Who Are You?

We are a society where oversharing on social media is really the norm. With sites like Facebook, Twitter, and a whole slew of other social media sites we can create personalities that we have only dreamed about. So the question remain, who are you really amongst all those status updates and instagram pics? It is only going to hurt the person that is making things up in the long run. I know we all want to put our best foot forward on these sites but there is a different between that and blatant lying. Honesty is a characteristic that parents and grownups need to model for our youth. Many are guilty of embellishing their lives or careers once in awhile. The bottom line is that we need to seriously unplug from the internet and mobile applications and take the time to look at our persona online and offline. You might need to reevaluate something if they are vastly different.

Detecting Emotions

But now, a new computer program can recognize people's emotions based on how they type, paving the way for computers that could one day be smarter than humans — a concept called "the singularity." In a new study, researchers asked a small group of people to type a block of sample text, and then analyzed the keystrokes and characteristics to see if they could identify any of seven different emotional states: joy, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, shame or guilt. The emotions that the program recognized with the greatest degree of accuracy were joy (87 percent of the time) and anger (81 percent of the time). Still, the new system could be a valuable tool for online counseling sessions such as those over internet phone services. For example, in some cultures where online counseling is particularly popular, psychiatrists may be able to estimate a patient's internal state even without the person verbally articulating it them.

Look Up From that Screen

A recent study monitoring the behavior of mobile phone owners shows that the average smartphone owner picks up his device a staggering 1,500 times in a week and spends more than three hours a day staring into its screen. The numbers come from a survey of 2,000 smartphone owners. This is going to make me reevaluate some things about my phone services and mobile application usage. This is actually taking time away from looking at bigger screens such as laptops. Still, over three hours? That seems like an inordinate amount of time and is it really all that productive? I mean there could be other things that we could be doing and do not say that these three hours happen while multitasking. It is also worth looking at the type of people that were in the survey and maybe expanding the population to include wider ranges in many of the areas. How often is your nose in your phone or you are staring at a screen that is taking away from better things that you could be doing?

Prioritizing Sleep

It is no secret that sleep can help improve all aspects of life but all too often people push sleep down the priority ladder because they feel that they have more important things to get done. It might feel sometimes like those extra two hours could be better spent working toward goals than wasted in dreamland, but the truth is that long-term sleep deprivation can result in significant cognitive and physical impairment. Lack of sleep affects motivation, decision making, and memory and learning. It also puts the people at risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes. According to the CDC, the average adult needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night but surveys show that a third of the population only gets 6 hours or less. Stress management is crucial to being able to sleep well. When people are stressed out, they are less likely to sleep. Even that big meeting where the newest software development is revealed can keep you up at night. A great way to avoid this is to have a habit of winding down before bed such as deep breathing or music relaxation.