Mind Soup

When you hear “Lebanon” and “government” in the same sentence, what comes to mind first? Sectarianism, money wasting, no electricity, no water, no jobs, bad internet, expensive living, taxes, wasta? The list goes on and on… Lebanon does not only have a beautiful landscape, it’s not only a touristic destination, it’s not only a clubbing hub, but it is also rich in resources that can help the Lebanese stand on their own feet. Lebanese are proud of that and are ready to fight for Lebanon, that’s the only thing they all agree on.

A Chinese man has died after a three-day online gaming session in which he did not sleep and barely ate, reports say.

The man reportedly lost consciousness at an internet cafe on the outskirts of the Chinese capital, Beijing.

He was rushed to a clinic but could not be revived, the Beijing Times said.

The 30-year-old man, who was not identified, was said to have spent more than 10,000 yuan ($1,500; £928) on gaming in the month before his death.

China has more than 450 million internet users, and online games - which can involve multiple users role-playing in a virtual world - are particularly popular with young men.

Researchers say tens of millions of Chinese people - many of them teenagers - are addicted to internet gaming, despite curbs introduced by the authorities aimed at tackling the problem.

Similar deaths have occurred in other nations. In 2005 a 28-year-old man died in South Korea after playing online games for 50 hours without a break.

Research suggests people with the biggest lists of contacts on Facebook are likeliest to feel stressed out by the website.
 
This comes from an Edinburgh Napier University study of roughly 200 students, using focus groups, online surveys and one-on-one interviews. Oh, if only the research included more people and a broader array of demographic groups!  Also, it would have been helpful to learn the average number of friends per person surveyed, and how big the largest ones were.

About one in ten of the students said that Facebook made them feel anxious. And 32 percent said declining friend requests caused feelings of guilt and discomfort. Perhaps because of this prospect, one in ten of the survey respondents said they disliked receiving friend requests in the first place, while 63 percent said they delayed responding to these requests.

Lead researcher Dr. Kathy Charles told the U. K. Press Association:

The results threw up a number of paradoxes. For instance, although there is great pressure to be on Facebook there is also considerable ambivalence amongst users about its benefits. And we found it was actually those with the most contacts, those who had invested the most time in the site, who were the ones most likely to be stressed…It’s like being a mini news channel about yourself. The more people you have the more you feel there is an audience there. You are almost a mini celebrity and the bigger the audience the more pressure you feel to produce something about yourself… But many also told us they were anxious about withdrawing from the site for fear of missing important social information or offending contacts. Like gambling, Facebook keeps users in a neurotic limbo, not knowing whether they should hang on in there just in case they miss out on something good.

Do you think stressing out about Facebook might be limited to college students?