Tag: mental health
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ChatGPT is my new social anxiety assistant
I have social anxiety. I dread interacting with strangers in unfamiliar settings, and yet I love travel, exploring new places, and getting to know interesting people. One coping mechanism I use is being prepared ahead of time: My anxiety doesn’t last, but anyone who shares this condition knows the stomach-clenching I go through as I…
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Avatar embodiment as self-directed therapy
You might have noticed that the Second Life avatar I’m using for photos has changed. With my SL partner Jakob offline and in the hospital, it’s uncomfortable to use the avatars that feel like “me” — my 9 year old alt and my 4 year old main Kay avatar. They feel too vulnerable. It’s unbearably sad to spend time in…
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Does cultural dissonance effect how we value virtual worlds?
I’m a member of the Society for Medical Anthropology, but I don’t often see research in that field that intersects with my interest in digital anthropology. So, I was curious to read “‘I Swear to God, I Only Want People Here Who Are Losers!’ Cultural Dissonance and the Allure of Azeroth“* in the December issue of Medical…
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Scientific debunking of brain training games
Stanford University released a statement about the brain training industry signed by 69 scientists last week, which Gizmodo addressed with the aptly titled Lumosity’s Brain Games Are Bullshit. People have been criticizing Lumosity’s claims about “neuroplasticity” and “making your brain brighter” for years. Though I think Lumosity began with the best of intentions and believed that their…
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Short documentary on virtual reality treatment of PTSD
Motherboard published this 20 minute documentary in March, but I just stumbled across it today (thanks GoodShit – NSFW). I’ve met a lot of people with PTSD or mental illness who use virtual worlds as part of their coping strategies, as well as some in formal virtual reality treatment programs. It’s incredibly powerful to be in…
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Analysis of Facebook posts correlated with personality traits
Check the word cloud below. What personality characteristics would you expect in people who use these with high frequency? If you said that they are “characterized by traits such as being unintelligent, unanalytical, unreflective, uninquisitive, unimaginative, uncreative, and unsophisticated”, then you’ve probably already read the recent research from the World Well-Being Project or one of the…
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Gaming will not turn you into a psychopath
Why Online Games Turn Players into Psychopaths is the silly headline of a WIRED article published yesterday. The author writes about behavior in the open, dangerous worlds of DayZ and Rust, and specifically his transition from helpful and cooperative to naked murderer. He keeps using the term “virtual worlds”, but I think he’s talking about worlds where violence…
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When the avatar outlives the human behind it
What happens to our digital existence when our physical existence is gone? I don’t mean this as a morbid topic but rather one that is increasingly important to consider and growing more broad all the time. I began thinking about online memorials and quickly found myself falling down the rabbit hole into a huge mess of…
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Talking about loneliness in a virtual world
This will be a somewhat personal post, so if you’re looking for cool robots or my scolding of presumptuous researchers, come back soon. Canary Beck has written a series of thoughtful posts about loneliness in Second Life this week. They’re excellent and are the jumping off point for the rest of this post, so take a few…
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Grandma’s new companion
When I read MIT anthropologist Sherry Turkle’s book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other last year, the sections on robotic companions weren’t my main focus but I found them fascinating. She wrote about observing interactions between older Japanese people in a nursing home and a robotic harp seal called…