literacy - Information Matters

Imagine a fourteen-year-old sitting on the floor of a library, flipping through a book they found almost by accident. The main character shares something deeply personal with them. For the first time, their life is not treated as unusual or controversial. It is simply there. Then the book is removed. No announcement. No explanation. Just absence. The message lands anyway. Your story is a problem. This moment captures what is often missing from public conversations about censorship. When books disappear, the impact is not abstract. It shapes how young people understand themselves, how they understand others, and how they learn to think.

Translation

October 29, 2025 Yuhao Zhang

When YouTube Meets Grandma: How Older Adults Perceive and Influence AI Recommendations

Behind every “You May Also Like” video sits an algorithm — an invisible curator quietly shaping what we see and what we don’t. Most of us accept this invisible hand as usual. We know it’s there, even if we don’t fully understand it. But for older adults, those who first learned about the world through newspapers, radio, and television, the logic of these recommendations can be confusing.