The psychology of addictive smartphone behaviour

Yes, welcome back to yet another small, but insightful research project of mine! I say small, as this is something which I've only been doing research on for a short period of time. I did ensure to scroll down slowly though, so I could take in every single word of what I was reading to help my head process everything.

What I've chosen to publish for this post, is an inspiration from a picture I had come across on one of my psychology groups on Facebook, and I said to myself that I'll get round to making a post on my blogging website about it at some point. I thought this today would be my ideal time for me to do it! Although I had the picture, I needed to find a piece of research that would link well with the picture. I had typed in "psychology & smartphones" in the Google search bar, which took me to this article that came up 1st in the results page: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.573473/full Here's my evaluation:

*This was the picture I had come across on one of my psychology groups on Facebook*

Overview: It is without any doubt that people like to spend their boredom time on their smartphones. I for 1, can even happily hold my hands up to this as well. We like to use our smartphones for the purpose of connecting with other people around us. That being said, most of our modern social life in this day & age revolves around communicating/connecting with people on social media. While social media can be a good purpose for connecting with other people, it can also become too addictive by constantly having to feel the need to check it all of the time. If you're curious to know more about this, see: The psychology behind social media It's not just social media that can cause smartphone addiction though, using a smartphone to continuously replace basic tasks can even put an enormous strain on our mental health. (Mine included) When I say basic tasks, I'm referring to checking the time, checking emails & doing work on it. It would be definitely safe to say that smartphones are taking over mental health, and that is not good at all.

Evidence: On the subject of communicating to one another, a smartphone may seem like a perfect use to do so, as you could have friends who could be going through a difficult time, and they would love somebody to communicate to them. Unfortunately, they could be too far away to communicate to a friend in person, which is why smartphones can provide the most affective use to communicate with people, regardless of whereabouts they are in the world. Highlighting social media for a few seconds, it can be a good way for anybody looking into the creative industry by creating their own content. Moreover, creating popular content on social media can help you to earn money.

Now for the downsides. It has been proven that teenagers' mental health have typically been effected the most by smartphone addiction, as they feel the need to crave their use of social media for the benefit of socially connecting with others. This can also include craving to seek support from their social media followers in a bid to make them feel valued. Although a smartphone my not seem like much to begin with, but the more that people, especially teenagers, mindlessly play about on their smartphone, the more they are at risk from dysfunctional systems. This is just something else besides poor mental health. 

If excessive smartphone use eventually gets to the point of becoming too addictive, then it causes aggressive behaviour to come out of oneself due to their addictive use of a smartphone interfering with their life in general. Endless use of a smartphone could very well be easily done if repeating its excessive use too often. Doing so can make your mind go numb by not even thinking about doing it. This is where the depression comes into play, as your mind will get bored of doing the same thing every time, but feel like there is no escaping the addiction at the same time.

Conclusion: All smartphone addictions have a different story to tell. Meaning, they are not all the same. In theory, it really all depends on what way people behave addictively on their smartphones. Regardless of what smartphone addictive behaviour, they can all have poor mindset consequences at the end.

Understanding Narcissism

Before I even begin, I just want to clarify by saying that this research topic I had mentioned in my previous post was actually found on WebMD. (Not on Psychology Today) *I apologize there*😂

Anyway, I can't exactly remember what I was doing where I came across this article that was published on a website called WebMD. But what I do remember, is I instantly became curious to have a thorough read through the article which contains information about what narcissism is all about.

Before reading through the article, I was already aware of what narcissism is, but at the same time, I wanted to plunge my mind deeper into the subject for the intention to develop a better & wide understanding of the reasons of how narcissism is unknowingly formatted into oneself. Here's what I have gathered...

Discussion/Review:

Narcissism is what is classified as a self-involvement that creates a dark personality trait to a person. Its overall intention is to fill their ego by purposely ignoring the needs of anyone around them. It was at this point during my reading of the article where I read that narcissism may not be a permanent trait to some people who just choose to behave like narcissists. This may well be dependant on how their mental health is coping, by again, choosing to behave this way as their way of trying to block out everything going on around them. Although, you may seem to think they enjoy behaving this way on the outside, but a look into their mental health state must be considered to be able to understand more about their reason for their choice of narcissist behaviour. 

As I then found out, narcissism has a spectrum. People who are going through a temporarily period of narcissism are classified on the lower part of the overall spectrum. 

In terms of the higher end of the spectrum, you have people who have to live with narcissism attached to them day-in, day-out due to a disorder. And that disorder is named as: 'Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)' There are 2 different types of narcissism that link to the personality disorder just mentioned. The 2 things the types share in common is the fact that different childhood experiences play a role of being officially diagnosed with NPD. Another common thing in the 2 types is the different ways people will behave in relationships. I suppose that does makes sense, given how different childhood experiences are first formatted to shape a person's upbringing.

Going back to narcissism in general, it is important to factor in all of its characteristics before just saying how it is just by looking at it on the outside. You will notice right away with any narcissist behaviour that a person will make themselves look important compared to other people around them by purposely paying zero attention to how these other people will react around them. This could be followed by that person constantly wanting to be admired for every single thing. Even though, there could be hardly anything for that person to be admired for - Just for the sake of not wanting to look like a disappointment. As a warning to any person who criticises a narcissist person, they will just hit you back hard (emotionally) with rudeness & abuse by thinking they are not receiving the support you are giving them. This has to be done by showing compassion & understanding. What I mean, is by not comparing yourself to other people. No judgement, just be there to show support to.

Conclusion: I would say the one thing that really spoke out to me while reading this article, was that narcissism goes way deeper than just its name. Meaning, there are so many psychological factors of how narcissism is made up of by discovering the roots of the trait.

As always, if anyone is interested to see where I got my research from, the source link is here: https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/narcissism-symptoms-signs        

The 6 thinking hats

Glad to be getting back into my productive stride on my blog again! This is mainly due to the fact that I've not been too majorly occupied with other things going on in my busy life atm.

This is something which I've literally discovered a short while ago. Of course, I made sure I did enough research about it beforehand. In all fairness, all of it was relatively easy for me to understand. Hence, the reason to post it now.

 

*The attached picture of the 6 thinking hats is just one of its many ways of being defined, as it has other ways of defining it. This one happens to be my favourite*

Who is the inventor?

The inventor is psychologist Dr Edward de Bono who had invented the 6 thinking hats in 1985, and his reason for this invention was inspired by coming across structural creative thinking.

What do the 6 thinking hats mean?

The 6 thinking hats overall, are defined as a method to be able to form creative ideas. To do this, every one of the 6 hats (or people in real life) has to have a part to play in order to make planning results happen. I suppose an example of this would be 6 people in a meeting room trying to structure a working plan.

What are my views on the 6 thinking hats?

I think the 6 thinking hats initiative is a great psychological idea of getting a group of 6 people together to create one working idea, as the definitions of the 6 thinking hats will encourage those people to get into their working idea roles without having to get into a panic. With that said, I definitely agree that it's a good initiative that every team participant will get to understand their role of the 6 thinking hats beforehand by preventing panic to find one, as well as learn about one of the 6 thinking hats at the very last second.  

Research source information: https://airfocus.com/glossary/what-are-the-six-thinking-hats/

*I had actually began this post on the 17/11, but didn't get round to finishing it until today*