Internet

People are speaking about 3,000 fewer words each day compared to less than two decades ago. Between 2005 and 2018, researchers found the average number of daily spoken words dropped from 16,000 to around 13,000 — a decline that appears linked to our increasing reliance on digital communication tools like texting and social media. Co-lead author Valeria Pfeifer noted, “We did a full analysis looking at what year the data were collected and found that, indeed, 300 spoken words on average per year go missing.”

Another researcher added, “There is a strong cross-cultural assumption that women talk a lot more than men. We wanted to see whether or not this assumption holds when empirically tested.”

The numbers show that women do speak slightly more on average — about 13,349 words per day compared to men’s 11,950. This modest difference of 1,073 words is small compared to the vast individual variation in daily speech, which ranges from fewer than 100 to over 120,000 words per day.

Senior author Matthias Mehl said, “I’m fascinated by the idea that we know how much we need to sleep, we know how much we need to exercise, and people are wearing Fitbits all the time. But we have no idea how much we’re supposed to socialize. The evidence is very strong that socializing is linked to health, at least to the same extent as physical activity and sleep are. It’s just another health behavior.”

The longer the internet lives, the more inescapable a certain trend becomes: the performance of grief. That is, when someone on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, exhibits a hardship for audience consumption. At The Atlantic, Maytal Eyal has an interesting appraisal:

People post videos of themselves crying (or trying not to). Some of these videos moody music; many rack up hundreds of thousands of views. … Influencers and celebrities strip down to what can seem like the rawest version of themselves, selling the promise of “real” emotional connection—and, not infrequently, products or their personal brand.

The weepy confessions are, ostensibly, gestures toward intimacy. They’re meant to inspire empathy, to reassure viewers that influencers are just like them. But in fact, they’re exercises in what I’ve come to call “McVulnerability,” a synthetic version of vulnerability akin to fast food: mass-produced, sometimes tasty, but lacking in sustenance. True vulnerability can foster emotional closeness. McVulnerability offers only an illusion of it.

In my years as a therapist, I’ve seen a trend among some of my younger clients: They prefer the controlled environment of the internet — the polish of YouTube, the ephemeral nature of TikTok — to the tender awkwardness of making new friends. Instead of reaching out to a peer, they’ll turn to the comfort of their phone and spend time with their preferred influencers.

Psychotherapist Esther Perel touched on this impulse while discussing what she calls “artificial intimacy.” She says that these digital connections risk “lowering our expectations of intimacy between humans” and leave us “unprepared and unable to tolerate the inevitable unpredictabilities of human nature, love, and life.”

Putting yourself out there is uncomfortable. But I also worry that by relying mostly on social media to encounter other humans, they’re forfeiting opportunities to develop the skills that could help them thrive in the flesh-and-blood world.

New research analyzing nearly 2 billion words from websites across 20 English-speaking countries reveals that Americans lead the pack in online profanity, outswearing even the Brits and Australians by a significant margin.

The findings flip common stereotypes on their head. While we might expect foul-mouthed Aussies or pub-going Brits to claim the digital cursing crown, it’s actually Americans who dominate online vulgarity.

Researchers noted in their study that “The United States, often associated with protestant puritanism, Christian fervor, and prudishness, show the highest rates of vulgarity in online discourse, followed by Great Britain.”

Online anonymity and informal communication styles enable this linguistic freedom. Unlike face-to-face conversations constrained by social hierarchies and formal expectations, digital spaces often feel like consequence-free zones for verbal expression.

Despite common perceptions that Australians are the most profane English speakers —Americans claim the digital crown for creative cursing. Americans apparently reserve their strongest expressions for online spaces where they feel freer to let loose.

Hope springs eternal for sports bettors, as they typically expect to break even on future wagers even when they have consistently lost money in the past.

Now we know roughly how overconfident many gamblers are. A study by Stanford University researchers finds that the average online sportsbook customer expects a gain of 0.3 cent for every dollar wagered. In reality, sports bettors lose an average of 7.5 cents per dollar wagered, reflecting “widespread overoptimism about financial returns,” according to Matthew Brown lead author of the study.

The study also found that 20% of participants reported betting too much. To promote responsible gambling, online sportsbooks have rolled out features making it easy for users to track their results over time. But since most sports bettors are overly optimistic about their future betting, those measures likely won’t do much to curb problematic gambling,

Brown says. “Even when bettors know their past losses, they remained optimistic about the future, so that particular approach to consumer protection might not be enough,” he says.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As online gambling infiltrates society (and the church), there are more opportunities for temptation, people can hide their gambling addiction by not leaving their home. How many secret addicted gamblers are there in our churches?

A new study reveals the alarming impact of TikTok on young adults’ body image, showing that just 7 to 8 minutes of exposure to certain content can significantly damage one’s body image.

Researchers studied female TikTok users aged 18 to 28. Participants were split into two groups: one watched what the authors deemed “pro-anorexia” and “fitspiration” content, while the other viewed neutral videos like nature and cooking clips. Interestingly enough, both groups reported a decrease in their self-esteem after watching the videos. But those exposed to fitspiration content had the greatest decrease in body image satisfaction.

This isn’t an isolated finding. Other studies have shown that prolonged social media use is linked to increased anxiety, depression, and disordered eating behaviors.

One of the most concerning aspects is how widespread this content is. 64% of participants reported seeing disordered eating videos on their For You page without searching for it. Even seeking out positive content on TikTok can lead to inadvertent exposure to harmful material.

The study’s findings add to the ongoing discussion of the negative impact of social media on the mental and physical health of young adults. Earlier in 2024 at a U.S. Senate hearing that included TikTok CEO Shou Chew, senators made one thing clear: tech companies need to be held responsible for not protecting young users from harm.

“You have blood on your hands,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham in his opening remarks. “You have a product that’s killing people … You can’t be sued, you should be!”

The study shows that it only takes a few minutes on TikTok to cause serious damage. In order to protect one’s body image, it might be time for young adults to rethink how they use social media.

If two of the 20th century’s iconic technologies, the automobile and the television, initiated the rise of American aloneness, then screens continue to fuel and even accelerated, our national anti-social streak. Countless books, articles, and cable-news segments have warned Americans that smartphones can negatively affect mental health and may be especially harmful to adolescents. But the fretful coverage is, if anything, restrained given how greatly these devices have changed our conscious experience.

The typical person is awake for about 900 minutes a day. American kids and teenagers spend, on average, about 270 minutes on weekdays and 380 minutes on weekends gazing into their screens, according to the Digital Parenthood Initiative. By this account, screens occupy more than 30 percent of their waking life.

Urban safety experts have long worried about the impact of distracted driving. However, a new study by researchers suggests we should be equally concerned about distracted walking.

Researchers have uncovered alarming differences in behavior between pedestrians engrossed in their mobile devices and those who remain alert to their surroundings. The study, conducted at two busy intersections in downtown Vancouver, used advanced video analysis techniques to examine the behavior of pedestrians and drivers during near-miss incidents.

Published in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention, the findings paint a concerning picture of how our smartphone addiction is affecting our safety on city streets. Distracted pedestrians, those using their phones for texting, reading, or listening to music, tend to walk slower and maintain closer proximity to vehicles compared to their non-distracted counterparts. They also rarely yield to oncoming traffic and are less likely to change their walking direction, even when dangerously close to vehicles. This behavior suggests a significant decrease in awareness of their surroundings and reduced navigational efficiency. This creates a perfect storm for potential accidents.

The next time you find yourself reaching for your phone while walking, remember: the digital world can wait. Your safety, and the safety of those around you, depends on staying present in the physical world.

TikTok’s grip on our collective attention spans might be even more dangerous than we thought. According to the company’s own research, users may only need to watch 260 videos before developing addictive behaviors. The findings also link excessive use to a series of mental health issues, including impaired memory, loss of analytical skills, diminished empathy, and heightened anxiety.

Lawsuits have filed against TikTok, accusing the platform of falsely advertising its algorithm and putting children at risk. The lawsuits claim that the company prioritized user engagement over the well-being of its younger audience.

The unredacted documents suggest that TikTok struggled to balance safety with its desire to keep users engaged. While the platform implemented features like screen time alerts and usage limits, its own data shows these measures had little effect. In fact, the screen time limit feature reduced usage by only 1.5 minutes per day, raising concerns that such interventions were more about optics than actual safety.

The platform’s effect on body image also emerged as a significant issue. The documents allege that TikTok’s algorithm has a bias toward promoting content from conventionally attractive users. Meanwhile, harmful content—such as videos related to eating disorders and suicidal ideation—often slipped through moderation and became part of algorithm-driven “bubbles” that young users were frequently exposed to.

In a statement to NPR, a TikTok spokesperson responded to the allegations, saying, “We have robust safeguards in place, which include proactively removing suspected underage users, and we have voluntarily launched safety features like default screen time limits, family pairing, and privacy settings for minors under 16.”

Billy Collins, the former poet Laurette of the United States, was recently asked by The New York Times Book Review, "How has the internet changed your writing?" Collins responded:

The internet asks us to speed up. Poetry invites us to slow down. I write with a pencil and paper, then use the computer only as a fancy typewriter. So, no change really, except in [the internet’s] role as the most persistent distraction in human history.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Distractions; Prayer—Of course there are many other distractions that can keep us from slowing down and being with God. (2) Bible reading and meditation—The Bible also invites us to slow down and listen to God speaking to us.

Internal documents from Tik Tok executives and employees reveal that the social media platform is driven to capture the attention of users. Here were some of their own internal statements:

• An internal presentation on the 2021 strategy for TikTok describes the company as being in an “arms race for attention.”
• “It’s better to have young people as an early adopter, especially the teenagers in the U.S. Why? They’ve got a lot of time.”
• “Teenagers in the U.S. are a golden audience.
• “The product in itself has baked into it compulsive use.”
• “The reason kids watch TikTok is because the algorithm is really good... But I think we need to be cognizant of what it might mean for other opportunities. And when I say other opportunities, I literally mean sleep, and eating, and moving around the room, and looking at somebody in the eyes.”
• As an internal guide on push notifications explained, a key goal of TikTok’s push notifications is to “Activate & Engage users with the right content at the right time, to encourage users to open the App more and stay longer.”
• In a chat message a TikTok employee confirmed that the company’s “goal is not to reduce the time spent” on the TikTok app, but rather to ultimately “contribute to DAU [daily active users] and retention” of users.

A young woman writer in England named Freya India (see her Substack called “Girls”) writes:

Since I was teenager, it seems like everyone has been selling a solution to Gen Z’s loneliness problem. One app after another to find new friends! Constant hashtags and campaigns to bring us together… But I’ve noticed that, recently, the latest “solutions” … aren’t encouraging face-to-face friendships.

[Instead], there are the imaginary boyfriends and girlfriends. There are imaginary therapists, a “mental health ally” or “happiness buddy” we can chat with about our problems… There are even entirely imaginary worlds now. Metaverse platforms might “solve the loneliness epidemic,” apparently. VR headsets could end loneliness for seniors. But by far the most depressing invention I’ve seen lately is a new app called SocialAI, a “private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on each post you make.”

I remember me and my friends spending hours after school writing our own songs, coming up with lyrics and drawing album covers—now we would just generate it with an AI song maker. Children are playing together less, replacing free play with screen time, and creativity scores among American children have been dropping since the 1990s. Part of that may be because children now depend on companies to be creative for them. Their imaginary worlds are designed by software engineers. Their imaginary friends are trying to sell them something. My imaginary world wasn’t trying to drag me anywhere, while algorithms now transport kids to darker and ever more extreme places.

Most tithing Protestants still prefer a physical collection plate to a digital one. A Lifeway Research survey of 1,002 American Protestants found that since the pandemic, more people are giving online—but still not most. Today, only 7 percent of those who tithe use a church smartphone app. Only 8 percent have set up automated bank payments.

Preferred Mode of Tithing:

62% Only cash or check

36% At least one form of electronic giving

02% Don’t know

A cafe in Amsterdam is filled with people on a Sunday afternoon, but there’s not a laptop or cellphone in sight. Those meeting are part of the Offline Club, where a Wi-Fi signal is not needed, whose members check their electronics at the door, grab a coffee and a seat, and pretend like it’s the '90s.

Each meeting starts off with quiet time for reading, crafting, or just relaxing with your beverage. Then it becomes social for people who want to engage with others.

Co-founder of the club, Ilya Kneppelhout said, “The Offline Club is a way for people to detox from their rushed daily lives and ever-connected lives with notifications. And it is people who are unhappy with their social media usage or their phone usage and screen time and want to decrease that and get back to real connection."

It’s a simple concept, but participants say they really look forward to it. “You get to be very present in a way you didn’t come in realizing,” one member said. Kneppelhout added, “It felt a bit like traveling in time and made me feel nostalgic about the way bars and cafes used to be. Because nowadays, those are places we’re only going to with friends and people we already know and spend time doing digital things like work.”

The founders say they think the concept would work well in other cities, too. “We’re getting together with a franchising concept and we hope to have offline detox events in the entire world for people to reconnect.”

Jonathan Haidt, author of a bestseller, "The Anxious Generation," challenged church leaders to address an important issue. He writes:

As long as children have a phone-based childhood there is very little hope for their spiritual education. An essential precondition is to delay the phone-based life until the age of 18, I would say. Don't let them fall off into cyberspace, because once they do, it's going to be so spiritually degrading for the rest of their lives. There's not much you can do in church if they are spending 10 hours a day outside of church on their phones.

Believers also need to know that researchers have found evidence that religious communities and families play a crucial role in raising healthy children. Haidt continued, “The kids who made it through are especially those who are locked into binding communities and religious communities.” Meanwhile, it is the "secular kids and the kids in progressive families" who tend to be "the ones who got washed out to sea."

Haidt stressed that lives built on smartphones, tablets, and computers will change their minds and hearts:

Half of American teen-agers say that they are online 'almost all the time.' That means that they are never fully present – never, ever. They are always partly living in terms of what is happening with their posts, what's happening online….

There is a degradation effect that is overwhelming, but most people haven't noticed…. I am hoping that religious communities will both notice it and be able to counteract it. But you can't counteract it if the kid still has the phone in a pocket. The phone is that powerful.

The Internet can be a dangerous place, and a new global survey is revealing that billions of people have likely been the target of cybercriminals at some point in time. The survey found that nearly half of all respondents have fallen victim to a cyberattack or scam.

In a poll of 20,000 adults from around the world, 45% reported that their personal data, such as banking or email account information, has been compromised by a hacking attempt or scam.

According to respondents, online scams and phishing attempts have become more sophisticated and successful due to artificial intelligence. Half of respondents (50%) disclosed that they’ve been exposed to a cyberattack at work in the last year. Of those whose personal data has been hacked, 20% reported that a cyberattacker successfully hacked one or more of their personal accounts, including bank or email accounts.

Delving into the layered side-effects of successful hacks and scams, 22% lost money as a result and 30% said they have doubts that their personal information will ever be safe again.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Cross; Easter; Satan; Spiritual Warfare - Cyberattacks can inflict significant financial harm. However, there exists a less visible but even more critical vulnerability that affects every human being. The Bible speaks of Satan as "a roaring lion seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8), who orchestrates spiritual attacks against all of humanity. These attacks target not our bank accounts or personal data, but our very souls, seeking to separate us from God's love and purpose for our lives. On the cross, Christ won our victory over Satan (1 Cor. 15:57; Col. 2:13-15). Only through faith in Christ can we find protection and true spiritual security.

Twenty years ago, at the moment of its IPO announcement, the most powerful company in the world declared that “Don’t be evil” would be the orchestrating principle of its executive strategy. How did Google intend not to be evil? By doing “good things” for the world, its IPO document explained, “even if we forgo some short-term gains.”

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO at the time, had some private doubts: as he would later explain in an interview to NPR, “There’s no book about evil except maybe, you know, the Bible or something.” But Schmidt came to believe that the absence of an authoritative definition was in fact a virtue, since any employee could exercise a veto over any decision that was felt not to involve “doing good things.” It took 10 years for the company’s executives to realize that the motto was a recipe for total, corporate paralysis, and quietly retired it.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible offers a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to business ethics than Google's original motto, providing guidance on positive actions rather than just avoiding a vague negative motto (Micah 6:8).

The cacophony of slot machines, dice rolls, and card shuffles is what usually comes to mind when people think of gambling. The more pervasive way to gamble that has become more popular over the years is with your cellphone.

The computers in our pockets provide us with 24/7 access to sites and apps that facilitate our bets for us. People can’t even watch a sports game on their phone without being inundated with ads for fantasy sports platforms. Why not combine phone addiction with gambling? What’s the worst that could happen?

Writing in The Atlantic, Christine Emba anticipates the dreadful impact:

In a sense, Americans have been training themselves for years to become eager users of gambling tech. Smartphone-app design relies on the “variable reward” method of habit formation to get people hooked—the same mechanism that casinos use to keep people playing games and pulling levers. When Instagram sends notifications about likes or worthwhile posts, people are impelled to open the app and start scrolling; when sports-betting apps send push alerts about fantastic parlays, people are coaxed into placing one more bet.

Smartphones have thus habituated people to an expectation of stimulation—and potential reward—at every moment. Timothy Fong, a UCLA psychiatry professor and a co-director of the university’s gambling-studies program, said, “You’re constantly surrounded by the ability to change your neurochemistry by a simple click. There’s this idea that we have to have excessive dopamine with every experience in our life.”

The frictionless ease of mobile sports betting takes advantage of this. It has become easy, even ordinary, to experience the excitement of gambling everywhere. It isn’t enough anymore to be anxious about the final score of the Saturday night football game—let’s up the ante and bet on the winning team!

But at what cost? Indeed, what happens when we begin to think of every scenario in our lives in terms of risk/reward and the dispassionate calculations of probability? This can turn life itself into some cosmic game, twisting relationships into scenarios we scheme and manipulate as we chase the dopamine rush of a winning bet. The easy accessibility to gambling won’t just affect us personally, for it can also change the culture around us.

Possible Preaching Angle:

As online gambling infiltrates society (and the church), there are more opportunities for temptation, people can hide their gambling addiction by not leaving their home. How many secret addicted gamblers are there in our churches?

A study of YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook revealed that American Teens—by a large margin—use YouTube (71%) more than TikTok (58%). But they're more likely to scroll through the TikTok app "almost constantly," according to Pew Research Center polling.

The stat points to how addictive and unhealthy TikTok's endless feed of videos can be for teens.

A study from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that new TikTok accounts were shown self-harm and eating disorder content within minutes of scrolling.

• Suicide-related videos popped up within 2.6 minutes.
• Eating disorder content popped up in 8 minutes.

Because of this, there's suddenly a roaring national debate over fears about teens' privacy, their data security—and all the misinformation going straight to their phones. Citing national security concerns, Congress is pushing to force the platform's Chinese parent company to sell TikTok or face a ban.

Psychologist Jean Twenge says. "It's of course possible that people will replace TikTok time with YouTube time or Instagram time. However, TikTok's algorithm is particularly effective at getting you to spend more time on it."

Online dating is so last year.

According to a report, popular dating apps have seen a major dip in usage in 2024, with Tinder losing 600,000 Gen Z users, Hinge shedding 131,000 and Bumble declining by 368,000.

Millennials and older generations seem to be holding steady with these apps, with nearly 1 in 10 adults on at least one dating app. But for Gen Z, they’re increasingly over the limited online options.

“Some analysts speculate that for younger people, particularly gen Z, the novelty of dating apps is wearing off,” Ofcom said in its annual Online Nation report.

According to experts, Gen Z seems to be more interested in meeting people IRL instead of finding them through an app. The idea of a “meet cute,” first popularized in every rom-com ever, has become a growing trend online. Accounts like @MeetCutesNYC, which boasts over a million followers, post videos of the various ways that couples have found each other.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Although in Bible times marriages were most often arranged by the parents, there are examples of “chance meetings” when couples met and fell in love that can be used for today’s singles. Some examples are Moses and Zipporah (Exodus 2:16-22), Jacob and Rachel (Genesis 29:1-14), and Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 1-3).

An investigation by the French newspaper Le Monde revealed a potential security threat for several world leaders. The confidential movements of France’s president Macron, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and former president Trump -- even after two assassination attempts on Trump – were easily tracked online through a fitness app used by their bodyguards.

The security agents were found using the Strava app, which is primarily used by runners and cyclists to record their activities and share their workouts. The data it collects can also be used to track users' locations.

The newspaper identified a total of 44 U.S., French, and Russian security agents, all responsible for presidential security, who had public Strava accounts. Their movements, including professional trips, were therefore communicated online.

The U.S. Secret Service said in a statement to Le Monde that while staff are not allowed to use personal electronic devices while on duty, “we do not prohibit an employee’s personal use of social media off-duty.” However, they added that “affected personnel have been notified" and that they "will review this information to determine if any additional training or guidance is required.”

These potential security breaches illustrate the risks associated with tech companies and consumer data. "Companies love our data, and we love the product, so we give away the data for free," said Ibrahim Baggili, professor of cybersecurity at Louisiana State University. "The government really needs to start cracking down on how data can be used and how long it can be retained."

Possible Preaching Angle:

God gives us the freedom to decide how to live, but we must consider how our choices affect others.