Media Use

Social media has gotten a bad rap lately: it’s been blamed for growing feelings of low self-esteem, loneliness, and bouts of depression. And not without warrant. Not only have users of the platforms reported these negative effects, but studies have shown that social media is, indeed, a likely culprit of…

Growing up, my two brothers and I loved to play all sorts of video games. We’d crowd onto the couch and battle each other in Halo 2 and Call of Duty on the Xbox. We’d spend hours creating our dream houses and families on Sims (with the help of some…

Pros and Cons of Swipe Dating On Your Mental Health, MoodThere was a stigma to online dating ever since Match.com first launched in 1995. The perception was that it was for people who were desperate and incapable of meeting someone in person. I’ll admit it; I never tried online dating…

A couple years ago, my little brother called me into his room and begged me to try on his new video game headset. This wasn’t any old gamer headset—it was virtually a portal to another world. I’m a baby so, of course, I denied his request at first. But then…

The new, much-anticipated medical drama The Good Doctor finally premiered last night, September 26 on ABC—and all eyes were on Freddie Highmore, as he made his debut playing young autistic surgeon Shaun Murphy. Many shows and films have gotten bad raps in the past for misrepresenting mental illnesses or perpetuating…

From Pac-man to Playstation, video games have become a big part of our culture. This year, on September 12, gamers all over the country will want to mark their calendars for National Video Game Day. With 24 hours dedicated to the pastime of video games, gamers will want get their…

The realm of dating as we know it has completely transformed and continues to change with advancing technology. Today, there aren’t as many of us meeting our loved ones in person—striking up conversation with them at the local coffee shop, or beginning our love story with a circumstantial meeting on…

Take a moment and try to imagine life without modern-day technology. No alarm to wake you up for work in the morning. No car to get you where you need to go. You don’t have the option of picking up your phone and calling your dad. Or the ability to…

It’s a common belief that you get along best with those who share your interests. And while I certainly see the basis for this assertion, I don’t think it always rings true—actually I know it doesn’t always ring true. In college, I studied multimedia journalism. I was a writer for…

The good people at KFC decided it would be a good idea to create a virtual reality training experience for their employees and this was the absolutely terrifying result. The future of VR is extremely exciting, but not in this context. If you’ve ever wanted to know what it would…

Oh Netflix, what would we do without you and your magical entertainment superpowers. Netflix has a seemingly endless supply of movies, TV shows, documentaries about any subject matter you could possibly imagine, but it’s also precisely why we spend half of our time on Netflix trying to pick out something…

Gamers have always had to defend their entertainment vice far more than your average cinephile or bibliophile over the years, but that’s all about to change thanks to science… and video games. Several scientists and mental health researchers (who are probably all avid gamers) have been conducting studies over the…