The answer may be yes according to a study. Conventional wisdom also says yes. However, there is no causal data — no definitive proof. In other words, the studies are inconclusive.

The studies we have so far on the relationship between digital technology use and mental health — for both teens and adults — are more than inconclusive. “The literature is a wreck,” said Anthony Wagner, chair of the psychology department at Stanford University. “Is there anything that tells us there’s a causal link? That our media use behavior is actually altering our cognition and underlying neurological function or neurobiological processes? The answer is we have no idea. There’s no data.”

Several researchers I spoke to — even those who believe the links between digital technology use and mental health problems are overhyped — all think this is an important question worth studying, and gathering conclusive evidence on.

If technology plays any small part in the rise in teen anxiety, depression, and suicide, we ought to know for sure. And if the ubiquity of digital devices is somehow remolding human psychology — in the ways our brains develop, deal with stress, remember, pay attention, and make decisions — we ought to know that too.

This begs the question: How do we find more conclusive answers? The answer is, in simple terms, by asking better, more specific questions.

(Image Credit: Tero Vesalainen/ Pixabay)

Designed by Shanghai-based architecture X+Living, Zhonshuge bookstores “feature incredible rooms coveted by book and illusion lovers alike.” Each location of the bookstore has a different design, meaning it is always a new experience upon going to a new branch.

Check out the amazing photos at Colossal.

(Video Credit: Great Big Story/ YouTube)

(Image Credit: DesignYouTrust/ Colossal)

Screen Junkies continues its series of Honest Trailers for past summer blockbusters with Braveheart, the 1995 hit starring Mel Gibson. The story was supposedly based on the life of the 13th-century Scottish warrior William Wallace, but any shred of historical accuracy was sacrificed for action, drama, and the elements of every other Mel Gibson movie. And in case you haven't seen Braveheart -or heard about it- this Honest Trailer contains spoilers.  

If you didn't study the history of England in school, what you know may be a mishmash of stories instead of a comprehensible timeline. The people of England are descended from the original Celts and an array of invaders who came in waves over the centuries, plus the more recent influx of people from various parts of the British Empire. Suibhne puts those events in order for us, but stops short of the Norman conquest. We can assume that there will be a part two. Check out Suibhne's animated histories of other parts of the world, too. The actual video is only about four minutes long, after a minute-long intro and before an ad at the end. -via Laughing Squid

Most, if not all of us, have encountered a picture of the giant stone heads in Easter Island at least once in our life. But to those who have seen those pictures, did you know that these heads have torsos as well? It was just buried the whole time (well, until the archaeologists excavated them).

The large stone statues, or moai, for which Easter Island is famous, were carved during the period A.D. 1100–1680 (rectified radio-carbon dates). A total of 887 monolithic stone statues have been inventoried on the island and in museum collections.

Although often identified as “Easter Island heads,” the statues have torsos, most of them ending at the top of the thighs, although a small number are complete figures that kneel on bent knees with their hands over their stomachs.Some upright moai have become buried up to their necks by shifting soils.

(Image Credit: Outdoor Revival)

The new issue of Vanity Fair has The Rise of Skywalker as its cover story. What can you say about a movie with a carefully-guarded plot, familiar characters, and six months to go before the premiere? Besides going over the history of Star Wars movies and showcasing a series of images by Annie Leibovitz, there are some fascinating on-set stories.  

“It’s the things that you can’t anticipate—the imperfections,” says Oscar Isaac, who plays the Resistance pilot Poe Dameron. “It’s very difficult to design imperfection, and the imperfections that you have in these environments immediately create a sense of authenticity. You just believe it more.” When Isaac arrived in Wadi Rum for his first week of shooting, Abrams had set up a massive greenscreen in the middle of the desert. “And I was like, ‘J. J., can I ask you a question? I notice we’re shooting on greenscreen.’ And he’s like, ‘So why the hell are we in the desert?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ And he said, ‘Well, because look: the way that the sand interacts with the light, and the type of shots you would set up—if you were designing the shot on a computer you would never even think to do that.’ There’s something about the way that the light and the environment and everything plays together.” It’s that something, the presence and the details and the analog imperfections of a real nondigital place, that makes Star Wars so powerful.

And without giving away the plot, there are some interesting tidbits about the new film.

* The Knights of Ren will return.
* Keri Russell plays scoundrel Zorri Bliss, who looks like a feminine Boba Fett.
* The bond between Rey and Kylo Ren is more profound than previously shown.
* Billie Lourd will appear in scenes with her mother, Carrie Fisher.

There's plenty more for Star Wars fans to explore at Vanity Fair.

This picture was taken around 1922. My first guess was a loudspeaker of some kind, perhaps used to address large crowds. I was wrong.  

The answer is in the full caption at Weird Universe. The gadget was found in a book called Illustrated World, published in 1922-1923. You don't see such machines much these days, because the whole idea seems futile.

Based on an ancient practice of preservation, storing your food in ceramic pots filled with some sand and water will keep them cold without having to put them in a refrigerator. You can save up on your bills and help the environment at the same time. More than that, your food stays fresh and organic.

In some parts of the world, this clay pot cooler is called a zeer, and its sustainable, inexpensive design is far from new. People in the Middle East and Africa have long used similar contraptions to keep food from spoiling in hot, dry climates.

Check out Ilana E. Strauss's article on Popular Science to find out the other steps to make this DIY non-electric cooler.

(Image credit: Elaine Casap/Unsplash)

Plastic takes too long to decay and break down into its basic components. There's too much plastic waste in our oceans and environment which has done a lot of damage to wildlife and ecosystems. But we might find our saving grace in microbes that can eat plastic.

In new research, an international team of scientists studied how microbial communities build up on ocean-polluting plastics and contribute to their degradation – a natural biological mechanism we might be able to exploit, if we can learn to understand it better.

"Abiotic degradation precedes and stimulates biodegradation since carbonyl groups are generated on the [plastic] surface," the researchers, led by environmental engineer Evdokia Syranidou from the Technical University of Crete in Greece, explain in their paper.

"Therefore, a wide range of organisms can settle on the weathered surface, using it as a substrate and as a carbon source."

(Image credit: mali maeder/Pexels)

Thanks to the efforts of hotelier MCR Development, the Trans-World Airlines airport terminal is seemingly brought back to life. The said airport terminal was designed by Eero Saarinen in 1962.

The TWA Hotel at JFK opened its doors on May 15 following a two-year $265-million restoration and renovation project orchestrated by architects Beyer Blinder Belle and Lubrano Ciavarra. Travelers will be able to stay in one of 483 rooms and 22 suites distributed throughout the building’s two iconic, six-story wings, some of them looking to the runways through giant 4.5-inch-thick glass panels that are claimed to fully isolate guests from the airport noise.

The hotel rooms–each with an obligatory Womb Chair and Tulip table designed by Saarinen, plus a classic 1950s rotary phone that most millennials won’t know how to use anymore–were designed by New York-based architecture firm Stonehill Taylor, which also created the public interior spaces and the Connie airplane bar. The latter includes a fully restored Lockheed Constellation airplane. Each room starts at $249 per night, with a shorter 4-hour stay rate of $140 in case you want to take a short rest before your plane leaves.

It’s a blast from the past!

(Image Credit: TWA Hotel/ David Mitchell)

Banquets are as political as they are festive and indulgent. Romans have been throwing these parties not just to show off their wealth but also to network and make important political statements, sometimes subtle, other times outwardly blatant.

The Roman banquet evokes voluptuary images of men in togas reclining on couches and glutting themselves on wild sow's udders and stuffed snails, while servants stream in bearing platters heaped with heavily sauced and delicately spiced foods from all over the world: ostrich from Africa, pepper and sugar cane from India, cumin from Ethiopia, sumac from Syria, olives from Greece, and that perennial Roman favorite, the fleshy homegrown fig.

Wine is drunk in copious amounts from double-handled silver cups, while a lyre plays in the background. There are performing troupes, poets, even the occasional leopard, and sometimes rose petals flutter down from on high.

Some argue however that the Roman banquets have been heavily exaggerated and that it wasn't always as revelrous. But there are stories about how different Roman emperors hosted their banquets, their particular eating habits, and selectiveness when it comes to food. Meanwhile, the plebeians have it rough.

Outside the patrician mansions and saffron-flavored swimming pools, the plebeians lived in overcrowded tenements and ate frugally. Food inequality was as endemic to ancient Rome as it is to our world today, with hunger and hedonism coexisting through the empire.

One thing is quite interesting about these lavish displays. It's not something done on a whim. Historians suggest that these were very calculated, not just to have fun but more so to establish their position in society.

(Image credit: Ulpiano Checa y Sanz/Wikimedia Commons)

The city of San Francisco as in a 1955 film made by amateur filmmaker Tullio Pellegrini. Pellegrini. See Playland (an oceanside amusement park which was closed in 1972) plus very rare footage of the SkyTram (an extinct ride over Seal Rocks and Sutro Baths), and a brake-screeching ride down Lombard Street (the Crookedest Street in the World).

via Amaze

Churches are some of the relics that show the history of architectural design. From the romanesque style of the medieval era to the gothic which was then succeeded by renaissance architecture, designs have evolved depending on the zeitgeist.

Our contemporary times have brought about more modern designs. And French photographer Thibaud Poirier captures some of these in his collection called Sacred Spaces.

The inspiring variety of church designs swing from style to style: the Brutalist aesthetic of Tokyo’s Saint Mary’s Cathedral, the minimalist approach of Berlin’s Kapelle, or the warm, cozy ambiance lent by the latticed wood details of Notre Dame de Chêne’s impressive walls and ceilings.

Taken from a consistent angle — flanked by pews on both sides and facing the altar — Poirier’s amazing eye for symmetry and detail underline the grandeur these modernist structures possess, impressive enough to rival their much older counterparts.

“And yet despite their great stylistic differences, the glue between these churches remains invisible to the human eye yet vibrates within each of us: the emotional state created whilst one is present,” the photographer says. “The sense of belonging. The conviction of something larger than us all.”

-via Nag on the Lake

(Image credit: Aw1805/Wikimedia Commons)

It's been 50 years since Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and for many of those years, we've heard people express disbelief that it ever happened. Sure, it was incredible that NASA accomplished the feat, and only seven years after President Kennedy set the goal, but when you think about it, creating a hoax would have been just as difficult, if not more. Who was the first person to publicly accuse NASA of creating a fake moon landing? It appears to have been Bill Kaysing, who self-published the book We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle in 1972.

Now, if Kaysing was just some random guy shouting in the wind, it’s unlikely anyone would have listened to him. Every conspiracy theory origin story needs at least some shred of credibility from the person starting it to get the fire going. For Kaysing’s assertions about the moon landings, this comes in the form of the fact that for a brief period he worked for Rocketdyne, a company that made rockets for the Apollo program. Not an engineer or having any similar technical expertise whatsoever, Kaysing’s background was primarily in writing, earning an English degree from the University of Redlands, after which he naturally got a job making furniture.

As for the writing gig he landed with Rocketdyne, his job was initially as a technical writer starting in 1956 and he eventually worked his way up to head of technical publications. He finally quit in 1963, deciding he’d had enough of working for the man.

After quitting, to quote him, “the rat race”, in 1963 Kaysing traveled the country in a trailer with his family, earning his living writing books on a variety of topics from motorcycles to farming.

The book wasn't a bestseller, but might have been if anyone were to actually read it as a comedy. Kaysing has the three Apollo 11 astronauts hanging out in strip clubs in Las Vegas when they were supposed to be in space, until they were taken to Area 51 to fake the lunar landing broadcast. Find out where Kaysing got his ideas and read some of the bizarre evidence he presented at Today I Found Out.

One of the many theatrical cartoons produced by Leon Schlesinger before he sold out to Warner Brothers, Hamateur Night is a hidden gem of a cartoon that is underappreciated by much of the viewing public. For one thing, it was not only directed by Tex Avery, it also features Avery as the voice of the hippo who laughs so hard he can hardly take his next breath. It also features Egghead, the precursor to Elmer Fudd, in a starring role. It is also a parody of 'Amateur Night', a feature of depression-era theaters, in which amateur actors (hence the appeal to the theater owners, who didn't have to pay them) gave short performances that were judged by the audience. Avery was not at the top of his game here, as he was still in development, but this is still worth your viewing. And at the very end, try to imagine painting one of those cels.