A Lonely World.Com

Online Social Networks – Instant Messaging

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 05:26:14 +0000

Article by Stella Lau, UC Berkely Education Dept.

“…man cannot live without attachment to some object which transcends and survives him…he is too little…we have no other object than ourselves we cannot avoid the thought that our efforts will finally end in nothingness, since we ourselves disappear” (Durkheim 210).
- Emile Durkheim

Sociologist Emile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) is one of the originators of modern sociology. One of Durkheim’s most famous works is “Suicide” in which he describes his four theories of suicide: egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic suicide. Durkheim’s theory of egoistic suicide, as described in the quote above, explains the cause of depression due to social isolation and loneliness. This theory says that too little integration with society or a community leads to suicide. There are no goals set outside the self, and people feel that life is meaningless; there is nothing greater than themselves to live for. For example, Durkheim compared widowed people with children and widowed people without children. He found that widowed people with children are more protected against suicide than their counterparts because they have something greater than themselves to live for, their children. When you have something you’re obligated to outside yourself (i.e. a network of friends or family), you’re more protected from depression and suicide. Social integration provides goals and meanings for people to live for. For someone who is depressed, there is little to no meaning left in life. Everyday activities, such as eating and exercising seem meaningless. They are constantly mourning on their own dead inner selves.

Social Isolation, loneliness, and depression are all interrelated. Studies have shown that the more time spent on the Internet leads to social isolation and loneliness, which in turn leads to depression. Even though online communities and instant messaging allows a person to stay connected with their friends and family as well as expanding their social network, the more time spent socializing online is time spent away socializing in the real world.

Online Communities

In a survey I conducted with 500 people, ages ranging from 18-25, the results showed that forty six percent of the subjects have spent three or more hours browsing through people’s pages on the various online communities. This study shows that people spend hours in a virtual world where the people of the pages they are browsing through may not even know of them. Just reading about other people and their lives already takes time away from actual socializing with your friends. By browsing these pages, people become so absorbed into a virtual world that they become disconnected from reality.

They feel like they are getting to know someone without actually knowing them. The friends on one’s friends list may not even be a friend. They could be acquintances or people you just met. However, many people consider these as “friends,” however, many do not even see or talk to them after adding them. People try to gather the most friends on their list to look popular. The physical contact and presence of being with a friend thus fades and one slowly becomes disconnected with reality.

The Stanford Study illustrates there is a correlation between the number of hours used on online social networks and one’s social isolation. The more hours spent leads to an increase social isolation in all three categories: usage of the phone, time spent with family, and social events.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging also causes social isolation and disembodiment because you are simply having conversations that are not real. You start losing social skills in the real world as you master your social skills chatting behind a computer screen.

Online communities correlates to instant messaging and further add to the impediment of one’s social life. Since you can browse other people’s pages and find out their interests, it makes it easy to find people with similar interests as you. You can then message them and ask for the screen names, and start chatting online. From there, you start building a virtual friendship with the other, comfortable to talk to a complete stranger because you are protected by the space between your computer and the stranger’s computer

As this process repeats itself (finding people with common interests as you), people find this more convenient than finding someone in the real world with such interests as you. People then become comfortable to this process and are likely to socialize in the virtual world rather than with real people. As well, a person can easily alter their identity behind the computer screen. When put in real social situations, the person that has been accustomed to the online social life will not know how to behave and act around other people and will likely find it difficult to socialize with others. This, in turn, will lead to social awkwardness and furthers the desire to comfortably socialize on the Internet. As this social awkwardness strengthens in the real world, people more and more desires the comfort of the ease to chat online that they soon become disembodied from reality, and therefore, isolates themselves from the world.

Link to article: http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~stellal/Cons.htm

UN Urges World To Open Wallets For Pakistan

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 02:40:52 +0000

Associated Press Writer - UNITED NATIONS (AP) The United Nations is putting the spotlight on more than 20 million Pakistani flood victims and urging governments and people around the world to open their wallets to help. link to story:t a hurriedly called meeting of the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said donors have given half the $460 million the U.N. appealed for to provide food, shelter and clean water to flood victims over the next three months. But he said all the money is needed now — and much more will be needed to rebuild Pakistan.

Link to story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/9227748

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the United States, already the biggest donor, would contribute an additional $60 million, bringing its total to more than $150 million in response to Pakistan’s “worst natural disaster in its history.”

She said approximately $92 million will support the U.N.’s $460 million appeal, which aims to provide food, shelter and clean water to more than 6 million flood victims over the next three months.

Earlier, Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, said “many billions” would be needed to help Pakistan. He challenged other countries, especially Pakistan’s close ally China, to “step up to the plate.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the Chinese have increased their cash assistance, supplied relief goods and taken responsibility for providing food, water and shelter to some 27,000 people in an inaccessible area in the north “so if you put this all together, it’s substantial.”

Both Holbrooke and Qureshi spoke at the Asia Society in New York ahead of the U.N. meeting.

The U.N. wants to spotlight the enormity of the disaster, which is bigger than the 2004 Asian tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, and this year’s Haiti earthquake, yet has attracted far less in donations.

Qureshi said Pakistan is facing one of its greatest challenges — tens of thousands of villages submerged, around 1,500 people killed, and more than 20 million affected — and needs international help because its own resources are insufficient.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said at the Asia Society, noting that only three weeks before the floods began Pakistan was trying to cope with a water shortage. “The economic cost is huge.”

The Pakistani government has been strongly criticized for failing to respond quickly to the floods, and Qureshi acknowledged the skepticism and criticism.

“Initially there was shock, paralysis, but we are out of it now,” he said. “We are getting our acts together. … This was a mega-flood, so as people are becoming more aware the response has improved, and it will continue to improve in the days to come.”

Qureshi said he wants to tell the world “what a serious challenge Pakistan is facing at a time when … a democratic, elected government … has succeeded in building a consensus in Pakistan against extremism and terrorism.”

He said it was unfortunate that “this calamity struck” in the Swat valley, where life was just returning to normal after a successful government campaign against extremists and terrorists, and in south Punjab, where a similar campaign was under way.

Holbrooke said it’s impossible to assess whether the extremists or al-Qaida elements are taking advantage of the floods because “we can’t even get in there,”

“The water has affected everyone. It’s an equal opportunity disaster, and military operations have effectively faded away,” he told a small group of reporters after the Asia Society event.

Qureshi said Pakistan has not reduced its military forces fighting the extremists or terrorists, but he said there will now be an additional challenge of dealing with the floods and rebuilding water-ravaged areas.

Famed Pakistani musician Salman Ahmad stressed that 100 million of Pakistan’s 175 million people are under 25 and they are skeptical and “feel abandoned by the world.”

“All you need to do right now is to give hope to those young people … who have two possible futures, one of following their dreams, the other of being sucked into extremism,” he said at the Asia Society.

US Marines arrive to help Pakistan flood survivors

For the United States, Pakistan is vital for its strategic goals of defeating militancy and stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan, so its troops can one day withdraw. Washington has already committed to spending $7.5 billion over the next five years in the country.

Also at the Asia Society, the Asian Development Bank said it will earmark at least $2 billion for Pakistan’s reconstruction over the next two years. Billionaire financier George Soros announced that he has given his Open Society Institute in Pakistan an extra $5 million to help the country’s civil society sector assist flood victims.

“We Are More Alike Than Different, And…

admin — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:40:09 +0000

We Need Each Other.”

Studio Brussel: K’s Choice – When I lay beside you (Music For Life 2009)

You Tube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL6yKSDsOiY

Stress Vaccine? Don’t Worry, Shot is on the Way, Says Dr. Robert Sapolsky

admin — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 17:08:29 +0000

Dr. Robert Sapolsky spent years studying stress in baboons.

Stressed out? There’s no app for that, but soon enough there might be a vaccine.

Dr Robert Sapolsky, a neuroscience professor at Stanford, says after 30 years of studying stress, his team might be on the verge of a novel cure.

“To be honest, I’m still amazed that it works,” Sapolsky told Wired in an August profile.

Sapolsky has long theorized that, unlike some animals, humans are unable to turn off stress chemicals used for the fight-or-flight mechanism. A class of hormone called glucocorticoids are one of the chief offenders, according to Sapolsky.

So his team has pioneered a way to bootstrap a “herpes virus to carry engineered ‘neuroprotective’ genes deep into the brain to neutralize the rogue hormones before they can cause damage,” according to the Daily Mail.

Sounds properly science fiction, but will it work?

So far, rat studies have gone well according to the British paper. Human trials are still years away.

Until then, don’t give up your yoga mat.

Read more about Sapolsky’s wild years studying baboon mating or check out his book “Why Zebra’s Don’t Get Ulcers.”

CBS News – Health /Aug.3, 2010

Link to article: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20012469-10391704.html

Stayin’ Alive: That’s What Friends Are For

admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:12:36 +0000

Relationships improve your odds of survival by 50 percent

A new Brigham Young University study adds our social relationships to the “short list” of factors that predict a person’s odds of living or dying.

In the journal PLoS Medicine, BYU professors Julianne Holt-Lunstad and Timothy Smith report that social connections – friends, family, neighbors or colleagues – improve our odds of survival by 50 percent. Here is how low social interaction compares to more well-known risk factors:

- Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day

- Equivalent to being an alcoholic

- More harmful than not exercising

- Twice as harmful as obesity

“The idea that a lack of social relationships is a risk factor for death is still not widely recognized by health organizations and the public,” write the PLoS Medicine editors in a summary of the BYU study and why it was done.

The researchers analyzed data from 148 previously published longitudinal studies that measured frequency of human interaction and tracked health outcomes for a period of seven and a half years on average. Because information on relationship quality was unavailable, the 50 percent increased odds of survival may underestimate the benefit of healthy relationships.

“The data simply show whether they were integrated in a social network,” Holt-Lunstad said. “That means the effects of negative relationships are lumped in there with the positive ones. They are all averaged together.”

Holt-Lunstad said there are many pathways through which friends and family influence health for the better, ranging from a calming touch to finding meaning in life.

“When someone is connected to a group and feels responsibility for other people, that sense of purpose and meaning translates to taking better care of themselves and taking fewer risks,” Holt-Lunstad said.

In examining the data, Smith took a careful look at whether the results were driven primarily by people helping each other prolong their golden years.

“This effect is not isolated to older adults,” Smith said. “Relationships provide a level of protection across all ages.”

Smith said that modern conveniences and technology can lead some people to think that social networks aren’t necessary.

“We take relationships for granted as humans – we’re like fish that don’t notice the water,” Smith said. “That constant interaction is not only beneficial psychologically but directly to our physical health.”

Brad Layton worked on the study as an undergrad at BYU and appears as a co-author on the new study. Layton’s involvement in this project helped him secure a spot as a Ph.D. candidate in the highly ranked epidemiology program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Link to article: http://news.byu.edu/archive10-jul-relationships.aspx