Study of 500,000 Teens Suggests Association Between Excessive Screen Time and Depression (vice.com)

Depression and suicide rates in teenagers have jumped in the last decade -- doubling between 2007 and 2015 for girls -- and the trend suspiciously coincides with when smartphones became their constant companions. A recent study places their screen time around nine hours per day. Another study, published on Tuesday, suggests that suicide and depression could be connected to the rise of smartphones, and increased screen time. Around 58 percent more girls reported depression symptoms in 2015 than in 2009, and suicide rates rose 65 percent. Smack in the middle of that window of time, smartphones gained market saturation. 

In Twenge's new study, published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science, the researchers looked at two samples: a nationally representative survey by ongoing study "Monitoring the Future" out of the University of Michigan, which is administered annually to 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, and the Centers for Disease Control's Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System,
 A sample of high school students administered by the CDC every other year. (Both surveys began in 1991.) Altogether, over 500,000 young people were included. The study authors examined trends in how teens used social media, the internet, electronic devices (including gaming systems and tablets), and smartphones, as well as how much time they spent doing non-screen activities like homework, playing sports, or socializing. 
Comparing these to publicly available data on mental health and suicide for these ages between 2010 and 2017 showed "a clear pattern linking screen activities with higher levels of depressive symptoms/suicide-related outcomes and non-screen activities with lower levels," the researchers wrote in the study. All activities involving screens were associated with higher levels of depression or suicide and suicidal thinking, and activities done away from a screen were not.

The Rapture Watch

This is 100% Scriptural proof that we are to remain watchers despite opening ourselves up to mockers & persecution concerning the rapture of the Church.

By Matthew Sloane.

"THE WATCHERS" quick reference.

 The 6 points to cross-reference

1. Matthew24:36-39 
The majority of people today will be ("OBLIVIOUS" NON-Watchers) just like they were when the Great flood destroyed mankind previously.

2. Matthew24:42-44
"Therefore keep watch"!  we are commanded to continuously keep watch, for we don't know the exact day or hour.

3. Matthew24:45-47 
Blessed is the servant who is "Doing his Job" a watcher is active & mocked by non-watchers.

4. Matthew24:48-51
A Non-watching Servant says Mocks his fellow servants and begins to live worldly because he believes the master delays.

5. Revelation3:2-3 
"Be Watchful" the servant who will not "Watch" God will come upon like a thief.
6. 1Thessalonians 5:6  A warning not to be a non-watcher, but watch & be sober.

Readiness at Any Hour

Matthew 24:36-51

36No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. 39And they were oblivious, until the flood came and swept them all away. So will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40Two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left.

42Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come. 43But understand this: If the owner of the house had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44For this reason, you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect Him.

45Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household, to give the others their food at the proper time? 46Blessed is that servant whose master returns and finds him doing his job. 47Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.

48But suppose that servant is wicked and says in his heart, ‘My master will be away a long time.’ 49And he begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50The master of that servant will come on a day he does not anticipate and at an hour he does not expect. 51Then he will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Revelation 3:2-3
2Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God. 3Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

1 Thessalonians 5:6
Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us Watch and be sober.

Kent Henry Minstrel Of The Lord Jesus Christ

There is now a shortage of cassette tape in the world

Steve Stepp and his team of septuagenarian engineers are using a bag of rust, a kitchen mixer larger than a man and a 62-foot-long contraption that used to make magnetic strips for credit cards to avert a disaster that no one saw coming in the digital-music era. 
The world is running out of cassette tape (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). National Audio Co., where Mr. Stepp is president and co-owner, has been hoarding a stockpile of music-quality, an-eighth of an inch-wide magnetic tape from suppliers that shut down in the past 15 years after music lovers ditched cassettes.
 National Audio held on. Now, many musicians are clamoring for cassettes as a way to physically distribute their music. The company says it has less than a year's supply of tape left. So it is building the first manufacturing line for high-grade ferric oxide cassette tape in the U.S. in decades.
 If all goes well, the machine will churn out nearly 4 miles of tape a minute by January. And not just any tape. "The best tape ever made," boasts Mr. Stepp, 69 years old. "People will hear a whole new product."

'Something Is Wrong On the Internet'

"Someone or something or some combination of people and things is using YouTube to systematically frighten, traumatize, and abuse children, automatically and at scale, and it forces me to question my own beliefs about the internet, at every level," writes James Bridle. From the article:

To begin: Kid's YouTube is definitely and markedly weird. I've been aware of its weirdness for some time. Last year, there were a number of articles posted about the Surprise Egg craze. Surprise Eggs videos depict, often at excruciating length, the process of unwrapping Kinder and other egg toys. That's it, but kids are captivated by them. There are thousands and thousands of these videos and thousands and thousands, if not millions, of children watching them. [...] What I find somewhat disturbing about the proliferation of even (relatively) normal kids videos is the impossibility of determining the degree of automation which is at work here; how to parse out the gap between human and machine.
The New York Times, last week:Parents and children have flocked to Google-owned YouTube Kids since it was introduced in early 2015. The app's more than 11 million weekly viewers are drawn in by its seemingly infinite supply of clips, including those from popular shows by Disney and Nickelodeon, and the knowledge that the app is supposed to contain only child-friendly content that has been automatically filtered from the main YouTube site. But the app contains dark corners, too, as videos that are disturbing for children slip past its filters, either by mistake or because bad actors have found ways to fool the YouTube Kids algorithms. In recent months, parents like Ms. Burns have complained that their children have been shown videos with well-known characters in violent or lewd situations and other clips with disturbing imagery, sometimes set to nursery rhymes.

What we may have forgotten and they won't tell you...