Optimal Experience

The author of the article, “You Can Buy Happiness, If It’s An Experience” stated many different ideas and thoughts on happiness. He stated that the anticipation waiting for a trip trumps buying the latest things. He proves multiple studies that show that an experience provides more happiness than the newest iphone. He also states that the build up waiting for a trip is improved due to your imagination. He disproves the saying “money can’t buy you happiness”. I agree with the author, because the points that he makes I have experienced.

“...between 2005 and 2012, 35% of the couples marrying in the US had met online” (González). The internet is used in many ways such as, communicating, posting status updates, and discovering new information. People most commonly argue the internet to be the source of loneliness and depression, whereas others say that it generates more relationships and friends. Electronic devices, such as mobile phones and laptops are utilized in everyday life, whether it be for work, school, personal matters, and in many other ways. It helps promote interactivity and involvement in a community, where you are not alone. It also permits transparent discussions, between friends, family, and others, that are beneficial in everyday life worldwide. Technology does not make us more alone as it gives people the opportunity to meet new people, supplements communications, and aids those who are already lonely.

Prominent columnist James Surowiecki stated, “Since the 1950s, reports of major depression have increased tenfold, and while much of that increase undoubtedly represents a new willingness to diagnose mental illness, there’s a general consensus among mental-health experts that it also reflects a real development,” in his article “Technology and Happiness.” The occurrence of increased of technology use has resulted in the mental stability of people steadily declining. One can infer that happiness is connected to trust and both have to have a very strong roots in order to feed off each other and make one happy. Another result was that “People are more anxious, trust government and business less, [..] by most standards, then, you’d have to say that Americans are better off now than they were in the middle of the last century. Oddly, though, if you ask Americans how happy they are, you find that they’re no happier than they were in 1946,” (Surowiecki) thus begging the question: is today’s society happy? By extension, one can conclude that present day people are more despondent than

Matt Richtel tells the story of how the Campbell’s spring break went. “We didn’t go out to dinner,” Mrs. Campbell mourned. “We just sat there on our devices.” Her husband joined them at the aquarium for a little while until he begged to do e-mail on his phone, and later she found him playing games. But finally they unplugged, “It changes the mood when everybody is present,” Mrs. Campbell said. Richtel goes on to say, “In the modern world, the chime of incoming e-mail can override the goal of writing a business plan or playing catch with the children.” The ultimate risk of heavy technology use is that it diminishes empathy by limiting how much people engage with one another, even in the same room,” Mr. Nass from Stanford thinks. If the students put down their electronics, and encourage the rest of their family to do the same, it could be an opportunity for them

The message from this section sticks out to me because I am surprised about the average smartphone user checks his or her phone around 150 times a day (Huffington, 2015). The statistic shows that how often smartphone users check or use their phones per day. Moreover, it also tells us how our brain is forced to distract attention continually, and it becomes difficult for us to focus on certain things when we use the smartphone too often. Technology products are like the serpent in the digital garden of Eden, which gives us what we want, but not necessarily what we need. Technology devices will not be helpful for people when we either overuse it or become addicted to it. My

“According to 2014 data from Pew Research, 90 percent of American adults carry a mobile phone and more than 58 percent of people carry smartphones that offer not only voice and text communication, but also internet, email, and social media access.” Mobile Devices Are Detrimental to Personal Relationships from the point of view of Mobile Devices on Personal Relationships. Whether it is checking your phone at the dinner table, or googling a math question, technology becomes a world, easy to be sucked into. Every day we turn to technology to fix our problems or to ease our mind, but why are we so obsessed with such a time sucking thing? It is safe to say, as a society we rely too much on technology because we are too obsessed with

In her article, Jean Twenge describes how post-millennials or what she calls “iGen”, are massively changing in the way they behave in society. She states how not only they interact less with people, but their emotional being is being negatively affected by technology, specifically smartphones. I believe future studies on this subject should include an even broader range of statistics from post-millennials around the world to see how this idea of mental crisis due to smartphones may be the same within different cultures, or perhaps different.

(Answer Prompt) In this article, “Are we Addicted to Technology”, by the author, Zoe Kleinman, issues the problem of technology. Today, the common issue in today's society is that people slowly become more reliant on their device rather than spending more time in their daily modern life. People are spending more time doing nothing productive with the use of technology, but stays in front the screen and have that gratification and that love of control that they are becoming more unable to stay away from the screen. (1st claim) It slowly affects people mentally and physically,(evidence) Zoe stated “ Surely tiredness is a by-product of a busy modern life- children, work, hobbies etc -rather than that relaxing time spent watching Netflix in bed?.”(effectiveness)Despite

Personal devices have evolved from being a source of guidance in people’s lives into becoming an emotional encumbrance. Over the course of the years, personal devices have evolved from facilitating people’s lives to causing them to experience a wave of toxic emotions. Stephen Marche, a sophisticated journalist for The Atlantic, has discussed the incredible potential that technology has granted for individuals: “Over the past three decades, technology has delivered to us a world in which we need not be out of contact for a fraction of a moment.” Personal devices have advanced the lifestyles of many people around the world because they have opened the door for unrestricted communication. With unrestricted communication, a person has the ability

In this article, The subjectivity of happiness: on Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's 'Flow' by Chase Nordengren, establishes that the key to happiness is to find flow activities and apply them frequently. The idea of happiness revealed in this piece indicates individuals who are constantly engaging with the world are the happiest. Csikszentmihalyi suggested, creating happiness, is by our habits and actions and not changing the world for happiness. This means demonstrating activities that match with the concept of high changeling level but with high ability, are a sources of flow activities, which convey happiness.

Picture this, it is a quiet evening, you are at home with your family, there are no appointments or sports games to run off to, what are you and your family doing together? Did you find yourself visualizing playing a game together, maybe having a nice dinner, or talking about everyone’s day all the while there is laughter filling the air. Well, it just so happens that a similar circumstance transpired in my own home a while back, however, instead of interacting with family, there I sat curled up on the couch scrolling through my phone as if it was the only thing that mattered. Meanwhile, my family was doing the same thing, caught up with the stimulating imagines flashing before their eyes every once in a while, perking up to announce to the room, “Hey, you got to see this.” This reality made me realized how much I missed the time before smartphones, touchpads, any of those “personal” electronic devices that seem to be consuming more of our time.

In a world where happiness is one of the things that we strive to have, the people in the world try to find their own happiness in false things. The article “Balk: Cell Phone…Smartphone” by Tim Balk, Tim discusses the topic of phone use in the world today. He makes some great points about how the use of phones has disrupted our world by making the younger generations think that they cannot have a fun time with the people around them without their phones to record those moments, and share them with the world. I completely agree with Tim’s argument. Our world has become a place where we show more rudeness, than love towards each other.

In addition, Csikszentmihalyi provides example of a mother who is enjoying daughter’s activity. A mother is enjoying eating cookies and reading books with the daughter. A mother is experiencing the flow while doing an activity with the daughter, which enables her to overlook all the other activities. Though the activity is casual, the person gets an autotelic experience which ultimately leads to happiness. Furthermore, Csikszentmihalyi emphasized that the relationship between flow and happiness depends upon the performance of an activity, even though the activity is simple and

While Anna Akbari author of the essay “A Personal Guide to Digital Happiness” affirms, “One question I keep coming back to: How does technology affect our happiness? As Albert Einstein remarked, "Why does this magnificent applied science which saves work and makes life easier bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it." (2) So how do we make sense of this technology and can it make us happier people? Akbari expounds, that she started this quest to find happiness in the digital age with online dating. One of her dates was with an anorexic emo guy with pink hair and full of angst. On their first date, he informed her that he was “kind of a depressive guy”, so she tried to empathized, stating that she had people close to her who have suffered as well and that she understood. “He then looked at me and stated firmly, with disdain, "No. You cannot understand. I've met people like you. You're one of those happy people." I've never forgotten that scathing accusation -- that I had the nerve to be happy. I'd never thought of people in those terms: "happy" or "not." Since that date I've grown increasingly obsessed with the concept of happiness, and judging from the abundance of literature being published on the topic, I'm not the only one: there are books to tell you how to be happier at work, how to

In society today, everybody will explain “there’s an app for that!” This essay will discuss an area of life where there is not an app for that. It is an important area of life. The area of life is something that helps you to have happiness – this is the area of life that I focus on. As far as I know there is not one single application that would be on an android, smartphone or any other device that can actually give you happiness in your hand such as spending time with your parents or siblings or family, being in love with someone and/or landing that dream job that you have always wanted. I know without a doubt that there is not one application that can do that. I will explain further in the following words.