When it comes to writing work emails, there are many rules to follow. In the past, people always wanted to come across as someone who’s calm and professional, which workplace manners experts say means they wanted to hold back their love for emoticons while on the job.

But language is always changing, and a recent national survey in the US found that 76 percent of Americans said that they had used emoticons in digital communication at work. The most popular emoticon is the happy face.

Lindsey Pollak, a US career coach who works with Millennials (千禧一代), has also noticed that emoticons have gone from being inappropriate for the workplace to being accepted. The reason behind this, according to her, is largely due to the changing of people in a particular age group of the workforce. Millennials are now the biggest generation in the American workforce. “A few years ago, emoticons were absolutely seen as very young and very personal,” Pollak said. “Over the past few years... I've seen emoticons become more acceptable. I see them more frequently not just from Millennials but from all generations at the workplace.”

“People tend to use emoticons to just add that little bit of extra change in the tone when there's something awkward or potentially offensive, or when they might take in things in the wrong way,” explains Lauren Collister, a sociolinguist. In life and work, many of us have used emoticons to send positive atmosphere or soften statements.

Pollak, however, warns against being too casual at work. Her advice is to be aware of who the audience is. “Frankly, I wouldn’t use a happy face with any CEO in the US. I wouldn’t use a happy face with the people of a certain level no matter how commonplace and acceptable it has become,” she said. “You can make or break a relationship with one email these days.”

In the old days, when you had to drive to a movie theater to get some entertainment, it was easy to see how your actions could have an impact on the environment. After all, you were jumping into your car, driving across towns, coughing out emissions (排放) and using gas all the way. But now that we’re used to staying at home and streaming (流式传输) movies, we might get a little proud. After all, we’re just picking up our phones and maybe turning on the TV. You’re welcome. Mother Nature.

Not so fast, says a recent report from the French-based Shit Project. According to Climate Crisis: The Unsustainable Use of Online Video, digital technologies are responsible for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, and that energy use is increasing by 9% a year. Watching a half-hour show would lead to 3.5 pounds of CO2 emissions. That’s like driving 6.28 kilometers. And in the European Union, the Eureca project found that data centers (where videos are stored) there used 25% more energy in 2017 compared to just three years earlier, reports the BBC.

Streaming is only expected to increase as we become more enamored of our digital devices (设备) and the possibility of enjoying entertainment where and when we want it to increase. Online video use is expected to increase by four times from 2017 to 2022 and account for 80% of all Internet traffic by 2022. By then, about 60% of the world’s population will be online.

You’re probably not going to give up your streaming services, but there’re things you can do to help lessen the impact of your online use, experts say. For example, according to Lutz Stobbe, a researcher from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin, we have no need to upload 25 pictures of the same thing to the cloud because it consumes energy every time. If instead you delete a few things here and there, you can save energy. Moreover, it’s also a good idea to stream over Wi-Fi, watch on the smallest screen as you can, and turn off your Wi-Fi in your home if you’re not using your devices.

The choice of the smartphone provides valuable information about its owner.

This is one of the findings of a study conducted by Heather Shaw, from the University of Lincoln's School of Psychology. Miss Shaw and her fellow researchers conducted two studies of personality differences between iPhone and Android smartphone users.

In the first study the researchers asked 240 participants to complete a questionnaire about characteristics they associated with users of each smartphone brand. In the second study they tested these stereotypes (模式化形象) against actual personalities of 530 Android and iPhone smartphone users.

The results of the first study show that Android users are thought to have greater levels of honesty, humility (谦逊), agreeableness and openness but that Android users are seen as less outgoing than iPhone users.

The results of the second study show that most of the personality stereotypes do not occur in reality, as only honesty and humility are found in greater amounts among Android users.

However, they do find that women are twice more likely to own an iPhone than an Android Phone. When researchers measured the characteristic "avoidance of similarity" which describes whether people like having the same products as others, Android users avoided similarity more than iPhone users. Finally, iPhone users thought it was more important to have a high status phone than Android users.

Heather explained, "This study provides new insights (见解) into personality differences between different types of smartphone users. The smartphone choice is the most basic level of smartphone personalisation (个性化), and even this can tell us a lot about the user. Imagine how personalities relate to the applications people download if we further research. It is becoming more and more apparent that smartphones are becoming a mini digital version of the user, and many of us don't like it when other people use our phones because it can reveal so much about us. "