They give a nice coolness to the eyes when I get tired of staring at the screen,” says Darsana R, a second year student of Lady Shri Ram College for Women. “Sprucing up the background for the ...

College students are struggling. They’re ignoring homework, flunking tests, skipping classes—a “stunning” level of disengagement, as one professor put it to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

“Adding grain to your photos is a big thing now,” says Sonia Uppal, a 20-year-old college student ... because so many people adopted that aesthetic, that has become passé.