Among many changes the COVID-19 pandemic has brought     1     the U. S., one is a possible move closer to a cashless society.

Since more people decided to stay home when the coronavirus outbreak spread, they were spending     2    (little) money than before. If people were out, fear of catching the virus kept them from     3    (touch) many things, including loose change at the register.

Unfortunately, a move to a cashless society could cause problems for some communities. About 8% of Americans don’t have a checking account. About 18% of Americans rely on alternative banking     4    (solution), like a check cashing location, even though they have a savings or checking account. So these people rely on cash     5    (purchase) goods and services.

“For those     6     have the option to move away from cash to credit cards, there will be fewer problems,” said Harvard business professor Shelle Santana. “But there are     7     number of people who don’t have the ability to do that substitution (替换), and those are the vulnerable (易受影响的) people in the community.”

While     8    (convenient) is an advantage of using a card or electronic payment, everything someone purchases     9    (track) and documented. Cash, however,     10    (protect) the user’s privacy and doesn’t leave a footprint behind.

2 . Is social media really making young people antisocial (孤僻的)? A surprising new study finds that children and young adults who use these platforms the most are actually more active in the real world than others! The new findings come from a long-term project called the Trondheim Early Secure Study. Researchers collected information from about 800 children and young adults when they were 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 years old. This included interviews about each child’s use of social media from year to year. The goal was to determine if using social media affects a young person’s overall social skills.

To the team’s surprise, participants frequently using these platforms did not see their social skills reduced. “On the contrary, we find that people who use social media a lot spend more time with friends offline than those who tend to limit their screen time,” says Professor Silje Steinsbekk from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Department of Psychology.

However, social media can present challenges for children and teens. Although it offers a convenient and comfortable way for those with social anxiety to communicate, it can also lead to addiction and misuse. Studies have suggested that young people with anxiety are more easily affected by the negative effects of social media, which can worsen their symptoms and harm their mental health. Therefore, it is crucial for parents to monitor their children’s online activity and usage.

Despite the risks to some, the team says their findings debunk the belief that social media causes young people to become socially isolated. In fact, their frequent use of social platforms may actually give them more opportunities to connect with old and new friends and set up chances to go out and socialize outdoors.

5 . Recently, the trend of “taking photos of a text-book cover by chance” has gone viral online. This sincere and lively form of expression quickly gained public favor, and textbook covers have become a popular template (模板) for people to create photos.

Following the textbook cover fever, people have been sharing scenic photos or short videos with textbook covers in the background. Beautiful scenery or interesting moments presented against such a backdrop reveal a unique Chinese charm. Some cultural and tourism departments have also launched textbook covers featuring iconic city landmarks, enveloping viewers in vivid paintings. Others have included ancient poetry, providing a fresh interpretation of Eastern aesthetics (美学).

For example, Beijing, as the capital of China with a long history and significant cultural heritage, has plentiful historical sites. You can easily find beautiful scenery from the capital in Chinese textbooks, or in the city itself, discover the source materials used for textbooks of subjects like history, English, art, and geography.

So why has this textbook cover trend attracted so many followers? It’s because these textbook covers carry memories. By looking back, people can re-examine their growth journey and seek values and interests that are still relevant to their present. Besides, a textbook cover is a vehicle of art. When breathtaking views combine with textbook covers from our memories, the beautiful scene adds artistic charm, making it even more fascinating.

Taking photos with textbook covers as back-grounds, whether poetic landscapes or historical sites, reflects people’s desire to get close to nature. Like a time machine, textbook covers allow us to escape our busy lives and temporarily journey into the past, revisiting stories imprinted in our memories as we voyage through the river of time. When we wake up, our heart is filled with warmth of life.

7 . If you’ve scrolled through your Facebook feed recently, you may have noticed something surprising: lots and lots of short videos.

What makes this “Reels” feature strange is that it is hugely addictive, which I know quite well from my own personal experience. Last Friday, I took a break and hit on one short clip of someone making dinner and, well, the next time I looked up it was 20 minutes later and the blank document on my computer monitor was confirming to me that my work was still not done.

However, as silly as it seems, Reels-is actually super important, and is at the centre of a major battle between the world’s largest tech firms. The format (格式) was first pioneered by TikTok-the Chinese-owned video app that has taken the world by storm since it launched in 2016. Today, TikTok has around 23 million UK users every month-including basically every person you know under the age of 25. And that fact has made Facebook and its parent company, Meta, very nervous indeed. As TikTok has continued to boom, Facebook has actually fallen in popularity among “Gen Z”. The reason Tik Tok has proven such a powerful challenger to Facebook’s social media dominance is almost entirely down to these sorts of short-form videos.

The format is almost perfectly optimised to be as addictive as possible: Tik Tok’s app shows you a short-form video, and if you don’t like it, you can simply swipe it away and another one will start playing instantly. And because it is portrait, not landscape, videos look “right” when viewed on your phone. What’s also smart is that TikTok’s algorithm (算法) picks videos for you based on what you actually watch, and not what you say you want.

Facebook isn’t the only app trying to do what TikTok does so well. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook’s parent company Meta, has integrated Reels even more aggressively into its app. And even Google is nervous, launching its own TikTok-style video section of YouTube(which it owns)a couple of years ago. As things stand, though TikTok currently maintains a healthy lead in the category, both YouTube and Facebook have deep pockets-so expect to see even more Reels and Shorts popping up in your feed as this intense battle continues to rage. You won’t be able to take your eyes off them.

8 . Would you rather be an impressive employee in an ordinary firm, or land a role at the most well-known company in your industry?

The answer to that question might seem highly personal, based on factors like whether or not you are a competitive person and how much you enjoy a challenge. In fact, there’s another strong factor at play: People from different cultures react very differently to that question. The psychologists from the University of Michigan asked people theoretical questions about the decisions they take. Specifically, the researchers compared people with East Asian backgrounds and European American backgrounds. They found that Americans are much more likely to favor being a big fish in a small pond. East Asians, and specifically Chinese people, are much more likely than Americans to lean towards being a smaller fish in a bigger pond.

Researchers first asked 270 students at a large American university whether they would rather be a “big fish in a small pond” or the opposite. Of the students with East Asian American backgrounds, three quarters said they’d rather be a small fish, compared with just under 60% of students with European American backgrounds who said the same.

The researchers then compared American and Chinese adults. They asked the participants whether they would rather attend a top university but perform below average, and whether they would rather work for a top global company but do less well in comparison to their peers. Over half the Chinese adults chose the famous university, compared with just a third of Americans. In the case of the firms, well over half of people from both groups chose to do better at a less well-known firm, but Chinese people were still more likely to choose being a “small fish” than were Americans.

The final experiment sought to discover how American and Chinese people made judgments about whether they were succeeding. They found that Chinese people were more likely to compare their performance to the performance of people in other groups. Americans, meanwhile, were more likely to compare themselves to people within the same group, to judge whether or not they were doing well.

In East Asian cultures, it’s “not enough that you know you’re doing well in your school,” said Kaidi Wu, a PhD student in psychology who led the research. “It is much more important that other people — an outsider, a family relative, a future employer who has five seconds to glance through your resume — also recognize your academic excellence.”

America is the opposite: “Think about how many times themes like ‘You are your own person’ or ‘Stop worrying about what other people think’ course through song lyrics and self-help books,” Wu said, concluding: “The choices we make are the products of our culture.”