3 . Have you ever run into a careless cell phone user on the street? Perhaps they were busy talking, texting or checking updates on WeChat without looking at what was going on around them. As the number of this new “species” of human has kept rising, they have been given a new name — phubbers (低头族)．

Recently, a cartoon created by students from China Central Academy of Fine Arts put this group of people under the spotlight. In the short film, phubbers with various social identities bury themselves in their phones. A doctor plays with his cell phone while letting his patient die, a pretty woman takes selfie (自拍) in front of a car accident site, and a father loses his child without knowing about it while using his mobile phone. A chain of similar events eventually leads to the destruction of the world.

Although the ending sounds overstated, the damage phubbing can bring is real. Your health is the first to bear the effect and result of it. “Constantly bending your head to check your cell phone could damage your neck,” Guangming Daily quoted doctors as saying, “the neck is like a rope that breaks after long­term stretching.” Also, staring at cell phones for long periods of time will damage your eyesight gradually, according to the report.

But that’s not all. Being a phubber could also damage your social skills and drive you away from your friends and family. At reunions with family or friends, many people tend to stick to their cell phones while others are chatting happily with each other and this creates a strange atmosphere, Beijing Evening News reported.

It can also cost you your life. There have been lots of reports on phubbers who fell to their death, suffered accidents，and were robbed of their cell phones in broad daylight.

During the outbreak of COVID-19, almost everyone in China wears a mask to     1     themselves against the virus.However, many people in the West feel     2     to wear masks, even if there is an increasing number of their compatriots being infected.

According to the Global Times, different attitudes toward wearing masks largely lie in the cultures. In the West, what people     3     believe that unless one is already ill, wearing а mask is simply     4    .

Siva Kumar from the US is one of them. “Masks can only protect you from particulate matter in the air you breathe, but they can' t hold up microbes," Kumar told China Daily. “Wearing a mask when you’re healthy will     5     tension for others.”

US infection prevention specialist Eli Perencevich told Forbes, The average healthy person shouldn' t be wearing masks." She added, “If they wear them     6     it can increase the risk of infection because they’re touching their faces more often.”

However, for people in Asian countries like China, wearing a mask is deep- rooted in their culture.Valuing collectivism(集体主义), people in Asia always want to make     7     to the groups that they belong to. In such uncertain and potentially dangerous time, many people have taken their responsibility to wear masks to ensure the safety of their     8    .

Chen Xinjie, a media worker in Beijing, said, Wearing the mask for a long time is hot, stuffy (闷热的) and uncomfortable...But as a member of the group, it’s our duty to do so.

Influenced by social cultures, the     9     toward wearing а mask can be different in the East and West. But as US essayist Ralph Emerson once said, “We must each     10     others even as we respect ourselves.”

A San Francisco Museum Tackles Art's Instagram Dilemma

A woman held tightly her phone to her heart, the way a missionary might hold a Bible. She was anxious to take a picture of a stunning bouquet of flowers that sat not 10 ft away, but first she had to get through a crowd of others who were doing the same.

    1    . For the 34th year, florists were asked to create bouquets that respond to pieces of art on display, from ancient carvings to contemporary sculptures. A tower of baby's breath imitates a waterfall in a nearby painting by Gustav Grunewald. Red flamingo flowers and neon blue sticks echo a surreal portrait of a woman by Salvador Dali.

It’s amazing and also extremely Instagrammable, to the point that it has become a problem.     2    . Institutions of fine art around the world face similar problems as the desire to take photographs becomes a huge draw for museums as well as something that upsets some of their sponsors.

So the de Young responded with a kind of agreement: carving out “photo free” hours during the exhibition’s six-day run.

One common complaint in the ongoing debates over the effect of social media on museum culture is that people seem to be missing out on experiences because they are so busy collecting evidence of them. A study published in the journal Psychological Science suggests there is truth to this. It found that people who took photos of an exhibit rather than simply observing it had a harder time remembering what they saw.

    3    . Linda Butler, the de Young’s head of marketing, communications and visitor experience, acknowledges that not everyone wants a museum to be “a selfie playland”. Yet a lot of other people do, and her take is that the de Young is in no position to claim that one motivation for buying a $28 ticket is more valid than another.

If we removed social media and photography, she says, “we should risk becoming irrelevant”.     4    . On this visit to the museum, most people seemed to treat the photo craze as the new normal. Many politely waited their turn and got out of other people’s shots,even as visitors bumped into each other in crowded galleries.

In recent weeks, many parents have realized the difficult truth about school this fall because of COVID-19. Hoping for a better     1    , parents around U.S. have started organizing “pandemic (流行病) pods”, or home schooling pods, for the fall, in which groups of 3 to 10 students learn together in homes under the guidance of the children’s parents or a hired teacher.

For parents who can organize and     2     them, pods seem like an easy choice. “I don’t believe that the online courses for that age group are     3    . Kids at this age really need that multimodal sensory learning (多模式感官学习).” one parent said.

These pods could     4     families with a schooling choice that feels safe—yet also allows kids to have fun and build social skills. However, it also has unavoidable shortcomings.

Depending on how the pods are set up, they may offer parents break. But given that pods can be     5    , complicated to organize and self-selecting, it is possible that they are most popular among wealthy families, experts say, and may     6     educational inequality.

Another     7     about pods is that families may not know how to minimize Covid risks. Pods shouldn’t have more than five kids     8    , said Saskia Popescu, an infection prevention expert. When you add together the teacher and all of the kids’ family members, a seemingly small pod ends up including dozens of people, and the more people in it, the greater the     9     for coronavirus exposure (接触). Furthermore, families in learning pods shouldn’t socialize with people outside the pod unless they wear masks and     10     socially distant, Dr. Popescu said. Pods should have clear rules on wearing masks and washing hands.