I recently posted how Social Media is probably making your life worse, especially those who have to look anything up to know everything.  Even more, those whose lives and feelings are governed by their online image and how many likes they got vs. others are losing out on life to a device.

The other issue is having your face buried in your phone while walking.  You are clueless to the world around you.  See the video above.

UPDATE: Getting Cosmetic Surgery for Snapchat Dysmorphia

This is by far the most narcissistic thing I’ve read.  People (tide pod eaters) are getting surgery to look like the filters they use on their Snapchat because they don’t look good enough in life because it is wreaking havoc on their self-esteem.  The report in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery claims that these filters can sometimes trigger body dysmorphic disorder, a mental illness that can lead to compulsive tendencies and unnecessary beauty procedures, among other negative outcomes.

A study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that people who were regular users of social media were twice as likely to feel lonely than those that were light users.

Another study released found that social media, especially Instagram, deepened feelings of anxiety and inadequacy for 15 to 24 year olds.

Go play outside and leave your phone in your pocket.  Also, don’t live your life on social media and you won’t be so self-obsessed.

UPDATE: A study came out stating that good social media don’t out weigh the bad:

(Reuters Health) – For young adults, the adverse effect of negative social media experiences on mental health outweigh any potential benefits of positive experiences, a study of university students suggests.

Each 10 percent increase in a student’s negative experiences on social media was associated with a 20 percent increase in the odds of depressive symptoms, researchers found.

But positive experiences on social media were only weakly linked to lower depressive symptoms. Each 10 percent increase in positive social media interaction was associated with only a four percent drop in depressive symptoms – a difference so small that it might have been due to chance.

“This is not inconsistent with the way we see things in the offline world . . . The negative things we encounter in the world count more than positive ones,” said study leader Brian A. Primack, director of the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania.

“If you have four different classes in college, the fourth class that you did poorly in probably took up all your mental energy,” he told Reuters Health by phone.

Primack said he believes social media lends itself to negativity bias because it is saturated with positive experiences that leave people jaded.

YOU ARE BEING WATCHED

I talked with friends at the gym who are or were in law enforcement  In cop terms they are always made by others because they are constantly looking around.  They are aware of their environment, potential danger, potentially dangerous people and escape routes.  As you can see in the video of fails, these people are vulnerable to all of the above.

Guess how else you are vulnerable with your head buried in a screen?  It doesn’t take a genius to know that Facebook, Google, Amazon and every other site is not only tracking your clicks, but are tracking where you go and what you do.

We used to have instructions, a map and intuition to get where we were going and for the most part, we got there.  millennial’s can’t get to the 7-11 without Google Maps now.  It’s also funny how they can know everything, but have knowledge of very little.  Take away their phone and not only would they not run into things, they’d have to actually learn about how things really work and how to navigate (I’m not discriminating here, I know directionally challenged relatives my age who fall into this category).  Looking up something on your phone doesn’t make you smart.

YOU ARE GIVING THE PERV’S A FREE TICKET

I’m not in law enforcement, but I put my phone away and watch others, especially those watching girls.  It’s almost a sport.   It used to be if a guy was looking in the wrong part of a girl, they got busted immediately.  It was like watching a tennis match seeing the heads turn when a cute girl walked by.  They had to use mirrored sunglasses and just glance when they could and not let their wives/girlfriends catch them.   Now, instead of having to glance behind sunglasses, the perv’s just look down or up (or up and down) anyone they want and modesty just goes out the window.  It’s truly tasteless, but if you had your head out of the phone, you wouldn’t be getting eyeballed so lasciviously.

GET A LIFE

It’s amazing to watch people now escape to their phone in what used to be a social situation.  So stop running into things and get a life.

FACEBOOK IS DESIGNED TO EXPLOIT HUMAN VULNERABILITIES

Recently, former Facebook president Sean Parker pointed out how Facebook is hurting people.

When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, ‘I’m not on social media.’ And I would say, ‘OK. You know, you will be. And then they would say, ‘No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.’ And I would say, … ‘We’ll get you eventually.’

Parker discussed the possible psychological effects of social media and Facebook in particular, especially for children who are now growing up in a digitally connected age:

I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and … it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.

The former Facebook President discussed the company’s initial aim, which was mainly centered around drawing in and building their audience:

The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.

Parker described Facebook’s appeal as a “social-validation feedback loop” which exploits human psychology to keep users coming back to the app:

It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.

Parker also briefly discussed how his vast wealth is likely to allow him to live longer than the average person due to advances in medical science