SOCIAL MEDIA’S IMPACT ON MENTAL STATE
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Social media has made it fashionable to brag. Gone are the days of being gracious and humble. The closest thing you will see will be a picture of someone showing the sunset from their car with a small portion of their BMW symbol showing on their steering wheel.
From Facebook to Twitter to Instagram, their is no shortage of apps and sites to show off why your life is so much better than everyone else.
Unfortunately, people fail to realize, these posts are perception based – not reality based. Photoshop is being used to change appearances and truths are being stretched in terms of possessions and experiences.
It is easy to see how one can get depressed with their own life, after scrolling through post after post about how great everyone else is portraying their life to be. With many of these apps being logged on at all times, with notifications being pushed to cell phones – people literally can not escape it.
Liking, following and commenting on posts and pictures are replacing true human interaction, which makes for less interaction in “real life”. This is a major concern. Interacting socially is necessary as one can not hide behind a computer forever.
The New York Academy of Medicine have conducted numerous studies that have shown people with strong social connections life healthier lives.
I am shocked there has not been more press on the depression, jealousy and crime resulting from social media playing such a large part in the daily lives of children and adults alike.
Depression – seeing the unbelievable photos one person posted from Bora Bora to another friend getting engaged, while you are hopelessly single to another getting their dream job.
Jealousy – becoming envious of others and the lives they lead, ultimately does not improve yours or those you care about.
Crime – wanting to keep up with the Jones’ leads to stealing and using whatever means necessary to show they also live a great life.
Of course, there are some skeptics who maintain that only those with lower self-esteem will be negatively impacted by social comparison. And some studies found social media has benefited relationships by reinforcing connections made in real life – which makes sense, particularly when you are staying in touch with old friends whom you would otherwise have little to no contact with.
Still, a recent study that examined Facebook use and well-being suggests that social media, in large part, may be doing more harm than good.
Holly Shakya and Nicholas Christakis performed a study of Facebook at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and found that consistently like others’ content and clicking links significantly predicted a subsequent reduction in self-reported physical health, mental health and life satisfaction.
Outside of your health and quality of life suffering, your productivity also suffers greatly. Both productivity personally and professionally. Time away from your family, while sitting right next to them and time away from work, while in the office have become too common. It is truly a tragedy to see something hurting families, friendships and work productivity being discarded.
PRIVACY
Statistics:
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- YouTube has more than 300 hours of video uploaded every minute and over 5 billion watched each day.
- More than 3 million companies have created LinkedIn Company pages
- LinkedIn has over 100 million registered users
- Twitter has roughly 2 billion registered users
- Facebook has over 1 billion users worldwide
*Most users log in daily, or stayed logged in – very concerning for your privacy.
Your “Privacy”
It is almost impossible to keep up to date with the drastic changes continually taking place regarding the online tracking, storing and sharing of your information. The race between giants such as Google and Facebook has been compared to an online “nuclear arms race.”
It is crucial for you to understand that changes to your setting and information are the only consistent in this environment. By providing “free” services to you, you are giving them the right (once you accept the lengthy terms and conditions agreement) to pry into your life.
With the continual push for information, many of these major players now are “publicly traded.” Since they are publicly traded the pressure to maximize profits is even greater. The only way to maximize profits is to continually push the envelope with accessing their users’ personal information and habits to third parties.
I strongly recommend utilizing companies that do not track your information such as Duck Duck Go for search engine uses and downloading Do Not Track + to stop these sites from storing your information and tracking your online movement. Frankly, they are spying on you. Would you be okay with a stranger following you around the store while shopping, taking notes of everything you are purchasing, only to follow you home taking further notes as to the time, how long you were there and where you go next? Me either, invasion of privacy is more like it.
Apps, including social media, emails and games have included in their terms and conditions that they are able to have access to your phone and the data. This includes scanning text messages, emails and much more.
Facebook
For instance, if you have Facebook on your mobile device, they have hidden in their terms and conditions that they can read your text messages. Talk about an invasion of privacy, right?
The link below details how they are using this information. Besides the fact they hide this information in their lengthy terms and conditions
section (very few read), they are now actively using this information to create a profile about you and track you.
How Google Works
Google has done the same and through their android service they store all of your contacts personal information too! I decided to learn more about the Google search process and it is pretty scary to see just how much they “know” about us, in which we did not know they knew. The link below details in a quick analysis how Google works behind the scenes.
I have since switched my search engine usage from Google and Bing to www.DuckDuckGo.com which has a very condensed and easy to understand privacy policy stating they do not believe in tracking, though believe in providing a service without being intrusive. The results are just as quick and I have been impressed thus far and recommend you checking them out. If Google is too hard to resist, Startpage.com utilizes Google for results, without giving up your personal data.
Amazon
With a monopoly on online shopping, entering the grocery business and retail on the horizon, Amazon with their delivery Prime products are a company to be extra careful of. They have quickly taken over the needs for the traditional store for your everyday shopping.
While this may be convenient, with convenience comes concessions. Read their terms and conditions. Remember, if they decide to raise pricing you are at their mercy. Their goal is to be as big as possible. After putting out the smaller competitors, the prices come up – their overall goal is of course to make as much money as possible.
Your information is the most valuable product they own.
Third Party Sites Tracking You
Second to last thing to check out are the issue of “cookies” and storing information you have on your computer and essentially snooping on sites you use, have used and are using to identify patterns, generate direct advertising dollars and recommend additional features the online companies (local and large corporations are doing this now ranging from espn.com, huffingtonpost.com, yahoo.com, cnn.com, foxnews.com, msnbc.com, bbc.com, etc.) that they know match your activity online.
I recently downloaded a product free which had a 2 minute tutorial showcasing how these sites sell your information (without permission) to third parties. Once I downloaded it I visited the sites I frequent for news and information daily and in the right corner of the browser this product called Do Not Track + gives the number of sites it is blocking from capturing your information (stopping these sites from selling your information without your permission). One site in particular had 14 sites they were giving information too. Unbelievable.
Apple/Google : Safari Web Browser News
Most recently The Wall Street Journal reported that Google which had agreed with Apple to assist with searches without tracking information for all products including the Mac, iPad, iIphone, etc that they intentionally circumvented the default privacy settings of Apple’s Safari browser, using a backdoor to set cookies on browsers set to reject them for over 6 months! The link below details how this was done and what this means to you.
What does this mean to you?
The information provided by The Institute of Human Understanding in the books on dating – such as Get Women To Want You and Get Men to Want You detail steps to protect your privacy. Your workplace and home should not be public information. This can be and oftentimes is an invasion of privacy, dangerous in the hands of the wrong people. We take your privacy seriously and will show you how to do the same.
