“I’m shouting, but no-one is listening!” How to talk to people about wireless radiation.

Rachel Gaunt has an extensive 20 year background in advertising, marketing and social activism. Rachel has written this article, “I’m shouting, but no-one is listening! How to talk to people about wireless radiation so they can hear…and care” to help EMF activists.

She writes, “Why is it that our earnest explanations about the dangers of wireless radiation so often fall on deaf ears? Why in the face of so much science are people not rushing to protect themselves?

I have long been an observer of humans and how they behave, and have spent a long time puzzling the resistance and denial that conversations about wireless radiation can generate.  Recently, a meeting with behavior expert, Matthew Wilcox, author of The Business of Choice, helped to provide the final pieces of the puzzle.

When you look at the way humans make decisions, it turns out that there are three major factors working against us when it comes to shifting beliefs about wireless radiation.

Three factors working against us

First and foremost there is the “It will never happen to me,” response to anything bad that may happen to us in the future. This is especially true among young people.

“It will never happen to me. I am never going to die. It might happen to someone else but not to me.”…

Read Rachel Gaunt’s full article here: I’m shouting but no-one is listening!”

Study links cell phones to addiction

http://www.baylor.edu/content/imglib/1/8/8/7/188769.jpgCollege students spend an average of 8 hours or more a day on their cellphones and women spend the most time, up to ten hours a day.  Excessive use poses potential risks for academic performance, according to a Baylor University study on cellphone activity published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.

The study notes that approximately 60 percent of college students admit they may be addicted to their cell phone, and some indicated they get agitated when it is not in sight, said Roberts, lead author of the article “The Invisible Addiction: Cellphone Activities and Addiction among Male and Female College Students.”

“That’s astounding,” said researcher James Roberts, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing in Baylor’s School of Business. “As cellphone functions increase, addictions to this seemingly indispensable piece of technology become an increasingly realistic possibility.”

General findings of the study showed that:

• Of the top activities, respondents overall reported spending the most time texting (an average of 94.6 minutes a day), followed by sending emails (48.5 minutes), checking Facebook (38.6 minutes), surfing the Internet (34.4 minutes) and listening to their iPods. (26.9 minutes).

• Men send about the same number of emails but spend less time on each. “That may suggest that they’re sending shorter, more utilitarian messages than their female counterparts,” Roberts said.

• Women spend more time on their cellphones. While that finding runs somewhat contrary to the traditional view that men are more invested in technology, “women may be more inclined to use cellphones for social reasons such as texting or emails to build relationships and have deeper conversations.”

• The men in the study, while more occupied with using their cellphones for utilitarian or entertainment purposes, “are not immune to the allure of social media,” Roberts said. They spent time visiting such social networking sites as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Among reasons they used Twitter were to follow sports figures, catch up on the news — “or, as one male student explained it, ‘waste time,’” Roberts said.

Excessive use of cellphones poses a number of possible risks for students, he said.

“Cellphones may wind up being an escape mechanism from their classrooms. For some, cellphones in class may provide a way to cheat,” Roberts said.

Excessive or obsessive cellphone use also can cause conflict inside and outside the classroom: with professors, employers and families. And “some people use a cellphone to dodge an awkward situation. They may pretend to take a call, send a text or check their phones,” Roberts said.

Roberts noted that the current survey is more extensive than previous research in measuring the number and types of cellphone activities. It also is the first to investigate which activities are associated significantly with cellphone addictions and which are not.

Study participants were asked to respond to 11 statements such as “I get agitated when my cellphone is not in sight” and “I find that I am spending more and more time on my cellphone” to measure the intensity of their addiction.

The study noted that modern cellphone use is a paradox in that it can be “both freeing and enslaving at the same time.”

“We need to identify the activities that push cellphone use from being a helpful tool to one that undermines our well-being and that of others,” Roberts said.

Baylor University did a previous where they reported “Cell phone and instant messaging addictions are driven by materialism and impulsiveness and can be compared to consumption pathologies like compulsive buying and credit card misuse, according to a Baylor University study in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions.”

“Cell phones are a part of our consumer culture,” said study author James Roberts, Ph.D., professor of marketing and the Ben H. Williams Professor of Marketing at Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business. “They are not just a consumer tool, but are used as a status symbol. They’re also eroding our personal relationships.”

Alone Together

“I forgot my phone” is a video with over 25 million hits.

Bill Moyers interviews MIT professor Sherry Turkle, who has studied our relationship with technology for over three decades, about what this constant engagement means for our culture and our society. Turkle, author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other”, says our devices are not only changing the way we communicate and interact with each other, but also who we are as human beings. “What concerns me as a developmental psychologist is watching children grow in this new world where being bored is something that never has to be tolerated for a moment,” Turkle tells Moyers. “Everyone is always having their attention divided between the world of people [they’re] with and this ‘other’ reality.”

Watch Bill Moyers interview Sherry Turkle here: http://billmoyers.com/segment/sherry-turkle-on-being-alone-together/