Blog #Well-being

Language and definitions can be telling about a culture. The United States has a legal definition of defamation but no legal definition of hate speech and in fact, hate speech is protected under the first amendment.  Are there consequences to this freedom of expression even when it results in prejudice and dehumanizing rhetoric?  Recent studies are confirming what history has already taught us – that hate speech is a precursor and even predictor of violence.  Before diving into the research we need a functional definition of hate speech. Although there is no unified legal definition, the United Nations states hate speech can be characterized as  “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behavior, that attacks or uses   pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender or other identity factor.”  Hate speech is communication that dehumanizes an individual, group, or population.  It can result in prejudice (irrational hostilities toward that group) to seeing others as less than human. Historical atrocities have this process of othering in common and was often politically motivated. Radicalization by exposure to hate speech through social media has expedited moral justification of violence revealed by the rising targeted shootings in our schools and workplaces.   While targeted violence is a complex issue, a growing body of research is moving beyond anecdote and establishing the connection between what we say online and what happens offline.

1. It’s Not Just Talk. Online Hate Can Predict Offline Violence. For a long time, the argument has been made that online speech, however vile, is just talk. Research, however, now establishes a measurable, predictive link between the volume of online hate speech and the frequency of offline hate crimes. In an analysis of 532 million tweets across 100 U.S. cities, researchers at New York University found that a higher number of targeted, discriminatory tweets in a city correlated with a higher number of real-world hate crimes motivated by race, ethnicity, or national origin. Yet in a profoundly counter-intuitive twist, the same study found a negative relationship between hate crimes and online self-narrations of discrimination; in other words, online spaces where people shared their personal experiences of being targeted by hate actually correlated with fewer hate crimes. A separate study conducted with the Spanish National Police added even more surprising detail to this connection. Comparing police records of hate crimes with social media posts, researchers found that Facebook posts were a more effective predictor of violence against migrant and LGBT communities than tweets. Even more counter-intuitively, they discovered that general "toxic language" was a better predictor of these hate crimes than messages explicitly classified as "hate speech." This suggests that a pervasive culture of generalized hostility may be more corrosive and indicative of future violence than isolated, easily identifiable slurs. If online hate is a reliable predictor of offline violence, the next critical question is how this hate behaves in its own digital habitat. Does it remain static, or does it grow?

2. Hateful Echo Chambers Act Like a Virus, Spreading and Accelerating. The concept of "hate begets hate" is more than a saying; it is a measurable phenomenon in loosely moderated online environments. A temporal study of the social media platform Gab, which has been described as an alt-right echo chamber, revealed that hate speech does not merely exist on such platforms—it grows, spreads, and becomes more potent over time. This growth is often tied to real-world events; researchers noted a significant spike in hateful activity and hashtags like #Charlottesville and #UniteTheRight around the time of the white supremacist rally in August 2017, demonstrating a clear feedback loop between offline events and online radicalization. Researchers identified three key trends that demonstrate this viral effect. First, the sheer volume of hate speech on the platform steadily increased over the two-year study period. Second, and more alarmingly, new users who joined Gab later became hateful at a significantly faster rate than the platform's early adopters, suggesting a rapid and powerful process of group norm socialization. Third, the language of the entire community began to correlate more closely with the language of hateful users, indicating that the norms of the whole platform were shifting toward toxicity. The study’s authors summarized this chilling acceleration in a stark conclusion. The amount of hate speech in Gab is steadily increasing, and the new users are becoming hateful at an increased and faster rate. While this platform-level data reveals how hateful ecosystems evolve, understanding the individuals within them—particularly those who commit mass violence—requires a more granular look at their digital lives.

3. A Shooter's Social Media Isn't Always a Manifesto. It Can Be a Cry for Help or a Bid for Fame. The narrative of an online user being quietly radicalized until they explode into violence is an oversimplification. A systematic analysis of the social media habits of 44 mass shooters reveals a much more complex picture. Their online activity is rarely a straightforward manifesto; instead, it is often a public ledger of their psychological state, revealing a mix of suicidality, a desperate bid for notoriety, and the "leakage" of violent intent. This desire for fame can be an integral part of the crime itself. The perpetrator of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, which killed 49 people, checked his Facebook and Twitter accounts during the attack to see if his massacre was going viral. Other shooters, driven by a desire to be known, are inspired by the infamy of their predecessors. One future shooter, after seeing another attacker gain global notoriety, wrote on his blog: On an interesting note, I have noticed that so many people like him are all alone and unknown, yet when they spill a little blood, the whole world knows who they are. A man who was known by no one, is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems the more people you kill, the more your’re [sic] in the limelight. In a counter-intuitive twist, a marked absence of social media activity can also be a critical warning sign. Researchers found that some shooters stop using social media entirely in the lead-up to their crime. This sudden change in posting habits, a departure from their established baseline of online behavior, can be as telling as an explicit threat.

4. The Psychological Toll of Gun Violence Is Far Wider Than We Imagine. The psychological impact of mass shootings is like experiencing an earthquake.  The victims are at the epicenter where the trauma is intense and the healing may be a long and difficult journey. The mental health consequences ripple outward, creating "co-victims" of the family members, first responders, and entire communities where an attack occurs. A 2024 national survey revealed just how wide this circle of impact is, with 20.1% of U.S. adults reporting that a mass shooting has, at some point in their lifetime, occurred in their broadly defined community. Among those who were present at a shooting but uninjured, a staggering 76.3% still reported mental health consequences. The study, however, surfaced a surprising finding when comparing the long-term psychological impacts of different types of gun violence. While mass shootings understandably cause immense and immediate distress, the data showed that survivors of non-mass shootings—such as being individually shot at or threatened with a firearm—actually reported more prolonged mental health problems. While mass shootings corresponded with greater psychological distress, the long-term impacts, including post-traumatic stress, were reported at a higher rate following non-mass shootings. Researchers suggest this difference may relate to several factors, including "differences in social support, mental health-care access, the more personal nature of non-mass shootings and exposure to ongoing unsafe environments." The focused national attention and community support following a high-profile mass shooting may not materialize for survivors of more common, less publicized acts of gun violence, leaving them to navigate a more solitary and persistent trauma

5. The Best Response to Hate Speech Might Not Be Censorship. The public debate over hate speech is often trapped in a simplistic binary of unrestricted free speech versus censorship. However, the United Nations' official strategy on the issue intervenes with a more sociologically astute framework that reframes the entire argument. The UN makes a critical legal distinction between "hate speech"—which can be harmful but isn't always prohibited—and "incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence," which is prohibited under international law. While acknowledging that hate speech can be deeply harmful, the UN's core strategy is not to silence it, but to overwhelm it. The approach prioritizes proactive measures like education, promoting tolerance, and fostering intercultural dialogue. Rather than focusing on censorship, the strategy aims to build societal resilience to hate by empowering a "new generation of digital citizens" to recognize and reject it. The core principle guiding this global strategy is one of addition, not subtraction. The UN supports more speech, not less, as the key means to address hate speech.

Community Connection The data offers a new understanding: that the predictive signal of violence isn't just overt bigotry but a broader toxic climate; that hateful ideologies don't just exist but metastasize within their digital habitats; and that the psychological wounds of violence ripple far beyond the initial blast zone, with the most common forms of gun violence leaving the longest-lasting scars. The digital and physical worlds are not separate realms. They are demonstrably interconnected, with online rhetoric acting as a leading indicator of offline harm. This evidence allows to change the narrative around gun violence while the definition of hate speech could be operationalized at the community level.  It presents an opportunity to recognize the need for recognizing our own relationship with social media and promoting interpersonal connections at a community level. Ultimately, promoting productive dialogue may be better suited at a community level rather than the national level.

 Anyone who has shared their life with a dog knows the experience: you look into their eyes and can't help but wonder what’s really going on in their mind. For centuries, our understanding of the canine inner world was based on intuition and anecdote. But in recent years, modern science has begun to provide concrete answers, using tools from genetics to fMRI to reveal a relationship even more complex and fascinating than we ever imagined.  The evidence reveals that the bond with your dog is a marvel of co-evolution, written in their muscles, their genes, and the very wiring of their brain. Let's explore five discoveries about our dogs. 

1. Those “Puppy Dog Eyes” Are a Real, Evolved Superpower That irresistible "puppy dog eyes" expression—the one that melts hearts and secures extra treats—is not an accident. It’s a specific anatomical superpower that dogs evolved to communicate with humans. A study led by comparative psychologist Juliane Kaminski compared the facial anatomy of domestic dogs and their wolf ancestors. The dissections revealed a striking difference centered on a muscle above the inner eyebrow called the levator anguli oculi medialis (LAOM). This muscle was uniformly present in the dogs, but in their wolf ancestors, it was a mere shadow of itself—a disorganized smattering of muscle and connective tissue fibers. This muscle gives dogs an incredible new ability: to raise their inner eyebrows with an intensity their wolf cousins can't match. Behavioral data from the same study confirmed that dogs produce this movement significantly more often and with higher intensity than wolves do. In fact, the most intense eyebrow raises were produced exclusively by dogs. This expression has a powerful effect on people. It makes a dog's eyes appear larger and more infant-like, and it mimics an expression humans make when they are sad. Researchers hypothesize that this triggers a nurturing, caregiving response in humans, giving dogs who could make this face a powerful selective advantage during the 33,000-year course of domestication. 

2. To Your Dog, You Smell Better Than Anyone—Even Other Dogs If you asked a dog what the best smell in the world is, what would it be?  Research using fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) technology suggests the answer is, unequivocally, you. Neuroscientist Gregory Berns and his team trained dogs to lie perfectly still in an fMRI scanner—awake and unrestrained—to see how their brains respond to different scents. While in the scanner, the dogs were presented with scents from themselves, a familiar dog, a strange dog, a strange human, and a familiar human from their household. When researchers analyzed the brain's primary reward center—the caudate nucleus—they found it was activated by all the scents. However, it showed the maximal activation in response to the scent of the familiar human. This positive response was even stronger than the one elicited by the scent of a familiar dog. What makes this even more profound is that the 'familiar human' scent didn't belong to the dog's primary handler who was with them at the scanner. This proves the dog's brain wasn't just reacting to a person who was physically present; the scent alone, a stand-in for a beloved member of their 'pack,' was enough to trigger the brain's reward system like nothing else. As the researchers concluded: The caudate activation suggested that not only did the dogs discriminate that scent from the others, they had a positive association with it. This speaks to the power of the dog’s sense of smell, and it provides important clues about the importance of humans in dogs’ lives. 

3. Their Social Smarts May Be a By-Product of Extreme Friendliness It's a common assumption that dogs were directly bred for intelligence—that our ancestors selected for canines that were best at understanding commands. The science, however, suggests a more fascinating and indirect path. Dogs’ ability to read our cues may actually be a side effect of being bred for something else entirely: an exceptionally friendly temperament. The first clue comes from a famous long-term experiment on silver foxes. Researchers led by Brian Hare found that foxes bred only for tameness (low fear and aggression toward humans) spontaneously became as skilled as dog puppies at using human communicative gestures, like pointing to find hidden food. This suggests that complex social-cognitive skills can emerge as a "correlated by-product" of selection for friendliness, without any direct selection for "genius." This behavioral evidence was a stunning clue, but the genetic explanation that followed was even more so. Scientists discovered that this "friendliness-first" evolution has a precise genetic signature. A study by Bridgett vonHoldt and colleagues identified a key to dog behavior as "hypersociability"—an exaggerated motivation to seek social contact. They discovered that structural variants in two genes, GTF2I and GTF2IRD1, contribute to this trait. Astonishingly, these are the same genes associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans, a genetic condition also characterized by hypersociability and extreme friendliness. It seems that during domestication, evolution targeted a genetic blueprint for an intensely social personality. A dog’s incredible ability to understand our intentions wasn't the direct goal of selection; it came along for the ride. 

4. They Don’t Just Read Your Mood, They Use It to Make Decisions Many dog owners feel certain their dog can sense their emotions. Science not only confirms this but shows that this ability is far more sophisticated than simple perception. Dogs actively use the emotional information they gather from us to make decisions and solve problems. A comprehensive review by Natalia Albuquerque and Briseida Resende highlights that dogs are adept at discriminating emotional cues from human facial expressions, body postures, and even our scent. But crucially, they put this information to functional use. One clear example comes from a 2013 study by Buttelmann & Tomasello. Dogs were shown two boxes, only one of which contained hidden food. To help them choose, a human would look into each box and display either a happy or a disgusted facial expression. The dogs consistently used these emotional cues to correctly identify the box with the food. Further evidence of this functional understanding comes from a behavior known as "mouth-licking." A 2018 study by Albuquerque and colleagues found that dogs exhibit this behavior significantly more when looking at human faces showing negative emotions (like anger) compared to happy ones. This suggests they aren't just seeing a face; they are processing its emotional meaning and responding accordingly. 

5. The "Love Hormone" Story Isn't as Simple as It Seems The idea of oxytocin as the "love hormone" has become a popular narrative to explain the dog-human bond. The story goes that when owners and dogs gaze at each other or interact affectionately, both experience a surge of oxytocin, creating a positive feedback loop that strengthens their bond. While compelling, the science is actually far from settled. A 2019 study by Sarah Marshall-Pescini and her colleagues provided a scientific reality check. They carefully designed an experiment to measure oxytocin in both dogs and their owners before and after a positive, affectionate interaction. In stark contrast to some previous reports, they were unable to find a significant increase in peripheral oxytocin levels (measured in urine) in either species. This doesn't mean oxytocin plays no role, but it highlights that the relationship is more complex than the simple pop-science narrative suggests. The researchers point out that findings across the field are mixed. Discrepancies could be due to differences in laboratory analysis methods or the ongoing scientific debate about how well peripheral measures in saliva or urine actually reflect what’s happening in the brain. This discovery is a perfect example of the scientific process in action: an exciting initial idea is tested, re-tested, and refined, leading to a more nuanced and accurate understanding over time. 

Conclusion: A Bond Forged in Science Science confirms what we've always felt: the bond with a dog is something special. But the reality is more astonishing than we could have guessed. The connection we share isn't just a matter of affection, but a product of remarkable and intertwined biological, genetic, and behavioral changes. That their brain's reward center lights up for our scent more than any other, or that their very facial muscles evolved to better communicate with us, doesn't diminish the magic of the relationship; it makes it all the more profound. As we continue to unravel the science behind our oldest friendship, what other incredible secrets are our canine companions just waiting for us to discover?

The smartphone has been seamlessly integrated as a cybernetic extension of the self. It’s the first thing we reach for in the morning and the last thing we see at night, a constant companion holding our memories, connections, and identity. We perceive it as an indispensable tool for navigating the modern world, a simple device under our command. But as our dependence deepens, a crucial question emerges: are we truly in control? Or is the device in our pocket subtly controlling us, rewiring our brains, and reshaping who we are? Drawn from a candid conversation with a tech insider on the front lines of consumer behavior, here are five impactful ways your phone is changing you. 

1. You're Cultivating a "Second Self" Online—And Preferring It A growing separation is occurring between our online persona and our actual self in the present moment. Increasingly, our focus shifts from experiencing life to documenting it, driven by an intense concern for how we are perceived in the virtual world. This creates a profound identity schism, where the curated, digital self begins to cannibalize the authentic, lived experience. This curated life, presented through carefully selected photos and posts, can become more valuable than the lived experience itself. The priority becomes capturing the perfect picture of an event rather than being fully present in it. As this digital representation gains importance, it makes us vulnerable. We are lured into perfecting this second self, which in turn exposes us to systems designed to exploit our need for validation. The consequence of this separation is a diminished capacity for personal growth. When a mistake happens in the real world but isn't captured online, it can feel as if it "didn't matter." Without a digital record, there's no perceived need to learn from the experience or consider how to do better in the future. They just have the representation on the phone and they would rather be okay with that self than the actual self that was in the current moment. So, it's almost like another persona. 

2. The Phone Isn't Just Using You; It's Preying on Your Fears Many users are unaware of the manipulative business models that power the "free" apps on their phones, especially older generations who didn't grow up with this technology. The old adage of commercialism applies: "if you don't pay for the product then you are the product." Your attention and data are the currency. A clear example of this is the proliferation of fear-tactic ads. You’ve likely seen them: a pop-up window blares a warning that "your phone has a virus." These ads are designed to trigger fear and bypass logical thinking, tricking users into downloading malicious "cleaning" apps. Instead of helping, these apps often clog the phone, sell personal data, or lock users into unwanted subscriptions. It's critical to understand the "why" behind what appears on your screen. These systems are not just business models; they are manipulative frameworks that can have profound societal consequences. Sponsored content and fear-based ads are not there for your benefit. They are engineered for corporate gain, preying on a lack of technical literacy to extract value. 

3. Your Brain is Being Rewired for a Never-Ending Dopamine Hunt Once we are hooked on curating and protecting our digital selves, platforms keep us engaged by rewiring our brains for a constant dopamine hunt. The design of many popular apps encourages "endlessly scrolling," a behavior that trains the brain to constantly seek the next small reward. These platforms have identified a potent emotional cocktail for engagement, often centered on drama, news and politics, or criticism. This constant intake of highly charged, often negative, stimuli becomes a primary source of validation for many. The more we rely on this external validation from our phones, the more we distance ourselves from our own internal state, reinforcing the cycle of dependence. This has physiological consequences. The habit of "doom scrolling" before bed, for instance, floods the body with the stress hormone cortisol right when it should be winding down. This not only disrupts sleep but also negatively impacts long-term physical and mental health. 

4. We're Outsourcing Our Most Human Skills As we rely more on technology to handle daily tasks, we risk losing fundamental human abilities. A simple example is navigation. Where we once used physical maps to understand our location, we now plug an address into an app and follow its commands, losing a basic sense of spatial awareness. More critically, we are seeing an erosion of vital interpersonal skills. Many people now prefer texting to phone calls, a shift that strips communication of essential human elements like tone and inflection, leading to disconnect and misunderstanding. The anonymity of communicating from behind a screen can also foster vitriol, as people feel emboldened to say things they never would face-to-face. The erosion of these vital skills is so pronounced that one tech insider stated it plainly: "We kind of are losing the skill of interpersonal communication. 100%." Interestingly, technology sometimes offers a partial remedy; the use of voice memos, for example, can reintroduce the nuance of audible inflection. 

5. The Best Tool for a Healthier Tech Life Isn't an App—It's You It’s a paradox: we turn to technology to solve the problems it creates, downloading another self-care app in the hope of finding an external fix. Our environment conditions us to look for such solutions. The real answer, however, is not external. It's about building the internal skills for self-regulation. This shift from external fixes to internal strength is powerfully illustrated by this story. After years on and off various prescriptions without finding lasting success, true mental stability came not from a pill, but from consciously building a "relationship with stability." This was achieved through practices like Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and mindfulness, which focus on internal communication and awareness. This journey is about understanding how your own brain processes information and being conscious of your internal state. Instead of turning to another app that can become a distraction, the most effective methods are often analog. Practical tools like setting firm app timers and keeping a physical notebook for journaling allow for focused self-reflection without the temptation of getting pulled back into the digital world. 

Conclusion: Reclaiming Your Attention The architecture of our digital lives is not accidental; it is a landscape engineered for extraction. Our phones are powerful, but their default settings are designed to capture our attention, reshape our habits, and monetize our behavior. From cultivating a preferred digital self to rewiring our brains for constant stimulation, the effects are subtle but profound. Being aware of these mechanisms is the first step toward reclaiming our agency. The next time you pick up your phone, ask yourself: Are you using it as a tool, or is it using you?