College costs, how digital generations prefer to learn, bean soup and the ‘what about me effect’
Welcome to Raised. The weekly update with 5 things to better understand our rapidly transforming digital world and help raise thriving children.
This week
🦉Learning: How digital generations prefer to learn
🚀 Skills: Generative AI features in mobile cameras
📚 Education: Misrepresentation of college costs in the US
⚡️Social: Bean soup and the ‘what about me effect’
🛜 Online: Junk websites
If you have feedback, questions or topics you’d like me to address in a future issue, do get in touch at raised[at]edaith.com
Tina
1/ 🦉Learning
How digital generations prefer to learn
Modern learners are ever under digital bombardment which has changed learning preferences. This textbook for educators identifies nine key learning attributes of digital generations:
#1 Digital learners prefer receiving information from multiple, hyperlinked digital sources
#2 Digital learners prefer parallel processing and multitasking
#3 Digital learners prefer processing pictures, sounds, color, and video before they process text
#4 Digital learners prefer to network and collaborate simultaneously with many others
#5 Digital learners unconsciously read text on a page or screen in a fast pattern
#6 Digital learners prefer just-in-time learning
#7 Digital learners are looking for instant gratification and immediate rewards, as well as simultaneously deferred gratification and delayed rewards
#8 Digital learners are transfluent between digital and real worlds
#9 Digital learners prefer learning that is simultaneously relevant, active, instantly useful, and fun
📖 A Brief History of the Future of Education (Corwin publishing)
2/ 🚀 Skills
Generative AI features in mobile cameras
You’ve probably noticed some basic AI features in your phone camera – the ability to copy and play with image finishes. The next wave of features includes the ability to instantly change expressions on people’s faces, remove and resize objects in your photos.
This could be handy to create a decent family photo, not so great for any notion that people’s real-time photos might be a trustworthy representation of actual events.
📺 Demo of Google Pixel 8 Magic Editor Features (Google)
3/ 📚 Education
Misrepresentation of college costs in the US
This article presents a case of fraudulent behaviour by universities with a system that masks the actual cost of a standard college education - which is much lower than what is marketed. The price for degrees for most universities is advertised (and reported to authorities) to be similar to the Ivy league institutions to appear prestigious and encourage applications. In practice, to ensure adequate student numbers most new students receive scholarships that offset tuition fees.
🔗 The Truth about College Costs (National Affairs)
4/ ⚡️Social
Bean soup and the ‘what about me effect’
Bean soup was trending on TikTok, with creators sharing recipes. One user’s response to personalisation questions about her recipe, including "But what if I don't like beans?", has led to calling out of the “what about me effect”.
The “What About Me Effect” combines individualistic culture with being constantly online. Always viewing personalised content feeds into some people’s expectation that everything they see should match their individual interests, preferences, and situation. The internet noticed the ridiculous slew of “what if” questions on bean soup videos and turned it into a running joke.
🔗 How a viral bean soup recipe prompted the internet to break down ‘what about me’ effect (Independent)
5/ 🛜 Online
Junk websites
People are using generative AI to quickly create junk websites to capture programmatic advertising money. Blue chip advertisers and major brands advertisements are displayed on these sites, likely without their knowledge, wasting about $13 billion each year.
The ploy works because programmatic advertising allows companies to buy ad spots on the internet without human oversight. Algorithms bid on placements with the goal to maximise the number of relevant human views for the ad. Even before generative AI entered the scene, around 21% of ad impressions were taking place on junk made for advertising websites.
For example, UAIN World-Today-News.com, a junk news and lifestyle site published about 1,200 articles per day during a week of June monitored. In comparison, The New York Times typically publishes around 150 articles a day.
🔗 Tracking AI-enabled Misinformation (NewsGuard)
If you would like to actively avoid these websites with internet browsing, try adding the name of a trusted source to the search keywords when looking for news on a given topic.
If your teen is spending time on Instagram, it may not be as bad as it seems. Marketers are concerned that teens and young people are using social apps more for messaging and group chats than for feeds, which means advertisers are finding it difficult to get their attention. Adults have become mainly lurkers - posting less, but still consuming ever more content and if sharing, only with close friends.
🔗 Social media is dead – Group chats and messaging apps killed it (Business Insider)
Future ready?
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