How To Make A Digital Detox Last, According To Science

an article by JR Thorpe for Bustle [with grateful thanks to Tara at ResearchBuzz: Firehose]


Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The way social media validates our desire to be seen can be a double-edged sword. Sharing and feeling connected with others can be paired with the dopamine rush of their approval — and discomfort if the likes don't roll in. In order to combat that incredibly common letdown feeling, Instagram has begun to trial a 'like-less' feed, where people can't compare their numbers of likes with other accounts, as part of an explicit focus on the mental health of their users. If fixes like that don't go far enough for you, though, some experts recommend a full digital detox or reset in order to reframe your relationship with your phone entirely. But what happens when the week of your reset is over, and you can go back to your past scrolling habits? Science has some ideas on how to make the lessons of a digital reset stick.

Some aspects of social media can play into individual traumas or triggers. I was ordered (yep, ordered) off Twitter by my therapist when the comparisons with other people's shiny achievements started to push my depression triggers. You don't need to feel triggered in order to want to make a change, though. Studies have shown that social media can negatively impact body image, and that teenage girls and young women are particularly vulnerable to social media-induced depression. If you want to do a digital reset, here are some tips from science on how to make it stick.

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A First Aid Kit for When Life Falls Apart

a post by Helena Önneby for the Tiny Buddha blog


“What if pain—like love—is just a place brave people visit?” ~Glennon Doyle

It’s one of life’s greatest paradoxes: When life is easy, everything seems easy. When life is hard, everything seems hard.

This one keeps coming back to me and I keep trying to figure it out. Why do we end up in these spirals of “all good” or “all bad”? How can we get out of the “all bad” faster next time we get trapped? How can we help ourselves get out of there?

I’ve had periods in my life when all seemed lost. When I haven’t been able to fathom ever getting out of bed with ease again. When I’ve thought my current situation would go on forever or I’ve been convinced that suffering was my destiny.

My struggles have often been linked to physical illness. With six different autoimmune diagnoses, I truly felt my life was over. Before even turning thirty years old my life prognosis was far from optimistic.

I call this period, and others like it, the black hole. I managed to get out of there at that time via some major lifestyle changes, involving my body, mind, and spirit.

But I’ve also realized that, most of the time, it’s the internal, silent struggle that challenges us the most. And, sure, I’ve visited there again in the recent five years, and I know I probably will in the future. I think it’s part of the human experience.

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I found this post really useful.

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5 Suggestions for Setting Realistic Expectations with Yourself

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog

Everyone has expectations for themselves. We often assume these expectations are reasonable. Yet many of them are anything but.

We expect ourselves to work without any breaks. We expect ourselves to have the same level of – high – energy every day. We expect ourselves to experience the same emotions – calm and contentment. We expect ourselves to be fearless.

We expect that we’ll handle difficult times like a to-do list, said Elizabeth Gillette, LCSW, an attachment-focused therapist in Asheville, N.C., who specializes in working with individuals and couples as their families grow. We’ll be quick and efficient with our sadness – like we’d be with replying to email or cleaning the kitchen.

Or we become parents and still cling to the same expectations around work and productivity – except, as Gillette said, now we “are sleep deprived and in survival mode. Even for people without children, there can be an expectation of doing everything well, 100% of the time.”

Or we set expectations based on the lives of others. We compare ourselves not only to other people, but to many other people. Life transition and recovery therapist Jenn Fieldman, LPCS, worked with a client who hyper-focused on all the incredible things people were posting on Facebook. They were getting more work done. They were having amazing dinners with their spouse. They were working out every morning. They seemed like the “perfect” parents.

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Posting on Facebook? Nothing but positive most of the time and if I feel the need to express any negativity then it's muted.
Unless, of course, I’m in a safe place like a secret group.
I think it's more the younger people who feel this immense pressure to outdo their peers in these very open places such as Facebook.

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The Impact of Immigration: Why Do Studies Reach Such Different Results?

Christian Dustmann and Uta Schönberg (University College London, UK) and Jan Stuhler (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain) Dustmann, Schönberg and Stuhler also at Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at UCL) published in Journal of Economic Perspectives Volume 30 Number 4 (Fall 2016)

Abstract

We classify the empirical literature on the wage impact of immigration into three groups, where studies in the first two groups estimate different relative effects, and studies in the third group estimate the total effect of immigration on wages.

We interpret the estimates obtained from the different approaches through the lens of the canonical model to demonstrate that they are not comparable. We then relax two key assumptions in this literature, allowing for inelastic and heterogeneous labor supply elasticities of natives and the "downgrading" of immigrants.

"Downgrading" occurs when the position of immigrants in the labor market is systematically lower than the position of natives with the same observed education and experience levels. Downgrading means that immigrants receive lower returns to the same measured skills than natives when these skills are acquired in their country of origin.

We show that heterogeneous labor supply elasticities, if ignored, may complicate the interpretation of wage estimates, and particularly the interpretation of relative wage effects. Moreover, downgrading may lead to biased estimates in those approaches that estimate relative effects of immigration, but not in approaches that estimate total effects.

We conclude that empirical models that estimate total effects not only answer important policy questions, but are also more robust to alternative assumptions than models that estimate relative effects.

JEL Classification: I26 J15 J22 J24 J31 J61

Full text (PDF)

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OECD Health Data 2013: How Does the United Kingdom Compare

Health spending accounted for 9.4% of GDP in the United Kingdom in 2011, slightly above the OECD average of 9.3%. However, health spending as a share of GDP is much lower in the United Kingdom than in the United States (which spent 17.7% of its GDP on health in 2011). It is also slightly lower than in certain European countries such as the Netherlands (11.9%), France (11.6%) and Germany (11.3%).

In terms of per capita spending on health, the United Kingdom continues to spend slightly more than the OECD average, with spending of 3405 USD in 2011 (adjusted for purchasing power parity), compared with an OECD average of 3339 USD. Health spending per capita in the United Kingdom remains at a level of 40% of that in the United States (which spent 8508 USD per capita in 2011).

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