Technology

Can a video game teach empathy?

Can kids learn empathy on an iPad? This is the somewhat unfair but inevitable question surrounding this week's release of a new tablet game called IF. Designed for 6 to 12 year olds, IF aims to help children manage their emotions, cope with stress and conflict, even deal with bullies. It comes with big expectations [...]

Is The Biggest Loser preying on disadvantaged communities?

The Biggest Loser machine screeched into the regional Victorian town of Ararat last night, and we all got to gorge on the usual clichés. Fat people stuffing their faces with junk food. Fat people crying. Fat people talking about how they are unlovable and unworthy. The Biggest Loser PR team would have us believe that their community-wide [...]

Food rating website: pulled due to pressure from lobbyist for junk food industry?

A senior government staffer who demanded a new healthy food rating website be taken down is married to the head of a lobbying outfit that works for the junk food industry, it has been revealed. via Food rating website: Fiona Nash's chief of staff married to lobbyist for junk food industry.

Facebook is ‘dead and buried’, replaced by simpler networks, study finds

A study of how older teenagers use social media has found Facebook is "not just on the slide, it is basically dead and buried" and is being replaced by simpler social networks such as Twitter and Snapchat, an expert has claimed. via Facebook is 'dead and buried', replaced by simpler networks, study finds.

Big Data Crushes Anti-Vaccination Movement

For years it’s been relatively easy to ignite medical controversy with emotional but often anecdotal evidence. TV is a popular format for doing just that. It’s quick, colorful and dramatic and increasingly in high-def and big-screen. Add a well known celebrity or two and the effects can be powerful, long term and hard to refute. [...]

Story of a gaming addict

"Looking back, I think I must have been insane," he told me, with a mix of pride and revulsion. "I was so immersed in it at the time. I knew it was abnormal, but never to the extent that I see it now." via Jorge Yao was master of his virtual domain in Clash of [...]

The Body Con – A Competition to Help People Change Body Perceptions

The Body Con is a challenge to the understanding that we have to look a certain way in order to be valued and accepted. It is an opportunity to stop conforming and create controversy by re-branding the "ideal". Enter now for your chance to win $1000 and the opportunity to hear from industry professionals who [...]

Google, Microsoft ramp up fight against online child pornography

In response to the longtime, alarming proliferation of photos and videos containing child pornography on the Internet, Web search giants Google and Microsoft plan to introduce measures to block the content from their search results. The modifications will prevent more than 100,000 search terms from generating results that link to images and videos associated with [...]

Why video games aren’t all bad

Why do kids like playing video games so much? Is it because they’re violent, misogynistic or just plain mind-numbing?   Generation Next speaker Dr Wayne Warburton has conducted research that shows the impact of violent games on the adolescent brain has both short and long term effects. None of them good.   Let’s leave violent [...]

Miley Cyrus: does the music business exploit women?

The pornification of everything is a huge problem across our culture, and one that has only grown muckier and more entrenched with the spread of the internet on teenagers' mobile phones. It's a problem not confined to pop music – hello, fashion photography – but pop is where the tectonic plates of sex and commerce [...]

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