Digital life

Digital life

I am 25 years old and I have little to no overheads as I use public transport and live at home with my parents

Yesterday morning, I woke up and checked my news app while still in bed. The headlines from ProPublica, The New York Times, and The Guardian loaded instantly: a curated stream of stories updated overnight. I scrolled through, tapped on a few pieces, then switched over to my podcast app to queue up something for my morning gym session. I queued up three new episodes: one from Search Engine, the first episode of the new ProPublica Narrated podcast, and an episode of Revolution.Social.

When most of us think of the holidays, we picture spending them with family - and that's exactly what my husband and I did for over 20 years. Our tradition was to stay in Los Angeles to be with my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, who all lived within driving distance of our home. It was always fun eating tamales, dancing to traditional ranchero music, and laughing at my dad's nonsensical jokes.

When I clicked on the attached YouTube link to recall what I had said, I began to worry that my memory is not what it used to be. When did I record said video? A couple of minutes in, I knew there was something wrong. Not because I found fault in what I was saying, but because I realised that the video showed me sitting at my Athens office desk wearing that blue shirt, which had never left my island home.

The internet has turned fringe belief into mainstream politics and policy from authoritarianism to vaccines. With democracy itself threatened, is it time to go back to a previous world of landlines, letters and face-to-face-contact, audiotapes and Ansaphones? What would we miss about the online world that is worth the risk to liberal culture and basic freedoms? Should we turn the internet off?

I tried the usual tricks: switching off notifications, deleting addictive apps, moving icons around, greyscale mode. None of it worked. Without notifications, I just checked more to see if something had happened. When I deleted apps, I used the browser instead. And when I deleted that I would eventually reinstall everything in a weak moment. (Which usually meant spending even more time on my phone as I had to log in everywhere again.)

Before you ever enjoy your first croissant, you'll likely find yourself trapped in a bureaucratic labyrinth. Europe's charm - the centuries-old systems, the beautiful order - also applies to paperwork. Every form must be printed, stamped, signed (sometimes in triplicate), and often translated by an officially certified translator. Registering your address? You'll need your lease, a tax number, health insurance proof, and - depending on the country - a "proof of integration" course.

ADA, Mich., Dec. 22, 2025 /PRNewswire/ - STELLAR Broadband, Michigan's leader in fiber internet and smart technology services, has announced the launch of ultra-fast 10-Gig fiber internet at Stone Falls of Ada, a premier residential community managed by DTN Management Company. This expansion is the latest milestone in a long-standing collaboration between STELLAR and DTN, which dates back to STELLAR's earliest days.

"Before the creator economy had rules, roadmaps, or ring lights in every bedroom, Brianna Mizura was already building something rare: community. What started as short-form POV storytelling quickly evolved into a universe of characters, emotional arcs, and inside jokes that millions of Gen Z and Gen Alpha fans didn't just watch-they lived inside. Today, with more than 20 million followers across TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, Brianna is one of the internet's original breakout stars-and one of its most enduring."

YouTube cofounder Steve Chen is one of the latest tech trailblazers to warn against social media's impact on kids. Chen warned in a talk short-form video "equates to shorter attention spans" and said he wouldn't want his own kids to exclusively consume this type of content. Companies that distribute short-form video (which includes the company he cofounded, YouTube) should add safeguards for younger users, he added.

Indian OTT platform Hotstar is named as the most popular streaming platform in India and accounted for 32% of the total market by the number of subscribers in 2017, followed by Amazon Prime Video with 12%. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video had attracted more subscriptions in 2017 than Netflix, primarily because of its more affordable pricing offer, according to IHS Markit.

Your dollar can stretch three to four times farther in Asia than in the U.S. In India, you can live comfortably on about $270 a month, excluding rent. In Thailand, about $600 a month gets you beach access, excellent street food, and world-class health care. And in Vietnam, $350 covers your monthly expenses in a country where a full meal costs less than a Starbucks latte.

In a recent study focussing on exclamation mark usage in message communication, it was found that it is often thought as being gendered. Receivers of messages containing multiple exclamation marks tend to assume that the writer is female. Interestingly, such an assumption is likely to be correct, as it has previously been found that more women tend to use exclamation marks than men.

Reading through the support page, the way it works is that once every 12 months, Google will allow you to "change" the email address associated with your Google account. In actuality, the process is more like adding a new alias email to your account since your old email address will not be deleted and will remain functional. You still get one email inbox and outbox, but presumably, you will be able to do some filtering based on which email a message was sent to, as well as choose which email to use for outgoing messages. Essentially, Google is giving users a way to associate up to three new email addresses with an existing account and all of its existing data and services.

Wake. If you're lucky, that is morning's first task. Wake. Not rolling over onto your side, not recalling the thoughts that have stayed the night, like a tryst who cannot sense they're meant to leave before light breaks through on the pane. Leave that to phones - light breaking through, remembering everything. Wake - what a herculean task! To wake first, and not check your phone. Everything after that? A form of grace, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Maybe it's my own nostalgia for another time (I did grow up on early 2000s movies where every main character in New York City worked at a magazine). But it can't be disputed that the cold, mechanical glare of a blue screen can never compare to the natural romanticism of paper in the format of love letters, novels and diaries. It feels nice to hold something! To leaf through a real page! We forget that restaurants are in the business of tactile pleasure: It's why we collect matchboxes and postcards and, if we're lucky, a custom pen pocketed on the way out.

Some eager obituarists base their confident predictions on declining user numbers. At least in the United States, however, self-reports of media usage don't appear to bear this out. A 2025 Pew Research Center survey found that while the share of adult Americans using the most popular apps, YouTube and Facebook, has "remained relatively stable in recent years," four others-TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reddit-have grown in overall use.

Google has updated the Google Business Profiles verification issues support form.

Most of that revenue comes from advertising, but an increasing amount of money flows in from YouTube's $14-per-month subscription plan, YouTube Premium. YouTube Premium's primary perk is the lack of ads. You also get YouTube Music Premium, Picture-in-Picture mode, playback with the screen off, and more. And yet, the concept of paying for YouTube may seem baffling to many, not only due to Premium's considerable cost and questionable value, but also because anyone can still, technically, enjoy YouTube without paying a dime.