Worldcrunch
Many popular video games now incorporate features similar to betting and online gambling, which is significantly increasing the risk of addiction and financial harm for young players. Addiction to video games and online gaming is one of the leading causes of mental health issues among adolescents today, ranking above anorexia and substance abuse.
Known in the past decade as a horse tranquilizer and surgical anesthetic, ketamine is now gaining popularity as a party drug and even a life-coping aid. But while it shows promise in treating depression, its misuse brings real risks and a growing blind spot.
With RFK Jr. and half of U.S. states backing phone bans in classrooms, the science remains unsettled — and experts warn that sweeping restrictions may do more harm than good without a broader rethink of how kids use tech.
Cheap cocaine is flooding the European drug market, escalating conflicts in open drug scenes, everywhere except the historically drug-tolerant Zurich. A visit to this Swiss city — known as an open-air hotspot for crack and heroin in the 1990s — with a different approach for taking on drug addiction.
Many parents give their toddlers a smartphone or tablet. Is this a total disaster or can children adapt to the new media? For Die Zeit, Wenke Husmann takes a closer look at what scientists say about how screens influence the development of children’s brains.
Many people want to sleep better, but available solutions either have little effect or severe side effects. Ultimately, there’s really only one approach that seems to work.
Despite hours of scrolling, smartphones hardly play a role in our dreams. Yet their absence may actually demonstrate our dependence on them.
As a child in Albania, Luan learned it was dangerous to owe money to the wrong people. Now an adult in Italy, he is struggling with a gambling addiction and is trying to get back on his feet.
Safety or addiction concerns about TikTok are very real. But would U.S. elected officials seek to ban or control this social network if it were not Chinese? Are U.S. social networks less harmful? For France Inter, Pierre Haski warns us to take a step back when pointing the finger at TikTok.
Whether we’re kids or adults, with different risks and problems posed, we share the same challenge: how to use screens, and use them well.
Stuffed toys, fetish objects, lucky charms, pets — we all have our comforting objects or companions, even if we sometimes find it hard to admit to ourselves. It’s an anthropological need that makes our lives more comfortable. But with smartphones, chatbots, and soon robots, taking up a new role as our future companions, we need to rethink whether our new, digital teddy bears create more harm than they provide comfort.
The term was coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to explain the fatal drift of major Internet platforms: if they were ever useful and user-friendly, they will inevitably end up being odious.
This essential morning drink for millions worldwide was once considered an addictive menace, earning itself a ban on pain of death in the Islamic world.
Our carelessness toward the environment could be due, in part, to the functioning of a very primitive area of our brain: the striatum.
Cyberbullying has gained ground again this school year. For philosopher and free-market advocate Gaspard Koenig, it’s simple: social media has the effects of an addictive and harmful drug, and thus forbidden for those under 16.
If we know that greed is one of the seven deadly sins, what about lust for German cars? A Lisbon priest has received a four-and-a-half-year suspended jail sentence for aggravated breach of trust and embezzlement, having taken his parishioners’ money to buy no fewer than 19 automobiles. Although Antònio Teixeira is known among his flock […]
People with serious drug problems are particularly at risk of coronavirus because of underlying health problems, but also because normal treatment options are being cut off.
Back in 2017, the Philadelphia Inquirer spoke with Chera Kowalski of the city’s McPherson Square Park library, which had become something of a refuge for drug addicts with nowhere else to turn. In the previous two months alone, the then 33-year-old librarian had performed CPR and administered opioid-overdose spray Narcan on eight different overdose victims. […]
Young, poor Moroccans, desperate for a fleeting sense of power and control are turning to a nasty chemical cocktail called ‘karkoubi.’
The many ways your iPhone or Android, and their apps, are built to hook you like a drug user. The UX (user experience) designers are confessing to their sins.
Iran’s Islamic regime may have harsh penalties for drug trafficking, but officials are now estimating that the number of “regular drug users’ has doubled in the past six years, from 1.3 million to about 2.8 million. The head of the country’s drug control organization, Parviz Afshar, told Iran’s ISNA news agency that currently “about 2.8 […]
A pulsing, hazy world comes to life every night in Brazil’s largest city, as drug traffickers and users gather to buy, sell, barter, smoke. When police intervene, a new neighborhood is found.
The northern state of Punjab is known as India’s bread basket. But in recent years, it has become a fertile ground not just for crops, but also drug abuse.
A temporary ban on the Facebook-owned messaging service sent countless Brazilians into a momentary panic, revealing how rapidly communication habits have evolved.
DAR ES SALAAM — Sitting on a stone bench, in a shaded back alley of the historical center of Stone Town, the capital of the Zanzibar archipelago, Ali Nassor Ali is making the most of his last day in the open air. Tomorrow, this 40-year-old man with a gaunt face and eyes reddened by years […]
Doctors in Germany have noted an alarming rise in psychotic episodes linked to excessive marijuana use among young people, which follows other studies around the world raising alarms.
BEIJING — A military-style boot camp in Beijing’s suburbs is at the front line of China’s battle against Internet addiction, a disorder that the government claims is afflicting millions of its children. The camp run by an army colonel is where desperate parents are sending their children in the hopes of weaning them off online games, cybersex and chats. The China Young Mental Development Base in Daxing district uses a blend of therapy and military drills to treat children such as 18-year-old Wang Dewei, the son of middle-class officials in the Hebei province. He says they forced him to come […]
SALAWAG — In the multi-player online battle video game Defense of the Ancients, or DotA, the aim is to conquer the opposing team on the other side of the map. The graphics are impressive, and the play is challenging. But for some, the game is not just about friendly competition, after it’s been blamed as a contributing factor in the Dec. 15 murder of a 19-year-old, who was allegedly stabbed by his friend outside a computer gaming shop after the two were playing the game. The boy responsible is now in government custody, and the incident pushed local officials to […]
What used to be simple outdoor fun is now considered real child therapy in our hyper-connected world.
Use of this incredibly addictive drug is growing in Germany, especially among Millennials who say it makes them feel invincible.
TEHRAN — There are 100,000 drug addicts on the streets of Iran, the country’s Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani-Fazli estimated Wednesday, saying that his agency had a “legal duty” to “pick them up” and send them to obligatory rehabilitation centers. He said $3 billion was being spent every year on illegal drugs in the country, and […]
MOSCOW — One of the defining new features of 21st century life is an attachment to our mobile phones. In Britain, a company AppRiver has actually measured bona fide fear of being without it, with 54% of the UK’s residents saying they worry when they are not able to see or hear their phones, and […]
High-stakes gambling machines involve billions of pounds, and prey on the destitute and unemployed. Most of the technology comes courtesy of Israeli billionaire Teddy Sagi.
HAMBURG – Jan Heusinger’s day was always the same: wake up, shower, have breakfast – and then spend the rest of his hours playing computer games. Four years ago, when he was 14, he’d bought World of Warcraft, an online role-playing game. By 2011, he’d stopped attending school to spend his days as an Orc […]