Today we discuss what causes a sense of social media fatigue, how scientists are tuning into our brainwaves to make us learn new tasks faster, and how a researcher invented a self-cooling tent that only needs sunshine and water to work.
Today we discuss what causes a sense of social media fatigue, how scientists are tuning into our brainwaves to make us learn new tasks faster, and how a researcher invented a self-cooling tent that only needs sunshine and water to work.
Social Media Fatigue
Brainwave Tuning
Self-Cooling Tent
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/social-media-fatigue-brainwave-tuning-self-cooling-tent
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how scientists are tuning into our brainwaves to make us learn new tasks faster, how a researcher invented a self-cooling tent that only needs sunshine and water to work, and what causes a sense of social media fatigue.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Social media can be kind of exhausting. I think we all know this. I mean, I myself have felt that burnout sometimes, you know, it's just it's a lot. But there is actually a term for it. And it's called social media fatigue.
NATE: Okay. By this point in the show, you and I have done over 100 episodes. And inevitably, a few of those episodes keep shared across social media. Yeah. Thankfully, most people are really kind and engage with the material in a cool way. Others can be a bit of a bummer. And you and I also hosted a YouTube channel and the comments and reactions, all that. It's there are some ups and downs, but I can totally see that if the negative stuff keeps happening over and over, they can get old really fast.
CALLI: And that is just one hyper specific relation to social media fatigue. Because a study published in the Computers and Human Behavior Journal recently looked into all the factors relating to social media fatigue. And honestly, there is a crap ton.
NATE: Oh yeah. I mean, social media is part of many people's everyday lives now, so I'm sure there are a lot of unique ways that social media can get bad for people.
CALLI: I mean, it can, but it's not all bad. It's not, I wouldn't even say it's mostly bad. Social media is a way that many people, myself personally, maintain friendships with people across the planet, some of whom we've never even met in person. It's also a way to stay informed and learn about cool concepts. Some of the topics we've discussed on this show came to our attention because of social media. But when social media gets bad, it gets really bad, like cyberbullying and privacy invasions, and that's just a few of the worst offenders. There's also, of course, social media addiction, which is a byproduct of social media overuse, and that is the main culprit when it comes to social media fatigue.
NATE: All right. What are some of the factors that lead to this?
CALLI: All right. The person heading the study was Nan Sheng, who used data from 2012 participants aged 12 to 72 and evenly split along gender who were recruited through a survey company in China. The participants were quizzed on topics like information overload, privacy invasion, cyber bullying, emotional exhaustion, social media fatigue, amount of time spent on social media and more. They had to provide not only their thoughts on the topics, but how much they personally experienced each of these things.
NATE: Interesting. I don't know if I would do like a good job answering questions like that on a survey. Be tough, but I guess that's going to be a good way to try and start getting data. What did the researchers find?
CALLI: Information overload was directly linked to participants level of emotional exhaustion. The more they read online about anything, whether it was a high lift topic like breaking news or something low lift, like memes, the participants felt exhausted from the plethora of information available. But there was also technological factors that contributed to their exhaustion, like constant software updates or too many unique features to learn about on a platform. Sometimes those two would be tied together. The study didn't provide recent examples, but think about how like, say, on your favorite platform they change a button or they move where it is. Well, your muscle memory is now changed and it can stress you out.
NATE: Interesting. I mean, I've definitely had times where I think a social media app has changed. It is weird. Or you go back to an app that you haven't used for a long time. You know, I don't know how to use anything now because to me so much is different. So I, I could definitely see how that could contribute to the fatigue, to maybe just not wanting to use the app at all.
CALLI: Exactly. What was more surprising about the study was that all of these factors were ranked as being equally concerning as cyberbullying or privacy issues. For some participants, it was a fear of either, and for others it was a residual memory of having been affected by either. Very few participants were affected by or afraid of both, but those that were had exhaustion levels much higher than the other participants.
NATE: All right. So these are interesting tidbits for sure, but I feel like the study is focusing a lot more on recreational social media use rather than, you know, professional social media use, for example, as content creators. You and I need to use social media. Yeah. Did the study address anything on the professional side of things?
CALLI: No. And that is one of the limitations of the study for sure. Yeah. Other studies have done light research on the topic of how professional social media usage can affect mental health, and came to the conclusion that being required to use social media will make your mind have a negative association with social media. Other issues, as mentioned before, the study doesn't even name specific social media platforms being used. Plus, the research relied on a one time self-report study. And, as we said before, self-reporting is absolutely one of the worst ways to do a study. It leaves your research vulnerable to inattentive participants, a possible bias that comes from a participant being dishonest for any reason and could miss any side effects that longitudinal research could otherwise capture.
NATE: All right. That does seem like a lot of hurdles and like we might be missing some pretty important information in there, but I guess it's still a good starting point.
CALLI: And yet it doesn't detract from the ultimate takeaway. Social media is a mixed bag that can and will lead to emotional exhaustion and social fatigue. If anything, the study could function as a launch pad for more exhaustive research that should identify more specific examples of how social media fatigue can occur. For instance, how would fatigue differ differently between daily Twitter users and, say, daily Pinterest users? In the meantime, the best conclusion the study has is to be mindful of your social media use. If you feel you use it too much. Try your best to step away.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Okay, guys, we are starting out this episode with a topic that is actually a little bit of a doozy for us, so I'm just going to say it outright. For the first time, scientists have figured out that if you tune into a person's brainwave cycle while they're trying to learn something, it dramatically boosts the speed at which their cognitive skills improve.
NATE: Okay, this sounds a little complicated, but pretty exciting, right? I mean, we're here to learn something new every day. Are we talking about neuroplasticity? The term relating to how flexible our brains can be when it comes to new information?
CALLI: Yes, actually, exactly that. Scientists have figured out a way to make our already flexible brains even more flexible. And it involves hacking into somebody's brain and sending the right pulse at the right time. Since each human brain has a natural rhythm that is created by neurons oscillating. You can send a replica of that rhythm at the right moment and it speeds up how the brain processes something.
NATE: Most physical objects have a frequency. You can see those really well in things like a glass where if you hit it, you can hear the frequency and then with like a goblet, if you play that same frequency back at it, you may have seen the trick where people can like sing at a glass and make it shatter. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's resonant frequency is it is a kind of like tapping into the resonant frequency of your brain. I mean, that's not what the shattering.
CALLI: Yeah, not not shattering, but that's probably the most relatable way to look at this. Yeah. Let me explain how they did this for a second. It's called electroencephalography. I cannot believe I got that word right or EEG for short. And what they do is attach sensors to your head to measure the brain's electrical activity. They did this for 80 participants and took readings on the midrange of the brainwave spectrum. These are called the Alpha Waves, which are the dominant brain waves when we are awake and relaxed. Now alpha waves oscillate between eight and 12 hertz for a full cycle every 85 to 125 milliseconds. With the sensors, scientists use the brainwave readings to create a visual representation that they call an optical pulse.
NATE: Hmm. Okay. What is an optical pulse look like?
CALLI: A little bit boring. It's a white square flickering on a dark background at the same speed as every participant's alpha wave. Yeah. So as the square flickers to the rhythm of somebody's brain, their brainwaves are moving at the same speed. Each participant was given a 1.5 second electrical pulse sent to their brains to make the alpha waves work normally before being given a sudden rapid task. They were told to identify specific shapes in the middle of a screen just filled with visual clutter.
NATE: That's my favorite app.
CALLI: Doesn't sound like a fun game, does it? Mm hmm. Now, a normal brain wave cycle consists of a peak and a trough. Think of the famous image of a heart monitor where it beeps and creates a little peak at the top before dropping into a valley. Brainwaves are actually similar, so some participants received pulses that matched the peak of their waves, some similar to the trough, and others got rhythms that were either random or at the wrong rate, like, say, a little bit slower or a little bit faster. While this happened, each participant repeated over 800 variations of the cognitive task, and the neuroscientists measured how quickly people improved.
NATE: Okay. Why so many pulses?
CALLI: To figure out which one was the right rhythm for each person. See, these pulses are actually uniquely individual. Just like the brains they're being sent to. But if the scientists found the right pulse for the right person, they found that the participants were able to learn how to do their task three times faster than anybody else.
NATE: So instead of the resonant frequency making the glass break, it makes it better, more powerful and faster.
CALLI: Yeah. If you can make a glass fast. Yes, sure.
NATE: It's a brain, but. Yeah. Okay. So what does this mean for the future?
CALLI: All right. This study is effective because it actually mirrors the way we learn things as infants. Previous work from this team showed that the brainwaves of mothers and their babies actually synchronize during communication. So this method creates a way to rapidly learn things the way we did as children. And if we're able to expand this method on a wider scale, we could learn practically anything at a quarter of the speed it would have taken us before. One example the research team mentions is training in professions where fast learning and quick decision making is vital, like for a pilot or a surgeon. And even if it's applied to more general learning, one thing is for sure this is something that could help give us all the edge we need to remain as sharp as possible for as long as possible.
NATE: That would be a pretty cool app, actually.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Do you remember when we talked about people who were mosquito magnets on the show and why? And like, why bugs love them and how camping is just the absolute worst. Not because of mosquitoes, but also because the intense, grueling heat sometimes.
CALLI: Sure.
NATE: Anyway, weird segue to get to: you know what would make camping better is an air conditioned tent.
CALLI: Oh, yes.
NATE: Lovely lead in.
CALLI: Sure. Yes. But like.
NATE: Yeah. So as of recently, that finally exists.
CALLI: Okay. What?
NATE: All right. So I'm sure people have figured out ways to air condition tents before. But this is new. This is a new and cooler, hah, cooler way to do that.
CALLI: There's there's already a bunch of ways that tents can be cooled down. Like you can have fans, you can have lighter colors. You can try staying hydrated and there's even portable AC. So what makes this tent different?
NATE: All right. This is different because it is a self cooling tent. A researcher from UConn named Al Kasani has created a brand new technology that makes a tent regulate its own temperature by up to 20 degrees Fahrenheit below the temperature outside. And all the technology needs to work is one very common ingredient: water.
CALLI: I'm just imagining a scientist just dumping a bucket of water onto a camper now. What what is going on here?
NATE: I mean, all right, that would actually cool them down quite a bit as well. But it's different. No, no, no. This is something where one gallon of water can power this tent’s cooling technology for an entire day. So Al is the creator here. He got the idea from a pretty common place, from plants. Plants absorb water from the earth and they sweat to cool themselves down and they repeat as necessary. And all the energy needed to do that comes from the sun. And with the rise of solar technology in recent years, Al wondered if he could find a way for humans to do the same thing.
CALLI: So he designed a tent that sweats. GROSS. How does something like that even work?
NATE: Al created a fabric wick designed to pull water up from a reservoir and over the entire surface of the tent. And what this does is create a mirror effect. The heat bounces off of an infrared reflective material made of titanium dioxide, which is actually just as light as a normal material on a tent. And the water flowing through the material interacts with the titanium nanoparticles that interact endlessly with the water. As you may know, because of the recent explosion in popularity of titanium water bottles, titanium is a very easy to find heat absorber for water. But that's not all because of the reaction between titanium, water and heat. It also creates an air purifying effect that makes the air in the tent much easier to breathe, too.
CALLI: Okay, I take it back. That actually sounds really cool.
NATE: And there's also a practical reason beyond making camping more comfortable that the tent exists. The tent is a small project that's part of a bigger focus on innovating means for renewable energy. And this kind of technology can only be used for smaller, temporary structures like tents for now. But imagine a larger version that can self cool like an entire building for no electricity cost. And even when you look at the tent strictly through the focus of camping, Al was also inspired by how tents are used during times of natural disasters. For example, if there's an earthquake or a war, makeshift tents are created to treat people. And with rising global temperatures, these tents can help keep people comfortable during recovery, removing the risk of something like heatstroke.
CALLI: These sound freaking awesome. All right, so where can you buy the Al tent?
NATE: Well, unfortunately, this thing is still in the research phase, so it's going to be a while before you can get a tent that generates its own air conditioning. Right now, he's hard at work on a finalized prototype, so we don't even know exactly what it will look like. And for example, it's not clear what the water reservoirs will look like. And the material for the tent is light, but will that be light and packable? So one article suggested that anything bigger than one of those packable fabric dog balls you can take camping would probably be too impractical for the normal person.
CALLI: Or for the normal person. Sure. But you made some really good points about other things these could be used for.
NATE: So that's true. Al has said that the industry interest in his tent is large because a self cooling tent wouldn't just be a commercial prospect for campers, it would be a godsend for forest rangers, people in the military and even the unhoused. Basically, anybody who needs a way to stay out of the ever-rising heat for a while.
CALLI: So you could say that Al's project is pretty intense.
NATE: Haha.
CALLI: Sorry.
NATE: Yeah.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: Hacking into a brain to make learning happen at a fraction of the time it would have taken before sounds like something out of science fiction, but it’s a lot closer to reality than you might think. With electroencephalography, scientists are now able to “send a signal” into someone’s brain like a glorified game of Dance Dance Revolution and speed up the process for learning cognitive tasks!
NATE: Imagine going camping in an air-conditioned tent and not having to worry about the electricity to make that happen. A researcher out of Connecticut is one step away from making that a reality with his groundbreaking invention of a “sweating tent,” inspired by the way plants create energy by absorbing water from the earth and sweating it out because of the sun’s heat. This tent is still in the research phase, but once released, it could change the game for everyone from campers to the military to even the unhoused.
CALLI: If social media is exhausting for you, then, well - same. But it turns out this is a universal feeling for many people, and a lot of the reasons are quite simple: it’s too much dang information at once! Surprisingly, a new study reveals that people are more exhausted by information overload than cyberbullying or privacy concerns - but they suggest that if it’s getting exhausting, it could be time to step away!