“Digital Hoarding” Could Be an Increasing Problem

As data storage has become more accessible than ever, the amount of digital “stuff” we all have put aside is on the rise, too.

In a recent paper published in the journal Information & Management, we have investigated a rising phenomenon called “digital hoarding”, which happens when an individual constantly acquires digital content, feels difficulty in getting rid of it, and gradually gets more and more digital content without an intended purpose.

Digital hoarding can quickly increase out of control, too — perhaps even more quickly than in the physical world, due to several reasons. First, the digital hoarder is less likely to notice the space limitations in the digital world. While the boundaries of a physical space are clear, such boundaries are less noticeable in digital spaces. Second, hoarding of physical objects happens in fixed boundaries, while digital spaces are “expandable” — you can get additional digital storage with minimum effort at very little or zero cost. Third, to hoard physical items, a person needs to expend some effort, such as purchasing them. By contrast, most digital contents are either self-created, free, or available on a subscription (订阅) basis. Fourth, compared with physical stuff, digital contents can be multiplied, for example, by making copies, with very minimal effort.

In the modern world, it is unavoidable that digital content plays an important role in our lives. Therefore, the potential of serious mental health impacts from digital hoarding is a real possibility.

If you think you’re holding onto too much digital content, you can try cleaning your digital footprint, reducing unnecessary digital content, coming up with simple methods to organize your files, pictures and videos. What’s more, reassess the importance of many social networks, including groups in many communication apps, and keep only those essential to you.

When you’re having fun with your friends, you take selfies. When you visit famous places, you take selfies. When you are in beautiful spots, you take selfies. But sometimes you don’t look very attractive in the photos. And, of course, if you’re going to post them, you want to look your best. What can you do?

Instead of posting a photo you don’t like, you can turn to photo retouching. When you retouch an image, you improve its appearance. Many apps offer you the ability to do that. Their easy-to-use tools help you smooth your skin, make your teeth straighter and whiter, and more. Within the apps, you can also change your facial features. You can make your eyes rounder and brighter. You can change the shape of your face or your nose. You can also change the direction of the light source or add highlights. All in all, you can make yourself look like you wish you looked.

Now you’ve uploaded your retouched photos to social media. People leave positive comments, and you get a lot of likes. That’s great, right? Maybe not. With so many people sharing personal images of their lives, it’s almost like a contest.

Who looks the best, takes perfect selfies and lives up to social media’s standard of beauty? You need to be part of that crowd so that you don’t feel left out. Worse yet, you feel if you’re not part of that crowd, you may be criticized for your looks. Maybe you think that if you don’t look like the influencers you follow, you’re not good enough. People generally retouch themselves to have larger eyes, thinner chins and brighter skin. Does everyone now look the same? It seems like a lot of people are trying to match up to unrealistic beauty ideals. That isn’t good for anyone’s self-image.

Perhaps it’s time to post the real you and only lightly retouched, if at all.

The Changes of My Hometown In My Eyes

Is Leather Good or Not?

For thousands of years, humans have used leather to make everything from clothing to furniture to footwear. The skin of animals is a material that is strong, hard-wearing and flexible. These qualities make leather a popular material for many different products, but more people are becoming concerned about the potential harm caused by items they buy. Should we respect ancient traditions or is having real leather not as important as it used to be?

The treatment of animals raised for their skins is a massive issue. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), more than 2.29 billion cows, pigs and goats are killed each year for their hides. This does not include the animal skin of fancier leather products, such as sheep, crocodiles, kangaroos and lizards.

There’s also an environmental problem. Producing leather is a very polluting process, because it requires treating the skins with chemicals. During the procedure, called tanning, chemicals change the fibres (纤维) inside the leather, making it tougher. A tanning facility uses more than 60,000 litres of water for every tonne of leather produced. It uses huge amounts of poisonous chemicals, including substances containing heavy metals such as chromium, which when washed out ends up in nearby soil and drinking water that people use.

However, the making of leather is not entirely negative. Selling animal skin is a key source of income for remote populations such as the Inuit people in Canada. Every day, cows, pigs and goats are killed for their meat to be sold in supermarkets. It’s respectful not to waste anything, and without leather their skins would have to be buried or burned.

Although there are alternatives to leather, some of these fabrics are only 85% to 90% biodegradable (可生物降解的). Vegan leather can be made from plastics which take years to biodegrade, so it’s actually worse for the planet.

Why Don’t We Use the Math We Learn in School?

How much of the math you’ve learned in school is used in everyday life? For the majority of people, the answer is surprisingly little. Clearly, some people learn math very well and apply it in everyday problem-solving settings. The question is why most people don’t, in spite of spending many years practicing it.

The first explanation blames the failure of education. One of the major barriers to using a skill in real life is automaticity. We tend to find the least-effort solution to our problem. If struggling through a math problem is hard for you, you’ll find a different way to solve it that doesn’t rely on math. The familiar model for teaching mathematics revolves around teachers telling students certain rules, applying those rules to examples and students then practicing problems similar to the examples seen in class. By teaching in this way, a lot of the work and deep thought that went into the creation of these mathematical rules is lost. In that sense, people were never taught math thoroughly enough to use it automatically in real life.

The second explanation is a little different. It argues that people may develop competence in math classes, but they struggle to translate real-life problems into a format where they can use their mathematics knowledge. This seems most apparent in the case of applying algebra (代数). Students struggle with algebra, but they particularly struggle with word problems. Yet, the equivalent real-life problems are typically much harder than word problems. From this perspective, what people struggle with is not doing math, but recognizing where and how to apply math to real problems.

Educational researchers now emphasize the importance of transfer and deep understanding. They believe we need to give students more training in noticing and converting everyday situations into the math problems they know how to solve. By using real-life math applications, students can make connections between math and everyday life.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Technology has made paying all sorts of bills incredibly easy. The real-time budget apps, which capture our spending and pay our bills automatically, should theoretically give us more control over our money. But why, in real life, do they do the opposite?

It helps to think about how we used to pay. My parents describe a process that would involve three separate points of contact whenever they paid for something with a credit card: first, at the cash register, then when a bill came in the mail and finally when they wrote a check to cover it. While each of the checkpoints is technically still there, automation has given us a chance to skip the second and the third. For bills paid automatically through a banking app, even the first checkpoint can be gone. We know that it is happening in the background, but it’s so far out of view that it might as well not be there. How do we get that connection back, without giving up the convenience that technology has brought us?

The good news is that though technology has taken away something, it can also give. Much of the battle is simply recognizing what we’ve lost. If we want to be smart about our money and have thorough control over it, we need to bridge that gap between what we spend on and how much we pay. We can start using personal-finance apps to do more than make our lives easier. These apps can send us notifications when each automatic payment is being made and categorize purchases, sending us instant spending reports. Admittedly, those tools require the user to sign up for these services and make conscious efforts to take full advantage of them. In this way, they are arguably better practice than balancing a checkbook on a Saturday morning.