Unhappy people are often addicted to the virtual world

Surveys of scientists show that people who are dissatisfied with life tend to spend a lot of free time watching television or the internet, while happy people like to read books and participate in social activities.

Dr. John P. Robinson and Steve Martin - of the University of Maryland (USA) - have done a study of activities that bring happiness to people. The study analyzed data of sociological studies from 1975 to 2006, with about 30,000 adults participating and divided into two groups.

These two experts summed up the use of time in the first day of the first group: ask participants to list the activities they usually perform in a day and how satisfied they are when they perform those activities. . And the second group only polls about people's satisfaction in life. Participants were asked about the level of happiness, how they used time and some other questions. These questions are repeated for years.

From the results of the analysis, the two researchers found that people who thought they had a happy life tended to spend more free time reading books, visiting friends, participating in social activities. On the contrary, those who are unhappy spend a lot of their free time watching TV or surfing the net.

Specifically, unhappy people watch television more than happy people about 20% (participants have the same level of education, income, age and marital status). Most participants think that watching TV is the easiest activity of the day, because with this activity they do not have to leave the house, wear clothes, spend money, plan to use time.

51% of people are unhappy feeling they have too much free time, while this rate in very happy people is 19%.

"Like many other addictive activities, watching TV can give people temporary gratification, but then it leaves a feeling of regret," said Dr. Steve Martin. He also concluded that TV addicts tend to face many obstacles in personal life and social life. For those people, television can become a tool to help them forget reality.

Like televisions, tools that serve virtual worlds like video games affect people's nerves and make people depressed. A study tracks more than 7,000 gamers from Western North American University scientists. Participants were also divided into two groups. The first group is sometimes playing video games, the second group plays regularly. "The results show that the second group has a depression rate of over 30%, while the first group has a rate of 20%. This suggests that playing games will make people more susceptible to depression," said Noshir Contractor. , professor of behavioral science at Northwestern University said.

According to Professor of Psychology Nguyen Hoi Loan, a lecturer at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, the fact that a person is constantly exposed to television screens and computers in an unchanged space will certainly be affected. health and nerves.

"Although technology gives us a lot of gadgets, sitting in one place can observe the whole world and participate in extremely interesting activities but it is still only a virtual world. Addiction to the virtual world will be difficult to integrate with life and when it sinks deep into it, it becomes more and more difficult to get out of. Many people consider it as the most pleasant way to escape reality, " said Professor Hoi Loan.

According to scientists, people who are easy to associate with virtual life are often those who lack skills in the workplace. These people, at the end of their working hours, often have little interaction with or participate in social activities: "This is not only a skill issue , " said Prof. Hoi Loan: "In terms of surgery, these people often "It is a weak neurological type and therefore afraid of communication. Social dissatisfaction makes them feel sad and depressed."

This natural tendency is detrimental to people, making them difficult in life, difficult to accept defeat, while those with strong nerves prefer to operate and easily overcome failure.

However, the explanation of being too intoxicated with the virtual world, Professor Hoi Loan said that when meeting a failure in life, many people retreat to their corners and seek entertainment without having to contact many people. He said that every person must learn to accept defeat from a young age to be able to reconnect with real life faster after receiving some failure.

"Urban society is growing too fast. Some people take advantage of that speed to follow the momentum of development, many people are left behind and the gap is getting more and more prolonged. In my opinion, in the present life. At the same time, learning the skills of accepting failure is extremely important, especially for young people who often like to satisfy their desires immediately but not to the long term, ' said Professor Hoi Loan.