Learn about why social media may not be as bad for mental health as we thought; why the Streisand effect says censoring information will probably backfire; and why tailgating at the light won’t get you through any faster. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Social Media Might Be Better for Your Mental Health Than We Thought — https://curiosity.im/2KN315C The Streisand Effect Says Censoring Information Will Probably Backfire — https://curiosity.im/2KxSR8u Here's Why Tailgating at the Light Won't Get You Through Any Faster — https://curiosity.im/2KLgGtC Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about why social media may not be as bad for mental health as we thought; why the Streisand effect says censoring information will probably backfire; and why tailgating at the light won’t get you through any faster.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/censoring-information-backfires-social-medias-mental-health-benefits-and-tailgating-myths
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why social media may not be as bad for mental health as we thought; why the Streisand effect says censoring information will probably backfire; and why tailgating at the light won’t get you through any faster.
CODY: Let’s get you through some curiosity.
Social Media Might Be Better for Your Mental Health Than We Thought — https://curiosity.im/2KN315C (Cody)
New research suggests social media might not be as universally bad for mental health as we thought. Now, we’ve covered a lot of research on this podcast into how social media can be bad for you. And that research still holds true — IF you’re part of the demographic those studies focused on. Which is usually teens and young adults. This new study focused on older adults, and for them, it seems social media might not be all that harmful. In fact, it could even lower levels of psychological distress. This study from June 2019 was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and it was led by Dr. Keith Hampton from the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. He used data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, or the PSID. That’s a U.S. survey that started in 1968, which makes it the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world. He was able to use that data to generalize to the entire U.S. population, because participants of that study are nationally representative — as in, representing stuff like age, gender, and ethnicity. In 2015 and 2016, the PSID asked participants to report how often they use social media and how frequently they felt symptoms of psychological distress, like sadness, nervousness, restlessness, or worthlessness. Dr. Hampton his team analyzed the data, and controlled for segments of the U.S. population who are more likely to experience psychological distress. They also looked at family and social factors that might contribute to mental disorders. And the team found that older adults who use social media are 63 percent less likely to experience serious psychological distress from one year to the next, including major depression or serious anxiety. Participants who connected with family members on social media seemed to have less psychological distress, even if their family members suffered mental health crises. Now, this isn’t to say that previous research is invalid. But the general takeaway is that social media may not be the moral panic we thought it was. Social media seems to give most adults a healthy way to share and connect with the people they care about. And the more we share, the healthier we seem to be.
The Streisand Effect Says Censoring Information Will Probably Backfire — https://curiosity.im/2KxSR8u (from Tuesday 9/3) (Ashley)
If you ever want to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information, then you might want to think twice. Because your plan could backfire in a big way, thanks to a thing called the Streisand effect. Yes, it’s named after legendary singer and actor Barbara Streisand. And it refers to the phenomenon where trying to cover something up ends up making it even more visible than it was in the first place. Here’s the story of how it got its name: In 2003, a photographer named Kenneth Adelman was working on a project to show California’s eroding coastline. He took more than 12,000 aerial photos of the coastline and posted them to a photography site. Somehow, Barbara Streisand found that the photos included an image of her clifftop mansion in Malibu, and she sued. According to Bloomberg, she alleged, quote, "the photo invaded her privacy, violated the state's anti-paparazzi statute and tried to profit from her name. She sought damages of more than $10 million, which she generously offered to donate to charity," unquote. Before the lawsuit, the photo had only six downloads — and two of those downloads were by Streisand's lawyers. SIX downloads. Then, in the first month after the suit made headlines, the photo site was visited by 420,000 people. That was JUST in the first month. Streisand's lawsuit was dismissed, she had to pay more than a hundred-thousand dollars to cover the photographer’s legal fees, and by the end, the photo of her estate had been seen millions of times. Whoops. So what causes the Streisand effect? Well, it’s a form of psychological reactance, which is basically your tendency to want to rebel when your freedom to do something is threatened. Basically, censoring backfires because people love forbidden fruit. People are curious by nature (we don't have to tell you that!), and if you tell them they can't do something, they'll want to do it — especially on the internet.
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Here's Why Tailgating at the Light Won't Get You Through Any Faster — https://curiosity.im/2KLgGtC (from Saturday 9/7) (Ashley)
According to research, you’re not gonna get through a traffic light faster by tailgating the car in front of you. [ad lib]
Whether you're two centimeters or two car lengths from the car ahead of you, it'll take you just as long to get through. I probably don’t have to tell you that tailgating is dangerous. But when it comes to stopping at an intersection, you might think it makes sense. If you were standing in line at a coffee shop, for instance, you'd scoot up close to the person in front of you — it's the polite thing to do for everyone behind you. Why wouldn't you do the same in your car? Well, tailgating at intersections causes plenty of fender benders. And on top of that, researchers from Virginia Tech and Duke University published a study in 2017 that showed tailgating didn’t even get people through a light faster. They had volunteer drivers line up 10 Chevy Impalas at a red light on a test road. The cars sat at varying distances from each other over a series of experiments. When the light turned green, they accelerated in a "normal and comfortable fashion" while a drone monitored their speed. And it turned out that it took cars just as long to make it through a stoplight, whether they were just a few centimeters behind the next car or they were a full 7.6 meters back — that’s nearly two car lengths!
What's going on? Well according to the study, it's kind of like melting ice. Ice can stay frozen for a while before it starts melting, because the process of going from frozen to liquid takes a little bit of extra energy, known as "latent heat." In the same way, it takes some time for a car to accelerate from a full stop. The researchers’ analogy was that the “temperature” (or, kinetic energy) of the vehicles can’t increase until the traffic 'melts' into the liquid phase. In practical terms, that means that the time a tailgating driver has to wait until it's safe to hit the gas offsets the extra space a non-tailgating driver gives the car ahead, since that driver can accelerate faster. So don’t tailgate! But don't change your coffee line habits. The team did the same experiment for people standing in line, and in that case, packing closer together gets everyone through faster. And if there’s one thing you want to get as fast as humanly possible, it’s coffee.
CODY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that social media is not neccesarily the worst thing in the world — especially if you’re an older adult.
ASHLEY: And that the Streisand effect says that when you try to censor something, it’ll probably backfire.
CODY: And that tailgating won’t help you get where you’re going any faster. So don’t do it! Unless you’re waiting to get a cup of coffee, of course.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!