Page 105 - Fear Unmasked Flipbook

T HE C URE fO R fEAR

would equal a pre-specified total (as in which two
numbers that added together equal a total of six). Half
of the participants were asked to keep their phones
on their desk, the other half were asked to put their
phones away. Even though not a single phone went
off during the experiment, participants that had their
phones on the desk performed nearly 20 percent worse
than those that had their phones put away. Again, there

were no notifications, alerts, or rings going off for the
people that had their phones on the desk. If these
participants performed 20 percent worse WITHOUT
the interruptions of notifications, just with the presence
of a phone, imagine how our performance declines
even more if we have notifications for our social media
turned on!

Another negative impact of social media is its
ability to induce sadness and contribute towards less
life satisfaction through constant use. In her Forbes
article, Senior Forbes Contributor Alice G. Walton
references a study performed by the Hubert Curien
Pluridisciplinary Institute out of the University of
Strasbourg in France that found that moment-to-
moment happiness and life satisfaction declines
through social media use. The study would survey
74
eighty-two different people five times a day for fourteen
days to assess their happiness and life satisfaction
after using Facebook. The experiment found that
75

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