'Gut-wrenching'

10 things about Harvard graduates: Liberals, virgins and iPhones

Harvard University has been a launch pad for many high-powered careers - and this summer has seen another crop of graduates leaving the flagship US university.

But if these are going to be the next generation of political and business leaders, what are their beliefs and experiences?

The Harvard Crimson student newspaper has carried out a close-up survey of these new graduates, showing their attitudes on politics, sex and technology.

Here are 10 things revealed about this new young elite.

1. An anxious generation. Among the class of 2018, 41% have at some point sought mental health support from the university's health services. About 15% had also sought support off campus. It's a striking reminder that these young people have studied at a time of rising concerns about stress and wellbeing on campus.

2. More than one in five leave Harvard as virgins. There was a similar number who had never had any "dating" experience while at university. Where dating did take place, dating apps were used by 69%. But more than a fifth of these new graduates reported having been "sexually harassed" at some point during their time as students.

3.Liberals in a Trump era. Politically these young graduates, who began at Harvard during the Obama administration, are opponents of the current presidency, with 72% saying the US is going in the wrong direction. Only 3% of those who voted backed Donald Trump, and two-thirds of these graduates describe themselves as liberal or very liberal.

4. Campus free speech? There were signs that students are self-censoring their views and not debating openly. About two-thirds of students had "at some point chosen not to an express an opinion in an academic setting out of fear it would offend others". This was particularly the case for Republican supporters. But almost half of students wanted to have "trigger warnings" if courses were going to include something that could be upsetting or offensive.

5. Raising a glass. Alcohol has proved to be the most durable of student diversions. Even if these young people are seen as over-stressed high achievers, they're still very likely to have a drink. More than 90% drink alcohol, and most drink every week. But tobacco has virtually been entirely stubbed out. There are almost no regular smokers, and more than three-quarters have never even once smoked tobacco. More students had tried cannabis than tobacco.

6. School shootings. There have been high-profile protests by young people in the US in the wake of school shootings. Harvard students backed calls to restrict access to firearms, with almost nine in 10 supporting tighter gun control

7. Smart students, smartphones. This is a cohort of students completely immersed in digital technology. Almost all of these new graduates own a smartphone, which are so prevalent that they're almost taken for granted. There is a strong bias towards iPhones, used by 87% of those leaving Harvard, with 80% using some other Apple computer device.

8. Harvard introduced an honour code in which students promised not to engage in academic cheating. But this survey suggests that this has not changed behaviour and that levels of cheating have remained broadly the same, with about a fifth of students owning up to having cheated at some stage. Very few of these say that this was detected.

9. Widening access. Entrance to top universities is always controversial. More than 60% back the principle of affirmative action and prioritising the admission of some students based on ethnicity. It was most popular among black and Hispanic graduates and least popular among Asian and white graduates.

10. What next? These graduates are entering an era of polarised views. It's also a United States divided by geography. These new high-flyers are not going to be spread across the country - they're planning careers that will see them clustering in three areas, New York, Massachusetts and California. About a 10th expect to head overseas. The biggest job destinations immediately after college are consulting, finance and technology. But if this gives a picture of where the new money will be made, 60% of the new graduates still expect to be depending on money from their parents.

Amazon and eBay are among retailers pulling a brand of cuddly smart toys from sale after warnings they pose a cyber-security threat.
Concerns were raised about CloudPets products in February 2017 after it was discovered that millions of owners' voice recordings were being stored online unprotected.
Manufacturer Spiral Toys claimed to have taken "swift action".
But subsequent research commissioned by Mozilla found other vulnerabilities.
The devices' California-based maker has not responded to requests for comment.
One independent expert told the BBC it was "great to see retailers acting responsibly", but added she wished they had done so sooner.
"It seems that refusing to sell products that threaten customers' security and privacy is the only way to make designers and manufacturers of these products care about these risks," said Angela Sasse, professor of human-centred technology at University College London.
"The fact that Mozilla had to shame the retailers into this action, more than a year after vulnerabilities were first discovered, is not great.
"Hopefully in future retailers will take such action as soon as shortcomings are demonstrated."
Hackable toys
The CloudPets range includes a number of soft animal toys that are fitted with a microphone and speaker.
These allow children to record their own messages and play back the voice recordings of friends and family members, which are uploaded to the net via a Bluetooth-connected app.
Although Spiral Pets eventually addressed the fact that many recordings had been exposed online, security researcher Troy Hunt revealed last year that it had done so only after being contacted four times about the issue.
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In the meantime, he added, the data had been accessed multiple times by unauthorised parties, and had even been held for ransom, before the matter was resolved.
The same month, a London-based company, Context Information Security, revealed it had found another flaw with the toys that meant hackers could trigger their own recordings in order to spy on owners.
"Anyone can connect to the toy, as long as it is switched on and not currently connected to anything else," Context reported.
"Bluetooth LE typically has a range of about 10m to 30m [33ft to 98ft], so someone standing outside your house could easily connect to the toy, upload audio recordings, and receive audio from the microphone."
The non-profit Mozilla Foundation - which develops the Firefox browser - subsequently commissioned a German research company to carry out further tests this year.
Cure53 found that the second flaw had not been fixed.
It reported a further problem: the toys' app referred users to a tutorial website whose domain registration had lapsed.
There was a risk, Cure53 said, that hackers could obtain the web address and use it to mount further attacks on families.
"I'm a mother of two young kids," Ashley Boyd, vice-president of advocacy at Mozilla told the BBC.
"In a world where data leaks and breaches are becoming more routine and products like CloudPets can sit on store shelves, I'm increasingly worried about my kids' privacy and security."
Duty of care
Mozilla shared the findings with digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which wrote a letter to US retailers selling the items .
"What CloudPets demonstrates is the potential privacy risks that even a toy with limited connectivity can pose," it said.
"That's why we also urge you to consider putting in place new or improved systems to ensure that products you stock, especially those that collect the information of children, have basic practices in place to respect the trust that consumers place in them."
Although the toys no longer appear on Amazon's US store, they are still listed on its UK site.
Amazon declined to comment.
Walmart and Target are among other US companies reported to be halting sales .
UK stores Tesco and The Entertainer also used to stock CloudPets toys, but both appear to have stopped doing so after the earlier reports.
The BBC has also contacted Google and Apple, who continue to offer CloudPets' apps on their stores.
Both said they were looking into the issue.

Where your data goes depends on how you use your phone. As smartphones get increasingly smarter, the amount of data they pull from the Internet is increasing.
For example, as you get instant updates about what your friends are doing, no matter where you are, or get weather warnings when you are out and about, it means that some apps on your phones are taking liberal chunks out of your mobile data.
The fact that you are spending more time browsing the Internet, streaming music or video, will also gobble up your data in a hurry.
Fortunately, your Android devices have many options to help you save mobile data and below are five ways you can do that:
1. Get your Facebook to behave
Facebook is one of the more ravenous apps when it comes to consuming your mobile data. However, there are a number of ways in which you can limit how much data Facebook uses, while still being able to check what your friends and family are up to.
Start by opening the Facebook app and tapping the three horizontal lines icon at the top-right of the screen, then scroll down until you see App Settings. Tap this, then tap Autoplay.
Facebook automatically plays videos when you view your timeline, and this can soak up a lot of mobile data; set this option to either On Wi-Fi Connections Only or Never Autoplay Videos.
2. Use apps offline
A good way of saving mobile data on Android is by finding out which of the apps have an offline mode. For example, Youtube enables you to save music and playlists to your device so you can listen to them without streaming.
By making your most-played songs and playlists available offline, you could save yourself a lot of data, just make sure you download the songs while you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network.
Apart from Youtube, other apps such as Google Maps will now work offline, so it is worth looking to see if your favourite apps feature an offline mode
3. Make sure apps are not auto-updating
There are apps that automatically download updates while not connected to a Wi-Fi network and this is another thing that eats up your data
To make sure apps are not downloading these potentially large updates while you are away from home and using mobile data, open up the Google Play Store and swipe from the left-hand side of the screen to open the Google Play Store menu.
Scroll down the menu and tap on Settings, then make sure that under ‘Auto-update apps,’ ‘Auto-update apps over Wi-Fi only’ is selected.
4. Limit how often apps sync, and what they update
While you may want certain apps to continue to fetch data from the Internet, you can still limit the amount of mobile data they consume by setting how often they connect to the Internet to sync. For example, if you do not need to know straight away that you have got a new email, you can change your email app to only check for new emails every hour.
Some email apps, such as Gmail, use push notifications for email, which means you cannot change how regularly they sync (as the app will tell you as soon as you get a new email), but you can prevent it from downloading images in emails while on mobile data.
To do, this open up Settings and tap on ‘Data usage.’ Scroll down to find Gmail and tap on it, then tap on ‘App settings.’ Select the account you use with the Gmail app, then make sure there is a tick next to ‘Auto-download attachments to recent messages via WiFi.’
You can also tap on ‘Always show’ under where it says ‘Images’ and change it to ‘Ask before showing.’
5. Restrict background data
Many apps will access the Internet while running in the background and only help themselves to small bits of data every now and again.
However, if you have a lot of apps, this can soon add up, so you may find your data disappearing a lot faster than you’d like.
There is an easy way to restrict which apps use your mobile data connection in the background. On the same page as the graph showing your data usage (also found by opening up Settings and tapping ‘Data usage’) you will see a list of apps arranged by how much data they have used. If you want to prevent an app from using data in the background, tap on it and select ‘Restrict app background data.’