Walls, Windows and some thoughts

Earlier this week I was talking to a qualified doctor about social media and loneliness.  Hours, days, months spent  decreasing the big, wonderful world to a "monitor" of 21 inches. Despite these hours spent on the computer in the safety of our homes, more people are lonely than ever.  Despite the possibility of more communication than ever, there is a lot of noise, and not much real talk.  Where the same news items show up on the walls endlessly in the different shapes and and slightly different format, seen from our first row seats or 'loge'.

People are getting defined by their presence on the different sites, and let computer models decide who they should or should not date.  If and when it comes to a real life encounter, in many cases there is a big disappointment.  Because on the net, you are who you want to be, and not necessary who you really are.

How 10% of web users are web dependent. Some of us suffer from IAD, but that could be an overuse of the internet as a form of self-medication for depression.  However, virtual engagements do not stimulate the release of neurotransmitters, such as oxytocin and endorphins, the way real life interactions do. Communication Addiction Disorder is another behavior disorder related to the need of being constantly in virtual communication with other people, even when there is no practical necessity for such communication (think Facebook, Youtube, Twitter,...)

As someone responsible for social media in the job, and spending a lot of time on the web in my free time, it first made me laugh.  And then it struck.

Time to switch off on a more regular basis, and venture in the real world, how freightening that might be.

Marleen

Of cats and photography

It never seizes to amaze me how cat pictures (good, bad, and anything in between) are so incredibly popular on photo-sharing sites and social networks.

Cat in Frituur Fabiola

It looks we might have to thank our brains for this.  It dawned on me earlier this week while reading 'The decisive moment' by Jonah Lehrer.  Lehrer talks about an experiment done by Timothy Wilson (So Wilson Came: Wilson et al., 'Introspecting about Reasons').  In this experiment the psychologist asked a group of female students to make a choice of their favorite art poster.  They were given a choice of a Monet landscape, a van Gogh painting and 3 - yep - cat posters.  The group was split up; one group had simply to rate the posters; while the other half had to answer a number of questions as to why they liked or disliked the posters.  Every one was allowed to take their favorite poster home.

The two groups made completely different choices.  The 'non-thinkers' took the Monet or the van Gogh while the 'thinkers' were almost equally split between the cat posters and the art posters.  In follow-up interviews the women who took the art picture home were happier with their choice than the cat posters. 75% percent of the cat poster owners regretted their selection.  None of the art poster owners regretted theirs.

The women listening to their emotional side made better decisions than the women reasoning about their decisions.

So the next time I see a hugely popular cat picture on a photo-sharing site, I know that (maybe) the viewers really thought about it :-)

Marleen