Relation Between Psychological Well-being and Internet Usage

Relation Between Psychological Well-being and Internet Usage Two major paradigms have been utilized in attempt to describe interactions between psychological well-being and internet usage: a deficiency paradigm which points out that the use of media is the consequence and compensation for unsatisfactory face-to-face interactions, and a global use paradigm, where internet usage are considered to be universal in terms of behaviours in online and offline social interaction (Tsao, 1996). Studies into the usage of social networking sites, such as Facebook, delivers several distinctions for the contrast of the two paradigms. University students supported the global use paradigm, where the relationship of online and offline social interactions were compared, and students reporting larger number of close friends and more offline face-to-face interactions had larger pool of Facebook friends. Humans, as social animals, are bound and thrive with social interactions; which cultivates our psychological well-being. According to Diener (1997), psychological well-being denotes how individuals appraise their lives, and such evaluations may essentially be in forms of cognitions, where it is an evaluation of the lives of individuals based on their satisfaction of their life as a whole, or, in another way, in the form of affect, where it is an appraisal guided by emotions and feelings in which individuals experience positive or negative moods in reaction to their everyday lives, and as people invariably experience moods and emotions, which may have a positive effect or a negative effect, the postulation is that most individuals evaluate their life as either good or bad, so they are normally able to offer judgments. Thus, as individuals who are unable to experience satisfaction in one area of their life, they would look to another medium in attempt to search for a comfort zone, and especially in times where technology thrive, where individuals dwell in an increasingly networked world, they are relentlessly connected to each other through various methods, with social networking spaces providing one of the most popular methods that people employ to link each other together. Individuals who cope well in social interactions make use of media as a tool for advancement in their social standings, and those who are unable to cope, use media as compensation for their unsatisfactory face-to-face interactions. Tsao (1996) describes interactions between media use and psychological well-being as two separate major paradigms: a global use paradigm, as well as a deficiency paradigm. Tsao (1996) explains that the deficiency paradigm, which forecasts that individuals view media usage as a compensatory mean of their unsatisfactory social interactions. Ashe McCutcheon (2001) refer such phenomenon that an individual exhibit as parasocial interaction, where it is considered a one-sided interpersonal relationship in which one party holds a great amount of information about the other, but the other party does not. Such occurrences can usually be observed between celebrities and fans. While it may not necessarily be negative, the emergence of a new medium for social interactions to occur was considered to provide more negative effects than positive ones, as parasocial interaction are considered to be counterproductive in terms of social interactivity. It has been clarified by Stepanikova, Nie He (2010) that in the long run, deficits on offline face-to-face social interconnectivity can be observed as individuals are immersed in online interactions and have diminished in terest in actual real world interactions. Turkle (1995) argued that individuals who engage and immerse in online-role-playing games would have the tendency to neglect their real lives so as to be able to live in the virtual world. Kraut et.al (1998) provides the same point of view, and added on that after a period of time, the families of such parasocial interactions garnered higher rates of loneliness, as well as lower rates of social involvement in the real world, and as reported by Nie and Erbring (2002), there was a negative correlation with the amount of time spent on the internet and amount of time spent for social interactions. As such, online interactions were preferred to as compared to face-to-face communications, and were found to be lonelier as time spent online increases. The deficiency paradigm is strong in its concept to explain the relationship of how individuals deal with online and offline social interactions, with illustrations of the causal behaviour of parasocia l interaction. However, further analyses conducted by other researchers may overthrow the deficiency paradigm. Gross (2004) challenges the strength of the research of Tsao by proposing that the deficiency paradigm is limited as it may not apply to every situation or case, and findings suggested that there are no significant correlations between social involvement and total time spent online, and there would be a better explanation on the relationship of online and offline social interactivity which can be established. Tsao (1996) elicits that in the global use paradigm, individuals display similar behavioural patterns when they are online, as well as offline. This would mean that individuals make use of media not as a compensatory mean, but rather, as a tool for the enrichment of their social statuses, as well as being connected to others. Park, Kee Valenzuela (2009) illustrates such universal behavioural pattern, as explained by the global use paradigm, through their findings that university students were using online social media sites such as Facebook to satisfy their social and psychological needs. Their results revealed that students were participating in Facebook groups to be kept up to date with events occurring on and off campus, to socialise with friends and to gain self-status (Park et al. 2009). In a similar study, Freberg et. al (2010) conducted a survey which includes 124 undergraduate students, and questionnaires were administered to the students to evaluate the relationship between online and offline social interactions. Several factors that were part of the assessment criteria was how individuals spend their time offline, which includes face-to-face social interactions with friends and family, as well as assessing their online connectivity, which translates to how often they spend interacting with friends they consider to be close. Results revealed that the majority of the assessed students reported being active on social networking sites, and it is found that there was no significant negative relationship between online and offline social interactivity. However, the limitation in this particular study is such that distortion to the actual number of close friends an individual has online would contaminate the actual data set, and thus would affect the reliability of the survey. Student in the sample size may not answer truthfully, or may have errors in thinking that they may have more close friends than they actually would have. Another example that limits t he research is that the needs and gratifications of the students were not assessed beforehand, and as such it was not clear to ascertain that media usage of the participant was attributed to compensatory or non-compensatory means. All total, few studies regarding the effects of online usage on psychological well-being revealed adverse effects, as majority of studies displayed little to no impact on online and offline social interactions (Gross, 2004), and other studies suggested that the relationship of online and offline social interaction would be better improved by a certain amount of online usage (Shaw Gant, 2002). These findings are more consistent with the global use paradigm brought up by Tsao, which evidently advocates internet use has become a universal experience as opposed to being referred to as a strategy for compensating what is lacking in our actual lives. The studies have provided a direction in explaining that the global use paradigm is more appropriate in the explanation of the relationship of online and offline social interactions. In addition, studies suggests that the way we interact online is shifting in the direction of the way we interact in the real world, and that proposes that the amount of social media usage by students are seen as universal in terms of behaviour in social interaction, as opposed to the deficiency paradigm suggesting that users have dissonance in the relationship of online and offline social interactions, and as researches reveal, those who are lacking in terms of offline face-to-face social interaction do not appear to be finding for more social connections online as a means of compensating for the deficient real world social experience. Nonetheless, it is certain that as the amount of time spent on social networking sites increases to a level where it is considered deficit, it would cause our offline soc ial interactions to be damaged as the more time spent online, it would mean we would have lesser time for face-to-face social interactions (Stepanikova, Nie He, 2010).

The Pancreas :: essays research papers fc

The pancreas is located in the middle of the abdomen. It’s surrounded by the stomach, small intestine, liver and spleen. It’s about six inches long and shaped like a thin pear, wide at one end. It has three sections: wider right end is the head, the middle is the body and the left end is the tail.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The pancreas has two functions; to make enzymes that help digest fats and proteins and the other, to produce insulin that controls the blood sugar level called glucose. It consists of Islet cells (1 of 3 types), which are endocrine glands. This means the Islet cells secret the insulin directly into the blood stream. The pancreas contains many more of these Islet cells than the body needs to maintain a normal insulin level. Even when half of the pancreas is removed, the blood sugar level can still remain normal. The pancreas is also made up of exocrine glands, which produce enzymes for digestion.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When the blood sugar levels aren’t normal, it’s a disease called diabetes. Diabetes (diabetes mellitus) is a deficiency of the hormone insulin or the inhibition of its action with the cells. The insulin acts like a bridge between the glucose and the cells. In the US there are about 16 million people who suffer from diabetes. It is the seventh most common cause of all deaths. Diabetes is most common in Native American females over 45 years of age.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are two main types of diabetes. The firsts is insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). In IDDM the body either doesn’t produce diabetes or produces very small amounts. The symptoms usually occur in teenagers under 20, usually around puberty. Untreated IDDM affects the metabolism of fat. Since the body can’t convert glucose into energy, it is broken down into fat and stored for energy. This also increases the amounts of ketone bodies in the blood, which interfere with respiration. The second type is called is non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). This is when the body doesn’t make enough insulin or is unable to use it. NIDDM is the most common of all diabetes; it makes up 90 to 95 percent of all cases. Scientists believe that in some people weight gain or obesity is what triggers their diabetes because 80 percent of people with diabetes are over weight.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Another problem people have with the pancreas is pancreatic cancer. Each year about 29,000 Americans and 3,000 Canadians are diagnosed with it.

Literature of Oppression and Freedom: Vaclav Havel and Natan Sharansky Essay

Often times throughout world history, and particularly the history of freedom movements, the cliche that life imitates art, and that art imitates life shows its face strongly. Two of the leaders of the dissent movement in the Soviet Union and its bloc countries/satellites just as easily could be merely characters in a play as well as characters within the world. The ironic thing is that their power derives from the same source: literary hero. Icons are created and understood things whether their figure is symbolic, archetypal or actual. In the cases of Vaclav Havel and Natan Sharansky their work was accomplished through these literary means. Their books, their histories, and their experiences are shared ones, perhaps only overshadowed by their joint successes. Vaclav Havel began his personal movement through a certain default. His history found itself at a crossroads when his educational pursuits were thwarted at the end of compulsory levels. His family’s identification with intellectuals was more than enough for the Soviet machine to attempt to discourage, by force of rule, further attempts at intelligentsia pursuit. Havel thus was placed into the position of many young idealists: when denied something, the object becomes much more desirable. This method of subjugation tends to be the downfall of many systems. It is seen often in Western countries that many talented individuals left to their own devices fail to achieve their full potential. My understanding is that if they were forcibly detained from their talents, they would begin to fight by human nature, and unlock more than they were ever able to, or motivated to, accomplish. With Havel, as with others, his power was unleashed subconsciously from his earliest days. Military service to the country, again a rigid compulsory reality, and allowance into an Economics program did not manage to reign in the young Czech. He discarded these and pursued quickly his passion – one shared by his family. Humanitarian values and improvement seemed to run strongly in the Havel household, and Vaclav was no different and no stranger to this. Following work as a stagehand, he managed to land himself in studies of Drama at Faculty of Theatre of the Academy of Musical Arts, completing his academics there by correspondence. The failure of the Czech government to discover and end Havel’s studies would ultimately undermine their authority over the playwright, and over those who followed his later writing. By 1966, Havel had his first international successes, and brought himself his first attention on the world political stage . It was during this period that one of his most influential works was written and produced: 1963’s The Garden Party. Havel was not hiding his civic tendencies and participated in what he hoped was a revival of the cultures of his home country. He took parts and positions in various movements, chief among them the Club of Independent Writers and the Club of Engaged Non Partisans. This did not cause him overwhelming trouble yet, even when he took a job with the non Marxist monthly paper Tvar in 1965. But the rulers did begin to take notice. In 1968, he, and many others of similar mind would pay for their ‘treason’ in the cultural revolution and its subsequent Prague Spring. Only 7 years later Havel began his transition from cultural icon to political figure by sending a series of open letters to the political bureaus. One of his most important early ones was a missive to then President Husak, a demonstration of his growing awareness of the plight of Czechoslovakian society. This writing directly resulted in the 1977 Charter, which for the first time openly criticized the standards of life in the state. As spokesman, he began the voice of referendum, and it was his previous popularity as author that provided the groundwork for his ability to draw followers. Unfortunately for him, chief among his followers were the censors and police. But his political life was well underway. Anatoly ‘Natan’ Sharansky, born in Ukraine of the Soviet Union followed a different path to his political life. It is amazing and worthwhile, however, to explore the similarities of life in yet a separate Soviet bloc land. For all intents and purposes, the two could have grown up together. This common bond, as it would turn out, would provide a common ‘enemy’ of sorts for them – an enemy of freedom and expression. Also ironic is the apparent ‘lapse’ of judgment on the part of the government that allowed Sharansky’s influence to foment, and then to spread. When dissident Andrei Sakharov was held under state control, it was Sharansky that was allowed to be his English interpreter. Such close work with the alleged revolutionary inspired the already impressionable Anatoly to develop his own ideas regarding the freedom of man behind the iron curtain. This time period saw him help found, and then act as spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. As with Havel in Czechoslovakia, 1977 would be the time of divergence from active young man to active international freedom fighter, in a cultural way. At the same time that the Charter was criticizing life under communism, Sharansky was first arrested for treason to the state of the Soviet Union. This initial interrogation and incarceration was based upon his supposed spying activities for the United States, charges that were later proven false, as was the case for many others. Upon conviction, Sharansky was sent to the gulags of Eastern Russia, where he would remain until 1986. When he was finally released, one of the first political prisoners to be, he finally realized one of his personal dreams: emigration to Israel where he could recover his Jewish heritage. When he arrived and was greeted with a hero’s welcome, he exchanged his Soviet name ‘Anatoly’ for the Hebrew ‘Natan’, by which he has since been known . Havel, too, would have to escape from behind bars, figuratively speaking. After the 1977 charter, he would find himself unable to publish any of his works which were gaining attention and influence. He was now a de facto politician and had to be stopped. The Czech government attempted to do so by imprisoning him three separate times, placing him behind bars for over 5 years. At the time of his incarceration, he had become the co-founder of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Prosecuted, a committee that he could not have foreseen he would need the personal care of. By the second half of the 1980s, as with Sharansky, Havel would finally begin to realize freedoms. Dialogue with the communist governments and the Soviet Union was finally beginning to open up, and Havel took the opportunity to coauthor a petition of â€Å"A Few Sentences†. This would eventually be signed by 10,000 Czechoslovaks. Despite a setback in 1989 in which a freedom movement was crushed, Havel came to his political pinnacle by gaining the presidency of the new Czechoslovakia. Havel and Sharansky have both been immortalized through their writings. We have their collected works and also now their important histories and memoirs and can study their dissent to compare their achievements and experiences. Theirs is the story of many others, and shows the power of literature, composition and political texts to connect oppressed peoples. Havel’s plays, and especially The Garden Party, and Sharansky’s memoir Fear No Evil are powerful representations of this ideal. The Garden Party could not have been better for uniting and informing the masses. As such, it is quite surprising that the play did not simply ‘go away’, so to speak; that it got into the hands of the public was a serious misstep on the part of the communist government. The play is absolutely a stunning satirical work. It uses humor to attack its target in a sideways fashion, which ultimately is a more successful frontal attack than pure rhetoric, anyway. Its characters are simple and believable, if not highly stereotypical, and work their wonders in different ways. If no other character is remembered after reading The Garden Party for the first time, it is Hugo that sticks in the mind. All at once he is quaint, separated from outer consciousness, and independent. Where he begins as an inner focused chess player in the home – so inner focused that he plays both sides – he grows into his own brutal oppressor. This is great work. We wonder at his childlike manner in playing against himself at the game, only to be shocked when he plays against himself through bureaucratic oppression later on. Most amazing of all is the ease with which he takes both sides in both undertakings. It is a comment at once on deception, and also of childlike qualities of leadership as opposed to mature development. Unfortunately, government cannot be run in this manner with its failure to police itself. Beyond its characters, The Garden Party relies upon dramatic tools to get its message across. These tools help connect the play to its audience, which must be remembered were the oppressed citizens of the Eastern Empire. In particular the writing in of a theme – paranoia – underscores the feelings of the time. It becomes obvious that even supporters of the system are discomfited by their work. Even as they work for the bureaucracy, they are always aware that they are being watched for their loyalty. They do not know who their enemies may be at any time. By way of example, Huge becomes his own enemy – a position that he never becomes truly aware of. Life becomes for him the prevention of danger to his position, the ultimate revelation of paranoia. His ongoing chess metaphor becomes the way of expressing this feeling. Rather than allowing himself to be open to abuse, he ‘checkmates’ his way out of trouble, squashing perceived opponents – squashing freedoms and liberties and ideals – before they can get to him. Sharansky in his life developed similar tactics. He, like many other civil liberties prisoners, had to create methods of dealing with harsh realities. Unlike Havel’s characters in many of his plays, of which The Garden Party’s Hugo remains the archetype and easiest to digest, Sharansky understood and faced his danger openly. His methods of using humor to disengage a situation, though, were the same. Both Havel and Sharansky understood and expressed within their lives, their lifeworks, and the awareness that even in their oppressive modes, humans are humans. Even interrogators can be reached through their own humanity. For all of the things we in the West think we know about the KGB, who were in charge of depriving Sharansky his freedom, we see through Fear No Evil that the secret police still were made up of humans. They were humans that could still be swayed, tempered or delayed through a humorous play. We can almost hear ‘checkmate’ come from Sharansky’s mouth at times, bringing Hugo right into his cell with him. The connections become obvious. We see the power of dissidence through language, whether spoken, read, written or performed. In this way, we see now the connections between Sharansky and Havel. BIBLIOGRAPHY Havel, Vaclav. The Garden Party and Other Plays. New York: Grove Press, 1993. Sharansky, Natan. Fear No Evil: The Classic Memoir of One Man’s Triumph Over a Police State. New York: Random House, 1998. .

Marilyn Moroe Conspiracy Theory - 795 Words

The way Marilyn Monroe died still brings up a plethora of questions that have no answers. Autopsy’s reveal she died from an acute barbiturate poisoning due to ingestion of overdose (Marilyn Monroe-Autopsyfiles). Conspiracy theories of the most desired woman of this era are suicide, accident and murder. So what caused Monroe to perish and meet her end? Was it a heightened mood swing after rejection, prescription mix-ups along with doctoral malpractice, and the government’s way of shutting her up as a way to avoid scandals about JFK or was it the Mafia avenging itself on the Kennedys? The most widely believed theory of Marilyn Monroe’s death is that she killed herself by overdosing on prescription pills. Eunice Murray, Marilyn’s housekeeper and oldest friend was there the night Monroe died. â€Å"Marilyn’s light was on and the telephone cable will still under the door, all signs that she was still awake† (Eunice Murray talks about the day Maril yn Monroe died). During August 5th, 1962, the day Marilyn passed away, Eunice noticed that Monroe was not being her usual happy self. Murray states Monroe had â€Å"a lot on her mind† that day and was more down than she’s ever been. Eunice has a theory in which she thinks Marilyn tried to commit another fake suicide but took too many pills and tried to reach the phone; but when she did, it was too late. Norma Jean Baker also known as Marilyn Monroe, had a history of previous suicide attempts. These stunts were for more fame and attention; and