Selfies Jump the Shark
What’s more dangerous: sharks or taking pictures of yourself? Now, you might think that those seemingly ferocious feeding machines Discovery Channel spends a week chronicling each summer is the easy answer. But you’d be wrong. It turns out that sharks have killed fewer people so far in 2015 than selfies have. That’s right: Taking a […]
Dealing With Death in the Digital Age
When I was growing up back in the 1980s, the whispering buzz among my peers would amp up when something particularly transgressive began to infiltrate our collective adolescent consciousness. Often it involved stories of friends who somehow managed to see R-rated movies that, theoretically, they shouldn’t have been seeing. But there was one franchise of […]
The Grandparent Factor
When my wife and I were shopping for a new home before the birth of our third child, one factor influenced our choice of neighborhoods above nearly everything else: proximity to her parents. Admittedly, the decision was in part a selfish one. Let’s face it: When you have three small children, you need all the […]
In Pain? Play a Game
Can video games help children cope with pain? Many scientists say so. And they say the therapeutic effect may work on two levels. First, video games provide a distraction. When they’re engaged with something onscreen, they simply have less available mental space to focus on what’s hurting. And at a secondary level, scientists have begun […]
P!nk Unleashed
P!nk got in touch with her inner Tipper Gore—the woman most responsible for getting parental advisory stickers slapped on music albums—after this year’s MTV Video Music Awards. Even though the singer (real name: Alecia Beth Moore) is hardly a stranger to racy, enveloping-pushing songs and videos herself, P!nk didn’t think much at all of this […]
Of ‘Goonies’ and ‘Bridges,’ Pilgrimages and Relics
In the Middle Ages, many Christians believed that taking a spiritual pilgrimage to visit holy shrines and relics would give them a chance to experience God more deeply. Jerusalem represented the ultimate destination for faithful followers of means. But for the vast majority of believers, such a journey was, practically speaking, impossible. Instead, they might […]
When Miley Met Hannah
We often talk about how pop culture—movies, music, video games, TV, the Internet—influences young people who consume it. But what about those who produce it? Especially if they’re quite young, how does being the at the epicenter of a pop-culture phenomenon influence them? One supernova star whose influence—for better, for worse—we’ve chronicled over the last […]
Hang Up and … Walk?
By now, most of us know that texting while driving is a seriously bad idea. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, texting while driving is actually six times more dangerous than drunk driving. But did you know that texting while walking can be deadly, too? And I’m not just talking about deadly to […]
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
The smartphone’s ascent from novelty to convenience to necessity has been swift. And as these handy little Dick Tracy-like devices have graduated to the latter category for so many of us, culture and commerce have evolved to accommodate our perceived need never to be far from our beloved phones. Even so, I was still caught […]
Rock’s Not (Quite) Dead … and Why That Matters
Last September, KISS bassist, entrepreneur and reality TV star Gene Simmons became the latest in a long line of voices to loudly lament, “Rock is finally dead!” In many ways, Simmons may very be correct. Rock music doesn’t enjoy the cultural omnipresence it wielded from the 1960s through the ’90s. And the industry as a […]