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Even those people who do not update their status or post on various groups on Whatsapp, Facebook and similar platforms keep checking them frequently as a matter of habit or the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO), a phenomenon so prevalent, it had to get an abbreviation. On the dinner table with family, at the bar with friends, sneakily during important office meetings; the smartphones keep us distracted from the present and mentally online. Garima Tikku from Gurgaon says, "When I got my first smartphone, I was excited beyond imagination. It was my shot at being connected 24x7 with my husband who works in another city. We get to see each other once in a fortnight and it was a blessing where we could not just exchange free messages all day but also have video conferencing without burdening our pocket. After a while, I realised that even when he was around, we were glued to the phones. It has become an obsessive, compulsive behaviour that afflicts everyone around us." No place is sacred and smartphones have breached every last citadel of privacy. We are tuning-out of lives of people who matter and tuning-into our smartphones. People are more interested in clicking pictures of their food, of the perfect scenery while holidaying, a precious moment with the family and more to update on Facebook and Instagram, than savouring the moment. Like Vikas Gupta, senior IAS officer, says, "We are living in a world where it is very easy to get disconnected from reality. The virtual world is very enticing and addictive. The social media and apps have really shortened attention spans and people feel the need to connect on their phones all the time." This connecting online is not the same as meeting and engaging with people in real life and could, in fact, be making us lonelier even when we are in touch with a number of people as the quality of interaction is very fleeting and superficial. A study by researchers from Boston Medical Center published in Pediatrics observed that a third of parents with kids at a fast-food joint were constantly on their phones and 73 per cent checked their phones atleast once and were observed to be harsher with their kids. Harbhagwan Singh, Senior Relationship Manager at a leading bank, says, "Smartphone apps have definitely helped us come close to old friends who live in distant cities but those who are close by get lesser attention." K. Yamuna Devi from Visakhapatnam voices a similar opinion and adds, "It has dramatically reduced person-to-person interaction as people find it easier to bond over the internet via their phones." The preference for interacting through apps is indeed preferred by a lot of people especially youngsters as they feel that a phone call gives away a lot and you can portray anything you want to through your messages. This shift to the virtual world has implications that are very real; for one thing, you stand to lose the pleasure of spontaneity. When we type a message, we can deliberate and modify the content to best suit our purpose. Another thing is that it is possible to perceive a message in many different ways without the benefit of tone and expression; after all how much can emoticons convey? How can we discount the fact that difficult interactions are being conducted online without the comfort of personal touch. It is easy to break-up with someone, discuss personal issues, gloss over awkward conversations and try to reconcile differences with a friend or spouse with an online message. Roopali Wirk, a psychologist, is of the opinion that being on your smartphone is a source of constant anxiety as you feel compelled to participate in the exchange of messages and can lead to life-changing addiction. The need to connect online gets so strong that you end up peeping into every aspect of others' lives and sharing the same. "When we are with our family and are on the phone constantly, it sends out the message to them that they are not your priority. We are role models for our kids and complaining about their excessive usage of devices will not help, rather we should reflect on our own habits. Also, the use of smartphones should be limited strictly to necessary interactions," she says. Everybody maintains an online character that they nurture with constant inputs. Tania, a 15-year-old teenager, sums it up aptly when she says, "I love it when people call up or come home to wish me on my birthday, even more so than the online wishes, but if I don't get enough wishes on my Facebook page, I am sure I will sulk for a very long time."
soul
talk According to Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioural science and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and co-author of a paper published in Journal of Consumer Research in October, the best way to present vegetable to kids is to pitch them with no message at all. The study highlights the disadvantages of overzealous marketing, however heartfelt. Two researchers devised a series of experiments that they conducted aided by a YMCA outside Chicago. Three groups of children were narrated a story about a girl who ate wheat flakes. For each group a different version was used, one highlighting that it made her strong and healthy, in the other they were said to be yummy and the third group did not get any description. The number of crackers that each group ate varied sharply. The ones who were told it was healthy ate three on an average, the ones who were told that they were yummy ate 7.2 and those with no detailing ate a whopping 9. The experiment gave similar results with carrots. What hungry men crave Hunger doesn't just mean men will want a bigger portion of food, research shows they also want bigger women. Both men and women crave bigger partners when they are hungry but men in particular desire voluptuous women while women want larger, heavier-set men. And these feelings fade when they are not hungry any more. Dr Viren Swami, psychologist at Westminster University, asked 266 men to rate cartoons of women in terms of attractiveness. Hungrier men selected bigger women as hunger can change your perception of attractiveness. A larger partner suggests they have been successful at finding food and can supply them with sustenance. Major surgeries more of a pain for men Gender plays an important role when it comes to the amount of pain a person feels after major surgeries. A recent Austrian study conducted on 10,000 people found that women experience more pain after minor procedures such as a biopsy while men felt it more acutely after major operations.
Ambition decided by birth order Research has found that first-born daughters are the most ambitious. At the University of Essex, Feifei Bu studied 3,552 people who were organised into 1,503 sibling groups by the British Household Panel Survey. In the comparisons, gender was an important factor as first-born girls were 13 per cent more ambitious that first born boys and the former were also 4 per cent more likely to be more educated. In terms of birth order, 7 per cent first- born kids were more likely to aspire to continue their education and had 16 per cent higher chance of completing higher education than their younger siblings. — Compiled by AG
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Dr. Andreas
Sandner-Kiesling, co-author of the study conducted at the Medical
University of Graz, Austria, said that patients were reviewed for pain
for four days after the surgeries and it was found that 27 per cent
men and 34 per cent women were more likely to report pain after major
and minor surgeries respectively.