Searching for "addiction"

social media addiction

Social media copies gambling methods ‘to create psychological cravings’

Methods activate ‘same brain mechanisms as cocaine’ and leads to users experiencing ‘phantom’ notification buzzing, experts warn

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/08/social-media-copies-gambling-methods-to-create-psychological-cravings

Social media platforms are using the same techniques as gambling firms to create psychological dependencies and ingrain their products in the lives of their users, experts warn.

atasha Schüll, the author of Addiction by Designwhich reported how slot machines and other systems are designed to lock users into a cycle of addiction.

Whether it’s Snapchat streaks, Facebook photo-scrolling, or playing CandyCrush, Schüll explained, you get drawn into “ludic loops” or repeated cycles of uncertainty, anticipation and feedback — and the rewards are just enough to keep you going.

Like gambling, which physically alters the brain’s structure and makes people more susceptible to depression and anxiety, social media use has been linked to depression and its potential to have an adverse psychological impact on users cannot be overlooked or underestimated.

Tech insiders have previously said “our minds can be hijacked” and that Silicon Valley is addicting us to our phones, while some have confessed they ban their kids from using social media.

However, the number of monthly active users of Facebook hit 2.13 billion earlier this year, up 14% from a year ago. Despite the furore around its data privacy issues, the social media monolith posted record revenues for the first quarter of 2018, making $11.97bn, up 49% on last year.

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more on addiction in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=addiction

Active Screen Time


After studying children ages 4 to 11 on their use of screen time, a University of Michigan study found that “how children use the devices, not how much time they spend on them, is the strongest predictor of emotional or social problems connected with screen addiction.”

According to an Australian study on active and passive screen uses, there are actually two types of active screen use: physical and cognitive. Kids can actually get similar benefits to physical exercise when they play with active video game systems like the Nintendo Switch, XBox Kinect or Pokemon Go.

Playing active games has been proven to have similar effects to moderate walking, skipping and jogging. There are also plenty of active screen uses that spark the cognitive side of the brain.

Studies show that children respond to activity-based programming when it is fun, designed for them and encourages imitation or participation.

AI data and infodemic

AI progress depends on us using less data, not more

A minimal-data practice will enable several AI-driven industries — including cyber security, which is my own area of focus — to become more efficient, accessible, independent, and disruptive.

1. AI has a compute addiction. The growing fear is that new advancements in experimental AI research, which frequently require formidable datasets supported by an appropriate compute infrastructure, might be stemmed due to compute and memory constraints, not to mention the financial and environmental costs of higher compute needs.

MIT researchers estimated that “three years of algorithmic improvement is equivalent to a 10 times increase in computing power.”

2. Big data can mean more spurious noise. 

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more on infodemic in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=infodemic

technology vs teacher

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-12-24-the-answer-for-schools-is-not-more-technology-it-s-teachers-and-human-connection

A business-minded person may think a large class with 50 students, one adult and 50 screens makes fiscal sense, and is therefore an “innovative” idea.A business person may also think that because focus groups of children demonstrate that kids like and enjoy a tech product, that it is educationally sound. Education shouldn’t be viewed as simply a “market,” and children are certainly not “widgets.”

Technology can and should be used with fidelity in schools, but we must balance technology use with developmental psychology, the psychology of addiction and educational psychology. We need educational technology that puts highly trained teachers at the center of product design and implementation. It is human interaction that truly engages children and inspires them.

smartphones technology behavior

Ellis, D. A. (2019). Are smartphones really that bad? Improving the psychological measurement of technology related behaviors. Computers in Human Behavior, 97 
, 60-66
https://www.academia.edu/39660117/Are_smartphones_really_that_bad_Improving_the_psychological_measurement_of_technology-_related_behaviors?auto=download

Conclusions sur- rounding use have therefore been
largely negative and smartphones have repeatedly
been associated with depression (Elhai, Dvorak,
Levine, & Hall, 2017), anxiety (Richardson,
Hussain, & Griffiths, 2018), disrupted sleep
(Rosen, Carrier, Miller, Rokkum, & Ruiz, 2016),
cognitive
impairment (Clayton,
Leshner,&
Almond, 2015), and poor academic performance
(Lepp, Barkley, & Karpinski, 2015). This repeats a
pattern of research priorities, which previously
focused on the ne- gative impacts of many other
screen-based technologies, systematically moving
from television and video games, to the internet
and social media (Rosen et al., 2014).

There is also little
evidence to support the existence of the constructs
under investigation (e.g., technology ‘addiction’),
yet many papers and scales continue to use
language associated with a specific diagnosis (see
Panova & Carbonell, 2018 for a recent review).

When it comes to understanding the impact of
technology more generally, there is an intrinsic
lack of high-quality evidence (Ellis et al., 2018a).
Revised psychometric tests may hold some value
in the future, provided they are grounded in
relevant theory and validated accordingly.

mindfulness teachers

https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2020/02/26/3-misconceptions-about-educator-self-care.html
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How Mindfulness Can Help Teachers and Students Manage Challenging Situations

Patricia C. Broderick May 1

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/53306/how-mindfulness-can-help-teachers-and-students-manage-challenging-situations

Mindfulness in the Secondary Classroom: A Guide for Teaching Adolescents,” (c) 2019 by Patricia C. Broderick. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company.

Many of the risky and potentially dangerous behaviors of adolescents—​procrastination, disruptiveness, disordered eating, cutting, drinking, violence, taking drugs, technological addiction, and so on—​have a common denominator. They likely involve avoiding unpleasant emotional experience by trying to make it go away. The extent to which we do this is a measure of our distress tolerance (García-​Oliva & Piqueras, 2016; Simons & Gaher, 2005). We all have our limits, but individuals who are highly intolerant of distress and unable to cope adaptively have quick triggers and are more likely to suffer from a range of psychological and behavioral problems (Zvolensky & Hogan, 2013).

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more about mindfulness in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mindful

Depression and Anxiety Teenagers

By Karen Zraick  

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/20/health/teenage-depression-statistics.html

The survey found that 70 percent of teenagers saw mental health as a big issue. Fewer teenagers cited bullying, drug addiction or gangs as major problems; those from low-income households were more likely to do so.

Some psychologists have tied a growth in mental health issues among teenagers to increased social media use, academic pressure and frightening events like terror attacks and school shootings.

A study released in 2017 found that the number of children and adolescents admitted to children’s hospitals for thoughts of self-harm or suicide had more than doubled from 2008 to 2015, echoing trends in federal data.

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more about depression in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=depression

Digital Minimalism

‘Digital Minimalism’: How To Hang Up On Your Phone Addiction

February 07, 2019 Jeremy Hobson Serena McMahon

Cal Newport, author of the new book “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World” and an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, argues that phone use is getting in the way of too much of our lives.

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more on contemplative computing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=contemplative+computing

 

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