From: RNZ
We Scroll Through 300ft of Newsfeed a Day, And Bad News Gets Most Attention
The average smartphone user is scrolling through 300 feet of news feed a day, the height of the Statue of Liberty, Dr Jay Van Bavel, a professor of psychology and neural science at NYU says.
Five billion people around the world are on social media with the average user online for about three hours a day.
And the stuff that grabs our attention tends to be negative. Why? It’s in the genes, Van Bavel told RNZ’s Afternoons.
“Imagine you’re one of our ancestors walking through the Serengeti, and out of the corner of your eye, you see something, and you’re not sure if it’s a snake or a stick, your first instinct is to just jump out of the way, because it was better to avoid being bitten by the snake and dying than it was to spend time to look and be careful and thoughtful about what it was.
“So, our default systems, our body is programmed to do is to avoid risks, avoid things that are dangerous and get out of the way. We’re super-attuned to looking for those things and paying attention to them.”
Read the whole story (subscription may be required): RNZ
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