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The Economic Consequences for Students During the Pandemic ‘Could Be Far Greater Than Those of the Great Recession’
The COVID-19 public health emergency may be officially over, but a new report shows that we’re only starting to see its impact on children’s education.
Standardized testing scores are down significantly, children in some districts are years behind on reading and math, and many have missed out on key periods of socialization, ProPublica reported. Remote learning and trauma relating to COVID-19 deaths both played a role in the setbacks.
As a result of this so-called learning loss, the economic fallout for those who went to school during the pandemic years could be worse than for people who worked during the Great Recession, Stanford economist Eric Hanushek said while presenting research at an event earlier this year, according to ProPublica. These students will be “punished throughout their lifetime,” he said at the event.
Hanushek said that those in Grades 1 through 12 during the pandemic could expect 3% lower incomes over their lifetimes due to learning loss, in a report published May 2020 at the onset of the pandemic.
Spike in Teen Depression Aligns With Rise of Social Media, New Poll Suggests: ‘It’s Not Going Anywhere’
“I can’t do anything right.” “I do not enjoy life.” “My life is not useful.” The share of teens who agree with these phrases has doubled over the past decade, according to an annual poll conducted by the University of Michigan — and one expert asserts that the increase in depressive symptoms is tied to the rise of social media.
In her book, “Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and Silents — and What They Mean for America’s Future,” Dr. Jean Twenge, a psychologist and a professor at San Diego State University, highlighted the poll’s results as a means of linking the spike in teen depression to the increase in social media use.
Since 1991, the University of Michigan has polled 50,000 students in 8th, 10th and 12th grades about their level of agreement with those three questions. After 2012, the number of students expressing agreement with those sentiments started to climb.
Dr. Zachary Ginder, a psychological consultant and doctor of clinical psychology at Pine Siskin Consulting, LLC in Riverside, California, was also not involved in the poll but said the correlation between depression and social media use aligns with previous research.
Amazon Duped Millions Into Enrolling in Prime, U.S. Regulator Says in Lawsuit
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has sued Amazon for what it called a years-long effort to enroll consumers without consent into its paid subscription program, Amazon Prime, and making it hard for them to cancel.
The FTC, the U.S. agency charged with consumer protection, filed a federal lawsuit in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered, alleging that the tech behemoth “ knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime” through a secret project internally called “Iliad.”
In its complaint, the FTC said Amazon used “manipulative, coercive or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions.”
When College Students Cut Back on Social Media, They Got Happier: Study
U.S. News & World Report reported:
Cutting back social media to a spare 30 minutes per day could be the key to reducing anxiety, depression, loneliness and feelings of fear of missing out, researchers say.
That was true for college students in a new study who self-limited social media — often successfully and sometimes squeezing in just a bit more time — for two weeks.
The study dovetailed with recent health advisories from the U.S. Surgeon General and the American Psychological Association, which warned that young people’s mental health has suffered as their use of social media has surged.
Chuck Schumer Calls on Congress to Pick up the Pace on AI Regulation
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is launching a new “all-hands-on-deck” effort Wednesday to regulate artificial intelligence, aiming to strike a balance between economic competitiveness and safety.
Schumer laid out his vision in a speech at a Washington think tank on Wednesday, calling on his Senate colleagues to create new rules regulating the emerging AI industry. The plan, the SAFE (Security, Accountability, Foundations, Explain) Innovation Framework, doesn’t provide specific policy requests or define the boundaries of “AI.”
Instead, it asks lawmakers to work together to address a variety of AI’s potential risks, from national security and job loss to misinformation, bias, and copyright.
Congress has struggled to regulate the tech industry, failing to pass long-debated legislation on data privacy and competition. But AI is different, according to Schumer, and presents new threats that lawmakers should address with urgency. To help quicken Congress’ pace on AI rules, Schumer said he would convene a series of “AI Insight Forums” later this year. These panels are intended to bring experts and lawmakers together to help form regulations.
The Federal Government Has a New Cyber Player
The federal government just got a new cyber player: a section of the Justice Department wholly devoted to disrupting and prosecuting cyberthreats to national security.
Matthew Olsen, DOJ’s assistant attorney general for national security, announced the National Security Division-housed National Security Cyber Section — NatSec Cyber for short — at the Hoover Institution think tank on Tuesday, and shared some additional details with me in an interview.
The person who is taking the job of acting head of the section is Sean Newell, who has been serving in the office of Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. Monaco is one of the Justice Department officials who has been emphasizing disruptive operations against malicious hackers, such as botnet takedowns and recovery of ransom payments, that was also a point of emphasis in the Biden administration national cybersecurity strategy.
Olsen was one of the Biden administration figures who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week in support of renewing the surveillance tools known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, set to expire at the end of this year. A prominent privacy concern that emerged at that hearing is the FBI warrantlessly accessing the Section 702 database of collected communications with searches using Americans’ identifiers, such as their names or email addresses.
Doctors Increasingly Using AR Smart Glasses in Operating Room: ‘Potential to Revolutionize Surgeries’
As artificial intelligence and other technologies continue to move into the medical field, a growing number of doctors are showing interest in how these innovations can transform all aspects of patient care — including surgery.
Augmented reality (AR) smart glasses are wearable devices that enhance how people interact with the world around them. This is one such technology that’s seeing wider use.
In the operating room, smart glasses allow surgeons to access important information they need in a real-time, hands-free environment — without having to look away from the procedure to check a computer screen.
A quarter of U.S. surgeons have already started using AR smart glasses. Meanwhile, an additional 31% of surgeons are considering using them, according to a study by global research firm Censuswide, which gathered insights from over 500 surgeons across America.
AI May Be Able to Predict Your Political Views Based on How Attractive You Are, a Recent Study Found
AI may be able to predict your political views based on how you look — and that could cause issues down the line, new research suggests.
A team of researchers based in Denmark and Sweden conducted a study to see if “deep learning techniques,” like facial recognition technology, and predictive analytics can be used on faces to predict a person’s political views.
The purpose of the March study, researchers wrote, “was to demonstrate the significant privacy threat posed by the intersection of deep learning techniques and readily-available photographs.”
