social-media

Study finds that playing videogames may be more cognitively beneficial for children than other forms of screentime (social media, watching videos/ TV)

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Many par­ents feel guilty when their chil­dren play video games for hours on end. Some even wor­ry it could make their chil­dren less clever. And, indeed, that’s a top­ic sci­en­tists have clashed over for years.

In our new study, we inves­ti­gat­ed how video games affect the minds of chil­dren, inter­view­ing and test­ing more than 5,000 chil­dren aged ten to 12. And the results, pub­lished in Sci­en­tif­ic Reports, will be sur­pris­ing to some. [Read more…] about Study finds that play­ing videogames may be more cog­ni­tive­ly ben­e­fi­cial for chil­dren than oth­er forms of screen­time (social media, watch­ing videos/ TV)

Study: Social media and general tech engagement not found to “fry” teenagers’ brains

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Lit­tle to no increase in asso­ci­a­tion between ado­les­cents’ men­tal health prob­lems and dig­i­tal tech (Sci­ence Daily):

With the explo­sion in dig­i­tal enter­tain­ment options over the past sev­er­al decades and the more recent restric­tions on out­door and in-per­son social activ­i­ties, par­ents may wor­ry that exces­sive engage­ment with dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy could have long-term effects on their chil­dren’s men­tal health.

A new study pub­lished in the jour­nal Clin­i­cal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence, how­ev­er, found lit­tle evi­dence for an increased asso­ci­a­tion between ado­les­cents’ tech­nol­o­gy engage­ment and men­tal health prob­lems over the past 30 years. The data did not con­sis­tent­ly sup­port the sug­ges­tion that the tech­nolo­gies we wor­ry about most (e.g., smart­phones) are becom­ing more harm­ful… [Read more…] about Study: Social media and gen­er­al tech engage­ment not found to “fry” teenagers’ brains

On cutting “empty brain calories” by reading a book instead of social media

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Stop doom­scrolling on social media and read a book (For­tune):

2020 is the year I decid­ed to cut back on emp­ty brain calo­ries. That’s right, I swore off the mind­less junk from social media. Because we are all like­ly to con­duct more and more doom­scrolling as the elec­tion nears and 2020 con­tin­ues its infamy, I urge you to stop ingest­ing dig­i­tal junk, and start read­ing a book. [Read more…] about On cut­ting “emp­ty brain calo­ries” by read­ing a book instead of social media

Four guidelines for smart use of smartphones

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These days, you can’t go any­where with­out hear­ing about how tech­nol­o­gy is ruin­ing every­thing, includ­ing our hap­pi­ness. There is some truth to this, but it’s not the whole story.

Tech­nol­o­gy can be bad for us—for exam­ple, when social media gives us FOMO (fear of miss­ing out) or traps us in fil­ter bub­bles that pre­vent us from see­ing mul­ti­ple points of view on impor­tant issues. As a soci­ety, we are increas­ing­ly con­cerned that tech­nolo­gies like smart­phones and social media result in more social com­par­i­son, bul­ly­ing, and loneliness—all stum­bling blocks to hap­pi­ness. Tech­nol­o­gy seems to be bad for our hap­pi­ness when it inter­feres with the men­tal, social, emo­tion­al, and behav­ioral process­es that con­tribute to well-being.

But we often fail to real­ize (and dis­cuss) the ways that tech­nol­o­gy can also sup­port hap­pi­ness and well-being—for exam­ple [Read more…] about Four guide­lines for smart use of smartphones

Brain Training vs Facebook/ Social Media: 1 — 0

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Does Reg­u­lar Brain Train­ing Keep Sele­na Gomez at the Peak of Her Career? (YCB):

“Sele­na Gomez hit the head­lines this week when she revealed to ELLE Mag­a­zine that, despite being one of the world’s most influ­en­tial celebri­ties online with 142 mil­lion fol­low­ers on Insta­gram alone, she actu­al­ly has no social media or pho­to edit­ing apps on her smartphone.

In fact, the only app she does have is Peak, a pop­u­lar brain-train­ing app.

The Peak app has already reached 40 mil­lion down­loads world­wide, and Sele­na Gomez is just part of a grow­ing trend of 20-some­things who are now using apps and games like this for fun, self-improve­ment and relax­ation, rather than just pas­sive­ly brows­ing online content.”

News in Context:

Tara Thiagarajan, Founder & Chief Scientist of Sapien Labs, on why she stays off social media

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Ques­tion: First of all, if I may, what do you do to stay sharp 🙂

Answer: I stay off social media almost entire­ly and also try hard not to get caught up with the dai­ly news cycle; this helps me get to more focused states where I can keep con­cen­tra­tion on long-form con­tent with greater depth. I also pay atten­tion to diet (no sug­ar), reg­u­lar exer­cise and meditation.

–> Keep read­ing the inter­view over at Medi­um with this great pio­neer work­ing on ways to democ­ra­tize access to neu­ro­science and neu­rotech in order to improve brain­health and men­tal health worldwide.