Social Media Wellness

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right.

Here is your map to guide you in this new life phase. You can use the powerful practices and insights - enhanced with online tools and exercises at AARP’s Life Reimagined.org website - to help you uncover your own special gifts, connect with people who can support you, and explore new directions.You’ll be inspired by meeting ordinary people who have reimagined their lives in extraordinary ways.

What do you need besides motivation and willpower? In Commit to Win, Heidi Reeder, PhD, unpacks over forty years of research by psychologists and economists to show that the key to reaching any goal, whether it’s to hit the gym more often or to finally quit that dead-end job, isn’t motivation, willpower, or determination. It’s commitment. Busting the myths most of us believe about commitment, Reeder shows that it all comes down to four variables.

What are we going to do with those 20 or 30 years we didn’t expect? Due to unfounded fears of unhappiness and regret, many intelligent, otherwise rational people, even into their 40s and 50s, are so convinced that old age is a time of misery that they simply deny any other outcome and refuse to plan their own destiny. This optimistic and highly informative guide to smart aging will detail for listeners the steps they need to take to ensure that long life becomes synonymous with good life.

Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl is known as the founder of logotherapy, a mode of psychotherapy based on human's motivation to search for meaning in his life. The author discusses his ideas in the context of other prominent psychotherapies and describes the techniques he uses with his patients to combat the "existential vacuum".

Are you losing hours to mindless scrolling? Feeling like social media and targeted ads are pulling your strings? You’re not alone—and you’re not powerless. In The Algorithm of You: Rewiring Your Brain in the Age of AI Overload, R. Shetty, a tech-savvy writer who’s battled the digital trap himself, reveals how AI-driven platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Google are rewiring your brain, hijacking your attention, and nudging your choices. But here’s the game-changer: you can take back control with R. Shetty’s transformative roadmap. Drawing from his own struggle with tech ...

When you are criticized or rejected, do you have a tendency to lash out or withdraw entirely? Both types of kneejerk reactions can have lasting and unintended consequences, affecting our friendships, careers, families, and romantic relationships. The truth is, overreacting hurts us as much as it hurts the people around us. You may see overreacting as an unchangeable part of your personality, but in reality, this tendency, like any other, can be unlearned.

John Homans adopted his dog, Stella, from a shelter for all the usual reasons: fond memories of dogs from his past, a companion for his son, an excuse for long walks around the neighborhood. Soon enough, she is happily ensconced in the daily workings of his family. And not only that: Stella is treated like a family member - in ways that dogs of his youth were not. Spending humanlike sums on vet bills, questioning her diet and exercise regimens, contemplating her happiness - how had this all come to pass, when the dogs from Homans's childhood seemed quite content living mostly out in the yard?

We live in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and shopping to binge eating and opioid abuse. Sugar can be as habit-forming as cocaine, researchers tell us, and social media apps are hooking our kids. But what can we do to resist temptations that insidiously and deliberately rewire our brains? Nothing, David Courtwright says, unless we understand the history and character of the global enterprises that create and cater to our bad habits.

There is a war on for your mind. We are endlessly confronted by those who would manipulate us – advertisers, pick-up artists, politicians, big tech, cult leaders and many more – even the humble waiter who asks, ‘Still or sparkling?’ All forms of communication are designed to persuade you in some way. Politicians and nudge units manipulate us into agreeing with controversial policies. Adverts tell us to buy lots of this, but none of that. The news tells us what to care about. Charities compete for our support. Social media buffets us with algorithms.

People - friends, family members, work colleagues, salespeople - lie to us all the time. Daily, hourly, constantly. None of us is immune, and all of us are victims. According to studies by several different researchers, most of us encounter nearly 200 lies a day. Now there’s something we can do about it. Liespotting links three disciplines - facial recognition training, interrogation training, and a comprehensive survey of research in the field - into a specialized body of information developed specifically to help business leaders detect deception....

Mindfulness at Work Essentials for Dummies explores the many benefits of utilizing mindfulness techniques in the workplace, offering managers, HR professionals, and business people of all levels guidance on how mindfulness can help with the development of core business skills. You'll discover the key concepts of mindfulness and quickly grasp how its implementation in the workplace is a win-win for you, your team, and your organization as a whole.

You will never look at people the same way again - including yourself - after this lively look at how we make character judgments. Drawing on cutting-edge social science research as well as their own work with Fortune 500 executives, members of Congress, and Nobel Prize winners, authors Matt Kohut and John Neffinger demystify the process we use to size each other up.

Most of us think that longevity hinges on maintaining a normal Body Mass Index. But research conducted over the last decade hit the media in January with explosive news: Overweight and even moderately obese people with certain chronic diseases - from heart disease to cancer - often live longer and fare better than normal-weight individuals with the same ailments. In this groundbreaking audiobook, Carl Lavie, MD, reveals the science behind the obesity paradox and shows us how to achieve maximum health rather than minimum weight.

As the world gets smaller, hotter, and flatter, people from different cultures are colliding like never before. However, many modern conflicts stem from the same root cause: the tension between people using the independent, separate, and in-control side of their selves, versus people using the interdependent, connected, and adjusting side. We also show how people can nudge their cultures to call forth their best selves. By knowing when and how to use our different selves, we may not just survive, but thrive in the 21st century.

What really drives success and failure? Can I trust you? It's the question that strikes at the heart of human existence. Whether we're talking about business partnerships, romantic relationships, child-parent bonds, or the brave new world of virtual interaction, trust, when correctly placed, is what makes our world spin and lives flourish. Renowned psychologist David DeSteno brings together the latest research from diverse fields, including psychology, economics, biology, and robotics, to create a compelling narrative about the forces that have shaped the human mind's propensities to trust.

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.

Jen Lancaster is here to take a hard look at our elevating anxieties, and with self-deprecating wit and levelheaded wisdom, she charts a path out of the quagmire that keeps us frightened of the future and ashamed of our imperfectly perfect human lives. Take a deep breath, and her advice, and you just might get through a holiday dinner without wanting to disown your uncle.

How do we make the judgment call between self-interest and caring for others? Drawing on the latest scientific research and interviews with social scientists, spiritual leaders, ex-cons, altruists, and philosophers, Matousek examines morality from a scientific, sociological, and anthropological standpoint. Each chapter features a series of questions, readings, interviews, parables, and anecdotes that zoom in on a particular niche of moral inquiry, making this audiobook both utilitarian and fun.

Dr. Nicholas Kardaras answers the question of why young people’s mental health is deteriorating as we become a more technologically advanced society. While enthralled with shiny devices and immersed in social media, our young people are struggling with record rates of depression, loneliness, anxiety, overdoses and suicide. Our immersion in toxic social media has created polarizing extremes of emotion and addictive dependency, while also acting as a toxic "digital social contagion”, spreading a variety of psychiatric disorders.