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Do smartphones and social media lead to adolescent suicide?
Two teens lay on couch with smartphones looking bored

Do smartphones and social media lead to adolescent suicide?

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Daniel Romer argues that the tendency to correlate uptick in suicides and social media is not backed by data. Instead, he argues the economic recession may be to blame.

Penn Today Staff

Tweets from Twitter users could predict loneliness
Person wearing a hoodie sits on a structural beam alone in an isolated area holding a smartphone.

Tweets from Twitter users could predict loneliness

By identifying similar themes across tweets, researchers are uncovering markers that could be used to predict loneliness, something that could lead to depression, heart disease, and dementia.

Penn Today Staff

The culture of coworking spaces
Person sitting at a table with an open book, a picture, glasses, a coffee cup and wearing headphones looking at a cellphone. Three people are in the background.

The culture of coworking spaces

As Penn sociologist David Grazian discovered through hundreds of hours of fieldwork, despite today’s digital work-anywhere economy, having a physical place to conduct business still matters.

Michele W. Berger

This is what it’s like to study social media influencers for a living

This is what it’s like to study social media influencers for a living

Emily Hund of the Annenberg School for Communication discussed her research on the intersection of labor and social media. “Academia is not exempt from the influencer logic,” she said. “You still feel that pressure to self-brand and present yourself online in particular ways. I don’t think any creative worker is exempt from that.”

#OldBoysClub: Twitter and gender disparities in health services research
stick figure rendering of a man on a soap box with a dialogue box, a person one step below staying silent.

#OldBoysClub: Twitter and gender disparities in health services research

A JAMA Internal Medicine study of Twitter users find that female health services and policy researchers had considerably less reach and influence on the social media platform than their male counterparts. 

Penn Today Staff

Brevity is the soul of Twitter
Six conversation bubbles with hashtags

Brevity is the soul of Twitter

A new study from the Annenberg School for Communication finds that the 280-character limit makes Twitter more civil.

Penn Today Staff

Deepfake detector wins PennApps XX
Team DeFake: Aarati Srikumar, Daniel Li, George Diwan and Sofiya Lysenko

Team DeFake: Aarati Srikumar, Daniel Li, George Diwan and Sofiya Lysenko (Image: Penn Engineering)

Deepfake detector wins PennApps XX

An app designed to detect deepfakes took home the grand prize at PennApps XX, beating nearly 250 tech projects developed over the course of a weekend. 

Penn Today Staff

When you watch online porn, who is watching you?
An open laptop with many security cameras sticking out where the computer screen would normally be, indicating privacy concerns when searching online for pornographic content.

When you watch online porn, who is watching you?

A forthcoming study from the Annenberg School for Communication analyzed over 22,000 pornography websites and found that 93% of them were sending user data to at least one third party.

Penn Today Staff