Social Media Wellness

We all keep secrets. 97 per cent of us are hiding a secret right now, and on average we each hold thirteen at any one time. They are the stuff of gossip, of novels and of classic dramas; secrets form a major part of our hidden inner lives. Podcaster Andrew Gold knows this better than anyone. A public persona, he found himself the (unwitting) recipient of hundreds of strangers' most private revelations. This set him on a journey to understand this critical part of our societies and lives. Why do we keep secrets? Why are we fascinated by those of others? What happens to our mind when we confess?

Renowned media scholar Sherry Turkle investigates how a flight from conversation undermines our relationships, creativity, and productivity - and why reclaiming face-to-face conversation can help us regain lost ground. We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection. Preeminent author and researcher Sherry Turkle has been studying digital culture for over 30 years. Long an enthusiast for its possibilities, here she investigates a troubling consequence.

The heart of man's dilemma, according to Rollo May, is the failure to understand the real meaning of love and will, their source and interrelation. Bringing fresh insight to these concepts, May shows how we can attain a deeper consciousness.

We live in a time of vast changes that include accelerating globalization, mounting quantities of information, the growing hegemony of science and technology, and the clash of civilizations. Those changes call for new ways of learning and thinking in school, business, and the professions. Listen as psychologist Howard Gardner defines the cognitive abilities that will command a premium in the years ahead.

For centuries, we’ve relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today, a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. Data scientists have become the new demographers.

The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants, and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions.

Based on a far-reaching study of thousands of individuals, Finding Flow contends that we often walk through our days unaware of and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: During much of the day, we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, and during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom.

From fake news to conspiracy theories, from inflammatory memes to misleading headlines, misinformation has swiftly become the defining problem of our era. The crisis threatens the integrity of our democracies, our ability to cultivate trusting relationships, even our physical and psychological well-being—yet most attempts to combat it have proven insufficient. With remarkable clarity, Sander van der Linden explains why our brains are so vulnerable to misinformation.

The world isn’t coming to an end, contrary to what you may have heard. But the media’s near-exclusive focus on conflict and disaster means that the progress and everyday acts of brilliance taking place across the globe go unnoticed. Jurriaan Kamp shows that optimism - intelligent optimism, not a rose-colored-glasses brand of wishful thinking - is good for not only your mind but your body too. He details a whole host of health problems that can actually be linked to pessimism.

“Like being deemed a witch hundreds of years ago, being presumed a slut today is cause for ostracism, abuse, and death”.... Archetypes of “witch” and “slut” have been used to police female sexuality and punish women; now, feminists are reclaiming them as positive affirmations. This book unearths the sex positive feminist legacy of the witch in art, music, politics, and popular culture, connecting the fictional witch we love to emulate and fear with real women, past and present.

Research has increasingly shown that nonverbal communication prowess is absolutely essential in seemingly unrelated areas of our lives (investment decisions, salary levels, etc.). However, as our society becomes more modernized and we incorporate new forms of technology into our daily interactions, we are becoming less and less capable of understanding one another as well as we should be. In The Art of Social Excellence, Henrik Fexeus combines his own expert knowledge as a mentalist with psychology studies to create a complete guide to social interaction.

In this powerful guide, award-winning psychiatrist Dr. Anders Hansen provides groundbreaking strategies to reclaim your focus and mental well-being. Unveiling the evolutionary reason for our distractibility, The Attention Fix sheds light on the toll our constant connection to smartphones and digital devices takes on our mental well-being. Backed by extensive research and studies, Dr. Hansen’s insights are scientifically proven and enriched through his exploration of the intricacies of the human brain.

This is the first truly comprehensive book examining the life and career of the murderer who has become one of America's great supervillains. It reveals not only the true story but how the legend evolved, taking advantage of hundreds of primary sources that have never been examined before, including legal documents, letters, articles, and records that have been buried in archives for more than a century.

You Are Now Less Dumb is grounded in the idea that we all believe ourselves to be objective observers of reality - except we’re not. But that's okay, because our delusions keep us sane. Expanding on this premise, McRaney provides eye-opening analyses of 15 more ways we fool ourselves every day. This smart and highly entertaining audiobook will be wowing listeners for years to come.

For the modern world, it seems as if sexuality and spirituality have always been at odds. But what if the two are actually deeply connected? And what if science could prove this connection? From neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, Sex, God, and the Brain argues that our religious and spiritual experiences derive directly from our sexual being. While others have speculated on a connection between religion and sex, Newberg is the first to demonstrate that the underlying biological mechanism of religious, spiritual, and sexual experiences are identical.

In an age riven by "fake news," "alternative facts," and disputes over the validity of everything from climate change to the size of inauguration crowds, the authors argue that social factors, not individual psychology, are what's essential to understanding the persistence of false belief and that we must know how those social forces work in order to fight misinformation effectively.

Under the new rules of social media, we are not what we eat, but rather what others believe we eat. The 21st century has marked the emergence of social media networking sites. They have become a major part of our lives: we can't imagine our lives without them, and it's unrealistic to assume that's even possible. Platforms like Twitter and Facebook haven't been around long, but they are already having far-reaching impacts on our health and wellbeing.

This clever and pithy audiobook challenges introverts to take ownership of their personalities...with quiet strength. Sophia Dembling asserts that the introvert’s lifestyle is not "wrong" or lacking, as society or extroverts would have us believe. Through a combination of personal insights and psychology, The Introvert’s Way helps and encourages introverts to embrace their nature, to respect traits they may have been ashamed of and reframe them as assets.

This advisory calls attention to the growing concerns about the effects of social media on youth mental health. It explores and describes the current evidence on the positive and negative impacts of social media on children and adolescents, some of the primary areas for mental health and well-being concerns, and opportunities for additional research to help understand the full scope and scale of social media’s impact.

Most kids get their first smartphone at the same time that they're experiencing major developmental changes. Making mistakes has always been a part of growing up, but how do parents help their kids navigate childhood and adolescence at a time when social media has the potential to magnify the consequences of those mistakes? Rather than spend all their time worrying about the worst-case scenario, listeners get a bigger-picture understanding of their kids' digital landscape.