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21 Symptoms of Social Media Addiction

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A recent article argued that Social Media should be banned for those under 16. Outrage! What are the warning signs that we have been imprisoned by our screens? Is it possible that the addiction to social media could be harming our physical, mental and spiritual world? I would be the first to admit that there are worse activities such as mindlessly TV channel-surfing.But I have noticed the addiction in others ! You all make so many excuses for spending so much time online. For many people this is not a cause for anxiety at all. We are increasingly cyborgian, and any wish to return to the old ways (3-5 years ago) is nothing but a futile, hopeless and romantic nostalgia. Having allocated myself a timetable that now stipulates a progressive increase in my time away from the screen I have noticed an improvement in my general health and sense of well-being. Perhaps the experience of having recovered from cancer last year has led me to rethink the primacy of direct interacti

Recommended Books - Fiction

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  Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding With delicacy of perception and memory, humour and pathos, Carson McCullers spreads before us the three phases of a weekend crisis in the life of a motherless twelve-year-old girl. Within the span of a few hours, the irresistible, hoydenish Frankie passionately plays out her fantasies at her elder brother's wedding. Through a perilous skylight we look into the mind of a child torn between her yearning to belong and the urge to run away. Indra Sinha, Animal's People 'I used to be human once. So I'm told. I don't remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being'.....But now Jaanvar - Animal - walks on all fours, the catastrophic result of what happened on That Night when, thanks to an American chemical company, the Apocalypse visited his slums. He lives a hand-to-mouth existence, with a crazy old nun called Ma Franci; Nisha,

How do academics read so many books?

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Scientia imperii decus et tutamen est First, let's interrogate the truth apparently proposed or implied in the titular question. Would it not be more accurate to state: it is believed that academics read lots of books. Is this true? For many undergraduates the notion that their Professor has read more than fifty books secures her a place in the same league as Wittgenstein or Dr Johnson. Far out! Strange! A living geek-book. So, the revered state of being widely read is a relative judgment. But let's grant that academics do 'read' rather a lot; perhaps more than average, perhaps excessively . For teachers in the arts, and in the social sciences, academic books are their primary tools and resources. Text is a living laboratory. Surely they spend every moment of their lives reading . That is to say, they might entertaining the possibility of reading in those great vistas of time the yawn like chasms between teaching, assessing, writing, and generally administerin