CosBeauty Magazine #76

Feature
3ways
to disconnect
Are you living life
through a filter? Here
are a few things you
should try:
1.
People watching
There is something wonderful about
just quietly being somewhere and
watching the world go by its business.
Taste savour your food instead of
snapping it; enjoy your surroundings
instead of checking in.
2.
Looking up
Ever walked in to oncoming foot
traffic? Or a telegraph pole? Don’t
pretend you haven’t; we’re all guilty.
Put your phone away and go to the
source. Look up and take in what’s
going on in the world around you – it’s a
pretty awesome place.
3.
Unplugging
A tech curfew is a very credible thing.
Not only will it give you a chance to
sleep better but it will also give your
over-screened eyes and brain a rest.
jealous much?
While studies of Instagram’s effects
on our emotional states are limited,
studies of Facebook have shown
that the passive consumption of
our friends’ feeds and our own
social media posts can correlate
with feelings of loneliness and
even depression.
In a joint research study conducted
at the Technical University of
Darmstadt and the Humboldt
University of Berlin in Germany,
led by Prof Peter Buxmann and
Dr Hanna Krasnova, Facebook
members were surveyed regarding
their feelings after using the platform.
“You get more explicit and implicit
cues of people being happy, rich
and successful from a photo than
from a status update,” says Dr
Krasnova. “A photo can very
powerfully provoke immediate social
comparison, and that can trigger
feelings of inferiority, [whereas] you
don’t envy a news story.”
Krasnova’s research has led her to
define what she calls an ‘envy spiral’.
“If you see beautiful photos of your
friend on Instagram,” she says, “one
way to compensate is to self-present
with even better photos, and then
your friend sees your photos and
posts even better photos, and so
on. Self-promotion triggers more
self-promotion, and the world on
social media gets further and further
from reality.”
While an envy spiral can unravel
just as easily on Facebook or Twitter,
Instagram is a test to your sense
of time. In an article on Slate.com,
Catalina Toma of the Department
of Communication Arts at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in
the US says, “You spend so much time
creating flattering, idealised images
of yourself, sorting through hundreds
of images for that one perfect picture,
but you don’t necessarily grasp that
everybody else is spending a lot of
time doing the same thing.”
30 www.cosbeauty.com.au