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Media Psychology

~ Informing, Educating and Influencing

Media Psychology

Tag Archives: Social Media

Tech Titans Dish Advice About Phone Addiction – Great Escape – Medium

24 Monday Sep 2018

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Advertising, Media Effects, Media Literacy, Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Comments Off on Tech Titans Dish Advice About Phone Addiction – Great Escape – Medium

Tags

Addiction, Email, Gaming, Mental Health, Smartphone, Social Media

 

Your phone is training you to be its servant. Here’s how to fight back.

by Clint Carter

Source: Tech Titans Dish Advice About Phone Addiction – Great Escape – Medium

With every Facebook post you like, tweet you send, or question you type into Google, you’re giving the internet strength. Feeding the algorithms. Paying the advertisers. You’re also helping to fill server farms that will ultimately be replaced by bigger server farms, effectively anchoring the internet in the real world. This is all sweet and rosy, if the internet-human relationship is mutually beneficial. But it’s not clear that it is.

In some ways, our nonstop online lives are bringing us closer. But at least as often, the relentless pace of social media, email, and constant pings and beeps only serve to pull us further apart. And all this tech is certainly bad for our health and happiness: Research links social media to depression and high-speed internet to poor sleep. Simply having a phone visible during meals has been shown to make conversation among friends less enjoyable.

It’s probably hard to imagine life without a high-powered computer in your pocket or purse at all times, but it’s worth remembering that you’re still an autonomous being.

That said, these effects aren’t inevitable. Not yet, anyway. It’s probably hard to imagine life without a high-powered computer in your pocket or purse at all times, but it’s worth remembering that you’re still an autonomous being. You can decide how often and in what way you interact with the internet. And if you talk to the researchers, authors, and entrepreneurs who understand digital technology best, you discover that many of them already have.

We reached out to eight digital experts to find out how they maintain a (reasonably) healthy relationship with technology. All agreed that push notifications are evil, so you should go ahead and turn those off right now. Some of the experts even said they keep their ringers and text notifications off, at least some of the time. Beyond that, they all had unique strategies for defending themselves against the intrusive, obnoxious, and possibly destructive effects of technology.


Give Yourself One Honest Hour of Work Each Day

Dan Ariely, PhD

Professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Much of Dan Ariely’s work — including Timeful, the A.I.-powered calendar app he built and sold to Google — focuses on making the most of limited time. One way he does this is by starting each morning in a distraction-free environment. “I think very carefully about the first hour of the day,” he says. “I used to have two computers, and one had no email or browser on it.” That’s the one he used for writing in the mornings.

“The thing is to realize that our time to work is actually quite precious.”

Ariely’s travel schedule forced him to abandon the dual-computer setup, but the experiment was fruitful enough that he now relies on a self-imposed internet ban to get work done. “The last thing I do each day is turn my computer off,” he says. “The next day, when I turn it back on, my browser and email are still off.” And Ariely keeps it that way until he’s powered through that first hour. “The thing is to realize that our time to work is actually quite precious,” he says. “We need to protect it.”


Quit Cold Turkey

Steve Blank

Stanford professor, retired entrepreneur, and founder of the Lean Startup movement

Over the two-plus decades that Steve Blank helped shape Silicon Valley, he ushered eight technology startups into the world. But it was during his tenure at Rocket Science Games, a company he founded in the mid-1990s, that Blank began getting high on his own supply. “I found myself drug addicted,” he says. “I’d be up playing games until four in the morning.”

“The devices started as tools and ended up as drugs for most people.”

Video games are hardly a Schedule 1 narcotic, but Blank was losing sleep and, he felt, setting a bad example for his children. Emerging research confirms his idea that games and social media can exert drug-like forces over users. A study published in the journal PLOS One even found that digital addictions can shrink the amount of white matter at certain brain sites, creating changes similar to those seen in alcohol, cocaine, and methamphetamine addictions. “The devices started as tools and ended up as drugs for most people,” Blank says. “App manufacturers are incentivized to make us addicted. I’ll contend that a ton of social media is actually a lot like oxycontin.”

When Blank realized that his gaming habit was robbing him of happiness by way of lost sleep and family time, he snapped his CD-ROMs in half (this was the ’90s, remember). Then he threw the pieces into the trash. “I literally went cold turkey,” he says. “And I haven’t played a video game since.”


Create an Email System and Stick to It

Ethan Kross, PhD

Professor of psychology and director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory at the University of Michigan

After studying Facebook — and, more important, after finding that the biggest users were the least satisfied with life — Ethan Kross decided to refrain from any social media use. But he still checks his email more often than he’d like. “It’s a self-control failure from a self-control expert,” he says.

To be fair, the professor is probably selling himself short. The truth is he relies on three solid rules to prevent compulsive emailing.

“So I just try to change my digital environment. We know from research that can be a powerful tool for enhancing self-control.”

First, Kross pushes all fast-moving work conversations to Slack. “That way I can get information from my lab collaborators quickly, and my email becomes less urgent.”

Second, he uses the snooze function, which is available on Gmail and services like Boomerang for Outlook, for any email that isn’t urgent. “If there are 50 things in my inbox, that can be disruptive to my immediate goals,” Kross says. So he snoozes them for a few hours or a few days, depending on the urgency.

Finally, Kross relies on an email-free iPad for reading, so he can’t check his incoming mail even if he wants to. “I don’t like checking my email when I’m in bed, because once every month I’ll receive something that makes me not sleep well,” he says. “So I just try to change my digital environment. We know from research that can be a powerful tool for enhancing self-control.”


Take Weeklong Breaks as Necessary

Jean Twenge, PhD

Researcher and professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of iGen, a book about how the internet is changing young adults

In April of last year, Jean Twenge signed up for Twitter. It’s her first and only social media account, and almost immediately she found herself clashing with people who disagreed with her research. “It’s a public forum, and I felt a compulsion to defend my arguments,” Twenge says. “But is that the right response? I don’t know. For my own mental health, I know it’s not.”

“It’s a public forum, and I felt a compulsion to defend my arguments.”

It’s not that she wanted to be on Twitter, but as an academic with a book to promote, Twenge felt like she had to. After six months with the service, though, Twenge noticed that she was increasingly giving in to a compulsion to check up on conversations that were making her miserable. “It completely confirmed why I don’t have social media,” she says. And so she scaled back. Twenge kept the account for promotional reasons and still has periods of time when she’s active, but when she needs a refresh, she consciously steps away for days or weeks.

When asked if she’s tempted to open an Instagram or Facebook account — even if just for research purposes — she replies quickly, “Nope.”


Dock Your Gadget and Walk Away

Erik Peper, PhD

Professor at San Francisco State University and president of the Biofeedback Federation of Europe

As a researcher who explores the impact of excessive phone use (it makes us feel lonely) and the bad posture brought on by constantly staring at a screen, Erik Peper makes a point of keeping his phone at a distance. When he leaves home in the morning, he packs it into his backpack instead of his pocket. And when he returns in the evening, he docks it at the charging station by his front door.

What’s the point? There are two, actually.

“There are very few things that are truly urgent.”

First, the microwaves coming off mobile devices could present a small risk to their owners, Peper says. In a paper he wrote for the journal Biofeedback, Peper cites epidemiological research showing that people who use cellphones for more than 10 years are more likely than nonusers to have tumors on their salivary glands and inside their ear canals. They’re also three times as likely to have certain brain and spinal-cord tumors on the side of their head where they hold their phone. “The data is weak and controversial,” Peper admits. “But I believe in the precautionary principle, which says that you have to first prove something is totally safe before you can use it.”

The second reason is that, simply put, it’s a distraction. “The phone hijacks our evolutionary patterns,” Peper says. “We don’t do good with multitasking, so if you’re writing an article, and every five minutes you pop back to answer a message, you’re much less productive in the long term.” The same logic applies to socializing, he says, which is why his phone is stored out of sight when he’s with friends and family.

Does it matter that he’s a little slow to reply to messages? Or that he occasionally misses a call? “There are very few things that are truly urgent,” Peper says. “It’s different if you’re a firefighter, but beyond that, whether I answer the email this minute, later today, or even this evening — it really makes no difference.”


Eliminate Email on Your Phone

Linden Tibbets

CEO of IFTTT, a service that lets you program your apps and smart devices to carry out rote tasks

Years ago, Linden Tibbets decided he didn’t want to be a slave to his email. Which meant, in short, that he would read and send messages only while sitting at his desk.

“The only time I send email on my phone is if I’m running late to a meeting and there’s no other way to communicate,” Tibbets says. “That’s literally the only time.”

“You can be endlessly entertained with what’s happening in the world around you. You don’t need your phone.”

The upshot, he says, is that he’s able to address his correspondance with better focus. “I would much rather spend an extra hour in the evening responding to email than to be distracted by it off and on throughout the day,” Tibbets says. If it takes a while to reply to people, no big deal. “I just say, ‘Thanks for your patience. I apologize for being slow to get back to you.’”

And if he finds himself with a moment of downtime — standing in line for groceries, for instance — Tibbets considers it rare opportunity for mind wandering. “I play a game with myself where I try not to look at my phone,” he says. “I look at people. I read food labels. I observe things in the environment. You can be endlessly entertained with what’s happening in the world around you. You don’t need your phone.”


Schedule Moments of Disconnection

Adam Alter, PhD

Professor of marketing at New York University and author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked

In Irresistable, Adam Alter argues that in some ways, tech addiction may actually be worse than cigarette addiction. Because the web is built on social connections, each new addict makes it harder for the rest of us to abstain. “Addictive tech is part of the mainstream in a way that addictive substances never will be,” Alter writes. “Abstinence isn’t an option.”

“I try to put my phone on airplane mode on weekends.”

So what does the tech critic do to protect his own mental autonomy? He disconnects when the workweek’s done. “I try to put my phone on airplane mode on weekends so I can take photos of my two young kids without interruptions from emails and other needy platforms.”


Swap Out the Brain-Rot Apps for Ones That Enrich

Ali Brown

Entrepreneurial consultant, host of Glambition, a podcast for women in business

Last year, Ali Brown had a social media reckoning. “It was after the election, when everything was getting toxic and weird,” she says. “I was getting all my news from Facebook, and I felt this sense of unease all the time.”

So Brown did an entirely logical thing that most of us haven’t done: She drained the swamp on her phone. In one heroic moment of full-steam bravado, Brown deleted Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and replaced them with apps from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. “I decided to pay for some really good journalism,” she says. “I’ll use my time to read those instead.”

“Responding to social media all day is going to get you nowhere.”

Once her healthier new phone routine was established, Brown added back one social media app — but just one! “I like Instagram because it’s generally happy and fun,” she says. “I post about my kids.”

Brown is lucky enough to have a team to run her Twitter and Facebook accounts, but she knows there are better uses for investing her personal time. “If you’re here in this life to do great, powerful work, then you need to create some space in your day to be a freethinker,” she says. “Responding to social media all day is going to get you nowhere.”

To her clients — mostly women running seven- and eight-figure companies — Brown generally offers this advice: “Try deleting social media for a week. You won’t miss anything, you won’t cease to exist, and you’ll thank me later.”

Go to the profile of Clint Carter

WRITTEN BY Clint Carter

Writer for publications such as Entrepreneur, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, New York magazine, and Wall Street Journal.

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Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?

26 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by Donna L. Roberts, PhD in Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Facebook, Social Media

By David Ginsberg, Director of Research, and Moira Burke, Research Scientist at Facebook

With people spending more time on social media, many rightly wonder whether that time is good for us. Do people connect in meaningful ways online? Or are they simply consuming trivial updates and polarizing memes at the expense of time with loved ones?

These are critical questions for Silicon Valley — and for both of us. Moira is a social psychologist who has studied the impact of the internet on people’s lives for more than a decade, and I lead the research team for the Facebook app. As parents, each of us worries about our kids’ screen time and what “connection” will mean in 15 years. We also worry about spending too much time on our phones when we should be paying attention to our families. One of the ways we combat our inner struggles is with research — reviewing what others have found, conducting our own, and asking questions when we need to learn more.

A lot of smart people are looking at different aspects of this important issue. Psychologist Sherry Turkle asserts that mobile phones redefine modern relationships, making us “alone together.” In her generational analyses of teens, psychologist Jean Twenge notes an increase in teen depression corresponding with technology use. Both offer compelling research.

But it’s not the whole story. Sociologist Claude Fischer argues that claims that technology drives us apart are largely supported by anecdotes and ignore the benefits. Sociologist Keith Hampton’s study of public spaces suggests that people spend more time in public now — and that cell phones in public are more often used by people passing time on their own, rather than ignoring friends in person.

We want Facebook to be a place for meaningful interactions with your friends and family — enhancing your relationships offline, not detracting from them. After all, that’s what Facebook has always been about. This is important as we know that a person’s health and happiness relies heavily on the strength of their relationships.

In this post, we want to give you some insights into how the research team at Facebook works with our product teams to incorporate well-being principles, and review some of the top scientific research on well-being and social media that informs our work. Of course, this isn’t just a Facebook issue — it’s an internet issue — so we collaborate with leading experts and publish in the top peer-reviewed journals. We work with scientists like Robert Kraut at Carnegie Mellon; Sonja Lyubomirsky at UC Riverside; Dacher Keltner, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, and Matt Killingsworth from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and have partnered closely with mental health clinicians and organizations like Save.org and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

What Do Academics Say? Is Social Media Good or Bad for Well-Being?

According to the research, it really comes down to how you use the technology. For example, on social media, you can passively scroll through posts, much like watching TV, or actively interact with friends — messaging and commenting on each other’s posts. Just like in person, interacting with people you care about can be beneficial, while simply watching others from the sidelines may make you feel worse.

The bad: In general, when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information — reading but not interacting with people — they report feeling worse afterward. In one experiment, University of Michigan students randomly assigned to read Facebook for 10 minutes were in a worse mood at the end of the day than students assigned to post or talk to friends on Facebook. A study from UC San Diego and Yale found that people who clicked on about four times as many links as the average person, or who liked twice as many posts, reported worse mental health than average in a survey. Though the causes aren’t clear, researchers hypothesize that reading about others online might lead to negative social comparison — and perhaps even more so than offline, since people’s posts are often more curated and flattering. Another theory is that the internet takes people away from social engagement in person.

The good: On the other hand, actively interacting with people — especially sharing messages, posts and comments with close friends and reminiscing about past interactions — is linked to improvements in well-being. This ability to connect with relatives, classmates, and colleagues is what drew many of us to Facebook in the first place, and it’s no surprise that staying in touch with these friends and loved ones brings us joy and strengthens our sense of community.

A study we conducted with Robert Kraut at Carnegie Mellon University found that people who sent or received more messages, comments and Timeline posts reported improvements in social support, depression and loneliness. The positive effects were even stronger when people talked with their close friends online. Simply broadcasting status updates wasn’t enough; people had to interact one-on-one with others in their network. Other peer-reviewed longitudinal research and experiments have found similar positive benefits between well-being and active engagement on Facebook.

In an experiment at Cornell, stressed college students randomly assigned to scroll through their own Facebook profiles for five minutes experienced boosts in self-affirmationcompared to students who looked at a stranger’s Facebook profile. The researchers believe self-affirmation comes from reminiscing on past meaningful interactions — seeing photos they had been tagged in and comments their friends had left — as well as reflecting on one’s own past posts, where a person chooses how to present themselves to the world.

In a follow-up study, the Cornell researchers put other students under stress by giving them negative feedback on a test and then gave them a choice of websites to visit afterward, including Facebook, YouTube, online music and online video games. They found that stressed students were twice as likely to choose Facebook to make themselves feel better as compared with students who hadn’t been put under stress.

In sum, our research and other academic literature suggests that it’s about how you use social media that matters when it comes to your well-being.


So what are we doing about it?

We’re working to make Facebook more about social interaction and less about spending time. As our CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said, “We want the time people spend on Facebook to encourage meaningful social interactions.” Facebook has always been about bringing people together — from the early days when we started reminding people about their friends’ birthdays, to showing people their memories with friends using the feature we call “On This Day.” We’re also a place for people to come together in times of need, from fundraisers for disaster relief to groups where people can find an organ donor. We’re always working to expand these communities and find new ways to have a positive impact on people’s lives.

We employ social psychologists, social scientists and sociologists, and we collaborate with top scholars to better understand well-being and work to make Facebook a place that contributes in a positive way. Here are a few things we’ve worked on recently to help support people’s well-being.

News Feed quality: We’ve made several changes to News Feed to provide more opportunities for meaningful interactions and reduce passive consumption of low-quality content — even if it decreases some of our engagement metrics in the short term. We demote things like clickbait headlines and false news, even though people often click on those links at a high rate. We optimize ranking so posts from the friends you care about most are more likely to appear at the top of your feed because that’s what people tell us in surveys that they want to see. Similarly, our ranking promotes posts that are personally informative. We also recently redesigned the comments feature to foster better conversations.

Snooze: People often tell us they want more say over what they see in News Feed. Today, we launched Snooze, which gives people the option to hide a person, Page or group for 30 days, without having to permanently unfollow or unfriend them. This will give people more control over their feed and hopefully make their experience more positive.

Take a Break: Millions of people break up on Facebook each week, changing their relationship status from “in a relationship” to “single.” Research on peoples’ experiences after breakups suggests that offline and online contact, including seeing an ex-partner’s activities, can make emotional recovery more difficult. To help make this experience easier, we built a tool called Take a Break, which gives people more centralized control over when they see their ex on Facebook, what their ex can see, and who can see their past posts.

Suicide prevention tools: Research shows that social support can help prevent suicide. Facebook is in a unique position to connect people in distress with resources that can help. We work with people and organizations around the world to develop support options for people posting about suicide on Facebook, including reaching out to a friend, contacting help lines and reading tips about things they can do in that moment. We recently released suicide prevention support on Facebook Live and introduced artificial intelligence to detect suicidal posts even before they are reported. We also connect people more broadly with mental health resources, including support groups on Facebook.


What About Related Areas Like Digital Distraction and the Impact of Technology on Kids?

We know that people are concerned about how technology affects our attention spans and relationships, as well as how it affects children in the long run. We agree these are critically important questions, and we all have a lot more to learn.

That’s why we recently pledged $1 million toward research to better understand the relationship between media technologies, youth development and well-being. We’re teaming up with experts in the field to look at the impact of mobile technology and social media on kids and teens, as well as how to better support them as they transition through different stages of life.

We’re also making investments to better understand digital distraction and the factors that can pull people away from important face-to-face interactions. Is multitasking hurting our personal relationships? How about our ability to focus? Next year we’ll host a summit with academics and other industry leaders to tackle these issues together.

We don’t have all the answers, but given the prominent role social media now plays in many people’s lives, we want to help elevate the conversation. In the years ahead we’ll be doing more to dig into these questions, share our findings and improve our products. At the end of the day, we’re committed to bringing people together and supporting well-being through meaningful interactions on Facebook.

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From the BBC: The Psychological Tricks Behind Pokeman Go’s Success

18 Monday Jul 2016

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Cognitive, GPS, Nostalgia, Pokemon, Smartphone, Social Media, Social Psychology

Nintendo’s latest video game has become an overnight sensation. What’s the appeal?

By Chris Baraniuk

11 July 2016

“Basically the reason I downloaded it is because a lot of my friends in the States have been going mad for it,” says Jon Norris. “They’re quite sensible adults but they were absolutely freaking out about it.”

Norris, head of content at Brighton-based digital agency Rocketmill, is talking about Pokemon Go. It’s a new augmented reality mobile game – and it’s taking the world by storm. The title, which has been available in the US for less than a week, has racked up millions of downloads already. The app lets players track down and “catch” virtual Pokemon that appear somewhere in the world around them.

Although not yet officially available in the UK, eager players like Norris have been able to install the app via some technical workarounds. The app has not risen to fame without controversy, though. For one thing, some have raised concerns over the fact that it can have very broad access to user data – from emails to search history and Google Drive – when users give it access to their Google accounts on iOS devices.

So what is the big attraction? And could its success have been predicted?

Admissions tests

Psychologist Andrew Przybylski at the Oxford Internet Institute has studied what attributes are essential for games to have the chance of being successful. These range from whether they are pitched at the right difficulty for players to how much they build in, or foster, social interaction with others, and he thinks one important factor is the ‘barrier of admission’ to having a good time.

A crucial feature of Pokemon Go, for example, is that it relies on technologies many people have and are already familiar with – their smartphone and GPS. Contrast this with geocaching, for example, which requires a more advanced knowledge of GPS (and even an array of physical equipment).

Many of the games that have enjoyed surprisingly broad appeal in the past – from Snake to Angry Birds and many of the original Wii titles – also married highly accessible gameplay with technology that was relatively new but easy to use, adds Przybylski.

“People have already learned how to use their phones – just like they know how to use their bodies for Wii Tennis,” he explains. “The work has already been done.”

“You can dive into it very easily,” agrees Norris.

Another factor is nostalgia. While Norris, for one, never played any of the previous Pokemon games, many Pokemon Go fans have fond memories of titles dating back to 1996, when the first instalments in the series were released. Even the very fact that people are talking about Pokemon more than usual again has prompted reminiscences among some older fans.

But for Przybylski, if a game tries to use nostalgia as part of its appeal, it must also deliver on its promise of novelty and fun. Pokemon Go, at least, certainly seems to have done so for some.

“The only way to deliver fun is to have players feel confident, give them a sense of exploration and connect them socially to others – on those three very important counts, the game looks like it’s succeeded,” he says.

Indeed, Norris immediately points out an unexpected benefit of wandering around Brighton, Pokemon Go app in hand.

“All the little Pokestops [where players collect in-game items] are associated with various pieces of street art in Brighton,” he comments. “It’s actually shown me a couple of pieces of street art I haven’t seen before.”

People have apparently been willing to wander around outside late at night in search of that elusive Squirtle or Meowth – or even make a catch while they wait for their wife to give birth. This has turned Pokemon Go into a bizarre phenomenon that has helped provide the game with its other, perhaps most important, dimension of success: it is excellent fodder for social media.

In 2013, British writer and TV presenter Charlie Brooker cited Twitter as one of his top 25 video games that changed the world. How is Twitter a video game? By Brooker’s logic, it has a graphical interface and a points-based system of competition (number of followers, for example). The idea that social media is a game, or that it can be played like one, is provocative – but with an app like Pokemon Go in mind this seems to make sense. Part of the game’s appeal, whether its makers intended this or not, seems to be the opportunity to meme-ify and share experiences about it on sites like Reddit, Snapchat and Imgur.

Thus, Pokemon Go plays out not just within the official app, but via these social networks too.

Psychologists are beginning to understand why using social media is so enjoyable, and one aspect of particular interest is the opportunity to craft and experiment with one’s sense of self. We do this offline too, but online we are offered different possibilities – and different potential rewards, such as new friends or increased levels of interaction.

Interestingly, there are many stories online of Pokemon Go players bumping into each other while on the hunt – the game clearly encourages social interaction both via the web and face-to-face, which is unusual.

Pokemon Go, then, may well be the perfect game for the social media age – we’re primed for it, argues Przybylski. Using social media has, he suggests, readied us for this sort of experience.

“The modern era has trained people for playing Pokemon Go,” he says.

Indeed, the way the game is being played and talked about online certainly seems to capture the essence of Mark Zuckerberg’s mantra that social media should enable “frictionless sharing” – activity that happens naturally and that appeals directly to the needs and desires of users.

Of course, it’s not clear how long players will remain enthralled by Pokemon Go. It’s still very new. But as with all overnight successes, this is another phenomenon that has managed to tap into some fundamental desire shared by many.

In doing so, Pokemon Go might just have revealed a little bit more about what motivates people. Whether or not you enjoy playing video games yourself, that’s certainly something worth thinking about.

—

Chris Baraniuk is a freelance science and technology writer. He Tweets as @machinestarts.

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Does Facebook Make You Feel Like a Guinea Pig?

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Literacy, Media Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Emotional Contagion, Emotional Manipulation, Ethics, Facebook, Social Media, Social Networks

Guest post by Liza Persson.

Recently Facebook conducted an experimental study exploring online “emotional contagion”; the emotional bias or “tone” (negative or positive) of the content of what people see online and whether it affects the emotional “tone” of content they create online afterwards. Emotional bias or tone of content was inferred using an algorithm developed for this purpose, which in itself is a good tool for analyzing content (Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014).

What Facebook was doing was not psychology or science in any other area though. Facebook violated procedures and principles in regard to conducting research scientifically. It didn’t live up to the ethical safeguards of protecting those participating in the study, although it did get consent via its terms and services policy which is probably sufficient enough to protect itself in the case of lawsuits (American Psychological Association, 2010). The goal of raising ad revenue is not the rationale for scientific research; serving the good of humanity is (Riley, 2014; Nisen, 2014).
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A Media Literacy Teaching Point

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Literacy, Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Internet, Media Literacy, Potter, Privacy, Social Media

Effective media literacy demands that an individual be aware and cautious about the amount of personal information they post on the internet or maintain on their computers. This information can be easily gathered and used to build a profile that involves personnel activities which can then further be used in predictive analysis for both good and nefarious reasons.

Created by Febelfin (“Fédération belge du secteur financier”)
 

Potter recommends seven strategies to protecting your online privacy:

  1. Search for information about yourself
  2. Correct inaccuracies
  3. Be careful what you post about yourself online
  4. Be skeptical about requests for information
  5. Study privacy policies
  6. Download software to protect your computer from threats to your privacy
  7. Set up your Internet browsers to disallow cookies as a default (Potter, 2013).

(…besides, sugar is bad for you…)  😉

References

Potter, W. J. (2013). Media Literacy. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

Related articles
  • Media Literacy’s Big Tent at NAMLE 2013 (mediaedlab.com)
  • Media Literacy Resources Available (csdtechpd.wordpress.com)
  • Thomas White: Media Literacy: Learning Not to Hate the News (huffingtonpost.com)

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Social Media

30 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Psychology

≈ Leave a comment

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Social Media

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A Study of the Walking Dead

17 Saturday Nov 2012

Posted by Ken S. Heller in Media Psychology, Psychology

≈ 2 Comments

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Cognitive, Influence, Social Media, Twitter, Walking Dead

Here’s some interesting work in Media Psychology. I’d like to see the Twitter data and how it was segregated into categories, but I’m sure that will be thoroughly discussed when the study is published. The team at the Harmony Institute, a research center dedicated to revealing the influence of entertainment, provide a little more insight here. Check out the three minute video explanation on that page.

Media Psychology Blog

Neal Ungerleider:  “A study of “Walking Dead” viewers looks at what happens to the mind while watching a zombie apocalypse… and what happens when viewers don’t share emotionally wrenching scenes on social media.“

See on www.fastcocreate.com

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