Author: TheConversation

By Woody Holton, Professor of History, University of South Carolina Many Americans of the founding era denounced government tyranny, celebrated the Declaration of Independence – and favored lockdowns and mass inoculations to combat a viciously contagious disease. Unchecked, smallpox kills more than one in 10 of its victims, leaving many of the rest blind, disfigured and sometimes sterile. Many historians say the reason George Washington never had children was his near-fatal bout of smallpox in 1751. The summer of 1776 was a time of crisis for the budding republic. A smallpox outbreak in the Continental Army killed hundreds. And...

By Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University Right at the time social media became popular, teen mental health began to falter. Between 2010 and 2019, rates of depression and loneliness doubled in the U.S. and globally, suicide rates soared for teens in the U.S. and emergency room admissions for self-harm tripled among 10 to 14 year-old girls. Social scientists like myself have been warning for years that the ubiquity of social media might be at the root of the growing mental health crisis for teens. Yet when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was asked during a congressional...

By Michael Humphrey, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Communication, Colorado State University The latest deluge of Facebook controversies has many people ready to kick the app to the digital curb, and there are plenty of guides on how to do it right. Even Facebook makes it pretty easy to understand the nuances of saying “see ya later” (deactivating) or “never speak to me again” (deleting). But before leaving completely, there is one thing to consider: What happens to your life stories? For many people, a decade or more of updates, comments, photos, messages, tags, pokes, groups and reactions...

By Joshua D. Rothman, Professor of History, University of Alabama For my recently published book, “The Ledger and the Chain,” I visited more than 30 archives in over a dozen states, from Louisiana to Connecticut. Along the way, I uncovered mountains of material that exposed the depravity of the men who ran the largest domestic slave trading operation in American history and revealed the fortitude of the enslaved people they trafficked as merchandise. But I also learned that many Americans do not realize that a domestic slave trade existed in the United States at all. Mentioning my research to...

By Aaron Brown, PhD Student, Higher Education, University of Toronto; and Elizabeth Buckner, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, University of Toronto As university and college semesters unfold, a small but increasing percentage of students will likely also be taking on a largely under-reported and overlooked form of part-time employment: sex work. Over the past year, there have been multiple reports of a dramatic increase in content creators on OnlyFans — a platform that allows fans to pay creators directly for content, which has been popular with sex workers. Some new users say they created accounts to navigate financial hardship...

By Gabriel Filippelli, Professor of Earth Sciences and Director of the Center for Urban Health, IUPUI; and Joseph D. Ortiz, Professor and Assistant Chair of Geology, Kent State University “Do Not Drink/Do Not Boil” is not what anyone wants to hear about their city’s tap water. But the combined effects of climate change and degraded water quality could make such warnings more frequent across the Great Lakes region. A preview occurred on July 31, 2014, when a nasty green slime – properly known as a harmful algal bloom, or HAB – developed in the western basin of Lake Erie....