Are you obsessed with taking pictures on vacation? Happiness expert say it could reduce your joy by 16%
Taking pictures may often feel like pausing wonderful times and freezing memories, but it actually pulls you away from experiencing the present
Are you someone who can't stop taking pictures — especially while on vacation? Well, Dr. Arthur Brooks, a happiness expert from Harvard University, believes you are trading real-life experiences for bare superficial moments on a screen. Speaking on The Tamsen Show (@tamsenfadaltv), Dr. Brooks reveals that taking pictures during vacations reduces the impact of these 'freeing' experiences by 16% and that our obsession with digital space is slowly taking away the meaning of our lives. The video, posted on March 26, is drawing eyeballs for its honesty.
Dr. Brooks explains that technology today has grown so important that our exposure to nature is mostly through screens. "The average child today spends between 4 and 7 minutes a day in nature, and between 4 and 7 hours a day behind the screen," he adds on the podcast. While you click pictures thinking you are gathering memories from your vacation, in reality, you are only compromising on the experiences you get by living in those moments. For example, Dr. Brooks explains that watching a sunset on your phone screen is nowhere close to experiencing it in real time. "Meaning can't be simulated; beauty can't be simulated either," he shares. The author then reveals that constantly being on the phone — taking pictures — is lowering the meaning of our vacations by 16%. Then what should we do? Do we go phone-free the whole vacation?
Well, instead, Dr. Brooks recommends one person be in charge of clicking pictures each day, and once it's done, you lock your phones and enjoy the present moment. "If you are looking through the screen to take a picture of the thing right in front of you so somebody else can enjoy it, maybe you, in two years... you've turned your experiences into a simulation of the experience," he adds.
To understand if photography really reduces our impact on highly enjoyable experiences, researchers (Robyn LeBoeuf, Gia Nardini, and Richard J. Lutz) conducted five surveys with 718 participants. First, they asked 111 participants if taking photos increases, decreases, or has no effect on enjoyment. While 51.4% reported no effect, 27.9% reported increased enjoyment, and only 21.6% said it distracts them from the real-life experience. However, when the same group was asked to reflect on past experiences, more than half (59.8%) realized that taking photos had reduced their enjoyment to some extent. It further supports what Dr. Brooks says on the podcast. Taking pictures may often feel like pausing wonderful times and freezing memories, but it actually pulls you away from fully experiencing the present moment.
Meanwhile, people online had mixed responses to Dr. Brooks' explanation. For instance, reacting to it, @cam_813 shared, "My wife and I always just take a few [pictures] each day. It’s always fun having a few to look back on, and both reminisce about the day and try to remember the exact place we were in the pics. Sometimes we can even remember what we ate for dinner that night. I agree, don’t walk around with your phone out, but stopping to get a few pics in is definitely worth it; just be mindful to get off the screen and [live] in the moment after you take the photos." Similarly, @michael_scott_davis wrote, "I love photography and taking pictures. It’s art to me, and my social media is an expression of that art. My kids are getting older, and I’m so glad that I took so many pictures of them when they were younger; my favorite part of each day is Facebook memories.
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