irst-hand examples and experiential knowledge on your topic (specific examples help your readers connect to your topic in a way they cannot with abstract ide

We were able to gain insights into the ways in which family practices were mediated by parents' beliefs about young children and technology and how these ethnotheories were based on parents' earlier experiences of technology at school or work, their own levels of expertise, and views on the importance of digital skills for their children's futures. Their perceptions of the potential benefits or dangers of early exposure to technologies shaped the availability of opportunities that children had to explore or play with different technologies in the home, although most families went to some lengths to ensure a mix of both traditional and digital activities and felt that they had the balance about right for their own circumstances.

The technologies we observed on our visits did not exist when the adult caregivers in our study were children so they did not draw on memories of their own parents' ways of dealing with issues such as screen time

ome parents, across income levels, were keen consumers and users of leisure and work technologies and encouraged children's developing competences with technology as necessary for a successful future. In other homes, more traditional activities were valued and parents encouraged board games and active play.

by the time they started school at age 5, all the children in the study had encountered devices such as desktop and notebook computers, mobile phones, MP3 players, televisions and games consoles and the products or outputs—such as DVDs, websites, games and interactive stories—that are viewed, read, played or created on these devices. All the children also had technological toys, including play laptops or robotic dogs.

It also states that televisions and internet-connected devices should be kept out of a child's bedroom, usage should be monitored and a family home use plan should be produced that includes a ban on screen-based media at meals and bedtimes. As this document and its earlier iterations have been enormously influential, both in the USA and in Europe, taking account of parents' responses to such enjoinders can be an important component of building up a picture of children's access to, and uses of, technology in the home.

Of significance is that traditional methods of communication (face-to-face and phone) were strongly associated with higher levels of perceived family well-being. This finding is especially important given that recent studies suggested a transformative trend toward more frequent use of ICTs than traditional methods of communication, particularly in the younger age group [15,18,30,32]. Specifically, we found that face-to-face communication was significantly related to all 3 dimensions of family well-being (harmony, happiness, and health). Using the phone as a communication method was also associated with higher levels of family harmony, happiness, and family well-being. One explanation is that the quality of communication through face-to-face and phones are richer than those of ICTs and, thus, provide greater communication satisfaction [28]. Face-to-face communication conveys verbal, nonverbal, and social context cues simultaneously and provides immediate and synchronized feedback. These are all fundamental qualities to establishing human relationships that, in turn, affect family well-being

lthough research on the interplay between technological advancements and family functioning are needed [11,15,27] and increasingly reported, little consensus has been found on the impact of ICTs on family well-being.

Hong Kong, the most Westernized and urbanized city in China, is one of the most technologically advanced and connected cities in the world with ICTs readily integrated into the daily lives of Chinese people.

it is uncertain whether ICTs enhance or weaken family relationships [14,15]. ICT use may increase the time families spend together, strengthen family bonds, improve family communication, and enable the maintenance of family relationships [16-20]. Other studies have suggested that quality family time has been significantly reduced and overuse of ICTs can lead to isolation from the family and failure to develop normal modes of expression, affecting the quality of family relationships [18,21-23].

Face-to-face communication possesses nonverbal elements, instant feedback, complete identification, and real-time interaction [13]. The phone, although it lacks visual communication cues, provides instant feedback and real-time interaction across a wide geographical range. IM and email allow for words (and now photographs, videos, and audio clips) to be asynchronously exchanged among individuals and family groups.

Family communication through both verbal and nonverbal interactions plays a central role in maintaining family relationships and enhancing family well-being [1

many of us now routinely interrupt face time with loved ones to scratch the itch of online distraction. American adults check their phones every 6 1/2 minutes, or approximately 150 times a day

She and other researchers stress that the benefits of real-time, face-to-face conversation – phones off the table – can't be understated. The shortlist of what it fosters includes empathy, above all else, but also trust, discovery, democratic debate, patience, mentorship and self-knowledge, as well as learning to tolerate the occasional uncomfortable silence.

Even as we claim to "connect" more than ever before via text, chat, e-mail and social media

The most troubling manifestation of our flight from conversation is familial, with some parents so enraptured by their new iPhone 6 that they routinely ignore their kids.

Across from them, a teenage girl glowered as her father typed on his phone in silence.

Phone calls have come to irritate us because they're unwieldy and can't be corralled like a quick text or e-mail. According to the Pew Research Center, teens now find talking to new friends on the phone "awkward" and "weird.

Experts worry that this dodging of face time is creating a deep empathy gap:

nstead of getting the attention they deserve from the adults in their lives, kids are getting a confusing emotional distance instead.

The southern Italian trattoria is the kind of place you imagine filled with loud talk and family togetherness. Instead, a father thumbed his smartphone surreptitiously in his lap as the bartender tried to entertain his young son

Check the organization: Does your paper follow a pattern that makes sense? Do the transitions move your readers smoothly from one point to the next? Do the topic sentences of each paragraph appropriately introduce what that paragraph is about? Would your paper work better if you moved some things around? For more information visit our handout on reorganizing drafts.

Wait awhile after you’ve finished a draft before looking at it again. The Roman poet Horace thought one should wait nine years, but that’s a bit much. A day—a few hours even—will work. When you do return to the draft, be honest with yourself, and don’t be lazy. Ask yourself what you really think about the paper.

if it’s really worth saying, if it says what you wanted to say, and if a reader will understand what you’re saying.

Rewriting is the essence of writing well—where the game is won or lost.

“The intimacy of the language thrills me. He’s not romantic about farming at all, instead talking about the winter’s ‘sleety dribble’, and the ‘cranreuch cauld’

He’s popular around the world because of the strength of what he was saying allied to the words he used

Burns’ work of 1785 describes his feelings after disturbing a fieldmouse in its nest. His apology becomes a reflection on a life of struggle with little reward at the end.

Maddie’s preparing to sacrifice Nathan, and X-Factor tries to talk her out of it, and she points out they were the reason Scott left her in the first place. You know, she’s not wrong. They knew he had a wife and son, and they were like, “Forget them, hang out with us!” They were kinda dicks. Scott begs her to just destroy him, but she sees no reason to limit herself like that. The X-Men and X-Factor both try to attack at the same time, and just trip over each other. The two teams bicker and start to fight each other. The X-Men still believe X-Factor to be mutant hunters; they haven’t seen the more recent news coverage. While Scott and Storm fight, Maddie reveals that their earlier battle, where Storm defeated Scott for leadership of the team, was the result of Maddie influencing things with her psychic abilities. I don’t like this retcon. It diminishes Storm, and says the only way she could defeat Scott is if Scott was basically brainwashed into losing. It’s a stupid, unnecessary retcon.

X-Factor #38 (1989, March)

Hi! I'm Alessandra, an 18-year-old health nut, real-food blogger and lover of salads, smoothies and nut butters! Welcome!

The Foodie Teen

Social media is your friend, albeit an irritating friend who fucks off whenever it’s their round. There’s no getting around the value of social media in promoting a movie on a shoestring. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest effectively allow you to target your niche audience in a place where they already congregate, which is obviously a thousand times more effective than making them come to you. Just ask any of those dodgy blokes who sell unpackaged cigarettes outside secondary schools. However, as social networks seek out more and more dastardly ways of profiting from their users, obstacles are increasingly being placed between films and their audiences. And the money spent removing these obstacles doesn’t always represent great value.

It’s much easier than you think. In fact, any idiot with £80 in the bank can do it. Want to know the greatest secret of releasing a film theatrically in the UK? Anyone can do it. And I don’t mean ‘anyone can do it’ in the after-school-special, I-love-you-just-the-way-you-are sense. I mean literally anyone can do it. All that stands between you and an official UK theatrical release is an £80 administrative fee paid to the FDA, the organisation that logs the UK’s release schedule and timetables each week’s National Press Show (NPS) screenings — the ones where British newspaper critics gather together to watch Pudsey The Dog: The Movie and The Purge: Anarchy back to back.

I hardly ever go on my phone. My phone hardly connects to WiFi or gets signal. So whenever I do get WiFi, I go on it but my parents still go ‘You’re always on your phone. Get off it and socialise!’ I don’t want to socialise, I want to get a new high score on flappy bird. (yup, I have flappy bird on my phone. It’s that old.)

I feel like I should tell you a few things about myself so I’ve done a list. I can’t do cartwheels. I hate it when people wink at me. I love to write and talk! I’m also very addicted to chocolate.