-
Why Children Learn Better Than Adults
Young children seem uniquely, insatiably, marvelously curious, even at risk of life and limb. You might think that this drive to explore helps children to learn so much so quickly. But is it really true that children explore more than grown-ups and that this helps them to learn? It’s not easy to test this idea scientifically. Grown-ups and children are so different that it’s hard to compare them. But in a new study just published in the journal Cognition, the NYU cognitive scientist Emily Liquin and I found a way to give children and grown-ups exactly the same problem. Sure enough, the children explored more and learned more—but at a cost.
-
Fix Burnout—Without Blowing Up Your Life
The emails are piling up, unread. Deadlines are blown. Once jovial video calls are now tense. You suspect burnout. The feeling is an increasingly common one. In a September survey of nearly 700 professionals by consulting firm Korn Ferry, 89% said they were suffering from burnout. Some workers are leaving their jobs as a result. Others are moving to other cities or making similarly drastic changes. But you don’t have to quit your job to combat burnout. There are ways to self-assess, work with your manager and improve your mental health. “There is a tendency for people to view burnout as a personal mental health issue, so it’s their problem, not anybody else’s.
-
The Pandemic Is Still Making Us Feel Terrible
“How we feelin’ out there tonight?” Bo Burnham asks an imaginary audience during his comedy special Inside, which he self-filmed from a single room over the course of a year. “Heh, haha, yeahhhhh,” he says to himself. “I am not feeling good.” Following the special’s release this past May, TikTok users pounced on the clip. The sound has been used in more than 71,000 videos, amassing millions and millions of plays. Everyday users and creators alike can be found lip-synching along—sometimes gesturing to a specific stressor in their life, other times just conveying a general sense of malaise. It’s a pretty fitting time capsule of this moment in American life. ...
-
For Many Men, Apps Can Be ‘an Important Gateway to Mental Health’
For many months during the pandemic, Jason Henderson felt lower than perhaps at any other period of his life. The 37-year-old was living in a basement apartment, newly divorced, recovering from back surgery and struggling with depression so crippling he had suicidal thoughts. A friend from an online men’s support group told the Vancouver, B.C., resident about a new peer support app for men’s mental health called Tethr. Henderson joined and began posting about his struggles. “I was met with commiseration, empathy and compassion,” he told me.
-
What Becoming a Parent Really Does to Your Happiness
Few choices are more important than whether to have children, and psychologists and other social scientists have worked to figure out what having kids means for happiness. Some of the most prominent scholars in the field have argued that if you want to be happy, it’s best to be childless. Others have pushed back, pointing out that a lot depends on who you are and where you live. But a bigger question is also at play: What if the rewards of having children are different from, and deeper than, happiness?
-
The Friendship Checkup: How to Reevaluate Relationships and Take Steps to Repair Them
As the pandemic has led us to reassess what’s important in our lives, many people have been reevaluating their friendships, reflecting on who they really value and which relationships are healthy or balanced. While the pandemic may have spurred these current reexaminations, experts say that taking a close look at one’s circle of friends is something we should do from time to time, because our friendships can have a substantial effect on our health and well-being, for better or worse.
