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This social sciences hub galvanized India’s dynamic growth. Can it survive?

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Former prime minister Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi pictured together during a book launch in New Delhi, India, in 2018.

The Centre for Policy Research has worked with the government of prime minister Narendra Modi (right) and his predecessor Manmohan Singh (left).Credit: Sushil Kumar/Hindustan Times/Sipa USA via Alamy

It is India’s leading social-science research institute with a global footprint. The Centre for Policy Research (CPR) is credited with providing an evidence base for India’s economic reforms in the 1990s and helping lay the foundations for its current agenda on climate change.

In January, the government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is seeking re-election, cancelled CPR’s international funding licence, a decision that is being challenged in court. The centre has also been served with a tax demand to pay around 10 crore rupees ($1.2 million) from India’s Income Tax Department.

The case against CPR, which is based in New Delhi, has shocked researchers and policymakers all over the world.

“CPR has a long track record of excellent scholarship, which has consistently illuminated and informed Indian public debates,” says Harald Winkler, an environmental economist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Around three-quarters of CPR’s annual funding came from international grants, most of which the organization is now unable to access. Fewer than 10 staff members are now left of a total of around 200. The centre, has also lost its chief executive, Yamini Aiyar, who stepped down on 31 March.

Mysterious case

The Ministry of Home Affairs cancelled the CPR’s international funding licence under the 2010 Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, or FCRA. The law requires organizations to register with the government to receive international funds. The aim, as described in the text of the act, is partly to protect “the national interest” from international influence.

The difficulty faced by CPR and other research organizations is that the law does not allow them to transfer funds from international sources to partner organizations. This makes collaborative research impossible to do, Aiyar writes in a World View article in Nature this week.

CPR’s international funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation based in Seattle, Washington, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in London (FCDO and the Ford Foundation, based in New York city. Nature reached out to the funders for a response. The Gates foundation and FCDO did not respond before this article was published. The Ford Foundation declined to respond.

The path to India’s growth

Since its founding in 1973, the CPR has worked with governments of both left- and right-leaning parties. “They were doing objective, non-partisan research,” says Robert Stavins, who studies energy and economic development at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1991, the country’s then government, led by the Indian National Congress party, embarked on reforms to liberalize its economy after some four decades of government restrictions on industrial development. That liberalization fueled India’s subsequent growth, including the rise of new corporations in finance, information technology, pharmaceuticals and services industries.

Indian Economist, Vice Chairperson of Punjab state Planning Board, and member of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council, Isher Judge Ahluwalia (R), looks at carvings during her visit to the ancient Sarkhej Roza in Ahmedabad on October 9, 2011.

Economist Isher Judge Ahluwalia’s empirical work helped build evidence in support of economic liberalization that fuelled India’s growth.Credit: Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty

CPR researchers helped to lay the intellectual foundation as well as provide empirical support for economic reforms through publications authored by staff. According to Aiyar, these include Towards an Industrial Policy: 2000 ad (1977) by CPR’s founding director V A Pai Panandiker and policy researcher P D Malgavkar; and Industrial Growth in India by economist Isher Judge Ahluwalia (1985).

Ahluwalia analysed productivity data for 30 industries over a 20- year period up to 1979/80. She concluded that India’s industrial growth had slowed after the mid-1960s and that government controls on industry were an important cause. It was painstaking work, carried out at a time when data were not digitized. This and subsequent work, were among the sources of evidence supporting the 1991 economic reforms enacted by the government of prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Climate strategies

CPR researchers have also helped the current BJP-led government with its climate-change policy development. Ahead of the United Nations climate meeting COP27 in Egypt in 2022, the CPR convened a cross-ministry team of the government to craft India’s first long-term low-emissions strategy.

The process to create the strategy “is an example where we were directly invited into a formal governmental process”, according to Navroz Dubash, CPR’s former head of climate, energy and environment research, now based at the National University of Singapore.

“The invitation likely came out of the academic work we did,” Dubash said in an interview published on CPR’s website. These include studies showing how climate and development can be integrated. Dubash explained how CPR encouraged different ministries to be in the room when the strategy was being developed. “We designed a process where we said let’s make this a cross-government approach because climate change is not . . . just about environment and emissions, it’s about the choice of electricity system, choice of transport systems, patterns of urbanization,” he said.

CPR has “done exceptionally important work on climate and energy policy”, says Matto Mildenberger, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It is one of the most important voices from the perspective of the global south.”

Action on accountability

In 2008, Aiyar and her team established a research project called the Accountability Initiative aimed at improving transparency and accountability in government. The programme studies and documents the government’s mechanisms for delivering and assessing its policies. It also analyses how communities can hold the government accountable, or improve its accountability.

The Accountability Initiative has highlighted the need for improvements to government funding mechanisms, says a US-based social scientist, who asked not to be named. For example, researchers showed a rising trend in late payments from a government welfare scheme for rural households, between 2016 and 2022.

CPR’s plight could have a chilling effect on anyone else attempting similar work, researchers have told Nature. “Now any research organization in India is going to be wary of getting involved in anything that may challenge the government and lead to FCRA status cancellations,” says Johannes Urpelainen, a political scientist who studies environment policy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and who has partnered with researchers in India.

In Breaking Through, a memoir published in 2020, the year that she died, Ahluwalia wrote: “More than any other institution I have known, and particularly relevant to bear in mind today, [CPR colleagues] showed a genuine ability to leave political differences at the door and reap the benefit of differing perspectives on issues of national importance.”

Nature has reached out to India’s Ministry of Home Affairs and the FCRA office in New Delhi. No response was received by the time this article was published.

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Thousands of Social Security numbers stolen from government firm

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Hackers recently stole hundreds of thousands of social security numbers from an American consulting firm, with victims across the US possibly affected.

Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA) has filed a new report with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, and sent a breach notification email to affected individuals.

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how are social skills shaped in an ever-changing world?

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The Ecology of Collective Behavior Deborah M. Gordon Princeton Univ. Press(2023)

Collective behaviours are present throughout nature — from groups of genes being activated simultaneously to shoals of fish swimming in unison for protection against predators and mounds of insects working together to build nests. But biologist Deborah Gordon worries that the evolutionary biologists who study how these phenomena evolved are missing a trick, because they often don’t consider that the ever-changing environments in which animals live are fundamental to shaping such behaviours. In The Ecology of Collective Behavior, she tries to set the record straight.

Gordon has spent decades studying the natural history of two ant species that live in very different environments, paying acute attention to how the insects’ stirring, dynamic habitats shape their behaviour. These observations form the bedrock of her book.

First, she describes the red harvester ant Pogonomyrmex barbatus, which lives in the harsh, parched deserts of New Mexico. Affectionately known as pogos, these ants are deep red and around 10 millimetres long — an impressive size for an ant. They live in colonies, which contain more than 10,000 female workers, and rely on seeds scattered on the desert floor for both food and water. Seed sources change slowly throughout the year as plants wax and wane; there is mostly a plentiful and constant supply of food. But collecting seeds is hazardous. Deserts are dry, so pogos live in a catch-22 world: they must risk desiccation to gather the water they need.

Gordon shows that this delicate trade-off is achieved by a slow but robust mechanism through which foragers recruit nestmates in the search for food. When a female returns to the nest with her bounty, she releases hydrocarbons from her outer cuticle to indicate to her sisters that there’s food out in the desert.

A fleeting touch from a forager’s antennae sends others scuttling out of the nest. They head out in random directions, but that’s OK, because the seeds are spread out on the desert floor, not clustered in patches. Plentiful food and favourable environmental conditions — days that are not too hot, for instance — mean that many foragers return to the colony and recruit many others. Conversely, under bleaker circumstances, fewer ants return to muster recruits. In this way, simple positive feedback regulates the steady collective behaviour of thousands of ants.

Next, Gordon turns to the arboreal turtle ant, Cephalotes goniodontus, which forages in the canopies of Mexico’s dry tropical forests. Unlike the desert harvesters, turtle ants spread their brood across many nests perched in the canopy, connected by a complex net of tangling vines, shifting leaves and moving stems. Their food sources are ephemeral — foragers must exploit bursts of nectar from transient floral blooms.

Each foraging turtle ant lays a trail of pheromones wherever she goes — independent of whether she has discovered a food source or not — while following the trails laid by others. These trails constantly bifurcate, and paths can change on an hourly basis. Which route should each forager follow?

The answer is simple, Gordon reveals. The ants follow the smelliest path — the one with the strongest pheromone signal — and keep reinforcing profitable trails until something tells them to stop, such as the presence of a predator or a broken branch. This ensures that the ants can find the most lucrative foraging spot and rapidly adjust the information flow if needed, changing their behaviour in a constantly changing environment.

Red Harvester Ant workers clear particles of sand from the entrance to their nest.

Red harvester ants clean their nest together.Credit: Clarence Holmes Wildlife/Alamy

Unpredictable environments

Pogos and turtle ants solve similar problems in distinct ways. How they do it is dictated by their environment. Gordon borrows concepts from network science to describe how turtle ants function in modules — units in which most information flow occurs — to keep communication local, enabling them to respond rapidly to the ever-changing availability of resources. By contrast, the centralized regulation of pogos is the epitome of low modularity: the nest is the sole source of communication.

Gordon argues that the nature of the environment and the resources it provides determine the types of collective-foraging mechanism that evolve — not just for ants, but for all social organisms. The extent to which ecology drives the evolution of social behaviour in this way has been overlooked, she suggests.

I agree that researchers need to better recognize that organisms exist, and have evolved, in a dynamic, often unpredictably messy world, and to acknowledge that this influences their behaviour. I admire how the author takes inspiration not only from careful field experiments — removing ants or changing the amount of available resources and observing how the insects respond — but also from the classical science of natural history. Many evolutionary biologists could learn a lot by rediscovering this way of working.

But I am less convinced by Gordon’s suggestion that her ideas are at odds with the ‘prevailing theory’ for social behaviour. Inclusive fitness theory — an idea put forward by UK evolutionary biologist William Hamilton in 1964, and accepted widely in the field — suggests that social behaviours evolve when the benefits of cooperating with relatives exceed the costs (W. D. Hamilton J. Theor. Biol. 7, 1–16; 1964). Hamilton’s ideas stemmed from his observations of wasps, ants, bees and birds in their natural habitats, and are supported by strong experimental and theoretical evidence.

Hamilton’s theory suggests that cooperation will prevail in unpredictable environments, with some animals choosing to help raise their relatives’ young rather than having their own (P. Kennedy et al. Nature 555, 359–362; 2018). This phenomenon is seen often in the natural world, from slime moulds to termites. Thus, the idea that dynamic environments help to shape social behaviour is already part of the accepted theory of social evolution.

I think the confusion arises because Gordon conflates proximate (mechanistic) and ultimate (evolutionary) processes. Her book offers useful insights into the proximate processes that regulate collective behaviour on a day-to-day basis, and the role of the environment in shaping and maintaining such behaviours. I agree that the interactions between organisms and their environments have become increasingly overlooked because fewer researchers are studying animals in their natural environments. But these insights are not at odds with the prevailing theory of how collective behaviours evolve.

In her final chapter, Gordon remarks: “The whole appears to be more than the sum of the parts, because the parts do not sum — they intertwine, jostle, and respond.” This heartening statement is a great description of the ecological and evolutionary complexities that shape our world. It’s these complexities that all biologists should keep in mind.

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?

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A teenage girl lies on the bed in her room lightened with orange and teal neon lights and watches a movie on her mobile phone.

Social-media platforms aren’t always social.Credit: Getty

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt Allen Lane (2024)

Two things need to be said after reading The Anxious Generation. First, this book is going to sell a lot of copies, because Jonathan Haidt is telling a scary story about children’s development that many parents are primed to believe. Second, the book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. Worse, the bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.

Haidt asserts that the great rewiring of children’s brains has taken place by “designing a firehose of addictive content that entered through kids’ eyes and ears”. And that “by displacing physical play and in-person socializing, these companies have rewired childhood and changed human development on an almost unimaginable scale”. Such serious claims require serious evidence.

Haidt supplies graphs throughout the book showing that digital-technology use and adolescent mental-health problems are rising together. On the first day of the graduate statistics class I teach, I draw similar lines on a board that seem to connect two disparate phenomena, and ask the students what they think is happening. Within minutes, the students usually begin telling elaborate stories about how the two phenomena are related, even describing how one could cause the other. The plots presented throughout this book will be useful in teaching my students the fundamentals of causal inference, and how to avoid making up stories by simply looking at trend lines.

Hundreds of researchers, myself included, have searched for the kind of large effects suggested by Haidt. Our efforts have produced a mix of no, small and mixed associations. Most data are correlative. When associations over time are found, they suggest not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways from their healthy peers1.

These are not just our data or my opinion. Several meta-analyses and systematic reviews converge on the same message2–5. An analysis done in 72 countries shows no consistent or measurable associations between well-being and the roll-out of social media globally6. Moreover, findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, the largest long-term study of adolescent brain development in the United States, has found no evidence of drastic changes associated with digital-technology use7. Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, is a gifted storyteller, but his tale is currently one searching for evidence.

Of course, our current understanding is incomplete, and more research is always needed. As a psychologist who has studied children’s and adolescents’ mental health for the past 20 years and tracked their well-being and digital-technology use, I appreciate the frustration and desire for simple answers. As a parent of adolescents, I would also like to identify a simple source for the sadness and pain that this generation is reporting.

A complex problem

There are, unfortunately, no simple answers. The onset and development of mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression, are driven by a complex set of genetic and environmental factors. Suicide rates among people in most age groups have been increasing steadily for the past 20 years in the United States. Researchers cite access to guns, exposure to violence, structural discrimination and racism, sexism and sexual abuse, the opioid epidemic, economic hardship and social isolation as leading contributors8.

The current generation of adolescents was raised in the aftermath of the great recession of 2008. Haidt suggests that the resulting deprivation cannot be a factor, because unemployment has gone down. But analyses of the differential impacts of economic shocks have shown that families in the bottom 20% of the income distribution continue to experience harm9. In the United States, close to one in six children live below the poverty line while also growing up at the time of an opioid crisis, school shootings and increasing unrest because of racial and sexual discrimination and violence.

The good news is that more young people are talking openly about their symptoms and mental-health struggles than ever before. The bad news is that insufficient services are available to address their needs. In the United States, there is, on average, one school psychologist for every 1,119 students10.

Haidt’s work on emotion, culture and morality has been influential; and, in fairness, he admits that he is no specialist in clinical psychology, child development or media studies. In previous books, he has used the analogy of an elephant and its rider to argue how our gut reactions (the elephant) can drag along our rational minds (the rider). Subsequent research has shown how easy it is to pick out evidence to support our initial gut reactions to an issue. That we should question assumptions that we think are true carefully is a lesson from Haidt’s own work. Everyone used to ‘know’ that the world was flat. The falsification of previous assumptions by testing them against data can prevent us from being the rider dragged along by the elephant.

A generation in crisis

Two things can be independently true about social media. First, that there is no evidence that using these platforms is rewiring children’s brains or driving an epidemic of mental illness. Second, that considerable reforms to these platforms are required, given how much time young people spend on them. Many of Haidt’s solutions for parents, adolescents, educators and big technology firms are reasonable, including stricter content-moderation policies and requiring companies to take user age into account when designing platforms and algorithms. Others, such as age-based restrictions and bans on mobile devices, are unlikely to be effective in practice — or worse, could backfire given what we know about adolescent behaviour.

A third truth is that we have a generation in crisis and in desperate need of the best of what science and evidence-based solutions can offer. Unfortunately, our time is being spent telling stories that are unsupported by research and that do little to support young people who need, and deserve, more.

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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Bluesky social network is now available to everyone

Bluesky social network

The Bluesky social network launched last year and the service was only available on an invite basis now the company has announced that it is now open to anyone, and you can now sign up for an account.

When you log in to Bluesky, it might look and feel familiar — the user experience should be straightforward. But under the hood, we’ve designed the app in a way that puts control back in your hands. Here, your experience online isn’t controlled by a single company. Whether it’s your timeline or content filters, on Bluesky, you can easily customize your social experience.

This month, we’ll be rolling out an experimental early version of “federation,” or the feature that makes the network so open and customizable. On Bluesky, you’ll have the freedom to choose (and the right to leave) instead of being held to the whims of private companies or black box algorithms. And wherever you go, your friends and relationships can go with you.

For developers: We’ve already federated the network among multiple servers internally, and later this month, you’ll be able to self-host a server that connects to the main production network. You’ll be part of the first batch of servers that federate with the network, so expect to experiment alongside us! We’ll share more information on how to join the production network with your own server soon.

You can find out more information about the new Bluesky Social Network over at the company’s website at the link below, ity is now available to sign up to without an invite.

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How to Create Awesome Social Media Content with ChatGPT

social media ChatGPT

In the digital era, where social media’s clout is undeniable, creating content that stands out can often feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. If you’ve been grappling with the content creation conundrum, you’ll be pleased to know that there’s a method to the madness. Enter the innovative approach to content creation using ChatGPT, a tool that is transforming the way we think about and produce social media content. This method promises to elevate your content strategy from mundane to remarkable, ensuring that your posts not only captivate but also connect with your audience on a deeper level.

The journey from being a Domino’s pizza driver to a social media maestro might seem like a distant dream, but it’s entirely possible with the right strategy. The cornerstone of this approach is the GAP framework, which stands for Growth, Authority, and Personal content. This strategic trio is designed to magnetize followers, establish trust, and forge a personal bond with your audience. But how do you implement this strategy effectively?Here’s a step-by-step guide to leveraging ChatGPT for your social media content creation.

Understanding Quality Content

Understanding what constitutes quality content is crucial for any brand looking to make an impact on social media. It’s not merely about disseminating information; true quality lies in the ability to engage and personalize content that mirrors the unique essence of your brand. This involves crafting messages that not only inform but also entertain and connect with your audience on a personal level, making your brand’s voice distinct and memorable.

Here’s where ChatGPT steps in as a valuable tool in your content creation arsenal. By feeding it precise and detailed inputs about your brand’s values, goals, and the interests of your target audience, ChatGPT can generate ideas and content that truly resonate with your brand’s identity. This process ensures that every piece of content you produce reflects the nuances of your brand’s voice, fostering a stronger connection with your audience.

Personalization is Key

Creating content that directly addresses your audience requires a personal touch, integrating unique aspects of your brand and the journey behind it. This personalization makes your content not just another message in their feed, but a story that speaks to them, resonating on a deeper level. By embedding your brand’s distinct characteristics and your own experiences into your content, you forge a stronger, more meaningful connection with your audience.

ChatGPT excels in customizing content to align with the specific nuances and details you provide. This adaptability ensures that the content produced is not only engaging but also genuinely relatable to your audience. By effectively communicating the essence of your brand and personal narrative through ChatGPT’s tailored outputs, you create content that captivates and connects, setting your brand apart in the crowded digital landscape.

Know Your Audience

Grasping the nuances of your audience’s preferences and desires is fundamental to crafting content that resonates. Knowing who your audience is, along with their interests, challenges, and aspirations, allows you to create messages that speak directly to their hearts and minds. This deep understanding is the cornerstone of any successful content strategy, enabling you to produce material that genuinely engages and captivates your audience.

Leveraging ChatGPT in this context offers the capability to precisely adjust your content strategy to meet the specific tastes and requirements of your audience. By inputting detailed insights about your audience into ChatGPT, you can generate content that not only aligns with their interests but also addresses their unique needs. This ensures that every piece of content you create is on target, enhancing the effectiveness of your communication and reinforcing the connection between your brand and its audience.

Creative Content Creation Prompts

ChatGPT stands as an invaluable ally in the creative process, offering a collaborative approach to generating new and innovative content ideas. As a brainstorming partner, it provides a wellspring of inspiration, supplying prompts and suggestions that ignite discussions and pique the curiosity of your audience. This collaborative interaction fosters a fertile ground for creativity, allowing you to explore diverse topics and themes that resonate with your followers.

Engaging ChatGPT in your content creation strategy enables you to craft messages that transcend mere information dissemination. By posing strategic questions and exploring varied angles, you harness the power to produce content that is both enlightening and captivating. This not only educates your audience but also offers them a delightful and interactive experience, ensuring they remain connected and engaged with your brand.

Content Production

Finally, the creation of your content should feel as natural as possible. Whether it’s video or written content, ChatGPT can help script or outline your ideas, making the production process smoother and more authentic.

To maximize your content’s reach, consider repurposing your videos into text for blogs, emails, or social media posts. This strategy not only doubles your content output but also caters to different audience preferences, enhancing your brand’s visibility and engagement.

Summary

The process of creating captivating and engaging social media content often appears intimidating, yet it need not be an overwhelming challenge. By integrating ChatGPT into your content strategy, you unlock the potential of artificial intelligence to generate content that is not only of high quality but also deeply personalized. This ensures that every piece of content you produce resonates strongly with your target audience, enhancing the connection they feel with your brand. ChatGPT empowers you to tailor your messages, ensuring they align perfectly with your audience’s interests and preferences, thus elevating your brand’s profile in the digital landscape.

Therefore, adopting this cutting-edge approach can transform your social media strategy, leading to significant growth and a vibrant, engaged community around your brand. Embrace the future of content creation with ChatGPT and witness the transformative impact on your social media engagement and brand elevation.

Source Dakota Robertson

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The Authentic Revolution: How BeReal is Reshaping Social Media

In an age where filters and curated lifestyles dominate the digital world, BeReal emerges as a breath of fresh air. This innovative app, birthed by French visionaries Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau, is a delightful blend of spontaneity and authenticity, attracting over 20 million users globally. Instead of focusing on perfection, the app celebrates real, unfiltered moments in daily life, resonating with an eager audience that craves genuine, unscripted snapshots of life on social media, from sharing images of hobbies to a dinner date or vacation. But what sets BeReal apart from the crowd, and why are major platforms taking note?

How BeReal Stands Out from the Crowd

BeReal, an app developed by French innovators Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau has gained popularity among over 20 million users worldwide. Its mechanics are simple and quite brilliant if you come to think of it. After you install it and create an account, you’ll receive a daily notification at an unpredictable time of day. After receiving the notification, users are asked to take a picture of their current surroundings and a selfie, captured simultaneously by both their phone’s front and rear cameras. The two photos are then shared with a selected group of connections and offer an authentic glimpse into their daily life. There’s no time for extensive filtering, capturing the perfect light, or making things look different than they really are.

Furthermore, as you take a selfie, the application reminds you to just smile and stay true to yourself. This is the ethos of BeReal, a project that focuses on authenticity and encourages users to stay clear of the fake epidemic spreading on all the other social networks.

To browse other users’ feeds, you must first post on your own account. Unlike traditional social media platforms, BeReal doesn’t prioritize likes, followers, filters, edits, or ads. Instead, it playfully tracks the number of attempts it takes for you to post a picture and highlights any delays beyond the standard two-minute window. If you’re consistently late, BeReal will send you a humorous message reminding you to be punctual.

Popularity is a Two-Way Street for the French Social Network

With its playful mechanics and the message to return to a healthy social media environment, the BeReal app became popular very quickly. It’s even more impressive that it managed to do so without selling any advertising. The new social platform saw its highest popularity in the US, accounting for 33% of its user base. While one might expect France to be next, it’s actually the UK that comes in second with 9% of users. France ranks third, comprising 6% of the users.

Besides a rapid growth in popularity and downloads, BeReal was awarded the iPhone Application of the Year title in November 2022. But all this buzz around the revolutionary platform also brought it to the attention of the biggest and most popular social networks in France.TikTok responded to the popularity of BeReal by introducing a new feature called TikTok Now.

This function encourages users to post spontaneous photos or brief videos daily using both their phone’s front and back cameras. It’s concerning that the major Chinese social platform didn’t even try to hide its imitation. For instance, while BeReal sends alerts stating “Time to BeReal” flanked by two warning emojis, TikTok’s notifications read “Time to Now” accompanied by two lightning bolt emojis. Meanwhile, Instagram is developing a comparable feature named IG Candid Challenges, and Snapchat has recently launched a dual-camera feature.

Unique Yet Familiar Features

BeReal primarily presents posts from your connections, but also offers a “Discovery” tab, letting users peruse recent public shares from individuals globally. In a direct comparison with TikTok’s “For You” page, the contrast is clear. While TikTok employs a specialized algorithm to serve user-specific content and maintain engagement, BeReal doesn’t focus on promoting trending or popular posts. A casual scroll reveals snapshots of everyday life in places like Norway, Croatia, and the Canary Islands.

Despite efforts by platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or Snapchat to emulate the media’s features, there’s an aspect they can’t duplicate. BeReal’s independence from the Big Tech consortium is its unique strength. For those wanting an escape from TikTok’s hooks, Facebook’s detached environment, and Instagram’s lofty ideals of perfection, BeReal emerges as a refreshing choice.

Final Thoughts

Even with giants like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok as competitors, BeReal holds its ground, offering a fresh take in the online space. While major social media platforms mimic the central feature that skyrocketed the French app’s fame, BeReal still stands a strong chance of enduring.

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Social media users criticize Hillary Clinton’s new State Department photo, writing, “You should be in jail.”

One person posted a picture of late U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who died in the Benghazi terror attack along with three other Americans.
This week, when the official State Department picture of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was shown, people on social media made fun of it.

Several well-known accounts on X made fun of the picture and criticized Clinton for the honor, pointing out that four U.S. officials were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, while Clinton was in charge of the State Department.

The official presentation took place at the State Department offices in Foggy Bottom, Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Current Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave Clinton the honor.
During the event, the painting was taken down, showing a picture of Clinton standing in a green dress in front of an American flag.

When Clinton smiled and laughed when he saw the picture for the first time, the crowd cheered.

Later, X got the picture from the 67th Secretary of State. She wrote in the post’s description, “Today, I was pleased to return to the @StateDept and help @SecBlinken reveal my official picture as the 67th Secretary of State. We’re happy to share it with the people of the United States right here, in case you can’t make it to offices in Foggy Bottom soon.”

In a later post, the former Democratic presidential candidate talked about her first days in the job: “When I walked into the State Department as Secretary fourteen years ago, I knew that having the honor to lead the State Department and USAID would be a singular challenge and a unique chance to do good in the world. It was all of that and more.”

“I’m very proud of everything we’ve done, and I’m thankful to everyone at the Department for working so hard to make sure peace, growth, and wealth happen all over the world. Clinton said, “They continue to make me and our country proud.”
But X users made fun of the former top U.S. official because of the picture.
Co-founder of the Federalist Sean Davis replied to Clinton’s post with a picture of late U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack along with three other Americans.

Eric Spracklen, a digital expert and conservative X user, said, “The American people, on the other hand, were unhappy to see it.
In response to Clinton’s tweet, the official account for the House Judiciary Committee sent a picture of the city of Benghazi.
In response to Clinton’s tweet, the official account for the House Judiciary Committee sent a picture of the city of Benghazi.

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The battle to protect our children from social media

Families, neighborhoods, and real-life bonds can help fight against social media’s “false perfection.”
With the possible exception of facial plastic surgery and skincare, the world of medicine is not about trying to be perfect, but about dealing with flaws and keeping illness and death at bay for as long as possible, not about following a higher standard.

We doctors know too much about the human body to worship it. Our therapists call this worshipping of oneself “narcissism,” and they try to help their patients accept themselves as they are.

In this way, social media and apps on the internet are often our enemies.
It’s weird to think that individuals on dating sites are obsessed with rich people with beautiful bodies and looks. Relationships that are based on faith and a good sense of fun are at risk.

On social media, many young women talk badly about marriage to avoid the pitfalls of having a child and a partner. Putting off marriage and starting a family to focus on a job is one thing, but making fun of the “institution” is another.

And the way social media makes people disagree goes all the way into politics and hate. In 2017, at a high school in California, an Instagram account was full of racist, sexist, and inappropriately mocking jokes. This caused a lot of tension in the town and led to multiple cases.
Sadly, this is far from the only time this has happened. It was and still is too easy to attack, pick on, and ignore people who can’t hear or see you. The COVID pandemic made the problem much worse because people were stuck in their caves with only their cellphones and social media became their only way to talk to other people.

It wasn’t good for them, and the rate of worry showed that. Teenage girls were especially at risk. According to CDC data, almost two-thirds of teens felt very lonely and unhappy in 2021, and one-third of them actually thought about killing themselves as the number of teens who went to the emergency room for mental health problems went up.

It would be too easy to just blindly ask for more government oversight and rules, but this would probably lead to more stubborn refusal and not solve the problem at all. I agree with Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, who I have talked to several times and who says that beating loneliness and reconnecting with people is a good alternative to social media.
I also like what Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia is doing with his Right Help Right Now program. This program is trying to fight the growing feeling of isolation and the mental health problem that is getting worse because of the outbreak. In an interview I did with him last week for Fox News, he told me that social media’s presence in every part of so many Americans’ lives only makes them feel more alone.

Youngkin also said, “Children belong to their families, not to the government. So, it’s very important to make sure that parents are always given power and the right to make choices with their child. We need to save this age, which is in danger of dying out. And at the center of it all is the part parents play in the lives of their children.”

Families, communities, and in-person bonds where kids, teens, and young people learn to accept and love each other “warts and all” are the best ways to fight the fake perfection of the internet and social media, which is luring and hurting our most valuable prize.