For years now, exhaustive psychological research and studies have concluded that a wealth of medical benefits exists for the individual who owns a pet. According to Abnormal Psychology (Comer, 2010), “social support of various kinds helps reduce or prevent depression. Indeed, the companionship and warmth of dogs and other pets have been found to prevent loneliness and isolation and, in turn, to help alleviate or prevent depression” (p. 260). Without companionship, people are far more likely fall into depression when life presents increased stress. An article in Natural Health summarizes the medical advantages of pet ownership by saying, “researchers have discovered that owning a pet can reduce blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol; lower triglyceride levels; lessen stress; result in fewer doctor visits; and alleviate depression” (Hynes, 2005). Additionally, Hynes explains, “Infants who live in a household with dogs are less likely to develop allergies later in life, not only to animals but also to other common allergens.”

While immune system adaptation explains allergy prevention, a pet’s gift of reducing depression is multilayered. One of the most important components is touch therapy. The physical contact of petting a cat or dog provides a calming effect, comforting the owner and fighting off stress. The New York Times reports pets “provide a socially acceptable outlet for the need for physical contact. Men have been observed to touch their pets as often and as lovingly as women do” (1982). Physical touch in infancy is vital to normal brain development, and the need for contact continues into adulthood as a way to ease tension, express love, and feel loved. 

Another aspect of this phenomenon is unconditional love. Pets can provide people with love that is difficult or sometimes impossible to find from another person. In the article Pets for Depression and Health, Alan Entin, PhD, says unconditional love explains everything. “When you are feeling down and out, the puppy just starts licking you, being with you, saying with his eyes, ‘You are the greatest.’ When an animal is giving you that kind of attention, you can’t help but respond by improving your mood and playing with it” (Doheny, 2010). Pets are often the only source of true unconditional love a man or woman can find, and the feeling of being adored improves mood and self-confidence.

Not everyone is a pet person, which is why owning a pet will not be efficacious for everyone. Indeed, people who are already so depressed they cannot even take care of themselves will not see improvements. However, those who do take on the responsibility of owning a cat, dog, or any other little creature, will see reduced depression simply because they are responsible for another living being’s life. In an article in Reader’s Digest, Dr. Yokoyama Akimitsu, head of Kyosai Tachikawa Hospital’s psychiatric unit, says pets help by “creating a feeling of being needed” (2000). This need, this calling to take care of the pet, will give the owner a sense of importance and purpose. It also provides a distraction from one’s life problems. These elements work in concert to battle depression. 

Owning a pet also results in increased exercise and social contact with people. According to Elizabeth Scott, M.S., in her 2007 article How Owning a Dog or Cat Reduces Stress, dog owners spend more time walking than non-owners in urban settings. Exercise is known to burn stress. Furthermore, Scott says, “When we’re out walking, having a dog with us can make us more approachable and give people a reason to stop and talk, thereby increasing the number of people we meet, giving us an opportunity to increase our network of friends and acquaintances, which also has great stress management benefits.” Increased exercise will also lead to an improved sense of well-being due to endorphins released in the brain, and better sleep.

Finally, owning a pet simply staves off loneliness. Scott says, “They could be the best antidote to loneliness. In fact, research shows that nursing home residents reported less loneliness when visited by dogs than when they spent time with other people” (2007). Just by being there for their owners, pets eliminate feelings of isolation and sadness. They can serve as companions and friends to anyone suffering from mild or moderate depression.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

References

Brody, J. E. (1982, August 11). Owning a Pet Can Have Therapeutic Value. In The New York Times. Retrieved December 13, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/11/garden/owning-a-pet-can-have-therapeutic-value.html?scp=1&sq=1982%20pets&st=cse

Comer, R. J.  (2010). Abnormal Psychology (7^th Ed.). New York: Worth Publishers

Doheny, K. (2010, August 18). Pets for Depression and Health. In WebMD. Retrieved December 13, 2010, from http://www.webmd.com/depression/recognizing-depression-symptoms/pets-depression

Hynes, A. (2005, March). The Healing Power of Animals. In CBS Money Watch. Retrieved December 13, 2010, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NAH/is_3_35/ai_n9775602/

Scott, E. (2007, November 1). How Owning a Dog or Cat Can Reduce Stress. In About.com. Retrieved December 13, 2010, from http://stress.about.com/od/lowstresslifestyle/a/petsandstress.htm

Williams, M. (2000, August). Healing Power of Pets. In Reader’s Digest. Retrieved December 13, 2010, from http://www.drmartinwilliams.com/healingpets/healingpets.html

In Delphi, Greece, μηδὲν ἄγαν (meden agan) was inscribed on the ancient Temple of Apollo — nothing in excess. Applying the famous principle to the design and structure of social media platforms could reduce a number of their negative effects: their addictive properties, online bullying, depression and lower self-worth, breakdowns in civility and their impact on political polarization, and so forth. Other problems, such as information privacy and the spread of misinformation (leading to all sorts of absurd beliefs, affecting human behaviors from advocacy to violence, with its own impact on polarization) will be more difficult to solve, and will involve proper management rather than UI changes (so they won’t be addressed here). The Social Dilemma, while mostly old news to anyone paying attention to such things, presents a good summary of the challenges and is worth a view for those wanting to begin an investigation.

A new, socially-conscious social media platform — we’ll call it “Delphi” for now — would be crafted to prevent such things to the extent possible, while attempting to preserve the more positive aspects of social media — the access to news and information, the sharing of ideas, exposure to differing views, the humor and entertainment, the preserved connections to people you like but just wouldn’t text or call or see. Because while breaking free and abandoning the platforms completely greatly improves well-being, the invention is as unlikely to disappear quickly as the telephone, so there should be some middle ground — moderation in all things, nothing in excess — between logging off for good and the more poisonous platforms we’re stuck with. People could then decide what works best for them. If you won’t break free, here’s at least something less harmful.

The new platform would do away with likes, comments, and shares. These features drive many of the addictive and depressive elements, as we all know; we obsessively jump back on to see how our engagement is going, and perhaps we can’t help but see this measurement as a measurement of our own self-worth — of our looks, intelligence, accomplishments, whatever the post “topic” might be. Comparing this metric to those of others, seeing how many more likes others get, can only worsen our perceptions of self, especially for young girls. Instagram is toying with removing public like counts, while still allowing users to see theirs in the back end, which is barely helpful. All three features should simply be abolished. With Delphi, one would post a status, photo, video, or link and simply have no idea how many friends saw it or reacted to it. Have you ever simply stopped checking your notifications on current platforms? It is quite freeing, in my experience. You know (suspect) people are seeing a post, but you have no clue how many or what their reactions are. There’s no racing back on to count the likes or reply to a compliment or battle a debater or be hurt by a bully. You’re simply content, as if you had painted a mural somewhere and walked away.

There are of course probable work-arounds here. Obviously, if someone posted a link I wanted to share, I could copy the address and post it myself. (There may be a benefit to forcing people to open a link before sharing it; maybe we’d be more likely to actually read more than the headline before passing the piece on.) This wouldn’t notify the original poster, who would only know (suspect) that I’d stolen the link if they saw my ensuing post. Likewise, there’s nothing to stop people from taking screenshots of posts or copy-pasting text and using such things in their own posts, with commentary. Unless we programmed the platform to detect and prevent this, or detect and hide such things from the original poster. But you get the idea: you usually won’t see any reaction to your content.

Delphi wouldn’t entirely forsake interaction, however. It would replace written communication and emoji reactions with face-to-face communication. There would in fact be one button to be clicked on someone’s post, the calendar button, which would allow someone to request a day, time, and place to meet up or do a built-in video call to chat about the post (a video call request could also be accepted immediately, like FaceTime). The poster could then choose whether to proceed. As everyone has likely noticed, we don’t speak to each other online the way we do in person. We’re generally nastier due to the Online Disinhibition Effect; the normal inhibitions, social cues, and consequences that keep us civil and empathetic in person largely don’t exist. We don’t see each other the same way, because we cannot see each other. Studies show that, compared to verbal communication, we tend to denigrate and dehumanize other people when reading their written disagreements, seeing them as less capable of feeling and reason, which can increase political polarization. We can’t hear tone or see facial expressions, the eyes most important of all, creating fertile ground for both unkindness and misunderstandings. In public discussions, we also tend to put on a show for spectators, perhaps sacrificing kindness for a dunk that will garner likes. So let’s get rid of all that, and force people to talk face-to-face. No comments or messenger or tags or laugh reacts. Not only can this reduce political divisions by placing people in optimal spaces for respectful, empathetic discourse, it can greatly reduce opportunities for bullying.

The goal is to only get notifications (preferably just in-app, not via your phone) for one thing: calendar requests. Perhaps there would also be invitations to events and the like, but that’s the general idea. This means far less time spent on the platform, which is key because light users of social media are far less impacted by the negative effects.

To this end, Delphi would also limit daily use to an hour or so, apart from video calls. No more mindless staring for four hours. Nothing in excess.

Much of the rest would be similar to what’s used today. We’d have profiles, pages, friends, a feed (the endless scroll problem is solved by the time limit). Abandoning the feed completely has benefits (returning to a world where you have to visit a profile or a page to see what’s happening), such as less depression-inducing peer comparison (look at how beautiful she is, how amazing his life is, and so on), but that could mean that one doesn’t really bother posting at all, knowing (suspecting) only a couple people will visit his or her profile. And one would also be less likely to be exposed to differing views if one has to seek them out. A feed may be necessary to keep some of the positive effects mentioned earlier. But perhaps going in the other direction could help — say, a feed just for pages and news, and a feed for friends, granting the ability to jump back and forth and ignore for a while so-and-so’s incredible trip to Greece.

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“Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom,” President Barack Obama said in March 2009. The statement foreshadowed the appearance of teacher merit pay in Obama’s “Race to the Top” education initiative, which grants federal funds to top performing schools. Performance, of course, is based on standardized testing, and in the flawed Race to the Top, so are teacher salaries. Teacher pay could rise and fall with student test scores.

Rhetoric concerning higher teacher salaries is a good thing. Proponents of merit pay say meager teacher salaries are an injustice, and such a pay system is needed to alleviate the nation’s teacher shortage. However, is linking pay to test scores the best way to “reward excellence”? Do we know, without question, it “can make a difference in the classroom”? The answers, respectively, are no and no. Merit pay is an inefficient and potentially counterproductive way to improve education in American public schools. It fails to motivate teachers to better themselves or remain in the profession, it encourages unhealthy teacher competition and dishonest conduct, and it does not serve well certain groups, like special education students.

Educator Alfie Kohn, author of the brilliant Punished by Rewards, wrote an article in 2003 entitled “The Folly of Merit Pay.” He writes, “No controlled scientific study has ever found a long-term enhancement of the quality of work as a result of any incentive system.” Merit pay simply does not work. It has been implemented here and there for decades, but is always abandoned. A good teacher is intrinsically motivated: he teaches because he enjoys it. She teaches because it betters society. He teaches because it is personally fulfilling. Advocates of merit pay ignore such motivation, but Kohn declares, “Researchers have demonstrated repeatedly that the use of such extrinsic inducements often reduces intrinsic motivation. The more that people are rewarded, the more they tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.” Extra cash sounds great, but it is destructive to the inner passions of quality teachers.

Teachers generally rank salaries below too much standardization and unfavorable accountability on their lists of grievances (Kohn, 2003). Educators leave the profession because they are being choked by federal standards and control, and politicians believe linking pay to such problems is a viable solution? Professionals also generally oppose merit pay, disliking its competitive nature. Professor and historian Diane Ravitch writes an incentive “gets everyone thinking about what is good for himself or herself and leads to forgetting about the goals of the organization. It incentivizes short-term thinking and discourages long-term thinking” (Strauss, 2011). Teaching students should not be a game, with big prizes for the winners.

Further, at issue is the distorted view of students performance pay perpetuates. Bill Raabe of the National Education Association says, “We all must be wary of any system that creates a climate where students are viewed as part of the pay equation, rather than young people who deserve a high quality education” (Rosales, 2009). In the current environment of high-stakes tests (which do not really evaluate the quality of teaching at all), merit pay is just another way to encourage educators to “teach to the test,” or worse: cheating. The nation has already seen public school teachers under so much pressure they resort to modifying their students’ scores in order to save their salaries or their jobs.

It is clear that merit pay does not serve young learners, but this is especially true in the case of special education students. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires states that accept federal funding to provide individual educational services to all children with disabilities. While the preeminence of “inclusion” of SPED children in regular classrooms is appropriate, the students are also included in the accountability statues of No Child Left Behind. SPED students are required to meet “adequate yearly progress” (AYP) standards based on high-stakes tests in reading, math, and science, like other students. While some youths with “significant cognitive disabilities” (undefined by federal law) can take alternate assessments, there is a cap on how many students can do so (Yell, Katsiyannas, & Shiner, 2006, p. 35-36). Most special education students must be included in standardized tests.

The abilities and the needs of special education students are too diverse to be put in the box that is a standardized test. SPED students are essentially being asked to perform at their chronological grade level, and for some students that is simply not possible. How does that fit in with a Free Appropriate Public Education, the education program the IDEA guarantees, that focuses on “individualized” plans for the “unique needs” of the student? It does not. Progress is individual, not standardized. Further, linking teacher pay to this unreasonable accountability only makes matters worse. Performance pay will likely punish special education instructors. Each year, SPED students may make steady progress (be it academic, cognitive, social, emotional, etc.), but teachers will see their salaries stagnate or slashed because such gains do not meet federal or state benchmarks. Such an uphill battle will discourage men and women from entering the special education field, meaning fewer quality instructors to serve students with disabilities.

When a school defines the quality of teaching by how well students perform on one test once a year, everyone loses. When pay is in the equation, it’s worse. Obama deserves credit for beginning to phase out NCLB, but merit pay is no way to make public schools more effective. If politicians want to pay good teachers better and weed out poor teachers, their efforts would be better directed at raising salaries across the board and reforming tenure.

For more from the author, subscribe and follow or read his books.

References

Kohn, A. (2003). The Folly of Merit Pay. Retrieved February 19, 2012 from https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/folly-merit-pay/.

Rosales, J. (2009). Pay Based on Test Scores? Retrieved February 19, 2012 from http://www.nea.org/home/36780.html.

Strauss, V. (2011). Ravitch: Why Merit Pay for Teachers Doesn’t Work. Retrieved February 19, 2012 from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/ravitch-why-merit-pay-for-teachers-doesnt-work/2011/03/29/AFn5w9yB_blog.html.

Yell, M. L., Katsiyannas, A., Shiner, J. G. (2006). The No Child Left Behind Act, Adequate Yearly Progress, and Students with Disabilities. Teaching Exceptional Children, 38 (4), 32-39.