youth

Why Karma Is Going To Kill Me On This One

/ John / Leave a comment

When I was young and dumb I was driving in the rain and saw a guy walking along the sidewalk with an umbrella. It looked like the one below.

There was a puddle that I could have driven around, but chose to speed up, going through the puddle and just waxed him. He put his umbrella away and was drenched.

To this day, I am expecting it to happen to me. I avoid puddles knowing that payback is coming. I don’t really believe in karma, but I know it’s coming.

By the way, I’m old and dumb now. I expect it to happen when I get even older and can’t get out of the way. It will be in the most inconvenient time and place possible.

On The Ignorance Of Youth

/ John / Leave a comment

“Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young person who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is their own.” – Sidney J. Harris

I don’t mind them going through this as a right of passage because I know I knew everything at one point. The only thing that is tough to take is someone who can look something up on a phone and thinks they know everything. That is not learning.

Learning involves a lot of failing and mistakes to hone a craft. We all learn best by learning what not to do before mastering any skill.

I make them put their phones away to prove their point and it takes all the bullets out of their guns.

I’m Shocked, Social Media Causes Depression

/ John / Leave a comment

Social Media, the place where you can make yourself look better to feel good about yourself when someone likes the tripe you post. Aside from being little more than a digital high school, a cesspool of hate (Twitter) and one of the biggest time wasters invented, it appears to causes depression.

In recent years, a number of studies have linked heavy social media use to an increased risk of depression.

“But then you have to ask the chicken-and-egg question,” said study author Dr. Brian Primack, a professor of public health at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville.

On one hand, he said, excessive time on Twitter or Facebook might fuel depression symptoms. On the other, people with depression might withdraw from face-to-face interactions and spend more time online.

So Primack and his colleagues decided to see whether social media use made a difference in young adults’ risk of future depression.

It did, according to their report, which was published online Dec. 10 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

The study included nearly 1,000 adults aged 18 to 30 who were depression-free at the outset, based on a standard questionnaire. All reported on their usual social media time and were assessed for depression again six months later.

By that time, nearly 10% fit the criteria for depression.

Overall, depression risk rose in tandem with time spent on social media.

Full report here