Children who experience social anxiety—feeling discomfort or distress in social situations—or who are socially incompetent are particularly at risk for developing dependence on electronic media. This is true whether the preferred agent be the Internet, video games, or a smartphone. The more a child hides behind a screen, the more socially awkward he or she becomes, creating a self-perpetuating cycle. In contrast, a shy child who continually works at overcoming social anxiety is likely to overcome it. In the past, the strong desire to belong to a social group during adolescence helped override resistance to social interaction, which would lessen over time simply due to practice. Nowadays, socially anxious or awkward children and teens aren’t forced to practice face-to-face and eye-to-eye interaction because some of their social needs are met online. Thus, in socially anxious children, the ability to tolerate the physical presence of others never builds, and “walls”are erected instead to keep the child feeling safe. An adolescent with somewhat poor social skills in high school can easily become reclusive as a young adult, spending more and more hours online and less and less time interacting in real life. This pattern makes it increasingly harder to make and keep friends. Relationship problems show up at home, too; research indicates that the more time a child spends using the Internet, the less healthy the parent-child relationship becomes. Thus, social incompetence and screen-time represent another bidirectional relationship.

   When a melting glacier released its hold on a 4,000-year-old corpse in September, it was quite rightly called one of the most important archaeological findings of the century. 16 by a German couple hiking at 10,500 feet in the Italian Tyrol near the Austrian border, the partially freeze-dried body still wore remnants of leather garments and boots that had been 17 with straw for insulation. At his side was a bronze ax of a type 18 in southern central Europe around 2000 B.C. On his expedition he had carried an all-purpose stone knife, a wooden back-pack, a bow and a quiver, a small bag 19 a flint lighter and kindling, and an arrow repair kit in a leather pouch. Such everyday gear gives an unprecedented perspective on life in early Bronze Age Europe. “The most exciting thing is that we genuinely appear to be looking at a man who had some kind of 20 in the course of a perfectly ordinary trip,” says archaeologist Ian Kinnes of the British Museum. “These are not artifacts placed in a grave, but the fellow’s own possessions.”