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Tech and social media are making us feel lonelier than ever:
You've had a social day. Two hundred Facebook friends posted birthday messages, your video of Mr. Meow shredding the toilet paper stash got dozens of retweets, and all the compliments on your latest Instagram selfie have you strutting with an extra swagger. Still, you can't help but notice an ache that can only be described as loneliness.
That we feel this way even when hyperconnected might seem like a contradiction. But the facts are clear: Constant virtual connections can often amplify the feeling of loneliness.
"Internet-related technologies are great at giving us the perception of connectedness," says Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, a Stanford University psychiatrist who's written about the intersection of psychology and tech. The truth, he says, is the time and energy spent on social media's countless connections may be happening at the expense of more rooted, genuinely supportive and truly close relationships.
If virtual socializing cannot substitute for the real thing, will social media prove out to be nothing more than a fad of the late 20th and early 21st centuries?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday June 19 2020, @03:32PM (3 children)
If true, that explains a lot. For me, alcohol consumption was always a matter of diminishing returns. More and more alcohol is needed to chase a buzz that becomes harder and harder to reach, and generally crappier in the long term. It's a shitty substance, although beer is delicious.
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If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 19 2020, @06:00PM (2 children)
More and more studies (finally starting to be done outside the tobacco industries who don't share their results) are showing how additional brain receptors are formed for chemicals like nicotine, creating addiction, particularly when exposed during certain phases of development: such as high school/college age.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday June 19 2020, @10:22PM (1 child)
Yeah it's the reduction in the other brain receptors that makes it a sort of Catch 22; if an addictive substance like alcohol is needed for reward and that substance becomes less effective over time due to tolerance, you're pretty screwed, unless the brain can develop new receptors in adulthood--I'm no biochemist and I don't know the answer to that.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 20 2020, @01:16AM
It's all a relative game. The first step to mastering an addiction is to become aware that you are addicted. Mindfulness and all that - there's a reason the Buddhists have been practicing it for so long. The key to ultimate happiness is to desire nothing, only then will you have everything you desire... but we are doomed to always want / need some things.
But circling back to the biochemistry: knowing and understanding that your brain is pushing these agendae on you does go a long way toward mastering them and realizing other goals than just feeding the beast.
🌻🌻 [google.com]