Bytes: What’s new in tech
For teens, the iPhone rules
Teens must think Android phones are for old people, said Magdalene J. Taylor in The Wall Street Journal. A survey of 7,100 American teens found that 87 percent of respondents currently have an iPhone. Even though Android phones often boast better cameras and battery life, a stigma has developed—at least among American teens—that “associates Androids with older technology, and older people.” Teens have also complained about being shamed by “the big green bubble” on text messages when they’re exchanged across Apple’s iMessage platform. “You’re telling me in 2023, you still have a ’droid?” said 20-yearold Abdoul Chamberlain in a video posted in April to his 3.4 million TikTok followers. “You gotta be at least 50 years old.”
Digital war games in a real war
A mobile video game about war has found a big audience of actual soldiers on Ukraine’s front line, said Thomas Gibbons-Neff in The New York Times. “Somewhere along the several hundred miles of front line in Ukraine, a Ukrainian soldier is probably playing World of Tanks—the video game.” The multiplayer game pits teams of tanks “and other killing machines” against each other on a virtual battlefield. It may sound odd for soldiers to want to devote their downtime to a game that carries “an eerie echo of the actual war unfolding around them,” but soldiers say it boosts camaraderie and helps them practice teamwork. War is also “often marked by long stretches of boredom,” and video games help pass the time. There is internet access, thanks to Starlink’s satellite networks, and soldiers today carry smartphones.
Europe starts tech transparency push
Europe’s sweeping Digital Services Act went into effect last week to regulate Big Tech platforms, said The Economist. “The DSA will apply to all online businesses, but bigger services, defined as those with more than 45 million users in the European Union, will have to follow extra rules.” Those include increased transparency with regulators over “how they moderate content, decide what users see, and use artificial intelligence.” Social media platforms will have to “make it easy for users to report” unwanted content, and must have to act fast to remove illegal posts. There are also restrictions around targeted ads and the use of personal data. The changes will be significant for Europeans; however, a global impact from the legislation is “far from guaranteed.”