A new longitudinal study by the Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) has uncovered a nuanced relationship between digital literacy¹ and cyberbullying among local adolescents.  The findings show that teens with lower levels of digital literacy are more vulnerable to cyberaggression, and those who make the least progress over time are at heightened risk of becoming victims of cyberbullying.  In contrast, adolescents who experience cyberbullying early on often develop stronger digital literacy skills, likely because they learn to navigate threats, avoid attacks and protect themselves in an increasingly aggressive online environment.  

Citizen science projects are playing an increasingly important role in ecological and conservation research worldwide. In these programs, members of the public support researchers by submitting photographs, audio recordings, observations, or even by contributing to data analysis. In Hungary, no fewer than 17 such initiatives combined their datasets in a joint study. The authors aimed to understand which socio-economic and environmental factors influence participation patterns in Hungary. By comparing the spatial distribution of citizen science data with an independent administrative dataset (municipality level data on income, education, demography, density and protected areas), the researchers identified several general trends as well as numerous project-specific relationships. For example, they found more per capita observations from municipalities with higher proportions of protected natural areas and lower population densities. Furthermore, excluding Budapest, the capital, both the proportion of people with diplomas and the proportion of elderly people showed a positive correlation with participation activity. In contrast, no consistent general pattern emerged regarding wealth or the proportion of children, although several project-specific relationships were observed. The study not only reveals how citizen science data are distributed across Hungary, but also provides robust support for the view that various biases must be taken into account when analyzing such data. The authors hope that their findings will help researchers in other countries design more effective projects and produce more accurate analyses by accounting for some of these or similar biases. 

ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today recognized individuals with awards for their exemplary service to the computing field. Spanning diverse disciplines, the 2025 award recipients were selected by their peers for energizing a thriving community that makes a real impact on both their colleagues and the wider world. This year’s awardees drove advancements in learning tools for computer science education, technology policy, and broadening participation in computing—among other areas.

Children who take more risks on the playground make safe decisions more quickly when crossing a busy street. That’s the central finding of a study that put 424 children aged seven to 11 from Norway and Canada through two virtual-reality tasks—essentially video game-style simulations they experienced through a headset while moving around a real gym. In one, children explored a virtual balancing structure with different height levels. In the other, they had to decide when it was safe to cross a street with oncoming traffic. The researchers tracked how willing each child was to take risks during play, then looked at how those same children performed when the ‘stakes’ were higher.