1 . Binge-watching (刷剧) is when a person watches more than one episode of a show in a row. With developments in the speed and connectivity of the Internet, increases in technology and the rise of on-demand entertainment companies, people can now have their favorite shows stream (流播) directly to their television at their convenience.

This behavior is nothing new. In fact, binge-watching has been officially listed in dictionaries since 2015. The entertainment companies recognize this behavior and many take steps to encourage it. Often, instead of releasing each episode on a week-by-week basis, an entire series will become available concurrently. Once the episode finishes, many platforms will display pop-ups with “you might like” suggestions, or will automatically play the next episode.

However, recent research suggests that out of the more than half of British adults who watch more than one episode of a show back-to-back (一集接一集地), almost a third have admitted missing sleep or becoming tired as a result; and 25% have neglected their household chores (家务活). Next we’ll be missing work!

Bingeing has other connections — binge eating, binge drinking and binge smoking. All of them are often associated with a lack of control and a possible route to addiction. Lindsey Fussell, consumer group director, said, “The days of waiting a week for the next episode are largely gone, with people finding it hard to resist (抗拒) watching multiple episodes around the house or on the move.” If people find binge-watching hard to resist, are we witnessing the birth of a new type of addiction?

The countless number of information and entertainment that television and online media can bring us is, many would say, a good thing. However, when the activity begins to bleed into other areas, causing us to stop functioning, then it becomes a problem. So, what’s the answer? Moderation! Neither a tiny amount, nor too much. After all, as the old proverb says, “A little of what you fancy does you good.”

2 . Are you happy with your appearance?     1    

“Almost all the girls with single-fold eyelids (单眼皮) in our class have had double eyelid operations,” Zeng, a Senior 2 student from Chengdu, told Xinhua. Zeng had the same surgery done this summer.     2    

From popular photo-editing apps to plastic surgery (整形手术), it seems that large eyes, pale skin and a skinny body are the only standard for beauty these days. But can following this standard really make us feel good about ourselves?

    3     . According to Huxiu News, over six in ten girls choose not to take part in certain daily activities, such as attending school, because they feel bad about their looks. As much as 31 percent of teenagers avoid speaking up in class because they worry that others will notice their looks.

“Many teenagers are upset about their appearance because they believe in unrealistic standards of beauty,” experts say.       4     Seeing all these things can make anyone believe that they’re too dark, too fat, too short, or too tall.

However, trying to live up to strict standards can make us feel anxious. What troubles us is not just our “imperfect” looks, but the fact that we criticize ourselves too much.

    5     Plus-size models are being featured in some fashion shows. All of us should be just as confident as they are.

3 . “More and more consumers across the country are using cashless payment methods. The rapid development of third⁃party mobile payment tools is helping to encourage cashless payment across the country,” said Dong Ximiao, a researcher at Renmin University of China.

Although there were 3.4 billion third⁃party payment accounts in total in China in 2016, China is not the first country to seek a cashless society. Developed countries like Sweden, Denmark and Singapore are also seeing that increase.

However, the rapid development of the cashless payment does not mean there are no challenges or criticisms. Alibaba’s Hema store has come under the spotlight (成为焦点) recently. The media said that consumers couldn’t buy goods in cash there, which would be considered illegal.

Alipay and WeChat Pay, the nation’s two major third⁃party mobile payment tools, also launched campaigns this month to encourage more people to use cashless payment methods, which caused concern over whether cash will soon disappear.

“Some offline sellers refuse to accept cash, which influences the natural circulation (流通) of cash,” said Dong. He stressed that a cashless society would not mean that cash would completely disappear. “Also it’s important to remember that nearly half of China’s population live in the country, and they are unable to enjoy innovation (革新) brought by the Internet,” said Dong. “And when it comes to China’s senior citizens, most of them prefer to use cash in their daily lives,” he added.

“It’s ridiculous (荒谬的) to question digital payment tools’ contribution to financial development. In the long term, various payment methods will be used by consumers, and merchants should respect consumers’ payment habits,” Dong noted.

4 . Before uploading a photo of ourselves to social media, chances are that we’ll use an app to smooth our skin, make our eyes look bigger, and lips fuller. With a couple of taps on our mobile phone, we can get a quick fix and present the “best” version of ourselves to the world. However, the problem is, when we simply edit our imperfections away, we’re also changing the way we look at ourselves.

Last month, researchers published the article Selfies—Living in the Era of Filtered (过滤的) Photographs. The article analysed photo editing apps’ bad influences on people’s self-respect and their possibility to cause appearance anxieties. The researchers also warned that such apps make it difficult to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. “These apps allow one to change his or her appearance in minutes and follow an unrealistic standard of beauty,” the article reads.

In the past, people may have compared their looks to those of famous people. But for today’s young people, beauty standards are most likely set by what they see on social media. “From birth, they are born into an age of social platforms where their feelings of self-worth can be based purely on the number of likes and followers that they have, which is linked to how good they look,” British cosmetic doctor Tijion Esho told The Independent. This is why many young people suffer an identity trouble when it comes to appearance.

“Now you’ve got this daily comparison of your real self to this fake self that you present on social media,” Renee Engeln, a professor of psychology, told the HuffPost website. Engeln further pointed out that when people spend too much time making such comparisons, they may become “beauty sick” and find it difficult to accept what they actually look like. “Because between you and the world is a mirror. It’s a mirror that travels with you everywhere. You can’t seem to put it down,” she told The Washington Post. So when we look in a real mirror, we shouldn’t think to ourselves, “Do I look as good as myself in the filtered photos?” Instead, we should think, “I feel good; I have my health.”

New research shows that the average cost of raising a child to the age of 18 in China in 2021 was 485,000 yuan for a first child,     1     is far more than     2     in the United States and Japan. The high cost of child-raising is one more     3     (difficult) Chinese policymakers face while     4     (deal) with rapidly decreasing birth rates. Experts warn China’s aging population will put pressure     5     its health and social security systems. A decrease in workers could also     6     (severe) limit growth for the world’s second-largest economy in the coming years.

New policies permit     7     (family) to have as many as three children. But China`s birth rate dropped to 7.52 births per 1,000 people in 2021. That is the     8     (low) since the National Bureau of Statistics` began recording the information in 1949. The high costs of raising a child     9     (cause) officials in China to place restrictions on the private tutoring industry in the last few years. Some areas have been giving couples money for having     10     second or third child.

8 . Big changes in agriculture are taking place in Singapore. The small, Southeast Asian nation is leading a farming revolution, according to the Reuters news agency.

Singapore covers around 720 square kilometers of land and only one percent of that land area is used for agriculture. Food production costs are higher there than the rest of Southeast Asia. As climate change and population growth threaten food supplies, the pressure on new farmers is to answer the government’s call to “grow more with less”.

“Whenever I talk about food security in Singapore, I tell people not to think about land-think about space，because you can go upwards and sideways,” said Paul Teng，an agriculture professor at Nanyang Technological University.

There are more than 30 vertical (垂直的) farms in Singapore-ones that grow up，not across，the land. Sustenir Agriculture is one of these businesses. Is hydroponic (无土栽培的) farm grows non-native foods like cherry tomatoes and strawberries inside buildings under artificial lighting. Then it sells the produce to local supermarkets and online stores. Sustenir raised $16 million from investors (投资者) last year. The money will be used to expand operations in Singapore.

However, not everyone thinks the new technology is best. Egg farmer William Ho says the government should not depend so much on agriculture technology businesses. “Many of them have failed. That’s why I’m always asking the government why it doesn’t invest in us old-timers. We are more practical,” he said. Professor Paul Teng said an issue for urban farmers is that the high cost of the technology makes their products too pricey for many people.

9 . When given the choice, about 85% of people say they would not want to know about some negative event far in the future. Yet recently millions around the globe have downloaded FaceApp, which allows users to see how they might age in real life.

Many had fun with joking that they love the FaceApp old filter (滤镜). Beneath the humor is a serious subject: How do we learn to relate to our future selves? It’s important that we try to because it could help strengthen the long-term decisions that we make. However, we often fail to make sacrifices for the older versions of ourselves.

More than half of the respondents in a recent survey of 2, 800 Americans said they rarely or never thought about what their lives might be like 30 years from now. This isn’t surprising, since most of us are firmly rooted in the present and thinking about the distant future can seem like a distant priority. My ongoing research might also offer an explanation: We tend to think about our future selves as if they are someone different from who we are today. In an effort to narrow these empathy (共情) gaps, my research workmates and I have tried to humanize (使人性化) people’s future selves in the same way others have tried to humanize charity receivers. Given that a photograph of one hungry child can spark emotional reactions, and cause viewers to donate, we have provided participants with vivid images of their distant selves.

That seems helpful. In a recently completed project in Mexico, we found that exposure to future-self images led more people to add to their pensions (养老金). Despite this research, I’m not sure that the app users will suddenly increase their pension and care about their health. The silly app isn’t paired with an immediate opportunity to change any of these things.

The lesson from FaceApp shouldn’t be that we need to combine hi-tech visuals with savings for retirement. The lesson, then, leads to a question: What more can be done to urge us to think about, care for who we will one day become?

10 . There is a popular saying in the English language: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Well, that is not true. Unkind words, name-calling or even the so-called “the silent treatment” can hurt children as much as being physically hit, sometimes even more so. A recent study of middle school children showed that verbal (言语的) abuse by other children can harm, the development in the brain. The study was a project of researchers at Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts. Researcher Martin Teicher and his team studied young adults, aged 18 to 25. These young men and women had not ever been treated in a cruel or violent way by their parents. The researchers asked the young people to rate their childhood exposure to verbal abuse from both parents and other children. Then the researchers performed imaging tests on the brains of the subjects.

The images showed that the people who reported suffering verbal abuse from peers in middle school had underdeveloped connections between the left and right side of the brain. The two sides of the brain are connected by a large bundle of connecting fibers called the corpus callosum. This was the area that was underdeveloped.

The middle school years are a time when these brain connections are developing. So, unkind, hurtful comments from children or adults during this period have the greatest effect. The researchers tested the mental and emotional condition of all the young people in the study. The tests showed that this same group of people had higher levels of fear, depression, anger and drug abuse than others in the study.

The researchers published their findings online on the American Journal of Psychiatry's website.

Parents cannot control what other people say to their children, but they can prepare their children.