A new report from the personal finance website WalletHub on the fastest growing cities in America cites five Bay Area cities as those with the highest growth in real GDP per capita at 6.41 percent. Milpitas, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose and Mountain View are at the top of the list for GDP, or gross domestic product. On the other end of the economic divide is Lafayette, Louisiana, which saw the highest drop in real GDP per capita at 5.76 percent. GDP can be used as an economic snapshot of a region because it is a measure of the monetary value of all finished goods and services made within a region during a specific period.

WalletHub based its findings on the analysis of 515 U.S. cities across 17 key metrics. The data set ranges from population growth to college-educated population growth to unemployment rate decrease. The two key factors were sociodemographics and jobs/economy. The report also looked at the growth of tech companies and venture capital investment, growth in median house price, increase in building permits and rate of foreclosures.

Taken as a whole, the Bay Area has long established itself as a formidable economic engine. In fact, if the Bay Area were a nation, it would command the 19th-largest economy in the world, the Bay Area Council’s Economic Institute reported last year, comparing the region’s gross domestic product to that of nations around the globe.

Still some of the WalletHub findings may surprise you. For instance, Enterprise, Nevada, had the highest population growth at 7.40 percent while Albany, Georgia had the highest population drop at 1.59 percent.

Another shocker is that Vista, California had the highest household income increase, at 11.63 percent. For the record, Las Cruces, New Mexico, experienced the highest household income drop at 2.16 percent. You also may not have seen this one coming: Frisco, Texas, experienced the highest job growth, at 6.88 percent.

The data used to create this ranking was collected from the U.S. Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Venture Capital Association and Renwood RealtyTrac.

Indeed, San Francisco now has the highest salaries in the world, with residents hauling in an average of $6,526 a month, according to Deutsche Bank’s new report “Mapping the World’s Prices 2019.”

Buoyed by the booming tech sector, the city also has the highest disposable income in the world of $4,710 a month, after rent. That buys a whole lot of avocado toast and orange wine, no? That figure is up 31 percent year-over-year and 88 percent in a five-year span, as Curbed SF notes, even as the city faces a gaping chasm between the rich and the poor and a massive homeless population.

Baghdad-by-the-bay dislodges Zurich for the top spot, although the Swiss city tops the survey for quality of life. And it’s hard to beat the cheese.

“The rapid growth of the U.S. tech sector is helping San Fran beat traditional capital cities for incomes,” Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid, Craig Nicol and Henry Allen wrote in the report. “Whilst its cost of living is increasing each year and rising up the cost rankings on most measures we cover, it still lags major global capitals. In terms of 2-bed rents however, it is only behind Hong Kong.”

The report adds that San Francisco has the second-highest median rent in the world, just behind Hong Kong at $3,631 per month.

As for other big American cities, the Big Apple comes in third in this global ranking of salaries ($4,612), with Boston ($4,288) and Chicago ($4,062) following closely behind. Cities making the list for the first time include Buenos Aires, Dhaka, Cairo, Rome, Lagos, Riyadh and Seoul.

Here’s the scam: Your phone rings just once in the middle of the night and the caller leaves no message. Panicked you may have missed an emergency call, you call the number back. Or maybe you get a recording and you stay on the phone trying to decipher what the recording is saying. Oops. That’s how they get you.

Little do you know you have been connected to a line with high interconnect fees, similar to calling a 900 number, and a massive phone bill is on its way.

These types of tricky robocalls, also referred to as a wangiri scam, which is Japanese for “one ring and cut,” often come from a 222 country code from the West African nation of Mauritania.

Robocalls are one of the banes of modern living. In August of 2018, Americans were besieged with a record 148.8 million intrusive automated messages — per day — according to YouMail, a robocall blocking service that collects and analyzes data. That’s 1.6 calls a second, or an average of 13 calls per person per month, as the Mercury News reported, though many people get far more.

The FCC advises that you never call back a phone number you don’t recognize. You can also check with your wireless phone provider to block outgoing calls to international numbers. And, unless you know folks in Mauritania— exercise caution when dealing with a 222 phone number.

A controversial figure in terms of how social media has disrupted notions of privacy, Zuckerberg used a limited-liability company, a wealth manager and nondisclosure agreements in an attempt to shield the transactions from public view, the Journal noted. The 34-year-old tech titan has amassed a compound worthy of robber baron at the world famous alpine lake, hailed for its deep and clear blue waters, pristine beaches and ski resorts.

Of course, $59 million might seem like a drop in the bucket to Zuckerberg, who has a net worth of $71.5 billion, making him the 8th richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

The two estates, known as Brushwood Estate and Carousel Estate, were previously on the market in 2017, as Fox notes. Brushwood was originally owned by novelist Stewart Edward White and its previous owner was San Francisco philanthropist Tamara Fritz, according to public records.

The main house has six bedrooms, five full baths, two half baths and is 5,322 square feet. It has a 2,293-square-foot guesthouse with two bedrooms and two and a half baths. It also has a private dock, boat lift and a hot tub, as Fox cites. Meanwhile, the Carousel property is noted for its “rustic charm.”

Certainly this could make for some choice real estate #humblebrags on Facebook. Wonder if he needs a housesitter?

“Everything I see on the TV news makes me worry all the time. There was a school lockdown in our neighborhood recently. That’s why I think it is very important to get him a smartphone,”  said the Hayward mother of three. “Being able to get a hold of him immediately will give me peace of mind.”

As smartphones dominate our daily lives, many parents feel pressured to buy them for their children at younger and younger ages. Some, like Amores, fear losing touch with their kids in a crisis. Others believe the devices offer priceless educational opportunities or worry their kids will feel left out because their friends have phones.

By the age of 13, 83 percent of kids have their own phone — up from just 34 percent in 2012, according to a Common Sense Media report last year. And a widely cited 2016 report by Influence Central put the average age for a child to get a cellphone at about 10, though some experts say that is trending downward. As the age drops, parents are left wrestling with the question of how young is too young for a smartphone.

“Phones are status symbols especially in our tech-worshipping society. But it is parents’ responsibility to make the right call for each child, not just ‘because everyone has one,’” said Caroline Knorr, senior parenting editor at Common Sense Media. “The risk with younger kids getting phones is that the devices are very powerful and require some level of maturity and responsibility.”

California students could soon be restricted or banned from using smartphones at school under a bill proposed by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, which would require schools to limit or prohibit the use of cellphones on school grounds. Experts have long warned that exposing children to smartphones too soon poses a long list of potential dangers, from health concerns to social setbacks.

“Research tells us that increased use of screens is associated with poorer academics, obesity, decreased fitness, reduced social interaction and disturbed sleep,” said Richard Bromfield, a professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School.

The very structure of the brain can be rewired by too much exposure to a smartphone as a child, scientists warn. Children who use smartphones and other screens for more than seven hours a day are more likely to experience premature thinning of the cortex, the outermost layer of the brain that processes thought and action, according to a 2018 study released by the National Institutes of Health.

Yet many parents feel that the risks of a scary world are more pressing worries. Amores wants to give her son a smartphone, instead of a flip phone, so she can video chat with him and pinpoint his location.

“I feel like there is no safe place anywhere,” Amores, 24, said. “If he has the phone on his body, we will be able to trace his location.”

Adamma Ison hasn’t gotten her 4-year-old son Jeremiah a smartphone, but she has let him use her Samsung so much he thinks it belongs to him. Jeremiah began watching YouTube to learn his letters, his numbers and the difference between an octagon and a hexagon around the age of two. She says the phone has been a great educational tool.

“It can be hard to hold a small child’s attention, but YouTube catches his attention and keeps it,” said Ison, 39, who lives in Vallejo. “It has helped him absorb complex information, expand his vocabulary and teach him life skills.”

Eighty one percent of parents with children age 11 or younger let their child watch videos on YouTube and 34 percent do so regularly, according to a report last year from the Pew Research Center. However, having the internet in your pocket also means running the risk of addiction to constant stimulation, doctors say.

“My biggest worry is the way too much smartphone, and social media in all its forms, trains a child’s brain to think about nothing but the latest tweet, text or ping,” said Bromfield. “I worry too that today’s children seem unable to tolerate their own company.”

That’s why Emma Wrankmore’s children don’t have phones. She worries they would distract her children, Blake, 10, and Natalie, 7, from the pleasures of childhood like climbing trees and playing tag with friends at the park while also exposing them to cyberbullying.

“I plan to hold out as long as I can,” said the Fremont mother. “Elementary school feels too young to me. I will probably give in once the majority of the school class has them so I don’t feel cruel — but don’t know when that will be.”

Two years ago, Brooke Shannon started the online Wait Until 8th pledge, a national movement urging parents to hold off on smartphones until 8th grade or age 14. The pledge only kicks in when 10 other families in your kid’s grade and school have also signed up.

“We all got swept away by the tidal wave of technology. It’s been very normalized so that everywhere you go, you see little kids using smartphones,” said Shannon, who lives in Texas and started the effort after seeing legions of first- and second-graders with smartphones. “But the fact is that it’s not good for them.”

Parul Naresh, of Fremont, is also interested in putting off the day her son Veer, 8, gets his own handheld gadget.

“There’s too much inappropriate content, and it’s a super waste of time,” she said. “I wish I myself was never trapped into using it.”

But Ison sees it differently. She’s well aware that she has to constantly monitor what Jeremiah is watching on her phone. She said she would never use the phone as a babysitter.

“The parents who have trouble with technology are the ones who aren’t paying attention,” said Ison. “They aren’t really present with their kids. Technology is not permission to check out. You have to supervise it.”

Gone are the days when pint-sized entrepreneurs could only trek from house to house or set up cookie booths in parking lots to hawk their Thin Mints and Samoas. Like everything else these days, Girl Scouts can now peddle their wares online with the organization’s Digital Cookie platform. There, they or their parents can set up a site and reach out to friends and family through email and social media. 

“I love digital cookie sales. It’s awesome,” says the bubbly Amalea, who three years ago became the highest seller in Mountain View when she sold 1,300 boxes. She’s not close to that yet this year. “If you are a teenager and you are posting pictures on social media anyway, it’s pretty easy to work in some cookies.”

But while many scouts and their parents are thrilled to say sayonara to shoe-leather sales, others argue there’s nothing like the old-fashioned method to teach girls valuable lessons about marketing, sales and winning over customers.

“There’s value in selling Girl Scout Cookies face to face,” says Jane Rabba Nicola, a mother of two from Dublin. “It promotes a sense of community, not to mention getting them to practice the dying art of ‘talking to people.’”

Girl Scouts launched its digital cookie sales platform in 2014, and today, more than 7,300,000 boxes nationally are sold online every year, according to Heather Burlew-Hayden, chief marketing and membership officer for Girl Scouts of Northern California.

“Families are distributed across the U.S., and this allows girls to connect with relatives and friends nationwide,” says Burlew-Hayden, who adds that cookies can be ordered quickly and shipped easily during the sales season, which ends March 3.

The bottom line? Girls like Amalea, who sell both ways, sell 76 percent more cookies than girls who don’t sell online, scouting officials say.

Amalea posts shots of her cookies on Instagram and Snapchat. She produces YouTube videos, such as one in which she is a Rapunzel-style princess trapped in a tower of cookie boxes, to market Amalea’s Cookie World. And she likes the fact that she can still sell online when the weather is bad or she has a lot of homework.

“She’s very committed, and she works very hard,” says her mother, Mendy Thijssen, who estimates about 20 percent of their sales are online. “She also goes door to door. But this is the future. They learn so much about how to run a business by selling cookies, and digital is a big part of that.”

Many scout moms say online sales are more fun and more convenient. Brenda Diaz says the Digital Cookie platform and its app made her life easier when she was in charge of cookies for her daughter Kristen’s troop last year.

“I loved being able to see the orders on my screen,” says Diaz, who lives in Union City. “It’s an awesome way to stay on top of everything and take orders on the go.”

Veronica Vazquez Houck, of Oakley, has been selling Girl Scout Cookies since her 12-year-old Hailey was in kindergarten. Now her 7-year-old Audrina is selling too. She says digital sales have helped reach customers who would rather pay by click. “A lot of people just don’t have cash on them anymore,” she says.

Still, some prefer old-fashioned cookie sales, where scouts have to pitch in person, describing the cookies in detail and explaining why it’s important to support their troop. That’s been the tried and true method of selling since 1917, when the first Girl Scout Cookies were sold.

“If a kid shows up at my door, I don’t care what they’re selling, I will buy it 100 percent of the time,” says Caris Noble, of Pleasanton, who has three children, none of whom are Girl Scouts. “If a mom posts on Facebook or sends a text that their child is raising money for something, I will not buy it.”

“Kids miss out on valuable lessons, including responsibility, accountability, initiative, communication and respecting others,” says Noble. “These are lessons I feel our youth are especially prone to miss out on in this age of smartphones and social media.”

Burlew-Hayden says online sales also teach important lessons in a digital age. “Girls learn valuable and relevant technology, logistics, and sales and marketing skills,” she says, “such as how to brand themselves online, manage their inventory, internet safety skills, and the importance of having a web presence in their business.”

Amalea is quick to embrace all kinds of sales. She pulls a blue wagon full of cookies around the neighborhood after school and works cookie booths with her troop. She makes a point of visiting customers who prefer personal interaction. And she points out that online buyers can request in person delivery when they order. 

“I love getting to meet people almost as much as I love getting to eat cookies,” she says. “I love selling cookies. That’s my thing.”

Spending a lot of time staring at screens as a toddler is linked with poorer performance on developmental screening tests later in childhood, according to a new study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics on Monday.

The Canadian study tracked the early childhood development of 2,441 children and found that higher levels of screen time at ages 2 and 3 can impact development at 3 and 5. Development includes growth in communication, motor skills, problem-solving and social skills. Signs of such development can be seen in behaviors like being able to stack a small block or toy on top of another one.

“This study shows that, when used in excess, screen time can have consequences for children’s development. Parents can think of screens like they do giving junk food to their kids: In small doses, it’s OK, but in excess, it has consequences,” Sheri Madigan, an assistant professor and research chair in determinants of child development at the University of Calgary, who was lead author of the study, told CNN.

Of course, there are caveats to the Canadian study. For instance, researchers note that “it is unclear if greater screen time predicts lower performance scores on developmental screening tests or if children with poor developmental performance receive added screen time as a way to modulate challenging behavior.”

How much screen time is too much? The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents limit screen use for preschool children ages 2 to 5 to one hour a day of high-quality programming. Most children in the study had two to three hours of screen time per day.

This is bad news for all the parents who started out whipping out the iPad to get through endless checkout lines, traffic delays and dinner prep time and found out that kids just can’t get enough screen time. Insanely popular games like Fortnite and Roblox are tough for children to put down.

“It’s addictive,” as David Wanderman, a pediatrician with Stanford Children’s Health has put it. “Anything that gives you a dopamine hit makes you feel good so that it makes you want to do it again and again. Social media and video games trigger that reward response.”

Children of all ages in the United States spend a total of about five to seven hours a day in front of a screen. That includes watching TV, working on a computer or playing video games, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Experts warn that too much screen time can also make it hard for your child to sleep at night, raise your child’s risk for attention problems, anxiety, and depression, and heighten the risk of obesity.

Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Levi Harrison, a Los Angeles doctor, recently noted that flexing your wrist inward to take that perfectly angled and meticulously framed photograph can cause numbness and tingling sensations, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

“What happens is the nerve becomes inflamed and angry, ” Harrison told KABC, adding that this new condition is actually a sort of carpal tunnel syndrome that has exploded because of the recent fascination with selfies.

The Irish Medical Journal has cited several cases of selfie wrist in addition to other selfie-related accidents such as injuries that result from trying to take selfies while jumping on a trampoline, walking on rocks and colliding into other people. Indeed, the researchers note that “selfies have been linked to a large number of mortalities and significant morbidity worldwide.”

In terms of preventing “selfie wrist,” Harrison suggests avoiding repeatedly posting selfies to social media because it can make the nerves “angry” and cause a sore wrist.

“You’re right in the moment,” Harrison told KABC. “Let’s take a picture right now and that’s what happens.”

Harrison suggested ways to try and hold your smartphone without causing extreme stress on the wrist. He also encourages patients to try exercises called “flappers” and the “queen’s wave” to stretch out the wrist.

“That is the nature of our generation right now,” Tina Choi, 29, who is one of Harrison’s patients, told KABC. “We’re taking so many selfies these days.”

Of course, self-portraits are as old as art itself, but never before has the need to capture one’s own beauty been so urgent and so repetitive as in the age of Instagram.

Pediatricians say that hands-on gifts, like old-school jigsaw puzzles — and even the cardboard boxes they come in — spark imagination and creativity better than the electronic devices that parents often feel pressured to buy at the holidays. The doctors advise parents to ignore the flashing screens, which have become ubiquitous in our digital age, and get back to the basics. A cardboard box, for instance, can be transformed into a house or a cash register by the child, which engages their brain while they play.

“The best toys are those that support parents and children playing, pretending and interacting together,” said Alan Mendelsohn, MD, FAAP, co-author of the report and associate professor in the Departments of Pediatrics and Population Health at NYU Langone Health. “You just don’t reap the same rewards from a tablet or screen. And when children play with parents – the real magic happens, whether they are pretending with toy characters or building blocks or puzzles together.”

The best toys are those that match children’s developmental abilities, while encouraging the growth of new skills, according to the AAP. Toys are key to developing children’s brains, language interactions and social interactions and physical activity, particularly as they move out of toddlerhood. Without the right toys, it’s easy for kids to become passive and let the gadgets do all of the work while they play.

Doctors also warn that while many electronic devices are billed as educational, that is not always the case. Much “interactive” media, such as videos, computer programs and specialized books with voice-recorded reading, make claims about educational benefits in advertisements that are unsubstantiated, according to AAP.

“Toys have evolved over the years, and advertisements may leave parents with the impression that toys with a ‘virtual’ or digital-based platform are more educational,” said Aleeya Healey, MD, FAAP, a lead author of the report. “Research tells us that the best toys need not be flashy or expensive or come with an app. Simple, in this case, really is better.”

Pediatricians have long advised that video game and computer use for kids be limited. Total screen time, including television and computer use, should be less than 1 hour per day for children 2 years or older, and completely avoided in those younger than 18-24 months. However,  most children under 9 now spend about two hours a day in front of computer, phone or television screens, according to Common Sense Media.

“The more we know about early brain development, the more we understand the need for play that is based on human interaction,” Dr. Healey said. “There is no screen, video game or app that can replace the relationships built over toys.”

Perhaps even scarier is that the more kids use screens, the more they want to use them, until trying to limit use of the devices becomes a battle between parent and child.

“It’s addictive,” says David Wanderman, a pediatrician with Stanford Children’s Health. “Anything that gives you a dopamine hit makes you feel good so that it makes you want to do it again and again.”

But when YouTube changed its rules about who could make money from its ad revenue-sharing program, the move upset a sizable group of would-be video stars, who saw their income suddenly tank. One of those, Nasim Aghdam, grew so angry that she opened fire at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno Tuesday, injuring three people before killing herself.

In the end, the 38-year-old San Diego woman who believed her social media channels could change the world and promote “healthy, humane, smart living” went viral through an act of violence. Her reaction was extreme, but in other ways the Aghdam tragedy is emblematic of a new breed of celebrity. The path from nobody to star is now littered with hopefuls to the YouTube throne, folks eager to be discovered online in the way Hollywood stars once were.

“I have spoken to teens who were convinced if they kept working on their YouTube channel, someone would come across them and make them a star,” said Scot Guenter, professor of American studies at San Jose State. “Many youth think they are extremely talented even when they aren’t. … I’ve checked out the YouTube channels of some of the would-be stars I know personally, and my critical sense is they better keep their day jobs, if they have any.”

Justin Bieber may be the best known celebrity discovered on YouTube but he is hardly the only one. The highest paid YouTuber right now is someone you may have never even heard of – DanTDM. He’s Daniel Middleton, a 27-year-old from England, who pulled down $16.5 million last year after he parlayed his 17 million subscribers into a sold-out world tour. His niche: videos about games such as Minecraft and Pokemon. He unseated the reigning champ, Swedish vlogger Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, who earned a mere $12 million last year after several controversial postings.

Aghdam, who believed she was being censored, filtered and discriminated against by YouTube, was angry that the platform’s shift in policy cost her a far smaller piece of the video pie. Google-owned YouTube, under pressure to crack down on offensive, hateful or extremist content, earlier this year tweaked its monetization rules, saying in a blog post that the company was working on assigning more human reviewers to monitor content, while assuring video creators their input would be heard.

That changed the game for legions of small video makers like Aghdam, whose channels included workout clips, graphic animal abuse videos and vegan cooking tutorials. It’s not clear how much Aghdam was making from ad revenue before the change, or exactly why the new rules pushed her out. But she was devastated.

“I’m being discriminated and filtered on YouTube,” she said online. “And I’m not the only one.”

Another YouTuber, Bite Size Vegan, agreed, writing on her own channel, “YouTube is trying to silence me! Help me fight social media censorship. Censorship of the truth and bias against vegan accounts is yet another extension of our global society’s willful denial of what we are doing to animals.”

They weren’t the only one upset by the changes.

“I’m an unapologetic YouTube fanboy,” v-logger Casey Neistat wrote in a post titled “WTF YouTube? taking away monetization???.”  That is, he wrote, what “gives me such distress about this issue.”

“YouTube is kind of a monopoly…it should act as a public utility,” said Dennis H, a frequent YouTube user, in an email interview. “Many users want to move to another platform, but there are no big competitors yet. YouTube should consider this in the future if it doesn’t want to end up like MySpace.”

The intensity YouTubers feel about the online video giant worries some psychologists, who fear the gold rush to social media fame may have dark consequences.

“This is a significant concern in our new social media culture,” says Thomas G. Plante, professor of psychology at Santa Clara University. “Folks see others becoming rich and famous overnight via YouTube and other similar social media outlets and they conclude that they can too. When things don’t work out as planned, many become despondent that their fantasies have not been realized.”

While most people can take failure in stride and move on, vulnerable people may be unable to cope with this kind of rejection.

“We don’t know exactly what went on in the mind of the YouTube shooter,” says Plante, “but I am very concerned that there are many unintended consequences of social media that we are beginning to see unfold. ”

Of course, it’s hard to give up on the dream of YouTube celebrity when others have grabbed the brass ring. YouTube estimates 300 hours of video are uploaded every minute.

“If I was a betting man I would put my money on more of these stories in the future,” says Plante. “It is chilling indeed.”

Staff writer Levi Sumagaysay contributed to this report.