, the boy was fine and would recover in a few day. I went away without giving his name. I was late for class, and I felt happy for what I had done. As a proverb says, “Help others is the source of happiness.” I feel it our duty make the world a better place to live in.

4 . For many people, going a few hours without your smartphone can feel like a lifetime. Now, one expert claims that humans are becoming so dependent on technology, that we’re actually merging (融合) into it.

Speaking at the Fast Company European Innovation Festival, Professor Yuval Noah Harari, a historian at the Hebrew University claimed that it’s becoming more and more difficult to tell where humans end and machines begin. He said: “It’s increasingly hard to tell where I end and where the computer begins. In the future, it is likely that the smartphone will not be separated from you at all. It may be embedded in your body or brain, constantly scanning your biometric data and your emotions.”

During his speech, Professor Harari highlighted how humans have affected our environment over time, and suggested that now may be the time to affect ourselves. He said: “Humanity has always remained constant. If we told our ancestors in the Stone Age about our lives today, they would think we are already Gods. But the truth is that even though we have developed more wonderful tools, we are the same animals. We have the same emotions, the same minds. The coming revolution will change that. It will change not just our tools, it will change the human being itself.”

If we do manage to merge with machines, Professor Harari suggests it could open the door to setting up civilizations beyond Earth. He added: “Life will be able to break out of planet Earth and no longer be confined to this flying rock.”

While Professor Harari’s claims may sound farfetched (牵强的), he isn’t alone in his vision of a machine-human world. Back in 2017, Elon Musk claimed that humans should merge with machines, or risk becoming irrelevant. He said: “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence.”

5 . It’s normal to long for the taste of potato chips or a cheese-covered pizza. Even though they’re full of calories, eating them occasionally won’t do much harm. However, according to the new numbers, young people are becoming more gluttonous. The BBC’s Good Food Nation Survey showed that on average, 16 to 20-year-olds ate fast food at least twice a day in the UK. So what’s behind this fast food binge (狂热)?

WebMD, an online publisher of news and information of human health and well-being, surveyed nearly 600 teenagers and adults in the United States. They found that the most common reason was our busy lifestyle. More than 92.3 percent of respondents said they were too busy to cook. Many find it challenging to balance work and life, and the convenience of fast food meets their needs. Fast food is readily available in corner stores and vending machines (自动售货机). Remember those instant noodle cups from the supermarket? They’re ready in minutes, and you can store them at home for a long time.

But many people think this trend does no good. Sarah Toule, head of health information at World Cancer Research Fund, told the BBC: “It’s frightening that people, especially younger generations, are eating so much fast food loaded with fat, sugar and salt, but offers little nutritional value.”

She added, “Especially high in calories, fast food leads to unhealthy weight gain-which in turn increases the risk of 11 cancers later in life.”

So what is the right thing to do? Toule suggested that young people should prepare meals in advance and learn to include the different food groups in their diets.

6 . Fantasy literature, a reading genre(类型)that was introduced from the Western world, has recently been developing rapidly in China. It is now popular among not only adult readers but also children.

A forum (论坛会)was recently held in Beijing during which participants agreed that such development trend would have an increasingly strong effect on children’s literature in China. Xu Dexia, direetor of China Children’s Press and Publishing Group, believes fantasy fiction will continue to heat up in China this year though it is still in its beginning.

Of the fantasy literature, science fiction is the most popular with children. 13-year-old Liu Wangding is a great fan of such books. He said, “I like reading science fiction, and one of my favorite books is 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea. Fantasy literature satisfies my curiosity, and I’m always interested in learning about science.”

A senior editor of children’s literature at the People’s Literature Publishing House, Feng Zhen, says it is good to see that fantasy literature becomes popular in China. Fantasy literature is purely imported from Western countries. Chinese authors took some time to get used to it before being able to produce such stories of their own. That is why there has been blank in the domestic market. With the Harry Potter storied introduced into China, such books quickly became popular in this country.

“Even though Western fantasy literature is popular, Chinese children still have difficulty fully appreciating such stories simply because of different cultural backgrounds,” Feng Zhen said. “Therefore, Chinese writers have a huge role to play in helping develop this branch of literature for our young readers.”

Feng Zhen praised the success of Luoling’s Magic, a best seller written by Chinese writer Chen Liuhuan. The book tells a 13-year-old alien girl growing up on Earth. The series has sold 1. 6 million copies since hitting the shelves.

Stop wasting food

8 . Two hundred years ago, the clock began to control the world of work. Paid on the basis of how many hours they worked, people rushed to and from work.

The clock’s power may at last be weakening. Flexible working existed well before the pandemic?(疫情). Now remote working has brought a greater degree of freedom. A survey of 4,700 home-workers across six countries conducted by Slack, a corporate-messaging firm, found that flexible working was viewed very positively, improving both people’s worksite balance and productivity. Flexible workers even scored more highly on a sense of belonging to their organization than those on a nine-to-five schedule.

It is hardly surprising that workers prefer flexibility. Working an eight-hour schedule is restricting. Those are also the hours when most shops are open, and when doctors will take appointments. Parents on a conventional routine may be able to take their children to school in the morning but are unlikely to be able to pick them up in the afternoon.

It is also not astonishing that home-workers feel they are more productive. After all, few people can concentrate for eight hours on end. There are points in the day where people feel like staring out of the window or going for a walk; these may be moments when they find inspiration or recharge themselves for the next task. When they do this in an office, they risk the boss’s disapproval; at home, they can work when they are most motivated.

What is striking about Slack’s study is the widespread support for home-working. Overall Just 12% of the workers surveyed wanted to return to a normal office schedule. In America black, Asian and Hispanic employees were even more enthusiastic than their white colleagues. Women with children were generally happy about it, reporting an improvement in their work-life balance.

Of course, the new schedule carries dangers: people may lose all separation between work and home life. To maintain some human contact, companies may adopt a mixed model in which workers go into the office for part of the week. But overall office-workers’ freedom is to be welcomed. The clock was a crud master and many people will be happy to escape its control.

9 . When you were at school, the last thing you probably wanted to do was to spend your weekends going to work. There was homework to do, sports to play and fun to have. But our parents probably persuaded us to find a job to earn some money and get some life experience. When I was a teenager I delivered newspapers to people’s homes. I then progressed to a Saturday job in a supermarket: stacking shelves and working at the checkout.

Today in the UK you are allowed to work from the age of 13, and many children do take up part-time jobs. It’s one of those things that are seen almost as a rite of passage(成人仪式). It’s a taste of independence and sometimes a useful thing to put on your CV(简历). Teenagers agree that it teaches valuable lessons about working with adults and also about managing their money.

Some research has shown that not taking up a Saturday or holiday job could be deleterious to a person later on. A 2015 study by the UK Commission on Employment and Skills found that not participating in part-time work at school age had been blamed by employer’s organizations for young adults being ill-prepared for full-time employment, but despite this, recent statistics have shown that the number of schoolchildren in the UK with a part-time job has fallen by a fifth in the past five years.

So, does this mean that British teenagers are now afraid of hard work? Probably not. Some experts feel that young people feel going out to work will affect their performance at school, and they are under more pressure now to study hard and get good exam results and a good job in the long term. However, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told BBC News that “Properly regulated part-time work is a good way of helping young people learn skills that they will need in their working lives.” In reality, it’s all about getting the right balance between doing part-time work and having enough time to study and rest.