When Sophie Szew first downloaded Instagram at her 10th birthday party, she was exposed to a flurry of information that “promoted eating disorders,” she told California lawmakers. By 15, she said, she was following “every starvation regimen recommended” by Instagram’s “explore” page. Szew, now 20, spoke in Sacramento at a Senate hearing in April in […]
Social Media
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Meditations for Hitting the Pandemic Wall
As we inch/hurtle toward a year of living with COVID-19 and its attending horrors, those of us not wrapped in the gentle insulation of exactly the right medication (prescribed or otherwise) might be struggling a bit. Who would have thought, other than informed epidemiologists shouting themselves hoarse, that this would have lasted longer than that […]
Posted inNews
HSU Investigating Racist Social Media Posts Involving Students ‘Mocking the Black Community,’ Times-Standard reports
The Times-Standard is reporting that Humboldt State University is investigating social media accounts that are “mocking the black community.” “The posts come amid upheaval across the nation from protests in the wake of the fatal arrest of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota,” the report reads. Read the full story and a letter from the university […]
Posted inNews
Rio Dell Police: Stop Sharing Photos of Alleged Shooting Suspect Online
The Rio Dell Police Department is asking the public to refrain from playing home detective and speculating about who the suspect is in a fatal Aug. 29 shooting and sharing his photograph on social media. “The Rio Dell Police Department has become aware of social media posts that include a picture of a man fitting […]
Posted inLetters + Opinion
Tribalism and Polarization, And Why We Should Be Concerned
A Google search of tribalism in America returns 664,000 results with headlines like “The New Tribalism and the Decline of the Nation State” and “Can Our Democracy Survive Tribalism?” Recently, a bounty of new books has arrived with titles like: Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations and Us Against Them: How Tribalism […]
Posted inNews
Students Launch Targeted #JusticeforJosiah Social Media Campaign
They sat in a group in the small living room of an Arcata apartment one afternoon in late March, scattered across a couch and the floor. They were all in their early 20s, students at either College of the Redwoods or Humboldt State University. With laptops and cellphones at their hands, they tapped away in […]
Posted inNews
Winship on ‘Modified Lock Down’ After Shooting Threat
Winship Middle School is on “modified lockdown” after a social media threat was directed at the campus, according to the Eureka Police Department. In a Facebook post, the department said all students are safe and preliminary information “indicates the threat is not accurate.” Staff at the school received a phone call this morning alerting them […]
Posted inNews
Buzzkill: That’s Not the World’s Tallest Tree
If you’ve logged on to Facebook in the last couple days, you’ve probably seen that photo to the right. It’s real, it’s beautiful and it’s in Humboldt County. It’s not, however, the tallest tree in the world. For whatever reason, the picture has been circulating like crazy lately, and it seems to always be accompanied […]