The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kostadin Kushlev ◽  
Ryan Dwyer ◽  
Elizabeth W. Dunn

Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shelly Bhagat

Social media is a new formed society for individuals to interact and connect with each other, despite of their caste, class, region, religion, and race, which eventually is focusing on the overall wellbeing of individuals surfing on social media regularly. Loneliness has a major influence on psychosocial problems, mental health, and physical well-being which is now focusing the individuals more who spends most of the time online. Many people on social media sites often present idealized versions of their lives, leading others to make upward social comparisons, which can lead to negative emotions. Social interactions on social media sites, specifically Facebook, may have a negative impact on face-to-face encounters for individuals who already have high levels of Loneliness and anxiety. In the present review, loneliness is introduced as an exemplar of social media deficits highlighting the social media website Facebook. Here a definition of loneliness is provided, as well as explanation of why it may pose a situation of concern for Facebook users.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teruyoshi Kobayashi ◽  
Mathieu Génois

AbstractDensification and sparsification of social networks are attributed to two fundamental mechanisms: a change in the population in the system, and/or a change in the chances that people in the system are connected. In theory, each of these mechanisms generates a distinctive type of densification scaling, but in reality both types are generally mixed. Here, we develop a Bayesian statistical method to identify the extent to which each of these mechanisms is at play at a given point in time, taking the mixed densification scaling as input. We apply the method to networks of face-to-face interactions of individuals and reveal that the main mechanism that causes densification and sparsification occasionally switches, the frequency of which depending on the social context. The proposed method uncovers an inherent regime-switching property of network dynamics, which will provide a new insight into the mechanics behind evolving social interactions.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 283
Author(s):  
Alejandra Martínez Ibarra ◽  
Jorge Ibarra Salazar

En este artículo analizamos los determinantes de la satisfacción residencial en México a partir de los resultados de la Encuesta de Satisfacción Residencial 2013. Los datos están agregados en 512 conjuntos habitacionales. Estimamos diferentes especificaciones por mínimos cuadrados generalizados para relacionar el índice de satisfacción residencial con variables independientes agrupadas en: características personales, aspectos económicos de la vivienda, medio ambiente físico, medio ambiente social, características de la vivienda, y localización y proximidad. Encontramos que las variables relacionadas con el medio ambiente físico y el medio ambiente social ayudan a explicar las variaciones en la satisfacción residencial promedio entre los conjuntos habitacionales en México. Estos hallazgos indican áreas de oportunidad para la política de vivienda que pueden mejorar el bienestar de los residentes.AbstractIn this paper, we analyze the determinants of residential satisfaction in Mexico on the basis of the results of the Residential Satisfaction Survey 2013. The data are aggregated into 512 housing complexes. We estimate different specifications generalized by least squares to link the rate of residential satisfaction to independent variables grouped into personal characteristics, economic aspects of the dwelling, physical environment, social environment, housing characteristics and location and proximity. We found that the variables related to the physical environment and the social environment account for the variations in average residential satisfaction in housing complexes in Mexico. These findings indicate areas of opportunity for housing policy that could improve residents’ well-being.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sbarra ◽  
Julia Leah Briskin ◽  
Richard Bennett Slatcher

In Press, Perspectives on Psychological Science. Accepted, 11.2.2018This final accepted version may differ from published version as a function of changes that emerge during the copyediting process.This paper introduces and outlines the case for an evolutionary mismatch between smartphones and the social behaviors that help form and maintain close social relationships. As psychological adaptations that enhance human survival and inclusive fitness, self-disclosure and responsiveness evolved in the context of small kin networks to facilitate social bonds, to promote trust, and to enhance cooperation. These adaptations are central to the development of attachment bonds, and attachment theory is middle-level evolutionary theory that provides a robust account of the ways human bonding provides for reproductive and inclusive fitness. Evolutionary mismatches operate when modern contexts cue ancestral adaptations in a manner that does not provide for their adaptive benefits. This paper argues that smartphones and their affordances, while highly beneficial in many circumstances, cue our evolved needs for self-disclosure and responsiveness across broad virtual networks and, in turn, have the potential to undermine immediate interpersonal interactions. We review emerging evidence on the topic of technoference, defined as the ways in which smartphone use may interfere with or intrude into everyday social interactions (either between couples or within families). The paper concludes with an empirical agenda for advancing the integrative study of smartphones, intimacy processes, and close relationships.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anubhuti Poudyal ◽  
Alastair van Heerden ◽  
Ashley Hagaman ◽  
Celia Islam ◽  
Ada Thapa ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: The social environment, including social support, social burden, and quality of interactions, influences a range of health outcomes, including mental health. Passive audio data collection on mobile phones (e.g., episodic recording of the auditory environment without requiring any active input from the phone user) enables new opportunities to understand the social environment. We evaluated the use of passive audio collection on mobile phones as a window onto the relationship between the social environment within a study of mental health among adolescent mothers in Nepal.Methods: We enrolled 23 adolescent mothers who first participated in qualitative interviews to describe their social support and identify sounds potentially associated with that support. Then episodic recordings were collected for two weeks from the same women using an app to capture 30 seconds of audio every 15 minutes from 4am to 9pm. Audio data were processed and classified using a pretrained model. Each classification category was accompanied by a predicted accuracy score. Manual validation of the machine-predicted speech and non-speech categories (10%) was done for accuracy.Results: In qualitative interviews, mothers described a range of positive and negative social interactions and the sounds that accompanied these. Potential positive sounds included adult speech and laughter, baby babbling and laughter, and sounds from baby toys. Sounds characterizing negative stimuli included yelling, crying, screaming by adults and crying by babies. Sounds associated with social isolation included silence and TV or radio noises. Speech comprised of 43% of all passively recorded audio clips (n=7725). Manual validation showed a 23% false positive rate and 62% false-negative rate for speech, demonstrating potential underestimation of speech exposure. Other common sounds included music and vehicular noises.Conclusions: Passively capturing audio has the potential to improve understanding of the social environment. However, the limited accuracy of the pre-trained model used in this study did not adequately distinguish between positive and negative social interactions. To improve the contribution of passive audio collection to understanding the social environment, future work should improve the accuracy of audio categorization, code for constellations of sounds, and combine audio with other smartphone data collection such as location and activity.


2002 ◽  
Vol 91 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1177-1182 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Carmen Hidalgo ◽  
Bernardo Hernández

Social relationships had been important in explanation and prediction of attachment to places. Although some have asserted the importance of physical aspects of the environment in the formation of attachment ties to a place, the social environment is required for the formation of bonds to a place, although strong emphasis on the social aspect has been questioned and the importance of the physical environment noted. The present objective in two studies was to test whether college students ( ns = 30 and 27) show a preference for a place they know, independently of the social interactions developed in them. Results confirmed the hypothesis, i.e., after a very brief stay in a certain place with nobody else there, these college students preferred that place to another with which they had not had previous contact.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12630
Author(s):  
Rolandas Vitkūnas ◽  
Renata Činčikaitė ◽  
Ieva Meidute-Kavaliauskiene

In the context of accelerating urbanisation, cities must ensure a viable economy, social well-being, and a healthy environment. Transport is one of the key conditions for economic development and meeting the needs of countries, regions, and cities. However, transport must meet not only the physiological but also the social needs of society, one of which is environmental security. Urban transport accounts for around 40% of CO2 emissions and 70% of other pollutants from road transport. Thus, one of the most difficult issues for any city to address when building bypasses is the growing number of cars in the city, traffic congestion, and the reduction of all greenhouse gas emissions. The documents adopted in July 2020 aim to revitalise the EU’s economy by moving towards a green economy and sustainability. In addition to the systematic and comparative analysis of concepts published in the scientific literature, the article also presents an analysis of the concepts of the sustainable city and sustainable transport, as well as a study of the social impact of bypasses and the assessment of the security of the social environment in the Baltic capitals. The aim of the article is to assess the impact of the growing number of vehicles on the security of the city’s social environment. Research results show that the number of pollutants and a direct dependence between the number of pollutants and the driving speed were established. Therefore, it needs to make investments in the transport sector: improving roads, the construction of bypasses, and the technical parameters of purchased cars.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (04) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rene Canady ◽  
Jorge Jimenez ◽  
Danesh Thirukumaran

Race describes cultural, historical, and oppressive relationships in society. The use of race in biomedical and scientific studies has been a powerful tool that can reinforce and alter society’s current assumptions about race. Some of the historical uses of race include evidence for race-based medicine, biological inferiority, and genocide. These uses have all used race as a crude proxy for genetic makeup, rather than a biological expression of the social environment that infiltrates the health and well-being of every American. By defining race and its social and cultural impacts on identity and the human experience within research, the field of biomedicine will improve clarity and integrity in addressing historical, scientific, and clinical inequalities. Currently, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) does not contain a definition of race and uses homogeneous ethnical categories when reporting population statistics. We propose that the definition of race be added in the collection of race data as a requirement of the OMB for nationally conducted research.


Author(s):  
Айля Илиязова ◽  

The aim of the paper is to highlight certain aspects of the semantic profile of the concept of "intelligence" through a model called "communication octagon", focusing on the theory of dynamics of communication links, and to analyze the interaction between the intelligent system and the social environment. The focus of interest in the study is human intelligence, based on individual biological differences, which can be modified as a result of construction and transmission of knowledge, mutual emotional transfer, making cognitive requirements (directed inwards and outwards, towards the environment), and as a result of dynamic social interactions.


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