These days technology like the iPhone helps us to track our own personal habits, Twitter gives us an insight into popular topics and analytics give us fascinating web usage statistics. Whilst technology has greatly enhanced our ability to collect interesting data about human behaviour, it’s important to realise that using such data to make conclusions about why we behave in such a way is unwise without investigating the differences between causality and correlation. Take for example the problematic question of whether the Internet is addictive or if addicts use the Internet.

The Relationship Between Psychology and Technology

Only thorough psychological research can investigate the motivations behind our behaviour. All of the modern day branches of psychology are governed by extremely strict rules that ensure that only legitimate and ethical research is conducted and published, and said research employs extensive statistical analyses on data derived from various methods including interviews, questionnaires, experiments, etc.

It is for these reasons that I believe that the relationship between psychology and technology needs to be much stronger. If we use psychology to understand and explain our interactions with technology today, we can help our future selves by using this information to make technology more accessible, usable and helpful for everyone.

There is absolutely no escaping the fact that one day you will be old. Most people regard getting older to be a physical decline, a frailty of the body, without considering the cognitive and social changes that occur as you age. It is for this reason that I take an interest in Irish research centres like the NCBI Centre for Inclusive Technology and the CASALA Centre (soon to open in Dundalk IT) who aim to improve future technologies by conducting cognitive and social psychological research with older adults and people with disabilities.

In today’s Irish Times an article describes the recent Business of Ageing conference held in Dublin, highlights some of the fantastic assisted living technologies being developed here in Ireland and suggests this country could be a leader in developing technology for older adults.

Let’s hope this prediction comes true. Not only would I love to work in this area of research and development, I for one would like to continue being an early adopter of new technologies. I would be incredibly angry if, as I got older technology slipped out of my reach, the way the majority of older adults are excluded today.

I would argue that if you’re tweeting, you’re certainly not trying to sleep or doing what’s good for your body in preparation for shutting down for a few hours. I myself have suffered some restless nights and made a real effort to combat the problem, rather than accepting it and suffering through more zombie like days in the office.

Turn Off Your Computer 30 Minutes Before Sleep

If you’re suffering from occasional difficulty getting to sleep at night you should consider the effects of using a computer late at night. Studies have shown that the brain remains stimulated after using a computer (or watching television), which in turn makes your sleep restless. The simple act of shutting down the computer 30 minutes before you’re planning on going to sleep can help relax you.

Research has also shown that the bright light of your computer monitor (let’s also not forget that mobile phone screens also produce a bright light) suppresses the production of our sleep hormone melatonin. If you are suffering from an especially bad case of insomnia then try shutting down the computer at least two hours before planning on going to bed.

Though you may enjoy the calming effects of using the computer, your brain on the other hand is thinking “light = daytime”. Staring at your computer screen means keeping yourself alert and wide-awake and returning online to complain about your inability to sleep is simply aggravating the problem.

If you are used to the routine of using the computer right up until bedtime, try to create a new routine for yourself. Use the last 30 minutes of your day to read a chapter out of that book you’ve been meaning to finish, to relax in the shower, to tidy up your apartment. Stick to the new routine and see if it helps improve your sleep.

Is checking if anyone has replied to your latest tweet or commented on your blog really worth loosing sleep over?

Avoid Caffeine Within 6 Hours of Bedtime

Coffee. Internet users are it’s biggest fan, but it does more harm than good to you in the evenings.

Caffeine is a short term solution if you are low on sleep and need to remain active, it blocks adenosine reception so you feel alert, and injects adrenaline into your system to give you a boost. The trouble is, that the half-life of caffeine in your body is around six hours. Consider a cup of coffee at 6pm, half the caffeine in that cup will still be floating around in your body at midnight. By avoiding caffeine within at least 6 hours of your bedtime you’re giving yourself a better chance at being able to fall asleep and the less caffeine in your body the better your sleep will be.

Also, excessive caffeine consumption has a negative effect on your digestive system, so you may suffer from heartburn when you try to sleep at night. Coffee (even decaf!) reduces the pressure on the valve between the esophagus and the stomach so that the acidic contents of the stomach pass up to the esophagus leading to heartburn, which is far harder to cure when you’re lying down as it’s even easier for that acid to travel to your esophagus.

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If the above two tips don’t work for you, I would recommend talking to your doctor as persistent insomnia can have detrimental effects on your physical and mental well being.

You can also try the following guidelines:

• Get up at the same time every day, even at weekends. Irregular sleep patterns undermines your ability to sleep.
• Avoid daytime activities in bed (like eating or watching TV) but reading before bed may be helpful.
• Do not smoke before bedtime, nicotine is a stimulant and just like caffeine it can disturb your sleep.
• Avoid alcohol within four hours of bedtime, though it may induce sleep it makes sleep more fragile and broken throughout the night.
• If you are unable to sleep, leave your bed and engage in a quiet activity elsewhere (not TV or using the computer) and return to bed when you feel sleepy again.
• Go to bed only when you are sleepy. Do not extend your bedtime hours in the hope of sleeping longer, in most cases you may be awake for longer.
• Exercise. People who take regular exercise sleep better than those of us sitting in-front of our computer screen 12 hours a day.

My name is Graham and I am doing a thesis on Facebook usage. The following is a link to a secure survey that I have made, asking basic Facebook usage questions and also incorporating a short personality questionnaire.

Open The Survey In A New Window

The whole survey will take no more than five minutes to do and is completely confidential; I can assure you that it is also anonymous. You need only type your initials. I would really appreciate it if you could find the time to do it, as I am struggling to get the required numbers. The only stipulation is that you are Irish, over 24, and have a facebbok profile. Thanking you in advance.

Graham Gilbert
Final Year MSc Cyberpsychology student at IADT

I’m rather interested in the results of this study and hopefully will be able to share the results of Graham’s study with you next year.

Having very much enjoyed this same event last year

Talks of interest to a Cyberpsychologist?

Mark Campbell from eMedia will be showcasing 3D Medical animations employed as elearning tools for life sciences.

Ronan Skehill from YourPinPoints shall discuss the business, societal and privacy issues surrounding location based services.

PhD Researcher David McKeown will be discussing the shortcomings of 2D mice and keyboards being used to interface with 3D environments, and demonstrating the use of wiimotes with 3D PC applications and robots.

Artist Miriam Lohan will introduce Sound Mapping – how to read a map by listening, perceiving presence and filtering information for navigation or pleasure.

PhD Student Fabiano Pinatti will explore how technology can support the nomadic/mobile aspects of modern work and life.

This research found that in comparison to 2006 there are far more female bloggers and that the majority of bloggers are no longer based within the IT industry. Non-Bloggers were found to be more concerned about the persistent nature of the Internet than Bloggers, but both had similar concern for issues of online privacy. Results found that Irish internet users have no preference for reading blogs based outside of Ireland and that the majority read a mixture of both Irish and international blogs, and did not rate either as more credible than the other. It was found that Irish internet users do not perceive it as highly important to know the identity of a blog author, but that over 60% of Irish bloggers publish online using their real name.

The primary motivation for Irish bloggers is the ability to articulate their ideas through writing and almost 52% consider their blogging as a form of journalism. The majority of Bloggers indicated that they have never lied on their blogs and that they actively attempt to verify information before posting an article. It was found that 35% of Irish bloggers do not feel connected to the Irish blogosphere, and that the most common blogosphere identified with was based around the author’s interests rather than geography. Most importantly, it was found that the impact of blogging on blogger’s lives was in no way negative and very positive in some respects.

This research is the first to investigate the psychological areas of interest surrounding blogging applied to an Irish audience, and though estimates have suggested only 1% of the Irish online population are blogging, this is steadily increasing. 35% of the Non-Bloggers surveyed indicated they had plans to blog in the future and blogging is definitely becoming increasingly more popular in Ireland, as demonstrated by the 40% increase in blogs registered at Irishblogs.ie between July 2008 and February 2009.

An increase in blogging in Ireland would be welcome due to its predominantly positive effects, such as increasing our shared intellectual capital, and, as this research indicates, blogging can in fact increase social capital too.

Furthermore, most previous research with regard to blogging has focused on personal journal style blogging, and it could be assumed that bloggers who are motivated by personal reasons were unrepresented in the sample that participated in this research. However, this could also suggest that Irish bloggers are actually less inclined to write what is considered a traditional form of blog – the diary style journal. This could indicate a cultural difference between Irish and non-Irish bloggers, or, a categorisation issue with regard to previous blog research.

Blogs are a highly personalised medium with the ability to involve the reading public in an integral manner, and unlike the traditional media they are not edited or gate kept and for this reason traditional journalists argue about how much trust to place in the content of blogs, however, it is argued that the comments system facilitates peer review.

It has been suggested that there aren’t many bloggers in Ireland and therefore there have been few arguments over the differences between journalists and bloggers in Ireland. Nevertheless, this research found that almost 52% of Irish bloggers consider their blogging as a form of journalism, with over 58% of this group using their real name to publish online.

However, over 10% of bloggers described incidents where content was illegitimately sourced from their blogs by the traditional Irish media. Over 58% of this content was written work and almost 30% was in the form of either photographs or photo-shopped images.

Due to the archiving feature of blogging this could suggest that bloggers are less likely to lie on their blogs in comparison to other online mediums, such as synchronous chat. However, with regard to blogging there are issues of identity concealment to consider, whilst deceptive, they are necessary to preserve the bloggers’ privacy.

Correspondingly, this research found that over 86% of bloggers indicated that they actively attempt to verify information before posting it on their blog, and 87% indicated that they had never published a lie on their blog. Of the small number of bloggers that had posted a lie, the majority done so to either to maintain their anonymity or for the purposes of fiction/satire or to embellish a story.

The majority of both bloggers and non-bloggers indicated that they had at least once attempted to double check information found on both Irish and non-Irish blogs, with only approx. 15% having never done this. However, this doesn’t necessarily indicate low levels of trust in the medium, but does perhaps point toward an awareness of the fact that blog publishing is unregulated.

Interestingly of the approx. 40% that blog using a pseudonym, 23% of this group also blogged using their real name. This suggests that some bloggers are taking advantage of both the benefits of blogging as themselves i.e benefits to reputation, and also anonymously somewhere else online. Anonymity online can help individuals to explore their identity, reduce shyness and encourage interactions with others online.

Though the Internet does help to support strong tie relationships, it is particularity effective for weak tie groups, allowing for the efficient flow of information and facilitating the development of ideas, blogospheres are a particularly good example of how the internet facilitates this.

The blogosphere is a classic social network but its characteristics differentiate it from most social networks, where communication is predominantly verbal and unrecorded. Networks of bloggers will often aggregate all of their individual blogs to a centralised location online, and these are referred to as planet aggregators an example of which is Irishblogs.ie.

However, some blogs are more connected to a blogosphere than others, with some bloggers not being connected to any blogosphere at all. Over 65% of bloggers indicated that they were listed on an Irish planet aggregator, and almost 64% consider themselves a member of the Irish blogosphere. The remaining bloggers indicated that they were not listed and did not consider themselves part of the Irish blogosphere. This highlights the 35% of bloggers unconnected from the Irish blogosphere, and this could suggest that there are far more Irish people blogging than is known.

It was assumed that non-bloggers would rate blogs based outside of Ireland as more credible than Irish blogs. However, out of a maximum score of 20 the non-bloggers rated Irish blogs with a mean score of 13.02 and non-Irish blogs with 12.64. The mean rating of the credibility of Irish blogs was actually slightly higher, though not significantly so.

Previous research has suggested that the more an individual relies on a source, the higher credibility they attribute to it, and the bloggers did rate the overall credibility of blogs higher than the non-bloggers. However, neither the bloggers nor the non-bloggers rated either Irish blogs or non-Irish blogs as significantly higher in credibility than the other. Incidentally, without a comparison to credibility scores of the traditional forms of Irish media this rating can only be used to compare the two categories investigated – Irish blogs and non-Irish blogs.

Additionally, approximately 50% of both groups said that they read a mixture of both Irish and non-Irish blogs, and approx. 35% said that they primarily read Irish blogs. Both the bloggers and non-bloggers indicated that they believed that blogging was more popular in other countries, and both groups thought that the medium was popular, but not “very popular” worldwide.

The Internet supports social networks, helps build social capital and having access to individuals outside one’s usual close circle can provide access to non-redundant information, resulting in benefits such as employment connections. During this research it was assumed that blog writing had a positive effect on the social lives of Irish bloggers, and it was queried what impact, if any, it had on their academic and professional lives too.

35.5% of bloggers believed blogging had a positive effect on their social lives, with 19.9% saying it had a “very positive” effect. Most importantly though, less than 1% indicated that it had any negative effect, and less than 44% indicated that it had no effect. Additional questions revealed that blogging has had an especially positive effect on the development of weak tie relationships with 81.3% of bloggers indicating that they have made friends that they communicate with online because of blogging. Weak ties are typical of relationships among casual acquaintances and are important for sharing information, making contacts and increasing awareness about new ideas.

Most people have only a few strong ties (closely-knit groups) and many weak ties. However, strong tie relationships can and do initiate online and can successfully move offline, as demonstrated by the 28.45% of Irish bloggers who have developed close friendships because of their blogging, additionally 62.07% of Irish bloggers have met people in real life as a result of their blogging. Although socalisation was found to not be a primary motivation for Irish bloggers, these results suggest socalisation is a by-product of writing a blog.

In an international online survey it was found that blogging is both personally satisfying and has a positive impact on its writer’s lives, with some bloggers claiming to have received speaking or publishing opportunities and career advancement because of their blogs. During this research it was found that less than 3% of Irish bloggers indicated that blogging had any negative effects upon their academic or professional lives,  and over 34% indicated it had a positive effect on their professional lives, and over 33% said it had a “very positive” effect.  Additionally, over 50% said it had no effect on  their academic lives however, over 30% said it had a positive effect and over 15% said it had a “very positive” effect

Blogging as a form of knowledge sharing contributes to the creation of a public good in the form of shared intellectual capital, and the positive social effects discussed above, combined with the academic and professional positive effects of blogging suggest that blogging can increase social capital, and Irish bloggers are clearly benefiting from this.