Research links excessive Facebook or Instagram use to depression and loneliness.

Source: Is Social Media Bad for You?

By  Loren Soeiro, Ph.D. ABPP

At any given moment, something like 40 percent of the world’s population—up to three billion people—are using Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or another social media app or website. Most people spend an average of two hours a day on these platforms: sharing photos, commenting on those of others, tweeting their opinions, or simply checking in on what the people in their networks are doing.

And yet, it’s become something of a truism that too-frequent social media use is bad for one’s health. No less of a social media darling than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose upstart political campaign was buoyed by Facebook, has come out against the network, calling it a “public health risk.” Forget about the instances of rampant harassment on Twitter; for anecdotal data on the downside of social media, ask almost any Instagram user whether he or she has ever experienced FOMO—fear of missing out—after viewing the extravagant photos posted by a random acquaintance. Can we generalize from FOMO? Can social media really be bad for your psychological health?

First off, the use of social media has been shown to correlate with loneliness, with heavy users being twice as likely to report social isolation. On the other hand, even if these users aren’t physically or emotionally separated from the important people in their lives, they may still feel that way: More time spent on the most commonly used social networks correlates to higher feelings of loneliness and isolation. Studies have also shown that higher social media use is associated with higher anxiety. It’s important to note that these studies do not prove causation: It’s possible that higher social media use is caused by loneliness and anxiety, and not the other way around.

Also, the ability to feel good about oneself—to have healthy self-esteem—may be compromised by social media use. Survey studies have suggestedthat Facebook use leaves over 60 percent of users feeling inadequate. A 2012 survey, billed as “Sweden’s largest Facebook study,” found an inverse correlation between Facebook use and self-confidence among female users, and suggested that Facebook use is associated with reduced happiness for women. In some studies, it looks as though some women often compare themselves to others on Facebook, and that they often believe that these people are more attractive. This affects their body image, chips away at their self-esteem, and contributes to weighing them down emotionally.

Generally speaking, Facebook provokes an awful lot of negative self-comparison just like this—that is, comparing oneself to others and deciding that their lives must be happier or better than yours. The problem is, even if you judge your life to be the better one, you’re still not likely to feel happy about this, because any kind of self-comparison has a negative effect on one’s moods. And if you feel some envy while you’re scrolling through your friends’ photos, you may be picking up on a real link between social media use and depressed mood. Feelings of envy may be the mediating link between Facebook use and depression: In studies that manage to control for envy by eliminating it as a factor, Facebook use doesn’t correlate with depression in the same way.

The connection between social media use and clinical depression, broadly speaking, is real. Even brief Facebook use can make people feel bad, as a recent Austrian study has shown: Just checking out your feed for 20 minutes—rather than randomly browsing the internet—instigates sad or depressing feelings. (I unscientifically tested this effect while writing this article, and sure enough, it worked.)

Some evidence suggests the more time you spend on social media, the worse you’ll feel: The persons who use social media platforms most often have been shown to be three times as likely to harbor feelings of depression and anxiety. Its users tend to report feeling worse about themselves from one minute to the next, and increased Facebook use even correlates with reports of reduced life satisfaction overall.

So consider taking a break from social media. You won’t even have to quit entirely; studies show that just avoiding Facebook for a short time can provide a significant boost to a person’s sense of well-being.

If you’ve been feeling depressed lately, be aware that limiting one’s social media use to 30 minutes a day may significantly improve mood after three weeks. Taking time away from social media is likely to make you feel less lonely and less depressed. It should cut down on feelings of FOMO and unhealthy envy, and can reinvigorate the self-affirming belief that your own life is as worthy and enjoyable as the lives of others—no matter how photogenic they are.

(Author’s note: If you are aware of feeling seriously depressed or suicidal, please consider seeking immediate professional help.)

References

 

An ounce of prevention will keep you from sending the wrong message when you hit ‘Send.’

Source: The 6 Most Passive-Aggressive Email Phrases You Use Without Thinking, According to a Recent Study

By Scott Mautz  Keynote speaker and author, ‘Find the Fire’ and ‘Make It Matter’

On the Internet there are basically two types of persons: meformer or informer.  Discover what is the difference between the two.

Source: ▷ Meformer or Informer: What kind of person are you on social networks?

By JENNIFER DELGADO

We are different, we have different values, goals and interests, which shines through our way of communicating, also in social networks. In fact, we do not all use social networks in the same way or for the same purposes, as revealed by a very interesting study conducted at the University of Rutgers. These researchers believe that social networks are basically made up of two types of people: “meformers” and “informers.”

According to their study, the 80% of social network users are meformers and only 20% are informers. Each one communicates completely differently, uses his social networks with dissimilar objectives and establishes different relationships with his contacts and followers.

Who are the informers?

Traditionally, self-consciousness has been referred to self-knowledge, but psychologist Tasha Eurich believes that there are actually two types of self-consciousness. There would be an inner consciousness, which is one that allows us to capture and understand our emotions and thoughts, and an outer consciousness, which would allow us to understand how others perceive us.

In fact, there are people who, although they have an extraordinary inner harmony, are not fully aware of how the others see them. There are also people who, although they are aware of how the others perceive them, do not have a great inner vision.

According to this psychologist, only a small percentage of people are fully aware of their inner states and the perception that the others have. These are people who have developed a balanced awareness between inside and outside. The interesting thing is that these people also use social networks differently, basically to inform and share valuable and useful information, both for themselves and for a large majority of people. They are the informers.

According to researchers at Rutgers University, reporters often use social networks to share different types of information, opinions, articles or images that are interesting or curious for the community. The reporters are communicative, respond to other users and usually have a greater number of followers, probably due to the interest generated by the content they share.

Often these are also people who produce original content. In fact, it is estimated that only 1% of the people who use the Internet create content while the rest is dedicated to consuming it, often without interacting.

Another study conducted at the University of Brunel revealed another characteristic of the informers: those who usually share eminently intellectual content have also greater mental openness; that is, they are more open to new ideas and experiences, as well as to discuss different topics.

Who are the meformers?

Approximately 80% of people are meformers; that is, those who are dedicated to publish about themselves. Their profiles on social networks are a kind of digitized diary that they share with the world.

They usually publish the places they go, what they eat, what they do and who they are with at all times. They are people who pour their daily life in social networks with a highly egocentric approach, sometimes falling into narcissistic tendencies.

In fact, researchers at Brunel University provide more details about the characteristics of these people. They discovered that those who publish more frequently, mainly about their social activities and daily life, tend to be more outgoing people. However, those who consistently published about their achievements and progress had more narcissistic features and needed external validation.

Although meformers tend to have fewer followers, usually half that of the informers, since they are limited to their network of friends, these people also tend to develop a stronger bond with their contacts.

Sources:

Romagnoli, G. (2019) Psicologia dei social: esistono “2 tipi di persone” che comunicano online… tu quale sei? In: Psinel.

Marshall, T. C. et. Al. (2015) The Big Five, self-esteem, and narcissism as predictors of the topics people write about in Facebook status updates. Personality and Individual Differences; 85: 35-40.

Naaman, M. et. Al. (2010) Is it Really About Me? Message Content in Social Awareness Streams. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work.Savannah: Georgia.

 

JENNIFER DELGADO

I am a psychologist and I spent several years writing articles for scientific journals specialized in Health and Psychology. I want to help you create great experiences. Learn more about me.

Researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer found that students remember more via taking notes longhand rather than on a laptop. It has to do with what happens when you’re forced to slow down.

Source: Attention, Students: Put Your Laptops Away

Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday

JAMES DOUBEK

As laptops become smaller and more ubiquitous, and with the advent of tablets, the idea of taking notes by hand just seems old-fashioned to many students today. Typing your notes is faster — which comes in handy when there’s a lot of information to take down. But it turns out there are still advantages to doing things the old-fashioned way.

For one thing, research shows that laptops and tablets have a tendency to be distracting — it’s so easy to click over to Facebook in that dull lecture. And a study has shown that the fact that you have to be slower when you take notes by hand is what makes it more useful in the long run.

In the study published in Psychological Science, Pam A. Mueller of Princeton University and Daniel M. Oppenheimer of the University of California, Los Angeles sought to test how note-taking by hand or by computer affects learning.

“When people type their notes, they have this tendency to try to take verbatim notes and write down as much of the lecture as they can,” Mueller tells NPR’s Rachel Martin. “The students who were taking longhand notes in our studies were forced to be more selective — because you can’t write as fast as you can type. And that extra processing of the material that they were doing benefited them.”

Mueller and Oppenheimer cited that note-taking can be categorized two ways: generative and nongenerative. Generative note-taking pertains to “summarizing, paraphrasing, concept mapping,” while nongenerative note-taking involves copying something verbatim.

And there are two hypotheses to why note-taking is beneficial in the first place. The first idea is called the encoding hypothesis, which says that when a person is taking notes, “the processing that occurs” will improve “learning and retention.” The second, called the external-storage hypothesis, is that you learn by being able to look back at your notes, or even the notes of other people.

Because people can type faster than they write, using a laptop will make people more likely to try to transcribe everything they’re hearing. So on the one hand, Mueller and Oppenheimer were faced with the question of whether the benefits of being able to look at your more complete, transcribed notes on a laptop outweigh the drawbacks of not processing that information. On the other hand, when writing longhand, you process the information better but have less to look back at.

For their first study, they took university students (the standard guinea pig of psychology) and showed them TED talks about various topics. Afterward, they found that the students who used laptops typed significantly more words than those who took notes by hand. When testing how well the students remembered information, the researchers found a key point of divergence in the type of question. For questions that asked students to simply remember facts, like dates, both groups did equally well. But for “conceptual-application” questions, such as, “How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality within their societies?” the laptop users did “significantly worse.”

The same thing happened in the second study, even when they specifically told students using laptops to try to avoid writing things down verbatim. “Even when we told people they shouldn’t be taking these verbatim notes, they were not able to overcome that instinct,” Mueller says. The more words the students copied verbatim, the worse they performed on recall tests.

And to test the external-storage hypothesis, for the third study they gave students the opportunity to review their notes in between the lecture and test. The thinking is, if students have time to study their notes from their laptops, the fact that they typed more extensive notes than their longhand-writing peers could possibly help them perform better.

But the students taking notes by hand still performed better. “This is suggestive evidence that longhand notes may have superior external storage as well as superior encoding functions,” Mueller and Oppenheimer write.

Do studies like these mean wise college students will start migrating back to notebooks?

“I think it is a hard sell to get people to go back to pen and paper,” Mueller says. “But they are developing lots of technologies now like Livescribe and various stylus and tablet technologies that are getting better and better. And I think that will be sort of an easier sell to college students and people of that generation.”

 

Photo by gustavo centurion on Unsplash

Even drawing stick figures has its benefits.

Source: Why ceasing to be creative is a mistake

By MATT DAVIS

• Many of us stop making art at a young age, convinced, perhaps, that we just don’t have the talent for it.
• This belief, however, may be wrong, and the benefits that producing art can bring aren’t contingent on talent.
• Is creating art an activity that all of us should pursue? Can artistic skill be taught?

When we think of life skills, we usually think of things like learning to cook, becoming financially literate, learning to de-escalate conflict, or cultivating our emotional intelligence. We don’t typically think of becoming better artists as a life skill. Indeed, artistic talent is seen as something innate — Some people are artists, and some people are not.

However, for those of us who profess to have no artistic talent whatsoever, it may be that cultivating this skill is even more important than for those who have, allegedly, “innate” artistic talent. So, is creating art a life skill? What kind of benefits can it bring? And, crucially, can it be taught, or is the act of creating something limited only to the lucky few?

Our innate love of art