Wearing the Inside Out: Meaningful (Dis)connections

When used for purposes of knowledge acquisition, information sharing, and community involvement, no one would debate the idea that social media can have an enduring positive impact our lives. However, with every scroll, click, like, and share, the digital debris that we collect and store on our internal ‘hard drive’ has a way of leaving its indelible mark on our psyche. And therein lies the bane of our socially mediated existence: Our desire to connect with the energies that make us feel whole and inspired lead us down the social media rabbit hole, yet we come up feeling incomplete, discouraged, and blah. We find ourselves on the path to digital self-destruction. As many of us can testify, extended social media use can cause our nervous systems to get stuck in overload mode. Like computers, we have a finite capacity to effectively store, process, and integrate the gazillion bytes of data that we input on a daily basis. As we continually integrate this information, we can easily overwhelm our ‘processor’ (in fact, we often do so without even realizing it). And when we do, our functionality lags, and, eventually, we run the risk of crashing. A quick look at human neurophysiology tells us that in order for our neural networks to function optimally, our brain needs rest. It needs relaxation. And it needs an occasional reboot. And, no, the brain isn’t really relaxing when we go down the rabbit hole. In fact, current research on social media behavior shows that our neu...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Creativity General Habits Happiness Self-Help Stress Technology Source Type: blogs