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The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) predicts a substantial and swift increase in global mobile data traffic. The predictions suggest that this growth will vary from 390 EB (exabytes) to 5,016 EB (exabytes) from 2024 to 2030, accordingly. This work presents a new maximum capacity model (MCM) to improve the dynamic resource allocation, robust encryption, and Quality of Service (QoS) in 5G networks which helps to meet the growing need for high-bandwidth applications such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video streaming. Our proposed MCM model enhances data transmission by employing dynamic resource allocation, prioritised traffic management, and robust end-to-end encryption techniques, thereby guaranteeing efficient and safe data delivery. The encryption procedure is applied to the header cypher, while the output parameters of the payload are altered. This indicates that only the sender and recipient will possess exclusive knowledge of the final outcome. In result, the comparative analyses clearly show that the MCM model outperforms over conventional models in terms of QoS packet planner, QoS packet scheduler, standard packet selection, traffic management, maximum data rate, and bandwidth utilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Selçuk University Social Sciences Vocational School is the property of Journal of Selcuk University Social Sciences Vocational School and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Med baggrund i et antropologisk feltarbejde og interviews blandt 10-11-årige børn i en nordnorsk 5.-klasse undersøger artiklen, hvordan børnenes digitale liv og brugen af sociale medier skaber nye aldersdemarkationer og nye overgange i perioden fra at være ’barn’ til at blive ’ung’. Det vises, hvordan brugen af digitale medier skaber nye rum i barndommen, hvor børnene får mulighed for at være sammen med en ny grad af selvstændighed, men også med begrænsninger, eksklusioner og voksenkontrol. I børnenes egen selvforståelse befinder de sig i en fase af livet, hvor de er i en overgang mellem små børn og teenagere, og de knytter selv denne overgang til deres digitale mediebrug. Det at få sin første telefon markerer et skridt på vej mod ungdomslivet med en ny social identitet. Artiklen viser, hvordan børnenes fortællinger knytter »social alder« sammen med det at have egen telefon og med bestemte sociale medier. Teoretisk benyttes Daniel Millers antropologiske forståelse af sociale medier, og empirien belyses med teoretiske perspektiver på ’overgange’.

As digital technologies rapidly evolve, updating and enhancing models of digital literacy pedagogy in technical and professional communication (TPC) becomes more urgent. In this article, we use “digital life” to conceptualize the ever-changing ways of knowing and being in postinternet society. Using collaborative autoethnography, we investigate features of threshold concepts in TPC pedagogy that may support models of digital literacy that are resistant to tools-based definitions, foster student agency, and facilitate accessibility, equity, and justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering that data are no stranger to politics and power, we argue that it may well be a site of age-based discrimination. We discuss how older people are described and, at times, disregarded in the analysis of digitisation and how those partial descriptions bring about challenges in the study of digital practices throughout life. We propose the notion of data ageism to conceptualise the production and reproduction of the disadvantaged status of old age caused by decisions concerning how to collect and deliver whose data. We exemplify this concept by examining data produced by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, which offers high-quality statistics on digitisation, but no data on individuals aged 75 years and over. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) predicts a substantial and swift increase in global mobile data traffic. The predictions suggest that this growth will vary from 390 EB (exabytes) to 5,016 EB (exabytes) from 2024 to 2030, accordingly. This work presents a new maximum capacity model (MCM) to improve the dynamic resource allocation, robust encryption, and Quality of Service (QoS) in 5G networks which helps to meet the growing need for high-bandwidth applications such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video streaming. Our proposed MCM model enhances data transmission by employing dynamic resource allocation, prioritised traffic management, and robust end-to-end encryption techniques, thereby guaranteeing efficient and safe data delivery. The encryption procedure is applied to the header cypher, while the output parameters of the payload are altered. This indicates that only the sender and recipient will possess exclusive knowledge of the final outcome. In result, the comparative analyses clearly show that the MCM model outperforms over conventional models in terms of QoS packet planner, QoS packet scheduler, standard packet selection, traffic management, maximum data rate, and bandwidth utilisation.

In recent years, the discussion about media technology and identity in scholarship of communication is mainly unfolded along two theoretical lines. One is to explore the value of "online community" through new media technologies. focusing on whether and how online interpersonal communication through social media can enhance identity recognition. The other is the role of "media sense of place" in locative media practice. However, the research of "online community" inherits Tonnies' concept of "community", and its applicability in the digital society is still questionable. In addition, the above two research directions respectively focus on online interpersonal communication and offline media practice, but overlook the new experience of the "online-offline" hybrid digital city shaped by smartphones. This study adopts a qualitative research method, looking for research subjects in a snowball search way and conducting in-depth interviews with 27 young floating talents during November 15th-25th in 2019 and April 5th-30th in 2022. To ensure material heterogeneity, the young floating talents from Wuhan and Xi'an were selected as key research subjects, while others residing in Beijing, Shanghai. Shenzhen. Guangzhou, and Chongqing were selected as the control group. We focused on their everyday life experiences in networked cities to explore the uniqueness of mediation with smartphone and the new variety of community. The results show that digital technology reshapes the notion of attachment itself. Attachment is rescripted from "belonging" to "co-existence". To be specific. smartphones commingle "de-spatialized" interpersonal interactions with "co-existing" urban experiences, making intimacy and human-land relationships intertwined but separated from each other. Owing to this mediation practices. the young floating talents who use smartphones everyday fostered a multi-sense of attachment which is looseness, differentiation and instability. Compared with the existing literature, this paper contributes in two aspects: firstly, the authors attempt to clarify the changes of attachment in digital contexts, avoiding the stereotype of measuring the new social reality based on the community perception formed by rural society and traditional communication technologies. Secondly, this study unifies the notion of "online community" and "media sense of place" into the concept of attachment. The focusing point was not on the use of media, but on the digital life practice of young floating talents transitioning online and offline. The residing willingness of young floating talents is very important for large and medium cities in China. This study explores possible paths to enhance urban attachment in the digital age from the perspective of media technology, providing reference value for cities to retain young floating talents as soon as possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of digital life have theorized the heuristic value of theoretical and emic boundaries and/or the interconnectedness of online and offline selves, often with a focus on the curation of an online self whose distinctiveness must be methodologically interrogated offline. Through ethnographic analysis of a large group of globally dispersed women who meet online to learn ethical pedagogy in service of a curated, offline self, I argue this split self denotes a self/other distinction on a continuum, with the ethical work conducted in service of an eventual collapse of this dual corporeality. I explain this through a framework of perspectivism, ethics, and the partible person. In doing so, I underscore a theoretical position that posits that the "digital" does not always usher in a "new" way of being, bridging prior anthropological scholarship on Indigenous personhood with a personhood that I argue is similarly enacted within a digital world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The Healthy China strategy is an important development objective of the 14th Five-Year Plan and Vision 2035 in China, while health service use in rural China has been a weak link in this strategy. OBJECTIVE: Nowadays, people's health service use will be influenced by digital technology due to the arrival of the Digital Age, and that is the reason why our interest is to discuss the effect of digital life on health service use among rural residents. METHODS: We use the data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2020 to examine the effect of digital life on health service use among rural residents, and we use Instrumental Variables method to control the endogenous problem and use KHB model to discuss the mechanism of this effect. RESULTS: It was found that digital life has increased the health service use among rural residents significantly, and this result has been verified by robust test and Instrumental Variables method. Besides, digital life can increase health service use through the information channel effect and the health literacy effect indirectly. Moreover, digital life has a more significant impact on the residents with low social capital, low physical capital and low social trust, which represents the inclusivity of digital life. CONCLUSION: The results of our paper will be helpful to examine the effect of the digital policy on promoting the health service use in rural China, and our findings will provide evidence of how to use digital life to enhance health service use among rural residents. Based on this, the government should take measures to eliminate the digital divide between urban and rural areas by promoting the level of digital life among rural residents, paying more attention to the digital literacy development among them, and forging ahead toward the great goal of the Healthy China under the Digital Age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguably amongst the ways refugees can adapt to the society they migrate to is their knowledge and competence in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). One of the ways that refugees who had to migrate from their countries due to compulsory reasons could make their lives easier in the country they migrated to was the use of The Internet with the developing technology. In this study conducted to investigate the digital lives of refugees in Türkiye, purposive sampling was used, and data were collected from the study group through an openended questionnaire. 14 participants participated in the open-ended questionnaire and the data were collected face-to-face. The data collected from the participants through open-ended questionnaires were analyzed using the content analysis technique. As a result of the study, it was found that digital technologies facilitate the lives of refugees in Türkiye. According to the results obtained from the research findings, it was found that all of the refugees have internet access, they use ICTs in their daily lives for communication and for keeping in touch with family and friends, and they want to improve themselves in ICT use. Based on these findings, the use of ICTs by refugees emerges as a situation in which they want to facilitate their life in Türkiye. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distance doesn't separate people, silence does!" Artificial intelligence is a reality and it evolves every day, it simplifies life where it is used in the human’s interest, being already applied in many fields. Is there any risk of moving away from the noble goal of being at the service of the collective good and of being used against people to limit fundamental rights and freedoms? Is there any risk that the totalitarian society will re-establish itself, this time on a global level? The current study presents, in summary, a first analysis of the latest developments in this field, starting from the Chinese experience, as far as it is known and popularized regarding facial recognition made by artificial intelligence for monitoring citizens for the social credit system.

In recent years, the Internet has become an integral part of our lives, which includes a wide variety of platforms and activities, different purposes, different uses, and different characteristics. Technology is present in all areas of life, but there are differences in the scope and type of activities young people do in their free time compared to the scope and type of activities during school hours. The purpose of this research is to make the young people's voices heard about their digital lives, to hear their suggestions for integrating technology in the school, and to make them partners in building curricula. The methodological approach in this research is a mixed method. 129 students aged 13-18 and 17 teachers who teach these students participated in the study. The research tools are two online questionnaires, one for students and one for teachers, both with closed and open questions. The findings reveal the students' leisure activities (digital and non-digital), the richness of their digital activities and their attitudes towards integrating technology into learning. In addition, the study presents what their teachers think about their student's leisure time activities and highlights the gap between them. Our findings are presenting the importance of hearing the students' voices for teachers and curriculum designers.

With the advent of 'the virtual world,' we have naturally gauged the 'reality' of the virtual in terms of how close it comes to empirical experience. However, the common association of the virtual to simulation depends on a representational dualism that reduces it to a simulacrum of reality and prevents us from seeing its real import. Virtuality, rather than related to simulation, refers instead to potentiality. Far from being something that first appears with the digital-virtual as a technological simulation, the virtual constitutes the bare potentiality intrinsic to human experience, always subject to technological modulation. Despite the path of increasing abstraction marked by the evolution of the technologies of communication, I argue that the virtual world, paradoxically, reveals matter as ineluctably vital and in permanent movement and transformation. The digital thus does away with the dualism responsible for the modern disenchantment of nature and—decentering the human, placing it as equally part of a rhizomatic and entangled nature—lays the groundwork for an animistic ontology that is consonant with a new materialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article drawn from digital life and anonymous existence in cyberspace. Developed from a literature review and developed, or disc analysis work developed in two units. The first approach or concept of Cyberspace, the origin of the term and, respectively, of Norbert Wiener’s studies, as well as explores the cultural elements that give it meaning. The unit addresses digital life and anonymous existence, looking at the implications of anonymity and creating distinct personifications from virtual reality platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of the discursivemediatized image of the digital environmental subject. An ambivalent element of the neo-developmental language of digital life is the "digital divide", which often takes ideological form when it constitutes the (non-)digital Other on the other side of the digital world, in the rigid binaries of centre–periphery. Of course, nothing illustrates the inequalities in access to digital and non-digital goods better than global crises such as the coronavirus epidemic, where the disparities between the living conditions (e.g. learning opportunities) of privileged and disadvantaged areas are widening, and this is one of the proofs of the existence of the digital divide. The school, which is the ideological state apparatus responsible for the reproduction of the subject as a basic productive force, became dysfunctional in different ways in different countries of the world, including Hungary, during the epidemic. In the latter, the epidemic has, according to many trusted research studies, further increased the backlog of disadvantaged and/or Roma students, and thus their segregation. Although it seems certain that the most important condition for the sustainability of digital life, and with it of the state, is the re-creation of digital environmental subjects through the education of digital literacy and critical-reflexive media use, the state seems to be abandoning these social groups in this respect; in their case, the interpellation value of digital education, or more precisely the lack of digital education, is the deterrence from learning. In the analytical part of the paper, I compare two media materials to highlight the possibility of a different narrative, coexisting with the negative trend briefly described above. These two items construct two images of digital environmental subject, and by analysing the differences between them, I would like to demonstrate that the hierarchy of centre–periphery can be made relative through the (non-)digital Other's emic and critical self-repositioning, facilitated by participatory research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life became digitalized and smartly controlled that requiring more energy usage. Smart cities and urbanization focus on the challenge of worldwide urbanization through the recognition of opportunities to integrate social, physical, environmental and technological infrastructure. Urbanization expand the need of all services including water, power, transportation, as well as other facilities. All those infrastructures should be delivered to citizen within a short period of time with very well controlled systems to provide more simple and comfortable life. Furthermore, stakeholders and citizens should be responsible and cooperative with government and organizations in order to achieve better solution for smart sustainable living approach. Although the smart urbanization can become a positive transformative force for different sustainable development aspects in cities, there is a lack of knowledge using the smart and sustainable concepts in cities. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a framework which merges the sustainable aspects with the Smart city components. The paper started by an analytical study about smart cities fields and their needs, then a study for sustainability aspects, all this end with a framework tested by a questionnaire to propose guidelines and recommendations to be followed by city planners in order to achieve sustainability goals in smart cities for better impact on citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Shanghai Physical Education Institute / Shanghai Tiyu Xueyuan Xuebao is the property of Editorial Department of Journal of Shanghai University of Sport and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Română de Drept al Afacerilor is the property of Wolters Kluwer Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

With the advance of technology, life has become comfortable as we move to the digital world of interconnectedness with devices and apps which have become a sine quo non-factor in today’s world. A life without internet and mobile phone is unthinkable. So, we are hooked to our smartphones and are continually interconnected with our smartphones and computers. With the current technologies continuously being designed to fulfil all our physical and emotional needs, there appears to be no excuse not to join the digital bandwagon. Consequently, digital media are integrated into the fabric of young people's lives today. This reality raises questions about the varied impacts of regular interaction on digital technologies, social networking sites, contact with friends and relatives through text messages and apps. Hence media literacy, digital skills and digital citizenship have become a topic of growing importance in the academic field, as well as among policy-makers and practitioners. The focus of this research is to know the forms of technology used in the digital life of young people, to determine the degree to which digital technology has become part of today's youth life and to examine the level of positive and negative impacts on the digital life of college youth. The research was undertaken on 242 undergraduate students, to study their digital life. From the main findings of the study, it was inferred that more than two- third (67.6%) of the respondents expressed a higher level of online digital activity, while the rest had a lower level of involvement and low level of social well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Iskolakultúra is the property of University of Szeged, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article develops new theoretical connections that offer insight regarding the status and operation of emotion in digitally mediated environments. I draw on Gilbert Simondon's concepts of emotion and affectivity—as key dimensions of his philosophy of individuation—to articulate an account that situates emotion at the heart of psychological life, while accounting for its role in the continuous practices of (re)solving psychic and collective tensions. Simondon offers a model of the psychological subject as operating simultaneously in and through relations with itself as subject and with itself as part of the collective. This informs the analysis in this article seeking to demonstrate that the reductionism and individualising operation of emerging digitised models of emotion render them of limited value to understanding emotional life in digital worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pandemic situation due to Covid-19 has made numerous barriers for educational system and hurdles for farming community with requirement of various remarkable modifications, modernization of key elements crucial for their business processes and technology advancement for maintaining the pace of operations whilst linking to changes in landscaping the guidelines and procedures. The present study has highlighted the major impacts of corona pandemic on education level of students and research scholars linked with agricultural farming community and the advanced measures taken for providing seamless educational services during this period. Globally many higher educational institutions have started their teaching and learning in online mode with a slower growth has seen in case of internationalization. In India, it has been about 32 crores students and researchers has abandoned moving to schools and colleges. Despite certain strong challenges, the higher education institutions started facing the situation positively and successfully managed ensuring continuity of teaching-learning along with research, trainings and other services with modernized tools and techniques. New mode of teaching-learning, new trends and newer perspectives have emerged and established for educating the farming community with a innovative view which has never been thought earlier. Here some post pandemic patterns have been narrated which will help exploring different types of educating process and some suggestions has also been notified for successful operation of educational activities for farming community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the lives of people all over the world. In particular, an unprecedented educational crisis has occurred due to the circumstances of physical distancing and remote learning. This article focuses specifically on the meaningful learning experiences in the everyday lives of adolescents during the pandemic. 72 meaningful learning experiences were identified from 11 participants who recorded their specific learning experiences for a week by a means of a journal recorded by themselves. A content analysis was undertaken in order to identify the ecology (what, how, where, and who with) of the different learning experiences. The results show a prevalence of personal and conceptual learning, a presence of both formal and specifically informal, everyday activities among the meaningful learning experiences detected, the importance of peers, teacher and “learning experiences while alone,” and the use of digital technologies as learning resources; they also reveal the assistance of others in the learning process. The main contribution of this study illustrates how students in everyday life during pandemics are involved in a whole range of different activities both at school and at home.

The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically changed the lives of people all over the world. In particular, an unprecedented educational crisis has occurred due to the circumstances of physical distancing and remote learning. This article focuses specifically on the meaningful learning experiences in the everyday lives of adolescents during the pandemic. 72 meaningful learning experiences were identified from 11 participants who recorded their specific learning experiences for a week by a means of a journal recorded by themselves. A content analysis was undertaken in order to identify the ecology (what, how, where, and who with) of the different learning experiences. The results show a prevalence of personal and conceptual learning, a presence of both formal and specifically informal, everyday activities among the meaningful learning experiences detected, the importance of peers, teacher and "learning experiences while alone," and the use of digital technologies as learning resources; they also reveal the assistance of others in the learning process. The main contribution of this study illustrates how students in everyday life during pandemics are involved in a whole range of different activities both at school and at home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In questo numero, per la rubrica “Incontro Fuori Luogo” abbiamo intervistato Derrick de Kerckhove, sociologo belga naturalizzato canadese, tra i principali esperti di cultura digitale in ambito internazionale. Considerato l’erede scientifico di Marshall McLuhan - con il quale ha lavorato per oltre dieci anni come traduttore, assistente e coautore - de Kerckhove ha diretto dal 1983 al 2008 il McLuhan Program in Culture & Technology dell’Università di Toronto e di recente è stato insignito del prestigioso premio The Medium and the Light Award 2020 per il suo costante impegno nella divulgazione del pensiero del maestro canadese. Nella sua lunga carriera, Derrick de Kerckhove ha fornito nuove interpretazioni degli studi di McLuhan alla luce dei mutamenti introdotti dalle tecnologie digitali, contribuendo in particolare allo sviluppo della tecno-psicologia, un campo di ricerca che indaga le connessioni tra tecnologia, linguaggio e mente umana. A partire da tale approccio, de Kerckhove ha studiato le relazioni interattive tra artefatti culturali e corpo umano, i concetti degli usi del tempo, dello spazio e del sé, l’impatto delle nuove tecnologie sulla psicologia personale e sociale, le nuove forme artistiche nate su scala globale, i processi di formazione del sapere e della conoscenza in Rete, i nuovi scenari educativi e dell’apprendimento. In Italia, de Kerckhove è stato docente di “Sociologia della cultura digitale” e “Marketing e nuovi media” presso il Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali dell’Università Federico II di Napoli e attualmente insegna “Antropologia della Comunicazione” al Politecnico di Milano. Dal 2009 è direttore scientifico della rivista Media Duemila e dell’Osservatorio TuttiMedia. Tra le sue opere tradotte in italiano si segnalano Brainframes: mente, tecnologia, mercato (1993), La civilizzazione video-cristiana (1995), La pelle della cultura: un’indagine sulla nuova realtà elettronica (1996), Intelligenza connettiva (1997), L’architettura dell’intelligenza (2001), Il sapere digitale (con A. Buffardi, 2011); Psicotecnologie connettive (2014), La rete ci renderà stupidi? (2016), Oltre Orwell. Il gemello digitale(con M.P. Rossignaud, 2020).

È stato pubblicato a febbraio 2020 un nuovo volume della collana Saggi tascabili Laterza dal titolo La cultura orizzontale, a firma di Giovanni Solimine e Giorgio Zanchini. Esso si propone di analizzare i cambiamenti intervenuti e in atto nei meccanismi di fruizione culturale a seguito della rivoluzione digitale e in particolare dello stato di connessione permanente alla rete, ossia la cosiddetta dimensione onlife, secondo il neologismo coniato da Luciano Floridi. Nello specifico, gli autori hanno scelto di osservare questi fenomeni dal punto di vista della cosiddetta «generazione delle reti». Se da un lato si potrebbe dire che l’uscita del libro ha avuto un timing molto sfortunato – è uscito infatti poco prima dell’aggravarsi dell’emergenza sanitaria e del conseguente lockdown del Paese – dall’altro lato si può parlare di un tempismo perfetto, dal momento che tutto quello che in esso ci viene raccontato ha dovuto fare i conti improvvisamente con uno scenario inimmaginabile fino a pochi giorni prima e la transizione verso l’era onlife e verso la cultura orizzontale ha subito un’accelerazione che probabilmente in una situazione di normalità avrebbe richiesto anni di sperimentazioni e tentativi. L’articolo ripercorre i contenuti del volume alla luce di quanto avvenuto negli ultimi mesi.

This book includes analysis to help understand how digital technologies will influence our political system. "Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech" [Politica viitorului. Tehnologia digitală şi societatea] covers the theoretical methodology for addressing the future of political ideas, the concepts of power, freedom, democracy, justice, transparency, and postpolitics. The book presents the impact of digital technologies on the relationship between the individual and the state. We strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in political science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Trabajo Social is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A fascination for the authentic is pervasive in contemporary culture. This article discusses texts recommending digital detox and how these accentuate dilemmas of what it means to be authentically human in the age of constant connectivity. Digital detox can be defined as a periodic disconnection from social or online media, or strategies to reduce digital media involvement. Digital detox stands in a long tradition of media resistance and resistance to new communication technologies, and non-use of media, but advocates balance and awareness more than permanent disconnection. Drawing on the analysis of 20 texts promoting digital detox: self-help literature, memoirs and corporate websites, the article discusses how problems with digital media are defined and recommended strategies to handle them. The analysis is structured around three dominant themes emerging in the material: descriptions of temporal overload and 24/7 connectivity, experiences of spatial intrusion and loss of contact with 'real life' and descriptions of damage to body and mind. A second research topic concerns how arguments for digital detox can be understood within a wider cultural and political context. Here, we argue that digital detox texts illuminate the rise of a self-regulation society, where individuals are expected to take personal responsibility for balancing risks and pressures, as well as representing a form of commodification of authenticity and nostalgia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of cellular organisms occurred sometime between the origin of life and the evolution of the last universal common ancestor and represents one of the major transitions in evolutionary history. Here we describe a series of artificial life simulations that reveal a close relationship between the evolution of cellularity, the evolution of metabolism, and the richness of the environment. When environments are rich in processing energy, a resource that the digital organisms require to both process their genomes and replicate, populations evolve toward a state of non-cellularity. But when processing energy is not readily available in the environment and organisms must produce their own processing energy from food puzzles, populations always evolve both a proficient metabolism and a high level of cellular impermeability. Even between these two environmental extremes, the population-averaged values of cellular impermeability and metabolic proficiency exhibit a very strong correlation with one another. Further investigations show that non-cellularity is selectively advantageous when environmental processing energy is abundant because it allows organisms to access the available energy, while cellularity is selectively advantageous when environmental processing energy is scarce because it affords organisms the genetic fidelity required to incrementally evolve efficient metabolisms. The selection pressures favoring either non-cellularity or cellularity can be reversed when the environment transitions from one of abundant processing energy to one of scarce processing energy. These results have important implications for when and why cellular organisms evolved following the origin of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social media is essential in the lives of adolescents, with 97% of US teenagers engaging daily. While it facilitates communication, learning, and identity development, it also poses risks like harmful content exposure and psychological distress, particularly for adolescents in their critical developmental stage. Teaching digital life skills innovatively counters these risks, adapting traditional competencies such as decision-making, problem-solving, creative and critical thinking, communication, interpersonal skills, self-awareness, empathy, and emotional and stress management to digital challenges., Objective: This study evaluates the accessibility of the "leduin" program, a novel intervention designed to impart digital life skills through Instagram. The program aims to leverage social media's educational potential, focusing on effective strategies to engage adolescents. Emphasizing accessibility is crucial, as it determines the program's overall impact., Methods: The leduin program, developed through intervention mapping, applies behavior change techniques via social media for 9th and 10th graders. It is a 14-week spaced learning curriculum with daily sessions <5 minutes. Emphasizing the "reach" aspect of the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance (RE-AIM) model, the recruitment targets diverse educational settings across 6 German states, aiming for inclusivity. Recruitment will involve schools, youth centers, and therapeutic facilities. The study seeks at least 128 participants, a calculated minimum to detect medium-sized effects in the quasi-experimental design and explore varying engagement levels and program responses. Data collection includes preintervention, postintervention, and 6-month follow-up surveys, using multilevel regression, latent growth models, and qualitative analysis to extensively assess reach and gain first insights on effectiveness, acceptance, implementation, and maintenance. The study aims to reveal key factors influencing program participation and interaction; a detailed analysis of engagement patterns will reveal the effectiveness of the recruitment strategies and barriers to participation. Additionally, initial indications of the program's impact on life skills, social media-related skills, health status, risk behaviors, and academic performance will be analyzed., Results: Recruitment was planned from May 2023 until the beginning of the leduin program in October 2023. As of March 2024, we have recruited 283 participants., Conclusions: The leduin program stands as an innovative and essential initiative in adolescent health promotion, harnessing the power of social media to teach important digital life skills. This study highlights the critical role of accessibility in the success of social media interventions. Effective adolescent engagement strategies are imperative, as they dictate the overall impact of such interventions. The insights gained from this study will be instrumental in shaping future programs, laying groundwork for a subsequent, more comprehensive cluster-randomized controlled trial. The study's design acknowledges the limitations of the current quasi-experimental approach, including the anticipated sample size and the absence of a control group, and aims to provide a foundational understanding for future research in this field., Trial Registration: Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien DRKS00032308; https://drks.de/search/de/trial/DRKS00032308., International Registered Report Identifier (irrid): PRR1-10.2196/51085., (©Elizabeth Zimmermann, Samuel Tomczyk. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (https://www.researchprotocols.org), 17.04.2024.)

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Copyright of Sociologija/Sociology: Journal of Sociology, Social Psychology & Social Anthropology is the property of MOD International and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Instagram, today as a result of technology that is acculturated with economic, social and cultural factors, brings leisure to the middle class, they do activities freely in life such as hobbies, recreation. The middle class in accessing Instagram is reduced by the Instagram algorithm to be a one-dimensional human. The middle class will be a uniform individual with the same activities like share, and comment. The middle class is a lasting individual who runs consumerism where everything becomes a commodity and is trapped in relations in the algorithm of relationships made by Instagram. For the middle-class Instagram is a lifestyle and daily activity. Instagram, which is mediated via cell phone, is a new socialization space that frees someone from the rules and disciplines of the patriarchal system. This activity results in the middle class recognizing, embracing and exploring things that cannot be expressed in everyday reality. Instagram in the middle class produces digital life practices that want to show a lifestyle. This study examines the phenomenon of middle-class practice in showing the practice of digital life: like share and comment on Instagram. Researchers will use a virtual ethnographic method. The virtual ethnographic approach will be carried out because this research is an object in cyberspace so that it can adequately understand the way the subject interacts and collaborates through observed phenomena. Instagram is a photo showroom, a kind of private space because the user gallery can be designed in such a way as the user wishes, users upload whatever happens around them, which is considered to represent user activity. The three accounts examined by @fajarmantoo, @herni_maryuliani and @ rosakusumaazhar present activities in digital life. The fact that manifests these two accounts is that consumption and production in the Instagram arena provide the formation of social reality. Instagram becomes a social reality forming tool that can give an idea of how activities in the middle class when on Instagram. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a society based on technology, the human being loses their centrality and triggers the fourth revolution by means of scientific advancement and digital progress: that of the rupture of anthropocentrism, of industry 4.0 and of the infosphere. The scientific and academic debate must focus its attention, among various elements, on the formulation of new ethical principles that can guide a person in their interaction, interconnection and, in some cases, “fusion” with the “machine” and its accompanying values. The advent of artificial intelligences is producing changes in the management of common liberties, of private and public life, of the individual and of the community, which increasingly seek in the “artificialisation” of the self and in their relationship with machines, places, subjects, reflections of interaction with each other and with the other self. The sophistication of technology and, therefore, of reality indicate the need to rethink the relationship between the tangibility of the natural and its mechaniseddigitalised representations. What will be the ethics of the future? What are the values to support in the new revolution that sees the person flanked by the machine? What are, at present, the global choices on these issues?