Wading through “news” overload

Where do we find truth when inundated with bots and falsehoods?

by Stacey Warde

The way we get information about our world today has changed radically since 1984 when I first entered the news business as a reporter. No one then could have imagined the daily flood of “news” (and “fake “news”) that overwhelms us today.

News was distributed mostly through newspapers, TV and radio, and was handled by people trained to gather and report their findings in trusted outlets.

Today, with the pervasiveness of the web, and access to endless data provided by both human and automated sources (also known as “bots”), we’re inundated with more news and information than we can possibly handle, some trustworthy, some not.

News will always be hard to define but we seem to have a hunger for it in the US, where, it is argued, a free press keeps the government in check, helps to inform the citizenry and sheds light on whether the republic is in good working order. News can also serve as a launching point for discussion, the public forum, where a variety of opinions and views can be shared.

Once, the newspaper’s editorial/opinion pages served as a safe forum for these discussions. Now, on the internet, where a majority (some 67 percent) of Americans get their news, it’s hard to find a safe forum, unless it’s moderated.

As a young journalist in 1984, my idea of news was, as a mentor once told me, information essential for a community to function.

A reporter’s job was to find and report the facts about subjects vital to that community, and to report them “without fear or favor.” Facts were not hard to find. With a little leg work and care, a reporter could paint a fairly accurate picture of the way things were—or were not—working in the community.

News was considered by most to be reliable data and information gathered, verified, organized and written by qualified journalists, able to give honest, accurate accounts of an event, industry, idea, person or issue that was deemed important for the community to know.

Truth in reporting, especially in government reporting, mattered most. A common and popular refrain from editors was: “Accuracy, accuracy, accuracy!”

If a journalist got it wrong and reported what today might be called “fake news,” he or she risked losing their credibility—and their job—as reporters. A false or misleading news report usually meant termination, and a new career. Truth mattered.

Today, in the blogosphere, it’s easy to clutter the information highway with lies and falsehoods, or what lately we refer to as “fake news.”

Fake news existed long before President Trump made it part of the American vernacular. Fake news was anything that slipped into the news page unverified or weakly sourced, or proved false and misleading. Corrections were made.

Journalists are still duped into reporting stories that come from questionable sources or they unwittingly pass on as “news” public relations ploys and marketing gimmicks. Other times, business/ad managers may try to bully or con journalists into promoting as “news” a potential advertising client’s business or services.

Overall, though, journalists still fight hard to give honest reporting and take pride in being considered trustworthy, reliable, credible sources of news and information.

Nonetheless, we find an insurmountable amount of questionable data in circulation today, mostly from the internet. Today, there are bots and hackers not just biased, sloppy journalists who muddy the waters, spreading false information.

A recent Pew Research Center study found that some two-thirds of links tweeted to popular websites are posted by automated Twitter accounts or bots, not humans. Some of the data proves worthy, other data is misleading. That makes finding reliable information more difficult than ever.

Still, we turn daily to the internet or our favorite news outlets to get the latest word on developments in the state and world. We’re drawn to the heroes and villains of the day’s biggest “news” events. We shudder at the most recent catastrophes and natural disasters.

We have plenty of outlets to choose from but usually go with the few that are most familiar. Often, they give views that reflect our personal biases rather than provide helpful or useful information about our world.

The Pew Research Center claims that 45 percent of adults in the U.S. get news from Facebook, where they are more likely to find sources that confirm their personal biases rather than provide vetted and fully sourced and truthful information that may or may not suit their views.

Social media have increasingly become the go-to source for news and information but also create bubbles where we see only what we want to see.

News is both a commodity and a resource. We sell it, buy it, and need it to get through the day for some reason. Yet, it’s become a Herculean task in today’s information ecosystem to distinguish fact from fiction, to know fake from real.

All of it is colored by the people (or bots) who spin it, and the notion of what constitutes “news” seems to get cloudier by the day.

Before the internet, reporters and editors were the information highway’s “gatekeepers.” They decided what got covered and how it got played. They kept the public discourse mostly civil and opened their pages to readers who knew how to put up a decent argument. It wasn’t a perfect public forum but it seemed to work.

That’s not to say propaganda (or fake news—read “disinformation”) didn’t proliferate, there was plenty of it, but it seemed easier to spot. In today’s partisan push to dominate the news and control the spin on events, and with the inundation of baseless information coming from who-knows-where, it appears that most news is propaganda and most propaganda is news.

You really have to work hard to get good information.

The internet was supposed to level the playing field and give citizen journalists the same power to dispense news and information as traditional or professional editors and reporters, who were often criticized for having limited or elitist views and unfairly dominating the public forum.

With the rise of citizen journalists—essentially anyone with a cellphone—and web-based news, all voices would have a platform from which to share their experiences and stories and observations, bypassing the gatekeepers, who seemed interested only in controlling and restricting access.

Gatekeepers would become unnecessary, eventually obsolete, a noisy hindrance to the free flow of useful (and worthless) data that virtually anyone can “publish” or post on social media, the new drivers and platforms for today’s news and information.

Today’s public forum, controlled mostly through social media outlets, seems to have devolved into a bot-driven wasteland of disinformation and propaganda.

The gatekeepers have given way to algorithms, bots and charlatans, whose purpose is to offer up the most clicks or views to questionable, unreliable or worthless data and websites. The internet was supposed to level the playing field and give everyone a voice, as well as provide easy access to useful information and public forums. What it did was eliminate the quaint beauty of civil discourse that gatekeepers attempted to provide.

Gatekeepers—reporters and editors—I would argue, whose role is perhaps outmoded in today’s information free-for-all, kept public discourse on a mostly healthy, dignified and lively trajectory. They determined whose voices got to be heard and avoided the spread of drivel that so often gets mistaken as news or information today.

Good editors and reporters knew their communities better than anyone, knew where the dead bodies were, kept close watch on the movers and shakers, the crooks and cons, and could put a spotlight on virtually any one of them. Editors had power because “sunlight is the best disinfectant,” especially when it comes to maintaining healthful and well-informed communities.

Some critics complained that this was too limiting and elitist; others saw this as a necessary guarantee against chicanery, provincialism, ignorance and animalistic bullying. Both views were correct.

Today, consumers of news must be more wary than ever before, they must be their own gatekeepers, sorting the good from the bad, trusting their instincts to know the difference between fact and fiction, between fake and real.

It’s a daunting but not impossible task. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. He can be reached at roguewarde@gmail.com.

RIP: Smoker Jim Ruddell

‘Us smokers, we’re a different breed, we’re like a circle of crusty old women with recipes everybody wants, but we don’t give up nothing.‘ —Smoker Jim Ruddell

While attending a burial at sea for my uncle, I got the sad notice from a friend that Jim Ruddell had died.

“Smoker Jim Ruddell,” the notice said, “got his angel wings, Friday Feb. 16 at 6:40 a.m., surrounded by family. His passing was peaceful.”

Jim fought valiantly, as he was wont to do, for nearly six months while recovering in the hospital from medical complications. It was an up- and downhill battle but he never gave up.

It’s “sad to have him leave us,” the note continued, “he will be greatly missed by everyone from family to community. He was a larger-than-life presence wherever he went…and I’m sure he will continue wherever he goes. Peace, love, and our deepest sympathies to the Ruddell family.”

Jim, whose tiny corner Smokehouse in Cayucos has made a huge impact on the community and beyond, garnering kudos from publications like Sunset Magazine, was a big supporter of The Rogue Voice, and advertised with us from the beginning.

A staunch conservative, he seldom winced at our liberal bent on issues and was always ready with a sound defense of his own political views, which were so different from our own. But he never got into nasty debates with us as is the tendency among so many in today’s divisive political atmosphere. He was a gentleman and a true friend.

“I don’t always like what you guys say or print but I support your right to publish what you want,” he’d often say as he handed us payment for his advertisement.

He was a real patriot, defending the First Amendment, and believing that we all, liberal and conservative, have a stake in making our communities a better place to live. He gave generously, and became a father figure to many who worked for and with him.

He leaves a giant hole in the community and we will miss him, but he also leaves us a legacy of giving, and making the world a better place.

Jim had his share of struggles but, like so many of us, he kept battling, keeping his eye on the greater good for his family and community. He was a true warrior.

In 2006, we featured Jim as a “Rogue of the Month” in our magazine. We are grateful and better off for having known him. Below, is Dell Franklin’s interview with Jim, which ran in the December, 2006, edition.

—Stacey Warde

A rogue for the ages

By Dell Franklin

There used to be smokehouses up and down the coast, on every pier in every little beach burg from San Diego to San Francisco and points north. Weathered shacks similar in size to tiny bait shops, manned by fish-smelly, aproned, be-capped, grimy faced eccentrics, an obscure breed dishing out smoked salmon, yellowtail, albacore, oysters, and sometimes pork or poultry and a little jerky.

Jim Ruddell, who learned the rudiments of smoking from his Louisiana father and uncles, grew up and lived in the Santa Monica area for 30 years, working as an auto mechanic. He was driving home from work on the freeway shortly after the verdict of the Rodney King trial precipitated the L.A. riots. He looked around and realized he was the ONLY car on the freeway. Gunshots rang out and crackled like a Vietnam firefight. All around him the city seemed to be burning. He felt as if he were driving through Dante’s Inferno. He’d been meaning to get out of L.A. for years, but now he had an epiphany: “I’m gettin’ the hell outta here!” When he arrived home to his wife Kathy and two-day-old daughter, he said: “We’re outta here.”

It took him more than a year to make contacts among friends and relatives on the Central Coast. He had a full-time job at Toyota, running the maintenance department. People came up to him with mechanically plagued cars, expecting the worst, to get gouged. It was not pleasant work, even for a sunny extrovert like Jim Ruddell, who never liked wearing a uniform and name tag.

Ruddell’s Smokehouse is smaller than a rich man’s bathroom.

“It’s like going to the dentist to these people,” he says. “I always tried to be understanding and helpful and honest and give them the best deal I could. I’m a people person, somebody who wants to make you feel good. Not being able to do that made this a pretty high-stress job: Everybody in a hurry to get their cars fixed and get out; everybody in the garage in a hurry to get your car fixed and get started on a new one. A rat race. I was fed up with it. I had this dream: Go up to the Central Coast, where there weren’t many people, take at least a 50-percent pay loss at the same job, and in the meantime start up a smokehouse.”

“But the odds aren’t good, are they?” I asked. “Starting an obsolete business, pretty much, and being…an anachronism…”

“A dinosaur. I started out by taking an old used pizza oven and turning it into a smoker in the backyard of our home in Morro Bay. My wife thought I was nuts. But I started smoking in the backyard for a few friends. I smoked turkeys for them. Every year about this time I do a turkey smoke. Believe it or not, smoking a turkey is a lot healthier than barbecuing; there’s no carcinogens.”

Ruddell kept working at the car dealership in San Luis Obispo at less than half of what he made down south, and then he built a new smoker in a pole barn on the ranch of a friend in Cayucos. He got to some serious smoking.

He had an old pickup. Without a business license, he found little spots along the highways all over San Luis Obispo County, from Highway 1 to Nacimiento Road out by Chimney Rock to Old Creek Road. He pulled over in spots and put out his sign: “SMOKED FISH.”

“I hung out on Highway 1 a mile north of Cayucos for almost nine months. The cops would stop and hassle me about a license, and finally I’d move on. I started doing it on weekends and then during the week, and twice I had to go back to work at the dealership to keep the money coming in.”

Was it crazy, giving up a career to sell smoked fish out in the middle of nowhere? You bet.

But Ruddell’s a rogue, who doesn’t listen to reason. Like most rogues, he’s inclined to fight the odds and go against the grain. He believes in his dream and is not afraid to follow it, or fail.

Ruddell, who partied and raised hell with the best of them, and does not regret any of it, but is now off the booze, opened his tiny smokehouse in Cayucos in the fall of 2001, about 10 yards from the sea wall and a block from the old pier.

He loves his new milieu. People aren’t going to the dentist when they come into his shop these days. They can have a good time hanging out, listening to jam sessions outside his store on Sundays, and he can watch with pride and gratification as his customers eat his smoked products. He’s got his own music going during the week—‘60s and ‘70s stuff—and he’s looking at the beach, soaking up the funky atmosphere. No uniform, just shorts, a T-shirt, and a ballcap. And he’s his own boss.

“What about the booze? Why’d you quit?”

“I was always a drinker, but I never had the freedom to drink like I did when I got my own place. You couldn’t drink at my past jobs, and I didn’t want to, but here I was, alone, with all this freedom, and it got out of hand. I was beginning to feel like a wreck, the hangovers were killing me, and I felt bad about what I was doing to myself. I was jeopardizing my business, my marriage, family, and realized I was needing a drink instead of wanting one. I was headed for disaster, and so I went to AA and I go every morning and I’m much happier. Everybody’s happier. It worked out.”

Ruddell says he owns the only HACCP inspected (hazard analysis of critical control points) retail smokehouse in the state. How’s business? He ships his smoked products all over the country. When I visited him, he was getting ready to ship some to Washington, D.C. He’s on the internet (www.smokerjim.com). He’s been written about in the New York Times, which is probably why East Coast tourists traveling up and down the Big Sur coastline stop off at his place for a sample of something unique at the last outpost.

Ruddell’s Smokehouse is smaller than a rich man’s bathroom and Donald Trump’s clothes closet. He’s got a deli case, upright, bathtub-sized smoker, stove, cutting board, some equipment stuffed in back, and his dream—that’s it. But he’s thriving, and in the summer he cranks.

The nearest smokehouse?

“I think they do some smoking on the Avila Beach pier, and there’s a smokehouse somewhere around Santa Barbara, and there’s one at Moss Landing, north of Monterey. Us smokers, and I know most of them, we’re a different breed, we’re like a circle of crusty old women with recipes everybody wants, but we don’t give up nothing.”

Not that he’s got to worry. He’s got the secret, and nobody’s going to open a smokehouse anywhere around here in the distant future, and nobody’s about to make a smoker out of an old discarded pizza oven, much less a pole barn. §

Dell Franklin is a writer who lives in Cayucos, Calif. He can be reached through his website:dellfranklin.com.

Abelard and Héloise

A medieval ‘love’ saga and modern-day sexual harassment

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by Lisa Bitel

Suddenly, popular media is saturated with stories of powerful men outed by women for behavior in the workplace. These alleged harassers seem to assume that power in the workplace grants them sexual access to anyone.

In medieval Europe, most people assumed the same thing, although they didn’t call it “harassment.”

As a historian of gender in the European Middle Ages, I am all too familiar with well-documented cases of sexual harassment, abuse and rape. Such behavior was not considered unlawful or wrong in the medieval period unless one powerful man harassed a woman who belonged to another powerful man.

One famous 12th-century saga involved a young philosopher, Abelard, and his teenage student Héloise. The story has many similarities with news of modern-day aggressors, with one major exception: None of today’s harassers has suffered medieval punishment.

The case of Abelard and Héloise

In 1115, Abelard was the star of the budding university scene in medieval Paris. Famous for his quick mind and infallible memory, Abelard supposedly never lost an argument. One day he encountered Héloise, who also studied classics and philosophy (rare for a medieval girl). Abelard later wrote of that first glance, “In looks she did not rank lowest while in the extent of her learning she stood supreme.”

Knowing himself to be handsome and brilliant, Abelard stalked the girl and persuaded her uncle, Fulbert, a church official and Héloise’s guardian, to hire him as her personal tutor. Fulbert was delighted to employ the famous Abelard. Fulbert gave Abelard room and board, so that he might tutor Héloise day and night.

Abelard taught Héloise more than philosophy. “My hands strayed oftener to her bosom than to the pages,” he admitted. “To avert suspicion I sometimes struck her.” Eventually, as he wrote, their “desires left no stage of lovemaking untried, and if love devised something new, we welcomed it.”

The affair became the subject of student ballads sung in the streets of Paris.

The wages of sin

Abelard was alarmed at the gossip and sent Héloise off to her old convent school outside of town. Their affair remained torrid, though, and he visited when he could. They once had sex in a corner of the refectory where nuns took their meals.

Their troubles became worse when Héloise became pregnant. Abelard sent her away—this time to his sister in Brittany—where Héloise gave birth to their son Astrolabe, whom she left behind when returning to Paris.

When Uncle Fulbert learned of Astrolabe’s birth he “went almost out of his mind,” as Abelard put it, even though Abelard reminded him that “since the beginning of the human race women had brought the noblest men to ruin.” Eventually, to appease Fulbert, Abelard agreed to marry Héloise, but only if Fulbert would keep it secret. Héloise objected but submitted.

As things were, the stalking and beating of Héloise posed no danger to Abelard’s reputation nor did fathering an illegitimate son. News of a marriage, though, would ruin him – for only celibate churchmen could find permanent employment as teachers.

Fulbert, however, spread word of the marriage. Héloise and her uncle argued fiercely until Abelard once more hid Héloise in a convent. Against her wishes, he made her wear nun’s clothing.

Uncle Fulbert believed that Abelard had abandoned Héloise. One terrible night, Abelard awoke to find himself under attack by a gang of ruffians who took shocking vengeance for Fulbert. As Abelard put it starkly, “They cut off the parts of my body whereby I had committed the wrong of which they complained.”

A eunuch, like a married man, was barred from high church offices and teaching positions. Abélard became a monk and Héloise an unwilling nun.

Whose calamity?

We know this sad story from Abelard’s “History of My Troubles” (“Historia Calamitatum”) written about 15 years after his marriage to Héloise. By then, she had become an abbess in charge of a small community of nuns at The Paraclete – a monastery founded by Abelard and named after one of his famous philosophical arguments. The two began to exchange letters in the 1130s. Héloise had never been happy in the convent. She wrote to her husband:

“The pleasures of lovers which we have shared have been too sweet … wherever I turn they are always there before my eyes, bringing with them awakened longings and fantasies which will not even let me sleep.”

Abelard suggested that she give all her love to Christ instead. He sent her handy tips for running a monastery. He refused to visit, though.

“My agony is less for the mutilation of my body than for the damage to my reputation.”

His career was paramount; her grief, less so. “His” reputation, “his” calamity. What about “hers”?

Bad love

Something about the history of Abelard and Héloise endured the centuries until 18th- and 19th-century intellectuals embraced the tale of these star-crossed lovers. Several poets and artists depicted Héloise unhappily entering the convent or dreaming of lost love. Parisians erected an ornate monument to the couple in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, where today’s lovers still leave fresh roses.

However, despite the discovery of more letters exchanged between Abelard and Héloise, today’s medievalist scholars tend to accept Abelard’s version of the relationship – that Héloise was complicit.

Abelard said Héloise loved him. But did the teenage girl actually consent to sex with the teacher who beat her? Did she agree to have the child? Did she prefer “love to wedlock and freedom to chains,” as Abelard claimed?

We know from her letters to him that she resisted the convent.

“Of all the wretched women, I am the most wretched,” Héloise complained, long after the affair.

Romancing harassment

No one has labeled Abelard a rapist, the seducer of a minor or a sexual harasser. His philosophical works remain crucial to the history of Christian theology and philosophy. Héloise is celebrated mostly for being a female intellectual in a period when there were few.

Such historical “romances” still play out in gender relations today, particularly in the university. A recent survey of graduate students and professors, for example, revealed the extent to which male professors prey on young minds and bodies under their guidance.

And, like Héloise, many such victims still find it hard to voice resistance, although they no longer cower in the cloister. Instead of writing letters to their harassers or singing ballads in the streets, they reveal their secrets in digital media – too often anonymously.

“Plus ça change,” or “the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing,” as Abelard might say. One thing we have learned since the Middle Ages is that sexual harassment is a destructive crime, no matter how romantic the backstory. §

Lisa Bitel is professor of History & Religion at the University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Food safety and security

The not-so-super Cayucos Supermarket

SLO County Environmental Health Services shuttered the Cayucos Supermarket late December because of significant code violations, including a rodent infestation.

by Stacey Warde

A county health inspector shuttered the Cayucos Supermarket in late December because of a number of “significant code violations,” including an infestation of mice and rats.

An official from SLO county’s environmental health services, according to the Tribune, investigated a complaint from a customer and found signs of “bite marks,” “droppings,” and “contaminated surfaces” throughout the store. The inspector gave the owner a few days to clean up the mess.

When the official returned, however, he found nothing had been done to fix the problem and new evidence of rodent activity in the store. So he ordered the place closed, leaving Cayucos without a local grocery. For how long, we don’t know.

Days before the closure, we visited the store and detected a strong and repugnant odor of urine. It’s not the first time we’ve noticed foul odors in the market. At times, the place has smelled of rotting carcass. Not the best environment in which to make food purchases.

Once, as noted in “Obsolesence and doing business,” we observed the owner spraying the fresh produce section with a can of RAID. We since limited our purchases to packaged items like beer, thinking we’d be safe. It goes without saying, wipe off your cans and bottles before drinking.

We’re not the only patrons who have noticed the decrepit conditions of the Cayucos Supermarket, which has been in operation since 1960 and doesn’t appear to have had any upgrades since. The cold storage units are run down, inefficient and often leak water onto the floors. The odors, we’ve been told, are caused by clogged drainage traps.

As the community adjusts to the closure, other long-term issues and complaints about the market have surfaced.

Corrie S. from Fresno, for example, had this to say in her one-star Yelp review: “So smelly. I couldn’t even stay long enough to buy food. Needs a total overhaul. The produce had flies around it. The shelves were dusty. I would rather travel to the next town to buy food.”

Overall, reviews of the market seem positive but it’s worth noting that they speak more of the warm staff and the sandwiches sold in the back deli than about the quality of the food or the appearance and cleanliness of the place.

We know also that locals love the market for its convenience, selection, reasonable prices and helpful and familiar staff. They love the deli, a separate business located in the back of the store, which offers unique home-style sausages in addition to delicious sandwiches.

Yet, in light of all the good that can be said about the market, we’d like to suggest that the shutdown demonstrates a failure of responsibility to provide food that is safe and secure to our visitors and local community.

Food safety and security are fundamental—as a basic human right—and paramount to the health of any community, large or small. We have a right, as enumerated by the World Health Organization, the United Nations, as well as by San Luis Obispo County’s Environmental Health Services, to food that is free from disease, contamination and sabotage.

Additionally, the closure runs the risk of creating a food desert for a community that already struggles to make sure all of its citizens are adequately and safely fed. The Cayucos Community Church serves weekly many familiar friends and faces with donated food.

The senior center also provides food items for those who are unable to afford groceries.

The closure is one more block in the stream of healthy food options to consumers who receive assistance or who are unable to drive to neighboring communities to shop for groceries.

As a purveyor of “healthy food,” however, our market failed to deliver. It did not meet the basic requirement of providing safe, wholesome, fresh fruits and vegetables, grains and other food items to visiting and local buyers.

The closure also affects employees who now find themselves without a job. We lament their loss and hope they will not be long without work.

We have no idea if or when the store will reopen. The owner must sanitize the entire market and seal all the openings through which rodents might find their way. That seems like a vast undertaking, given the condition of the building and the store’s outdated storage. We wish them luck, and hope that, if they do reopen, they will be more mindful of the safety and security of the food they sell.

Meanwhile, BizBuySell.com has the place listed for sale at $3 million. Perhaps we can lure a buyer who values providing a safe, clean and healthy food environment to the local community and the many travelers who pass through here. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice. Daniella Magnano contributed to this article. She runs Spumoni Egg Farm where she keeps chickens and delivers fresh, healthy eggs to friends and people in need in the community.

Teen mental health deteriorates

Studies link demise to increased cellphone use

by Jean Twenge, San Diego State University

Around 2012, something started going wrong in the lives of teens.

In just the five years between 2010 and 2015, the number of U.S. teens who felt useless and joyless—classic symptoms of depression—surged 33 percent in large national surveys. Teen suicide attempts increased 23 percent. Even more troubling, the number of 13- to 18-year-olds who committed suicide jumped 31 percent.

In a new paper published in Clinical Psychological Science, my colleagues and I found that the increases in depression, suicide attempts and suicide appeared among teens from every background—more privileged and less privileged, across all races and ethnicities and in every region of the country. All told, our analysis found that the generation of teens I call “iGen”—those born after 1995—is much more likely to experience mental health issues than their millennial predecessors.

What happened that so many more teens, in such a short period of time, would feel depressed, attempt suicide and commit suicide? After scouring several large surveys of teens for clues, I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens’ lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone.

All signs point to the screen

Because the years between 2010 to 2015 were a period of steady economic growth and falling unemployment, it’s unlikely that economic malaise was a factor. Income inequality was (and still is) an issue, but it didn’t suddenly appear in the early 2010s: This gap between the rich and poor had been widening for decades. We found that the time teens spent on homework barely budged between 2010 and 2015, effectively ruling out academic pressure as a cause.

However, according to the Pew Research Center, smartphone ownership crossed the 50 percent threshold in late 2012 – right when teen depression and suicide began to increase. By 2015, 73 percent of teens had access to a smartphone.

Not only did smartphone use and depression increase in tandem, but time spent online was linked to mental health issues across two different data sets. We found that teens who spent five or more hours a day online were 71 percent more likely than those who spent only one hour a day to have at least one suicide risk factor (depression, thinking about suicide, making a suicide plan or attempting suicide). Overall, suicide risk factors rose significantly after two or more hours a day of time online.

Of course, it’s possible that instead of time online causing depression, depression causes more time online. But three other studies show that is unlikely (at least, when viewed through social media use).

Two followed people over time, with both studies finding that spending more time on social media led to unhappiness, while unhappiness did not lead to more social media use. A third study randomly assigned participants to give up Facebook for a week versus continuing their usual use. Those who avoided Facebook reported feeling less depressed at the end of the week.

The argument that depression might cause people to spend more time online doesn’t also explain why depression increased so suddenly after 2012. Under that scenario, more teens became depressed for an unknown reason and then started buying smartphones, which doesn’t seem too logical.

What’s lost when we’re plugged in

Even if online time doesn’t directly harm mental health, it could still adversely affect it in indirect ways, especially if time online crowds out time for other activities.

For example, while conducting research for my book on iGen, I found that teens now spend much less time interacting with their friends in person. Interacting with people face to face is one of the deepest wellsprings of human happiness; without it, our moods start to suffer and depression often follows. Feeling socially isolated is also one of the major risk factors for suicide. We found that teens who spent more time than average online and less time than average with friends in person were the most likely to be depressed. Since 2012, that’s what has occurred en masse: Teens have spent less time on activities known to benefit mental health (in-person social interaction) and more time on activities that may harm it (time online).

Teens are also sleeping less, and teens who spend more time on their phones are more likely to not be getting enough sleep. Not sleeping enough is a major risk factor for depression, so if smartphones are causing less sleep, that alone could explain why depression and suicide increased so suddenly.

Depression and suicide have many causes: Genetic predisposition, family environments, bullying and trauma can all play a role. Some teens would experience mental health problems no matter what era they lived in.

But some vulnerable teens who would otherwise not have had mental health issues may have slipped into depression due to too much screen time, not enough face-to-face social interaction, inadequate sleep or a combination of all three.

It might be argued that it’s too soon to recommend less screen time, given that the research isn’t completely definitive. However, the downside to limiting screen time – say, to two hours a day or less – is minimal. In contrast, the downside to doing nothing – given the possible consequences of depression and suicide – seems, to me, quite high.

It’s not too early to think about limiting screen time; let’s hope it’s not too late. §

Jean Twenge is professor of psychology at San Diego State University. This article was originally published on The Conversation,and is published with permission.

Drain the swamp?

In February, Trump ordered major federal agencies to set up deregulation teams, to fulfill a campaign promise to cut red tape for businesses, including major players in the production of pesticides.

Pesticide lobbyists find welcome mat at USDA under Trump

by Robert Faturechi, ProPublica, and Danielle Ivory, The New York Times

At a private meeting in September, congressional aides asked Rebeckah Adcock, a top official at the Department of Agriculture, to reveal the identities of the people serving on the deregulation team she leads at the agency.

Teams like Adcock’s, created under an executive order by President Trump, had been taking heat from Democratic lawmakers over their secrecy. What little was publicly known suggested that some of the groups’ members had deep ties to the industries being regulated.

Adcock, a former pesticide industry executive, brushed off the request, according to House aides familiar with the exchange, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Making the names public, they recalled her saying, would trigger a deluge of lobbyists.

In fact, interviews and visitor logs at the Agriculture Department showed that Adcock had already been meeting with lobbyists, including those from her former employer, the pesticide industry’s main trade group, CropLife America, and its members. CropLife pushes the agenda of pesticide makers in Washington, including easing rules related to safety standards and clean water.

Adcock, who left the trade group in April, maintained contact with her former industry allies despite a signed ethics agreement promising to avoid for one year issues involving CropLife as well as matters that she had lobbied about in the two years before joining the government.

In one meeting, Adcock discussed issues banned by the ethics agreement with an executive who had been her lobbying partner weeks earlier at CropLife, according to the accounts of participants and the visitor logs, obtained through a public records request by The New York Times and ProPublica.

Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the USDA who also spoke on behalf of Adcock, said she had not violated her ethics agreement by meeting with her former industry allies. He also denied that Adcock had discussed issues related to her previous lobbying at the meeting, or that she had suggested that her deregulation team would be swamped by lobbyists if names of its members were released.

“The career ethics officers at USDA agree that this is not a violation of the ethics agreement that Rebeckah Adcock signed,” said Murtaugh, citing a 2009 memo by the Office of Government Ethics.

Others dispute that interpretation of the memo; the ethics office declined to say whether the memo applied to the meeting, citing its policy not to discuss individual cases.

Adcock was scheduled to appear Tuesday before subcommittees of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is tracking Trump’s deregulation effort. In announcing the hearing, the committee, led by Republicans, applauded the deregulation teams for making an “unprecedented reduction in the federal regulatory footprint.”

Republican members of the committee declined to comment about Adcock’s activities. Representative Elijah E. Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, said that if Adcock had violated her ethics agreement, it contributed “to a troubling pattern of President Trump’s failure to ‘drain the swamp.”

In February, Trump ordered major federal agencies to set up the deregulation teams, to fulfill a campaign promise to cut red tape for businesses. Corporations and industry groups quickly hired lawyers, lobbyists and economists to help them influence the process with billions of dollars at stake. The regulations under review cover a range of subjects, including the cleanliness of drinking water and the safety of highways.

The Trump administration has declined to make public the names of many members of the teams. It has also generally not provided records related to the teams’ calendars and correspondence.

A joint investigation published in July by The Times and ProPublica found that the teams included former employees of industry-financed organizations that oppose environmental regulations; lawyers who have represented companies in cases against federal regulators; and staff members of so-called political dark-money groups. Some are reviewing rules that their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and at least two may be positioned to profit personally if certain regulations are undone. In all, the two news organizations have identified 112 current and former team members, including 41 with potential conflicts.

At the meeting on Capitol Hill in September, Adcock lamented the scrutiny that her team was under, a House aide familiar with the exchange said. Adcock cited, in particular, public records requests for calendars and emails.

The Times and ProPublica asked for those records this year and have received only a few. Most other federal agencies have been similarly unresponsive. The visitor logs that have been obtained are often handwritten sign-in sheets. They appear to show only a fraction of meetings, and many are illegible. It is not known from the logs, for example, if Adcock or her team had met with environmental or science groups in addition to the industry representatives.

In response to questions from reporters about possible conflicts of interest, agency officials across the government have said the deregulation teams are abiding by strict ethical standards, including rules that bar them from working on issues directly affecting recent employers.

Records received through a Freedom of Information Act request show that Adcock entered such an agreement on April 26, pledging that she would “not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which I know CropLife America is a party or represents a party” for a year.

But in May, Kellie Bray, a lobbyist for CropLife, arrived for a meeting with Adcock, according to the visitor logs.

The two knew each other well. From 2010 to early this year, Adcock and Bray lobbied together for CropLife, which represents Syngenta and Monsanto, among other pesticide makers.

Disclosure records show that during those years the two advocated for the industry’s agenda at agencies, including the USDA and the Environmental Protection Agency, and in Congress. They pushed CropLife’s interests on bills and regulations relating to the impact of pesticides on water and human health.

Adcock’s departure from CropLife left the trade association short a seasoned lobbyist, but gave it a valuable contact in the top ranks of the USDA.

Bray said in an interview that in May, Adcock had met with her and the Southern Crop Production Association, a CropLife affiliate. Bray said she had sat in on the meeting but hadn’t talked.

“I facilitated the introduction,” she said. “That is all.”

After the meeting, the Southern Crop Production Association, which represents pesticide manufacturers, formulators and distributors across the South, said on its website that “Rebeckah has an exceptional understanding regarding the many issues facing agriculture due, in large part, to her previous position with CLA,” using the acronym for CropLife America.

Among the topics discussed, according to the trade group’s website, were the tests that pesticides must undergo to prove they are safe and rules governing their use near water sources. The trade group did not respond to requests for comment. Bray confirmed that the group had discussed regulations about the use of pesticides near water.

Discussing policy related to the impact of pesticides on water is deemed off limits under Adcock’s ethics agreement. Murtaugh, the USDA spokesman, said Adcock disputed that she had discussed any off-limits subject.

“If any participant declared concern regarding any issue precluded by Adcock’s agreement, she politely and firmly instructed them it was not a matter she could discuss or assist with,” he said.

He also said Adcock had instructed Bray not to participate in the meeting and did not recall her being in the room.

Murtaugh said a provision in the memorandum from the Office of Government Ethics allowed an appointee like Adcock to attend meetings with a former employer or client so long as five or more other stakeholders participated. In the May meeting, he said, four of the Southern Crop Production Association representatives were affiliated with individual companies: Syngenta, Albaugh, Triangle Chemical and Crop Production Services.

However, three of those companies are also members of the CropLife trade group, Adcock’s former employer. And they were attending in their capacity as the executive committee of the Southern Crop Production Association, according to the association’s website, not as individual company executives.

Walter M. Shaub Jr., who headed the Office of Government Ethics under President Barack Obama and during the early months of the Trump administration, said the provision cited by the USDA did not apply to the ethics regulation in Adcock’s agreement. Even if it did apply, he said, the meeting lacked a necessary diversity because the participants were all affiliated with one trade group. He also said it was irrelevant that Bray hadn’t spoken.

“If she brought them there, signed into the sign-in log, attended the meeting that she may or may not have set up, it definitely counts as a meeting with her,” said Shaub, who has been critical of the Trump administration.

Before Adcock worked at CropLife, she served as a lobbyist for the farming industry at the American Farm Bureau Federation. Among its donors is Farm Credit, a lending institution. In July, Adcock met with a delegation from Farm Credit, according to a participant.

One of the executives who attended — Jeremy Brown, president of Broadview Agriculture, a Texas cotton producer — said in an interview that he knew Adcock from the Farm Bureau. For those who did not know her, Adcock explained her past lobbying on behalf of the farming industry, and she asked for recommendations on regulatory changes, he said.

“Any time you have people already familiar with the industry, it helps,” Brown said. “They can hopefully get their feet on the ground and get the work in.”

He said he had pushed Adcock to get cottonseed reclassified as an oil seed crop so cotton producers could be eligible again for certain government subsidies if revenue dropped. He also discussed what he termed overreach on clean-water rules.

“She was taking notes, being really receptive,” Brown said.

Another highlight, he said, was the access the group enjoyed. Never before had he attended a meeting in the private gathering room just outside the office of the secretary of agriculture.

“I’ve been to the USDA a couple other times,” Brown said, “and this was the first time I’ve been able to go to what they call the Cage.” §

Robert Faturechi is a reporter at ProPublica covering money in politics. Danielle Ivory is a New York Times reporter covering the intersection of business and government, including contracts and regulation.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for its newsletter. This story was co-published with The New York Times, and is published here with permission.

Stop the malignant use of US military

U.S. Army Rangers, assigned to 2nd Battalion 75th Ranger Regiment, prepare for extraction during Task Force Training on Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif. Rangers constantly train to maintain their tactical proficiency. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Steven Hitchcock/Not Reviewed)

Last month, Secretary of Defense James Mattis warned that if Congress doesn’t “remove the defense caps,” he said, “then we’re questioning whether or not America has the ability to survive.” This claim that insufficient increases in Pentagon spending threatens American security is flatly wrong. The real and present danger to our national security is the unecessary use of U.S. military power abroad.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis

There are two key ways the faulty use of combat power abroad continues to deteriorate our security. The first is the purpose for which the military is used. The preamble to the Constitution explains that the military is intended to “provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Further, it decrees that Congress alone has the power to declare war. Today, Congress has fully ceded its responsibilities; the Executive branch has assumed virtually sole discretion for the deployment of the military.

The second and more troubling misuse of the military are the missions they are given to execute. For decades, the armed forces have been routinely employed, not for the “common defense,” but for the benefit of other nations or for purposes with no apparent connection to the security of our country.

The armed forces should only be used to defend American vital national interests—our territorial integrity and prosperity—and only committed when genuine diplomatic efforts have been fully exhausted.

Congress and the American people should debate and decide whether there is a legitimate threat to our vital interests, if the crisis is solvable by military means with clear and attainable objectives, if the resources to succeed are affordable, and if we have a sound strategy to achieve the desired political end state to safely extricate ourselves within a reasonable period of time.

With Congress on the sidelines, the Trump Administration and its two predecessors have egregiously failed on all three points. There is little wonder, then, that the use of the military has not enhanced American security or prosperity.

Presently, the Trump Administration publicly employs the military on active combat missions of one type or another in Niger, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, Djibouti, and Nigeria (there are also scores of classified combat missions for Special Operations Forces about which the public knows nothing). Most of these missions have no relation to U.S. national security whatsoever; others have thread-bare associations at best.

These operations consume tens of billions of dollars each year, cost the lives of U.S. service personnel, and divert resources and manpower away from preparation to defend against potential threats which could pose a legitimate threat to U.S. security.

Moreover, even in operations that were tactically successful, we sometimes have perversely inflicted strategic defeats on U.S. interests. For example, the famed Iraqi surge of 2007 did result in a dramatic decrease in U.S. casualties, but enabled then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to systematically purge his army of rival Sunni officers. That led in 2014 to his army disintegrating in the face of ISIS attacks.

In restoring Iraqi sovereignty over ISIS, Baghdad enlisted the use of U.S. air power, ground controllers, and Iranian-backed militias––including the actual use of Iranian troops in Iraq. Iranian military advisors and troops also helped Baghdad crush recent Kurdish attempts at independence ––after the U.S. military helped the Kurds defeat ISIS in Mosul. Iranian influence over Iraq is today pervasive. None of that would have been possible without U.S. military operations since 2003.

The time has come for a major overhaul of American foreign and defense policies. We must abandon nation-building and meddling in the internal affairs of other countries. Our national security objectives in the Middle East can be more effectively accomplished via active and robust intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance efforts.

American affairs abroad should be redirected away from an obsessive attempt to solve problems using lethal combat power and instead focus on expanding U.S. economic opportunity and beneficial trade policies. Core functions of the U.S. government are to defend our population and facilitate a healthy economy. Misusing the military is counter to both objectives. §

Daniel Davis, a former Army lieutenant colonel with four combat deployments, is a defense expert at Defense Priorities, the Washington think tank. Follow him @DanielLDavis1. This article is published with permission from Breaking Defense.

RIP: Smoker Jim Ruddell

A rogue for the ages

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