Smartphones have been blamed for everything from taking drivers’attention from driving to keeping people on the sofa scrolling (滚屏) videos. But the smartphone that seems to be everywhere could just easily increase physical activity if it pushes its owner’s buttons in the right way.

New research shows that making social connections (人际关系) through activity-tracking apps gets people to move more. And another study on the “Pokemon Go” phenomenon shows that the smartphone game got players to take thousands more steps than usual. Together, the studies show the potential (潜在性) of smartphones to push a range of people to be more active.

People who linked with friends on the activity-tracking app increase their steps by 400 a day on average, compared with people who made no social connections, according to Tim Althoff and two other computer scientists at Stanford University. Such opinions show the possibilities of smartphones and games to help with one of the most stubborn public health problems — that even people who want to be active have trouble staying active.

An NBA video game, for example, will give players extra powers in the game if they reach a step goal in real life. The app “Zomies, Run!” uses audio stories to push people to run more or run faster.

Still, there is room for growth: Only about 4% of all health apps use “gamification”, such as point- scoring or competition, according to a study published in October in BMJ Open. “Gamification is actually quite closely linked with behavior change techniques,” says Dr. Elizabeth Ann Edwards, the study’s lead author.

Anvitha Vijay，who is only nine years old，has built two educational apps. One is Smartkins Animals，which helps many 【小题1】（child）identify more than 100 animals and 【小题2】 other is Rainbow Colors，which teaches kids colors.

With the help of YouTube videos，the young girl from Melbourne，Australia，learned codes（编码）at age 7 all by 【小题3】（she）. Soon，she was trying her hand at making apps.“When I first got my iPad，I 【小题4】（attract）immediately by all the apps on it，”she told TFK.“It wasn't long 【小题5】 I wanted to create my own.”

Anvitha's skills won her a scholarship to attend a big tech conference hosted by Apple in San Francisco，California. There，she got tips from the professionals and went to workshops 【小题6】 she learned about the latest software for app building. All that training led to an idea for a third app. This one，called GoalsHi，inspires kids 【小题7】（develop）good habits.

Anvitha's goal is to keep on 【小题8】 (create) technology that helps kids learn while they are having fun. But what's even more 【小题9】 (importance) to her is that the world sees the power of technology in kids' hands.“The more training we get in tech at an early age,”she says,“the 【小题10】 (good) chance we will have of becoming champions who will one day change the world.”

   I was a paperboy — well actually, the first papergirl in Seattle. When I was 12, I took my way into a job delivering (投递) The Seattle Times. I remember the boss looking this _______ girl over and telling me I had a week to _______ I could do it.

So after school, I would _______ over to the hut down the street, pick up my bundles, lift them onto the back of my _______ and ride my route. Sunday morning papers were too _______ for me to carry. I tried, and it took me three hours to _______ them as I had to keep coming back to reload. So, my mother volunteered to get up at 5:30 am and drive me around. She _______ herself to my employment.

What I learned as a _______ was to find out where each of my customers wanted their papers. I didn’t just throw them on their lawn (草评)._______ they wanted papers on their porch, or mailbox or inside the gate, that was where they got them. When a ________ went out of town, he would tell me and I would make sure that the papers didn’t ________ up to attract thieves. In return, I got big ________.

Somewhere the paperboys are ________ by modern services. We put our orders into online forms that then tell a service that ________ a guy in a truck to throw the papers onto the lawn.

The people that run and own newspapers have the ________ to deliver news to us in a large number of forms, and we should be able to get it any way we want. We should be able to ________ for the form we want it ________, including how it is distributed. I would ________ pay to have a papergirl or paperboy deliver the ________ on the right day in the right way, and I would tip for that privilege.

Let’s bring back the paperboy and with it ________ employment for our children.

   In the early times, the music industry was terrified of taping (用磁带录音), thinking that customers would just copy music, or record from the radio. But that never really happened, at least not enough to cause any real hardship to anyone in the music business.

The same argument arose over technologies like MiniDiscs and recordable CDs. But the thing that terrified the music industry more than anything else was the arrival of services like Napster, which allowed people to share music over the Internet without costing them anything. The music industry was shocked; it saw people exchanging (交换) digital copies that didn’t degrade (削弱) the quality with each transfer, something that stopped tapes being a huge threat.

But it wasn’t the Internet that killed the music industry. In fact, everything is still looking optimistic for many musicians. Taylor Swift has had a good year, and her latest album is likely to make her very wealthy indeed. There is always going to be public demand for music.

However, the technology will simply destroy the record company. The reason is simple. Record companies are a man in the middle that simply doesn’t need to exist anymore. The same way we buy our flights direct, and do our shopping online and have things delivered from Amazon instead of going to a local shop. We have always been willing to enjoy cost reductions at the expense of the middleman, and the record companies are that kind of middleman.

What does the record industry offer? Well, surprisingly little these days. It used to be the case that record companies would go and find new talents. Of course this still happens, but more likely is that an artist will be discovered by the public through YouTube, or even from friends on Facebook or Twitter. Record companies also used to have an important role in producing the music. But countless artists are making their own way through software or any of the other amazing music apps, without any help from the record companies.

   As Internet users become more dependent on the Internet to store information, are people remember less? If you know your computer will save information, why store it in your own personal memory, your brain? Experts are wondering if the Internet is changing what we remember and how.

In a recent study, Professor Betsy Sparrow conducted some experiments. She and her research team wanted to know the Internet is changing memory. In the first experiment, they gave people 40 unimportant facts to type into a computer. The first group of people understood that the computer would save the information. The second group understood that the computer would not save it. Later, the second group remembered the information better. People in the first group knew they could find the information again, so they did not try to remember it.

In another experiment, the researchers gave people facts to remember, and told them where to find the information an the Internet. The information was in a specific computer folder (文件夹). Surprisingly, people later remember the folder location (位置) better than the facts. When people use the Internet, they do not remember the information. Rather, they remember how to find it. This is called “transactive memory (交互记忆)”

According to Sparrow, we are not becoming people with poor memories as a result of the Internet. Instead, computer users are developing stronger transactive memories; that is, people are learning how to organize huge quantities of information so that they are able to access it at a later date. This doesn’t mean we are becoming either more or less intelligent, but there is no doubt that the way we use memory is changing.