Digital mindfulness is the application of mindfulness practices in your digital life. According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medicine School, mindfulness is “a means of paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally”. Here two main key points are stressed when it comes to mindfulness as a practice in your digital life.

The first point is that you must learn to do things on purpose. For example, you use your phone as a habitual escape from boredom or stress, which is thought by many as a quick solution to all those negative feelings. But what if you get only negative responses from your phone-the news or posts are negative? Instead of finding peace, you find more boredom and more stress. The solution that mindfulness provides is purposeful and intentional choice. Therefore, you are empowered to choose how to respond to the stimulus (刺激) behind such feelings as boredom, loneliness, and stress and not just treat the symptoms (症状).

The other key is going through the experience non-judgmentally. When you feel sad or angry because of a post on social media, all you ever do is to go through the experience and let it flow. At its heart, mindfulness involves the acceptance of your memories, feelings, and thoughts minus any judgment on yourself or others because of those things. These feelings, memories, and experiences come and go. After they have passed, you are still you and in control. You will become more aware of your inner world. It's this internal monologue (独白) that pushes you to grab your digital technology (phone, Alexa speaker, TV, etc.).

Digital mindfulness is not about avoiding the negative things in life. Through mindfulness practice, you regain the power to learn from these experiences and healthily deal with the negative. Mindfulness will also teach you to be aware of all your emotions, so you learn to deal with the things that you used to avoid. Finally, digital mindfulness brings you peace of mind in an ever-changing and increasingly connected world.

Now, I would rather prefer to think of it as one of many tools that we can use in our daily life.

Turning 18 is a big deal when you are a teenager. It means you are responsible for yourself and don’t need your parents’ permission any more. However, there are lots of opinions about when one becomes an adult. Some are based on science, while others are personal opinions. While currently the age is 18, science supports 25 as a more sensible age for adulthood, and I agree.

While studying the brain of teenagers, scientists have learned that when kids are around 18, their prefrontal cortex(前额皮层) is only halfway developed. The prefrontal-cortex helps people set and achieve goals by receiving signals from different regions of the brain to process information and adapting accordingly. That halfway development means that you still have things to learn and your brains still have time to develop until the age of 25.

Some people think going off to college and living on your own qualify(使...具有资格)you as an adult, while others may believe having a steady income and being able to afford to live on your own are what make you an adult. Not everyone has a fortunate life where they have family that can provide support; there are situations where you are forced to become an “adult” whether you like it or not.

In the foster care(寄养) system, once a child turns 18, he or she is considered an adult and can no longer receive state-sponsored support. These children are forced into a life where they have no family or anyone to support them other than those who were there for them in the system.

Having a quality job will allow you to supply yourself with necessary things to live and help you become a more mature and responsible person. Also, going through difficult times and realizing life isn’t as easy as it seems, should qualify someone as an adult.

Throughout the ages different ideas have been expressed about the working of the human brain. In ancient times, men thought that the mind was based in the heart. It was not until the 18th century that man realized that the whole of the brain was involved in the workings of the mind.

During the 19th century scientists found that when certain parts of the brain were damaged men lost the ability to do certain things. And so, people thought that each part of the brain controlled a different activity. But modern research has found that this is not so.

In the past 50 years there has been a great increase in the amount of research being done on the brain. Scientists have found that the way the brain works is far more complicated than they had thought. They have tried to use computers to copy the way the brain works. However, they have found that even using the latest electronic equipment they would have to build a computer weighed over 10,000 kilos.

Earlier scientists thought that the power of the brain decreased during a man’s lifetime. But now it has been found that an old person who has always been mentally active has a quicker mind than a young person who has done only physical work. It means the more work we give our brains, the more work they can do.

Scientists hope that if we can discover how the brain works, we will be able to make better use of it. For example, how do we learn language? Some children learn to speak and read and write when they are very young compared to average children. But scientists are not sure why this happens.

Other people now believe that we use only 1% of our brains’ full potential. They say that the only limit on the power of the brain is the limit of what we think is possible. This is probably because of the way we are taught as children. When we first start learning to use our minds we are told what to do, for example, to remember certain facts, but we are not taught how our memory works and how to make best use of it. We are told to make notes but we are not taught how our brains accept information and which is the best way to organize the information we want our brains to accept.

This century man has made many discoveries about the universe — the world outside himself. But he has also started to look into the workings of that other universe which is inside himself.