“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.”
SENECA
Technology takes tremendous leaps every year and has made communicating with others faster, easier, and more efficient than ever. We can video chat, talk by phone, and send text messages in a matter of seconds. No wonder these devices have become a central part of our lives. A Gallup poll found that more than two fifths of adults check their smartphones multiple times per hour.
But as new technology is making some things easier, it is not making us happier. A quick review of the research that’s been done about recent technology indicates that these hypnotic screens that have suddenly become so hugely important to modern life do exactly the opposite: Texting damages relationships, use of social media corrodes friendships, and the more you use the internet, the more likely you are to feel anxious—or worse.
But before you assume that this chapter is advocating unplugging from everything and moving to a cabin in the woods, read on. While too much technology can eat away at well-being, there are many ways that using high-tech tools can make you feel better. From leveraging meditation and journaling apps to using Facebook to create the right kind of social capital, there are ways to use gadgets to better yourself. This chapter looks into what those are and how to make the machines work for you, rather than vice versa.
Ask: For What Are You Using the Internet?
It may not be the technology itself that impacts your happiness, but the ways you are using it. A look at internet usage and how it affects well-being found that the frequency of going online did not clearly correlate with well-being one way or another, but specific types of internet use correlated to depression, social anxiety, and family cohesion. The study isolated five main reasons individuals go online:
1 To meet people
2 To seek information
3 For distraction
4 To cope with a personal problem
5 To send/receive email
Those who went online for coping—using the internet to solve personal problems, try to “feel close to others,” find information about topics they couldn’t talk about with others, express themselves, and find distraction to relieve themselves from stress—were “more likely to report greater depression, greater social anxiety, and less family cohesion,” according to the researchers. This contrasts with those who went online for more active tasks (such as seeking information or communicating with others) who reported higher levels of family cohesion—thanks, according to the researchers, to the day-to-day communication to loved ones it can provide.
• If you use the internet to help you solve your personal problems, consider alternative, real-world ways to find these kinds of resources.
Beware Internet Addiction
Another concern for frequent online users: internet addiction. The ping of an email hitting your inbox or a notification on Twitter releases a burst of dopamine much like what a smoker feels when lighting a cigarette. At one time or another, all of us have found ourselves opening a browser as soon as we wake up or surfing the web when we should have been doing something “better” with our time. But there’s a big difference between that low-level wasting of time and full-on addiction.
A survey of 572 university students found that for at least 9 percent of those surveyed, the internet was an addiction, with these participants continuing to hop online even as they suffered adverse effects including exhaustion (after staying up late to browse) and academic problems. Those classified as addicts agreed that they shouldn’t use the internet so much, as had been suggested to them by others, and thought that they would use it less if they had more friends. The researchers concluded that “the internet does play a role in some students’ academic difficulties.”
Stop Apologizing
If an email has been sitting in your inbox for a few days, or even a few hours, it often seems polite to begin your response by apologizing for your delayed response. Such anxiety about responding immediately might make you think you are being conscientious, but in fact you are just driving yourself crazy. One study found that people respond to emails, on average, within six seconds. Yet in almost all cases, the sender does not actually expect an immediate response. Duke University psychology professor Dan Ariely conducted a test, asking people who emailed him to fill out a form and indicate if they required an answer right away. Just 2 percent actually needed an immediate answer.
• Remove “Apologies for the delay” from your email vocabulary. There is a high likelihood the recipient didn’t even notice.
Dunbar’s Number Works on Twitter
You may have thousands of followers on Twitter, but how many of them do you actually know? Dunbar’s number—the approximate number of people in your social circle with whom you can maintain a meaningful relationship (discussed in Chapter 6)—has also been found to apply to social media. A team of researchers from Indiana University analyzed data of Twitter conversations collected over a six-month period to test whether this concept—developed before the invention of microblogging—might still apply. Analyzing more than 380 million tweets involving 1.7 million individuals, they determined that users were able to maintain a maximum of one hundred to two hundred stable social media relationships over time.
• Don’t expect your tweets to appeal to all your followers all the time; just focus on your 150 closest friends.
Turn Off Your Social Networks
While social networks are where we go to keep in touch with friends, acquaintances, and people with whom we might not otherwise correspond, they may actually be hurting our social life. Researchers at Florida State University and Florida International University looking at factors that mitigate stress and boost life satisfaction in college students found social networking and texting to be correlated with both lower levels of life satisfaction and higher levels of stress.
As the researchers put it, texting and social media “allow the user to disengage from the demands of real-time social interaction” that would be required in a phone call or face-to-face conversation. The finding that heavy social media users are also less likely to be in a romantic relationship is a bit ironic, considering that many students use social networking cites to find dates. But the research suggests that these behaviors lead to isolation and depression symptoms.
• Instead of “Liking” someone’s status on Facebook, message them to see if they want to grab a drink.
Don’t Trust Apps to Find You Love
Speaking of technology and dating: Tinder may have plenty of users, but apps are not reliable tools for finding love, according to researchers. A study by a team of psychologists tested how skilled sophisticated machine learning was at predicting individuals’ romantic desire for one another—and the machines failed. The researchers asked participants to answer more than one hundred questions about personality traits and preferences in romantic partners. The researchers next used an advanced algorithm to predict which other participants each would be attracted to, based on their corresponding responses. Subjects then took part in four-minute speed dates, noting their level of interest in each person they met.
The algorithm failed to identify any pattern in the participants’ answers sufficient to predict whether any two subjects would be likely to connect. As the study’s authors put it, “compatibility elements of human mating are challenging to predict before two people meet.”
• Apps can’t predict whether you will hit it off with someone; your odds of success are much higher if you simply approach a person in person.
Stop Seeking Likes
“We have the philosophical question, ‘If a tree falls in the forest and there was no one there to hear it, did it make a sound?’ Now the question is, ‘If you posted a happy moment—with your wife, or child, or friend—and it didn’t get any likes, was it actually a happy moment?’ Once upon a time, we did a lot of things with friends or family or on our own, and had space to be just with ourselves. But with a smartphone, now we don’t, and all your connections are in your head, telling you, ‘No, this wasn’t a happy moment.’ Yes, we are social animals, but you have to have your own goals that are built on your visions—not the approval of your connections. When you develop a need for approval in all aspects of life—even areas that are very private—it is a hunger that can never be satisfied.”
—Yair Amichai-Hamburger
A team of Danish researchers asked a group of almost 1,100 subjects to stop using Facebook for one week. The participants were asked before and after the break to rate, on a scale of one (very dissatisfied) to ten (very satisfied), “How satisfied are you with your life today?” Those in the control group remained at about the same average, while those who quit Facebook for a week went from an average of 7.56 to an average of 8.12. The Facebook quitters also described feeling a big increase in their concentration, decisiveness, enthusiasm, and more.
• Take a break from your newsfeed. Even if it’s just for a few days, it can have a big impact.
Reframe Your Smartphone Relationship
“I never hear people tell me in clinical practice that people hope that their family and friends will remember them for the time they spent at work or on their smartphones—and yet, this is where we seem to be spending more and more of our days. While this time is spent under the pretext of being ‘productive,’ often it is more about seeking pleasure and avoiding discomfort. Smartphones are like slot machines, designed to grab your attention and reward the brain and body with short hits of pleasure—unless you are aware of this and can use them wisely and with intention.
“Reflect on and consider the type of relationship that you want with your phone, just as you should any relationship in your life. Get intentional about it. Consider the function of the ways you interact with your phone. Is it about distraction and avoidance or is it about the things that we know lift our spirits and create pathways to connection, meaning, and happiness in our lives?”
—Jo Mitchell, clinical psychologist
Text for “Relationship Maintenance”
As anyone who has sent a random kissy-face emoji knows, texting can have a healthy place in relationships. Researchers at Brigham Young University looked at the texting behavior of 276 young adults from around the United States to examine how it impacted their relationships. They found that texting to express affection was associated with higher levels of attachment between the partners, but other kinds of texting were associated with lower relationship quality:
For men, it was found that overly frequent texting might be taking a toll on their relationships.
For women, it has been found that using text messages to apologize, make decisions, or work out differences may in fact be causing distance.
• Stick with flirty and affectionate subjects in your texts to a partner; anything more serious is probably better handled in person.
Talk, Don’t Text, Over Long Distances
Modern technology would seem to hold an ideal solution for a relatively old-fashioned challenge, the long-distance relationship. The other person can seem so far away, making communication more important than ever in order to maintain a sense of connection. But in a study of how different types of communication impacted satisfaction with relationships, some methods clearly had advantages over others.
The study looked at 311 unmarried participants who were separated from their partners by distances ranging from ninety miles to more than 10,000 miles, for periods ranging from about two weeks to more than ten years. Those who used webcams and phone calls—methods most similar to face-to-face communication—were more likely to express feeling emotionally supported by their partner and social with their partner, and that they were the recipient of advice and guidance.
On the other hand, there was no positive correlation found between text messaging or instant messaging and respondents’ feelings of emotional support, advice or guidance, or socializing. Alarmingly, frequency of text messaging (which has become a go-to means of communicating for many people) was actually found to be negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction; the more partners communicated by text, the less happy they were.
This study indicates that more intimate forms of communication (face to face, telephone calls, and letter writing) remain the most effective communication methods when it comes to keeping love alive over great distances.
• Use Skype or Facetime to keep your long-distance relationship going long term.
Texting Kills Your GPA
On the list of negative side effects of excessive texting, you can add that it hurts your grades. A study that examined the relationship between cell phone usage/texting and life satisfaction of a group of 500 college students found cell phone use and texting was negatively correlated to subjects’ grade point averages. The students surveyed spent a jaw-dropping average of 278.67 minutes (almost 4-3/4 hours) per day on their cell phones and sent an average of 76.68 text messages.
It turned out that high-frequency cell phone users tended to have lower GPAs and lower life satisfaction relative to their peers who used their phones less often. The researchers suggested this might be due to the fact that those using cell phones a lot are not focusing on academic work, or are using them during class or when they should be studying. As they put it, “In other words, high frequency users are more likely to be multitasking and task switching while in class or studying and these behaviors are known to lower academic performance.”
• Each ping may distract you from the task at hand, so try silencing your phone altogether or keeping it out of sight to improve your overall performance—in class or otherwise.
Technology is not always bad, of course. Anyone who has turned to their smartphone when lost in the middle of a city or to watch a cat video when they really needed a pick-me-up knows that having a high-tech device on hand has its perks. That’s why Jo Mitchell, clinical psychologist and director of The Mind Room, a well-being center based in Melbourne, Australia, urges finding ways to elevate your smartphone usage, to turn it into a source of fulfillment instead of depletion. There are three key ways you can do this:
1 Connection: Facebook and social media can offer big social benefits, if used properly. “We know that the strongest predictor of happiness in life is the quality of our social connections, so anything we do to nurture those and to feel valued and appreciated by others is great for our health and well-being, and for theirs,” as Mitchell puts it.
2 Mindfulness: Using mindfulness apps such as Buddhify, Headspace, or Smiling Mind can turn your phone into an oasis of calm. “Suddenly meditation practice is not location bound—it can travel with you wherever you are and fit in the gaps of your life,” she says. “In an attention economy, learning to be master of your own mind, rather than slave to it, is key to happiness.”
3 Charity: Selfless acts and charity have been found to boost one’s well-being significantly. Your mobile device can help you to do that more effectively. “Send a Touchnote postcard to a friend via your phone to their real-world postbox (remember them?),” says Mitchell. “Or donate to a cause using apps like Shout for Good.”
Cell Phones Increase Anxiety
The same study found that that while high cell phone usage hurt GPAs, it also ratcheted up anxiety. The researchers theorized that this may be due to the fact that the ever-present mobile device makes it difficult for users to disconnect and “find the solitude necessary to temporarily escape these perceived obligations”—an important component of well-being and life satisfaction.
• Turn off your notifications—or turn off your mobile device altogether—for designated periods of time throughout the day in order to allow yourself breaks to be present in the moment.Use Fac
Keep It Personal
If you want to help increase the happiness of your friends, stop “Liking” them. A study from Carnegie Mellon University looked at more than 1,900 Facebook users’ activity logs over three months and how they corresponded with their self-reports of psychological well-being. While comments with a personal touch corresponded with improved happiness, “Likes” and similar one-click communications made no improvement in the subjects’ well-being.
• Next time you’re about to click that “Like” button for a friend’s post, think of something more personal to say and write it in the comment field—or say it to them in person.
Use Facebook to Build Offline
Social Capital
As this chapter has so far demonstrated, social media is often a weak stand-in for actual in-person socializing. But it does have some real-world advantages. A team of researchers from Michigan State University surveyed 286 undergraduate students and found Facebook usage to be positively associated with three types of social benefits:
1 Bridging social capital: connections to people from different walks of life than your own—weaker ties than you might have with close friends, but ones that enable social inclusion to a wider variety of groups
2 Bonding social capital: connections to like-minded people—family, team or organization members, or hometown friends
3 Maintained social capital: relationships you continue even after relocating or changing jobs or interests
A positive relationship was found between Facebook use and the building and maintenance of all three of these types of connections. Interestingly, general internet use didn’t help build capital, except in the case of maintained social capital. Students reporting low life satisfaction and low self-esteem gained bridging social capital when they used Facebook more heavily. The researchers pointed out that using social media does not remove one from the real world, but “may indeed be used to support relationships and keep people in contact, even when life changes move them away from each other.”
Stop Comparing, Start Appreciating
One of the biggest reasons Facebook and Twitter negatively impact happiness is the social comparisons that you are likely to make when scrolling through your newsfeed. You may be feeling pretty good with how your day is going only to see that a friend is relaxing on some Caribbean beach or just got a big promotion at work. Or you just bought a new bike you’re excited about—and a high school buddy posts a photo of her fancy new car. The fact that such “upward comparisons” push our mood downward has been established through studies going back to at least the 1950s.
While it’s hard to avoid doing this, Mai-Ly Steers of the University of Houston suggested to James Hamblin of the Atlantic that “the antidote to comparison tends to be gratitude. If you’re grateful for things, you’re not really comparing yourself.”
• If an acquaintance’s boastful post has you feeling down, think of something that’s good in your life. You could even express gratitude for the fact that you have successful acquaintances. If that fails to dislodge your depression, get off Facebook and go do something that makes you proud.
Play More Video Games
While spending your life with an Xbox controller in hand is not the most fulfilling way to live, there may be some benefits to gaming—particularly for the elderly. A team of researchers from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University found that Wii-type games allow the elderly to socialize and exercise while playing. They studied a group of forty-five residents of a senior home and found that the games improve functional abilities like hand-eye coordination and balance, which in turn reduce the incidence of falls among the elderly.
In addition to the physical benefits, the study found that “seniors who played Wii are better off in their psychological well-being than seniors who engaged in traditional activities.” They scored significantly higher on self-esteem and affect, and significantly lower on loneliness, compared to those in the control group. Of course, the findings were limited to older folks and to active games that involved physical motion—sitting on the couch playing the latest Resident Evil probably would not generate the same positive results.
Snap a Selfie
While endlessly photographing yourself is a bit narcissistic, it has been found to be an effective way to give yourself a jolt of joy. Researchers at the University of California, Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences assigned forty-one college students to three different groups. The first was instructed to take a smiling selfie each day; the second was told to take an image of something that made them happy; and the third to take a picture of something they thought would bring happiness to another person and then send the image to others.
Over a period of four weeks, the researchers collected almost 2,900 measurements of the subjects’ moods, and found that those in all three categories experienced upticks in their happiness levels. Their reasons for this varied: selfie takers reported that their smile became more natural over time, while those taking photos of the things that made them happy said they became more appreciative of the little things that brought them joy in life. Those taking pictures and sending them to others reported feeling more connected to the people to whom they sent the photos and felt a reduction in stress.
• Turn your cell phone camera into a happiness booster by snapping a smiling pic of yourself or something you like once a day. That doesn’t mean you have to share those selfies on Instagram—at least not every day.
More Radio and Less TV
Old-school media can influence your well-being in important ways. The effects of watching TV are very different from listening to the radio or reading a newspaper. In the United States, people spend around five hours per day watching TV; in Europe, around three hours. Both would probably do well to cut down.
In Europe, people who watch more than half an hour of TV a day report that they are less satisfied with their lives than those who watch less or none. No such result was reported for listening to the radio. In fact, listening to the radio for more than two hours a day makes people happier than not listening at all.
Reading newspapers has been found to have a similar, and even greater, positive effect to people’s happiness as listening to the radio. Those who read newspapers are much happier than those who do not, and the more time they spend with newspapers, the happier they are.
• Listen to a podcast or the radio for thirty minutes more than you usually do, and watch TV for thirty minutes less.
. . . Though Watching TV with a Significant Other Can Be Healthy
Too much television is not generally good for your happiness level—unless you watch it with a spouse or significant other. Shared media experiences—reading the same books, sharing a movie night together, or watching the same TV shows—have been found to create stronger connections in couples. Researchers conducted a pair of studies and found that while sharing real social worlds (i.e., having living, breathing mutual friends) predicted a greater quality of relationships in couples, in cases where members of a couple lacked mutual friends, a shared media world could promote a better relationship between the two.
• Netflix and chill with your significant other—unless you have real friends to hang out with.