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Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being

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A woman and a man sit in bed in a dark bedroom, distracted by a laptop computer and a smartphone respectively.

People who had access to the Internet scored higher on measures of life satisfaction in a global survey.Credit: Ute Grabowsky/Photothek via Getty

A global, 16-year study1 of 2.4 million people has found that Internet use might boost measures of well-being, such as life satisfaction and sense of purpose — challenging the commonly held idea that Internet use has negative effects on people’s welfare.

“It’s an important piece of the puzzle on digital-media use and mental health,” says psychologist Markus Appel at the University of Würzburg in Germany. “If social media and Internet and mobile-phone use is really such a devastating force in our society, we should see it on this bird’s-eye view [study] — but we don’t.” Such concerns are typically related to behaviours linked to social-media use, such as cyberbullying, social-media addiction and body-image issues. But the best studies have so far shown small negative effects, if any2,3, of Internet use on well-being, says Appel.

The authors of the latest study, published on 13 May in Technology, Mind and Behaviour, sought to capture a more global picture of the Internet’s effects than did previous research. “While the Internet is global, the study of it is not,” said Andrew Przybylski, a researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, who studies how technology affects well-being, in a press briefing on 9 May. “More than 90% of data sets come from a handful of English-speaking countries” that are mostly in the global north, he said. Previous studies have also focused on young people, he added.

To address this research gap, Pryzbylski and his colleagues analysed data on how Internet access was related to eight measures of well-being from the Gallup World Poll, conducted by analytics company Gallup, based in Washington DC. The data were collected annually from 2006 to 2021 from 1,000 people, aged 15 and above, in 168 countries, through phone or in-person interviews. The researchers controlled for factors that might affect Internet use and welfare, including income level, employment status, education level and health problems.

Like a walk in nature

The team found that, on average, people who had access to the Internet scored 8% higher on measures of life satisfaction, positive experiences and contentment with their social life, compared with people who lacked web access. Online activities can help people to learn new things and make friends, and this could contribute to the beneficial effects, suggests Appel.

The positive effect is similar to the well-being benefit associated with taking a walk in nature, says Przybylski.

However, women aged 15–24 who reported having used the Internet in the past week were, on average, less happy with the place they live, compared with people who didn’t use the web. This could be because people who do not feel welcome in their community spend more time online, said Przybylski. Further studies are needed to determine whether links between Internet use and well-being are causal or merely associations, he added.

The study comes at a time of discussion around the regulation of Internet and social-media use, especially among young people. “The study cannot contribute to the recent debate on whether or not social-media use is harmful, or whether or not smartphones should be banned at schools,” because the study was not designed to answer these questions, says Tobias Dienlin, who studies how social media affects well-being at the University of Vienna. “Different channels and uses of the Internet have vastly different effects on well-being outcomes,” he says.

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Business Industry

Galaxy S24, S23, Fold 5, A54 and more get surprise update in Europe

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An unexpected new update is rolling out to quite a few Samsung phones. The Galaxy S24 series, Galaxy S23 series (S23 FE included), Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Flip 5, and Galaxy A54 are getting their second April software update in the European region.

This update appears to be exclusive to European users and has to do with 4G network compatibility. According to the changelog, which is common to all of these devices, “support for regional 4G TDD frequency band type has been updated.”

Samsung also notes that anyone who purchased their phone in Germany will not be able to use 4G networks on TDD (time division duplexing) frequency bands in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Switzerland, and Czech Republic. However, 4G networks in these markets mostly use the FDD (frequency division duplexing) frequency bands, so the update shouldn’t cause any issues for users.

Samsung doesn’t say why this update was released, and given how uncommon and unexpected it is, we don’t see a reason to speculate. Samsung could provide more information later on, however, and we have also reached out to the company for a comment.

Galaxy S24, S23, Fold 5, Flip 5, and A54 owners in Europe should be able to download the new update by opening their phone’s Settings » Software update menu and selecting Download and install. You may also want to check for a similar update if you have a device not mentioned here.

Galaxy S24, S23, Fold 5, A54 Europe update

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Bisnis Industri

iPhone shipments take a surprise nosedive

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The iPhone 15 Pro line comes in four finishes: black titanium, white titanium, blue titanium and natural titanium.
A surge in iPhone shipments in 2023 seems to have lead to a decline in demand in 2024.
Photo: Apple

After a stellar 2023, iPhone shipments dropped 9.6% year over year in the first quarter of 2024, according to a market-research firm.

Arch-rival Samsung also saw a decline in shipments, but not as large a one. On the other hand, two Chinese phone makers saw extremely strong growth last quarter.

iPhone and Samsung shipments battle for top spot

Apple had a brilliant 2023, capturing the top spot in shipments for the first time ever, according to IDC. iPhone also led in the fourth quarter, with almost 25% of the world market — way ahead of Samsung’s 16% of the market.

But the shoe is on the other foot in 2024. Apple lost out to Samsung in the first quarter of the year, according to new research from IDC.

Cupertino shipped 50.1 million iPhones in the January-through-March period, down from 55.4 million in the same quarter of 2023. Samsung smartphone shipments dropped 0.7% year over year, and it shipped 60.1 million devices.

“While Apple managed to capture the top spot at the end of 2023, Samsung successfully reasserted itself as the leading smartphone provider in the first quarter,” said Ryan Reith, an IDC analyst.

Estimates from IDC and other market-research firms are necessary because Apple (like other device-makers) does not announce how many smartphones it sells.

A considerable share of the slip in iPhone demand reportedly happened in China.

Don’t overlook Xiaomi and Transsion

Two companies that are virtually unknown in the United States each took a significant chunk of the market in Q1. Xiaomi shipped 40.8 million Androids while Transsion shipped 28.5 million.

“There is a shift in power among the Top 5 companies, which will likely continue as market players adjust their strategies in a post-recovery world,” said IDC analyst Nabila Popal. “Xiaomi is coming back strong from the large declines experienced over the past two years and Transsion is becoming a stable presence in the Top 5 with aggressive growth in international markets.”



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Life Style

In a surprise move Iran releases conservationists who studied big cats

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Houman Jokar (L) uses an antenna to scan leopards' radio collars as the area Head of the Department of Environment points to the signal direction in the Kuh Bafgh Wildlife preserve in Iran.

Conservationist Houman Jokar (pictured left in 2008) working with a government official using an antenna to scan leopards’ radio collars.Credit: Caren Firouz/Reuters

Four members of a conservation group focused on big cats who were jailed in Iran six years ago were pardoned on 7 April as part of a mass amnesty of prisoners ahead of Eid holidays at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan.

The group includes Niloufar Bayani, a conservation scientist and former consultant with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and biologist Houman Jokar, who were both released yesterday. The other two, released today are ecologist Taher Ghadirian and Sepideh Kashani, an administrator with the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation (PWHF), a non-governmental organization (NGO) in Tehran. All four were arrested in January 2018 alongside five other conservationists; none of the nine now remains in prison.

“I am incredibly happy for them. We have all greatly suffered from the injustice that was done to us,” says Morad Tahbaz, a businessman and conservationist with US-British–Iranian citizenship who was one of the nine but was released last September as part of a US–Iranian prisoner swap. UNEP also welcomed the release in a statement.

Bayani wrote letters to government officials and members of the judiciary from Tehran’s Evin prison, revealing how incarcerated people were being subjected to isolation, exhausting interrogations, torture and threats of rape.

“Currently, groups of activists working in climate-related issues are under extreme pressure. The conviction of our environmental NGO and the fate of its employees and founders is one example of how environmental work has become a political crime,” she wrote.

Six years behind bars

The nine, all members of the PWHF, were arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a military organization that is part of the Iranian state. The director of PWHF, Canadian–Iranian citizen Kavous Seyed-Emami, a sociologist, died in prison weeks after the arrest in circumstances that have not been independently verified.

Starting in November 2019, a revolutionary court sentenced the remaining eight to prison terms of between four and ten years, for espionage.

At the time of the arrest, the group was carrying out research on species including the endangered Asiatic cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus venaticus) and Persian leopard (Panthera pardus tulliana) in national parks and elsewhere.

Seven of the conservationists remained in Iran after last year’s prisoner swap, and three of those were subsequently released after serving shorter sentences.

The detentions sparked a worldwide campaign by conservation organizations advocating their release. Iran’s president at the time, Hassan Rouhani, established an inquiry that concluded in May 2018 that there was no evidence supporting the charges. However, the prison sentence was still handed down, and was then upheld by a revolutionary court in February 2020.

The release is “very good news. But nothing can restore the lost years of life and the loss of Emami,” says Kaveh Madani, director of the UN University Institute for Water, Environment and Health in Richmond Hill, Canada. Madani was deputy head of Iran’s Department of Environment when he, too, was arrested and interrogated in 2018 as part of the same operation that sent the environmentalists to jail. He was able to flee the country.

Research in prison

During her incarceration, Bayani managed to complete a research project. She interviewed 25 female political prisoners incarcerated for opposing Iranian government policies, and researched how climate change is perceived in an oil and gas producing state.

“Being confined for over 4 years in one place, a small square piece of land on the planet has gradually shifted my point of view,” she wrote in a report called ‘Climate Literacy in the Land of Oil’. Bayani began teaching a course on climate change, which led to an open letter from the prisoners calling on their government to take stronger action on climate change.

“I used to think through maps, satellite photos and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) modelling, as if my desk was constantly soaring above the Earth,” she continued. “From a satellite view, it is easy to imagine a united human population that is concerned about its common future, but when you land, as I have on this small parcel, the reality is very different.”

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