When was the last time that you dialed a phone number from memory? It probably depends on how long you've been using {#blank#}1{#/blank#} like a cellphone. While some generations can recall the days of memorizing phone numbers, it's possible that members of Generation Z have never had to remember a single {#blank#}2{#/blank#}. Why is this? Because smartphones offer quick and convenient ways for storing and {#blank#}3{#/blank#} information. There is no need to memorize anything. But this isn't without consequence. As digital devices develop, more and more users' heavy reliance on them may be having disabling effects." Digital dementia（失智）"is the term being used by medical professionals to identify some of these effects.

    Some professionals like Jim Kwik, an expert in memory improvement and optimal brain performance, are taking a closer look at this effect. Kwik describes digital dementia like this:"...we're {#blank#}4{#/blank#} our brains to our smart devices. We're so reliant on our smartphones that our smartphones are making us stupid. As medical studies chart the decline in memory and cognitive skills among smartphone users, a connection is made between symptoms {#blank#}5{#/blank#} with dementia."

    The seriousness of overuse becomes {#blank#}6{#/blank#} when you consider just how young smartphone users are becoming. Author and speaker Simon Sinek points out that young minds" Are not ready for it! Their minds cannot cope with the dopamine（多巴胺）."Consequently, the overstimulation of screens and sounds lead to {#blank#}7{#/blank#} more often than not. So now parents, teachers and managers are asking how to handle the influx（汇集）of young people with this kind of addiction.

    First, monitor your cellphone use. Keep downloading applications like Forest or Checky. Then cut back on any {#blank#}8{#/blank#} usage. Set a specific goal of how much you think you should use your phone.

    Determine {#blank#}9{#/blank#} areas for cellphone use. For example, while you're at home, only allow yourself to check your phone somewhere like a home office. This way, the time in between tasks isn't {#blank#}10{#/blank#} filled with staring at your screen.

    Today, the events {#blank#}1{#/blank#} in realistic-looking or-sounding video and audio recordings need never have happened. They can instead be {#blank#}2{#/blank#} automatically, by powerful computers and machine-learning software. The catch-all term for these computational productions is "deepfakes".

    The term first appeared on Reddit, a messaging board, as the username for an account which was producing {#blank#}3{#/blank#} videos. An entire community {#blank#}4{#/blank#} up around the creation of these videos, writing software tools that let anyone automatically {#blank#}5{#/blank#} one person's face onto the body of another. Reddit shut the community down, but the technology was out there. Soon it was being applied to political {#blank#}6{#/blank#} and actors.

    Tools for editing media {#blank#}7{#/blank#} have existed for decades—think Photoshop. The power and peril of deepfakes is that they make fakery cheaper than ever before. Before deepfakes, a powerful computer and a good chunk of a university degree were needed to produce a realistic fake video of someone. Now some photos and an Internet connection are all that is required.

    The consequences of cheap, widespread fakery are likely to be {#blank#}8{#/blank#}, albeit slow to unfold. Plenty worry about the possible impact that believable, fake footage of politicians might have on civil society—from a further loss of trust in media to the {#blank#}9{#/blank#} for electoral distortions. These technologies could also be deployed against softer targets: it might be used, for instance, to bully classmates by creating imagery of them in embarrassing situations. In a world that was already saturated with {#blank#}10{#/blank#} imagery, deepfakes make it plausible to push that even further.

Can a precise word total ever be known? No, says Professor David Crystal, known chiefly for his research in English language studies and author of around 100 books on the {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. "It's like asking how many stars there are in the sky. It's impossible to answer," he said.

An easier question to answer, he {#blank#}2{#/blank#}, is the size of the average person's vocabulary. He suggests taking a sample of about 20 or 30 pages from a medium-sized dictionary, which {#blank#}3{#/blank#} about 100,000 entries or 1,000 or 1,500 pages.

Tick off the ones you know and count them. Then {#blank#}4{#/blank#} that by the number of pages and you will discover how many words you know. Most people vastly underestimate their {#blank#}5{#/blank#}.

"Most people know half the words—about 50,000—easily. A reasonably educated person about 75,000 and a really cool, smart person well, maybe all of them but that is rather {#blank#}6{#/blank#}. An ordinary person, one who has not been to university say, would know about 35,000 quite easily."

The formula can be used to calculate the number of words a person uses, but a person's active language will always be less than their {#blank#}7{#/blank#}, the difference being about a third.

Prof Crystal says exposure to reading will obviously expand a person's vocabulary but the level of a person's education does not {#blank#}8{#/blank#} decide things. "A person with a poor education perhaps may not be able to read or read much, but they will know words and may have a very {#blank#}9{#/blank#} vocabulary about pop songs or motorbikes. I've met children that you could {#blank#}10{#/blank#} as having a poor education and they knew hundreds of words about skateboards that you won't find in a dictionary."