New York Times: Extremism Finds Fertile Ground in Chat Rooms for Gamers. “A report, released on Thursday by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights, underscored how deeply rooted misogyny, racism and other extreme ideologies have become in some video game chat rooms, and offered insight into why people playing video games or socializing online seem to be particularly susceptible to such viewpoints.”
Tech Transparency Project: YouTube Leads Young Gamers to Videos of Guns, School Shootings. “YouTube’s algorithms are pushing boys interested in video games to scenes of school shootings, instructions on how to use and modify weapons, and even a movie about notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, according to a study by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP).”
UNESCO: Girls’ performance in mathematics now equal to boys (UNESCO report). “This research confirms that the gender gap in learning has closed even in the poorest countries. And in some countries, the gap is now reversed. For example, by grade 8, the gap is in favour of girls in mathematics by 7 percentage points in Malaysia, by 3 points in Cambodia, by 1.7 points in Congo and by 1.4 points in the Philippines. However, biases and stereotypes are still likely to affect learning outcomes. Even though girls catch up in mathematics in upper primary and secondary education, boys are far more likely to be overrepresented among the highest performers in mathematics in all countries.”
Smithsonian: Negative Effects of Social Media May Impact Adolescent Girls and Boys at Different Ages . “Girls and boys appear to be susceptible to the negative effects of social media use at different ages, according to new research. A study published today in Nature Communications suggests that teens and tweens have different windows of vulnerability to technology depending on their biological sex.”
TNW: Google ad portal equated ‘Black girls’ with porn. “Google’s Keywords Planner, which helps advertisers choose which search terms to associate with their ads, offered hundreds of keyword suggestions related to ‘Black girls,’ ‘Latina girls,’ and ‘Asian Girls’ — the majority of them pornographic, The Markup found in its research. Searches in the keyword planner for ‘boys’ of those same ethnicities also primarily returned suggestions related to pornography.”
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