As cars have gotten fancier, tiny computers, called microprocessors — commonly known as chips(芯片) — have been added to control many different parts of a car. Modern cars may have as many as 150 microprocessors.

Last year, many car makers had to close their factories because of COVID-19. Since they weren’t making cars, they canceled many of their orders with chip makers, which forced the companies that make microprocessors to stop making so many chips for cars. They began selling lots of chips to other kinds of companies. For example, during the lockdown many people bought computers and video game systems to help pass the time while they were stuck at home. This meant that companies which made computers and video game systems needed a lot of chips for their products. So now demand for new vehicles has returned, but there aren’t enough microprocessors.

One company that studies the car business says that the chip shortage has already caused car makers to produce 500,000 fewer cars. The company expects that number to drop by 300,000 more cars this year. Ford stopped making cars at its Kentucky factory in December, and has slowed up work at a factory in Germany. General Motors has decided to make fewer cars at its factories in Canada, Mexico, South Korea, and the United States. Honda and Nissan have stopped making cars at some of their factories. However, the problem has not affected the entire auto industry equally. Toyota says it diversified its supply chain and stored a huge number of components after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. And Hyundai didn’t cancel any of its chip orders in 2020 due to COVID-19, so it is almost not affected. But the hit to the industry has been reported at $61 billion.

Another reason for the shortage is that there just aren’t many companies that make chips. Most of the large chip-making companies are in China.

Most experts think the bottleneck is expected to last for months.

Since the early to mid-2010s, social media apps have made a permanent home in many people’s phones, and spending time on social media has become as much of a daily activity as drinking water. Since so many people are on it for much of their days—especially kids, teens, and young adults—there is increased concern over what social media is doing to people.

Many argue that social media is an unhealthy way to pass the time, and that false information from online is causing confusion and panic. This type of thing happens with every generation when something new that people don’t understand comes along: So many people thought rock-and-roll was making teens morally bad, which really wasn’t the case. It is fair to say that the teenage years are hard, and that teens need an escape. Back before phones, teens would listen to rock music as a form of escapism, or they would watch TV, go to the movies, skate around, or dress up in crazy clothes. Unfortunately, all of those things at one point in time were blamed for being a bad influence on young people. Social media is the new rock-and-roll: it’s a new thing, and people demonize(妖魔化)change.

For example, many believe that everything on social media apps is filtered(加滤镜)and that seeing perfect people and their perfectly edited lives often leads to lots of negative emotions. However, models, magazines. and movies have been using retouching(修整)tools for photos and media since Photoshop and other post-production services were invented. Social media has made it easier to see more edited pictures, but social media itself isn’t making people want to look a certain way. People should acknowledge that these pictures aren’t authentic, and the posts are made to look good on purpose. Social media is not to blame for body confidence issues when the things people want to look like aren’t even real in the first place.

It seems like most issues around social media are user errors, like anyone complaining there are too many people being addicted to social media. However, not everyone is addicted to social media; people who have any grasp on reality wouldn’t spend every waking second on the phone. It is really up to the individual how they use social media. Keeping up with the flood of posts, stories, and photos takes a lot of time—many young people admit that they spend hours on their phones every day. Yet, this seems like an easy problem to solve when the solution is simply clicking off the phone a couple hours early. Therefore, it is clear that moderation(适度)is the key to dealing with all the issues around social media.

Socially, few things are more annoying than someone repeatedly checking their phone in the middle of your conversation with them. Soon enough, you’re having unhappy thoughts, thinking of their way like, I’m boring you; you’re more concerned with whoever’s on that phone than me; you don’t care about me. None of that is necessarily true, but this is: “If someone is engaged in a great conversation, they wouldn’t care about their phones,” says Leslie, a psychologist and researcher at NYU.

Do you sometimes wonder: What should I have said to a rude person like this? What if we have to talk to such maddening persons? Experts have advice about how to deal with this.

Whether you say something or not, remember that the cell-addict’s annoying habits aren’t about you. “It’s rude, for sure, but sometimes we mistake the behavior for more than what it is,” says Leslie. “It’s possible that they are facing something tough and merely experiencing nervousness or anxiety,” he adds. It’s also possible that their partner is stuck with a flat tyre (轮胎) or their kid is sick in hospital. The point is that you don’t know.

So before you become angry at the cell-addict’s open rudeness, focus instead on building a better conversation than whatever’s going down on Instagram. You might never be able to achieve this, given the power of today’s social media, so if you’re close enough to a person, Leslie advises you to directly ask them: “What’s on that thing that’s so interesting?” Chances are that they will apologise at once and quickly put the phone away. But if the answer is something real, talk about it. Better yet, you can avoid the situation in advance by saying something like, “I’m really interested in catching up properly, so how about we leave our phones in the car?” If they indeed have that flat tyre or sick kid, at least you won’t have to assume that it’s because your stories are boring.