More Validation About Our Prediction About Living in the Age of Anxiety Or 3 Articles About De-stressing & 1 About Screen Addiction

One of our predictions for 2018 is that we're now living in an Age of Anxiety, driven in part by our screen addiction.

What we're seeing is confirmation of our prediction. In this blog post, we'll cite validation from the New York Times and Bloomberg.

Among the points we made about the Age of Anxiety was "We anticipate more coverage on stress, anxiety, mental health and ways to de-stress, which includes taking a break from your device – aka a technology cleanse or digital detox – which is healthy and a good idea but may seem impossible to do."

And that's just what we've been seeing. We'll tackle in a future blog post what it means for marketers to try to communicate with key audiences in such a way so as to minimize their stress levels. This is a real challenge because there's so much anger and resentment, sincerely felt by conservatives and liberals, that the personal -- like which team you root for and which coffee maker you use or what programs a brand advertises on -- has become politicized to an unprecedented degree,

But first, some advice on how to de-stress from the New York Times:

How to Manage Stress Like an Olympic Biathlete

The pressure of an intense physical race combined with methodical target shooting gives biathletes a unique perspective on coping with stress.

By TARA PARKER-POPE

The Promise of Self-Compassion for Stressed-Out Teens

Many in this driven generation believe they can’t move forward without beating themselves up.

By RACHEL SIMMONS

How to Break Up With Your Phone

Nine ways to have a healthier relationship with your phone.

By CATHERINE PRICE

Meanwhile, here's a Bloomberg article about screen addition: 

Tech Diets Catch on With Apple Executives, Facebook Billionaires and Google:rSilicon Valley insiders, concerned about the attention-sapping effects of modern technology, experiment with ways to log off.

We'll continue to explore the Age of Anxiety because, I'm afraid, it's going to be a main theme for a while.

New York Times Validates Our Prediction About the 1st Amendment & Colleges

We try to stay away from politics but we also look at media issues, which includes the First Amendment and free speech and a free press.

With that in mind, in 2017, we predicted:

The first amendment becomes a battle-ground issue. Between campus culture wars(regarding who can speak on campus and who can disrupt those who try to speak on campus),varying definitions of hate speech and the more-open expression of bigotry, the fight to protect free speech will generate coverage in 2018. Part of the challenge is a polarize climate is finding the balance between allowing free expression and preventing bigoted express.

And in February 2018, we saw this New York Times' article, "Republicans Stuff Education Bill With Conservative Social Agenda," which includes pullout text that describes a "590-page higher education bill working its way through Congress" as "a wish list for those who say their First Amendment rights are being trampled."

And addressing those concerns will lead to others feeling that their First Amendment rights are being abridged. And the bill specifically addresses "universities where controversial, or sometimes merely conservative, speakers have sought to appear. Schools have denied speaking slots or put restrictions on them after some protests against the speakers have become unruly." The bill would force colleges to publicly declare their speech policies, so if they tried to change the rules ad hoc, depending on who was speaking, they would be vulnerable to free-speech lawsuits."

It's worth reading the article about how this is playing out. The article provides some details that suggest that the bill does not equalize things but, instead, tilts things in the other direction. In other words, it seems the bill will continue to use of the First Amendment as a battle-ground issue. And that, we think, is a mistake. 

How to Combat Fake News

After spending a lot of time monitoring the media -- particularly mainstream media with a liberal and a conservative bias -- it's clear that as a country, Americans can't agree on facts. 

Our intent is not to be political, though. The problem for journalists, the media, companies that rely on communicating via the media as well as the people who consumer the media is that: content designed to disinform is causing a credibility problem. (We realize "disinform" is not a real word but perhaps it should be. And we get the irony of using a made up word to discuss the implications of fake news. Also, there's a real difference between disinformation and  news with which one disagrees.)

As part of our list of ongoing predictions, we said we're going to have a problem with a shorter news cycle combined with fake news, which is not going to fade away in 2018. This will get worse as we get closer to the midterm elections.

So what can we do about fake news?

Facebook is altering its news feed, allowing users to identify sources they feel are credible. Google is also changing its algorithm. 

And some are hoping that Congress should get involved and regulate (or try to) big tech or hope that big tech itself will adjust things to reduce the impact of fake news while also helping users weaken the hold of addiction of their products and services.

We don't think those Congress will be affective here (not necessarily their fault; the companies on their own aren't able to figure out a way to improve their credibility).

One solution we'd like came from Jeffrey Herbst, president and CEO of the Newseum, in a Wall St. Journal op-ed column, "How to Beat the Scourge of Fake News: Facebook and Google can’t do it alone. Better educating consumers is crucial" in Dec. 12, 2016.

That seems so long ago, it might hardly still be relevant.

Herbst notes something important:

This is hardly the first time that fake news has been controversial. The “yellow journalism” of the late 19th century featured fake news, false interviews, and an obsessive focus on crime

His solution to fake news is to:

Teach media literacy to millions of students...They become better citizens by learning how to discern what is true and what is not on social media by analyzing sources and making evidence-based arguments.

We don't see this as a 100 percent solution by any stretch. But it is more effective than posting a list of apparent fake news as was done, recently, much to the humor of late night comedians.

Check out the article, and let us know if you have additional suggestions.

It's important for journalism, for public relations professionals -- and most of all, for our country.

Bloomberg Businessweek Validates Our "Age of Anxiety" Prediction

Add to Bloomberg Businessweek the list that already includes the Wall St. Journal and the New York Times of publications that have validated our prediction that 2018 is the "age of anxiety."

Check out our prediction here but check out, also, this article by Bloomberg Businessweek's Editorial Board: "A New Year's Wish: Better Social Media:Why is everyone hooked on a product that makes them miserable?" (Original print headline: "Social Media Doesn't Have to Be Terrible.")

A key line:

Across Silicon Valley, insiders have lately been raising similar concerns, and fretting that the business model of social media may be undermining the well-being of its users. A growing body of research suggests they have a point.

Even more significant:

Among the young, social media may be playing a role in rising rates of depression and suicide. It seems to induce feelings of envy, anxiety and inadequacy. It appears to reduce self-esteem, inhibit sleep, interfere with schoolwork and (of all the ironies) encourage antisocial behavior. Some two-thirds of kids now say they wouldn't mind if social media didn't exist. And who can blame them? 

The problem is that it's hard to quit.

Welcome to what we’ve called the age of anxiety. The things that we rely on to get through our day, to connect to family, friends, colleagues, and our communities at large are the same things that undermine our sense of self and our happiness.

Worse – many of us recognize that our reliance on our screens and on social media is making us unproductive and unhappy but we can’t break the addiction. And this isn’t just a problem for teens; it’s a problem for everyone.

Bloomberg Businessweek’s Editorial Board suggests that “it’s up to social media business to make its products more humane and less exploitive” but we don’t think they are truly motivated to do so since making it easier to disconnect means taking a hit on their revenue.

Look, we don’t have an answer, either. And we continue to be on social media, too.

Hoping won’t make it so, but as Bloomberg Businessweek’s Editorial Board says about what social media tries to do – bring about human connection – “it’s worth reflecting on how to meet that desire (human connection) – without making everyone miserable in the process.”

Couldn’t agree with that more. Do you have suggestions for how to reduce our anxiety? Let us know.

Play the Retailpocalypse Game

We've been talking about retailpocalypse -- not because we want it to happen. But because we feel it is happening, and few are paying enough attention to it.

Interestingly, Bloomberg Businessweek is paying attention. They've developed a Retailpocalypse game to show how hard it is for malls to survive in this age of Amazonification.

You can play it here.

By the way, there's no way to win, we believe, based on playing the game several times.

Also, you should know: When the game ends, a laughing Jeff Bezos fills the screen.

We do hope Bloomberg is wrong but we definitely feel there will be a shakeout in retail.

Boston Globe's "Tech Nomad" Recognizes Screen Addiction + 3 types of solutions that aren't going to work

At some point there may be a backlash to this trend but for the moment, there is a rising recognition that as a society, we are overly dependent on our devices, and that what we're all suffering from is screen addition.

Screen addiction is something we discussed in our predictions for 2018, published in December 2017.

The Boston Globe's "Tech Nomad" columnist, Michael Andor Brodeur, recently wrote about this in a column entitled, "Hard Wired: Our smartphone habits are more like full-blown addictions. So how can we regain control?"

So we consider ourselves validated but that still means we're addicted.

 What's worse, Brodeur suggests that the proliferation of virtual assistants like Alexa presents another opportunity to become addicted to tech. And he's right about that.

So, what to do?

Brodeur cites other industry experts who suggest we should:

• Simply switch your phone to grayscale. By muffling the ways your phone uses contrast, color, and, for lack of better phrasing, sparkly stuff to recruit your attention, the phone becomes less of a dazzling gem to gaze into, and more of a utilitarian brick.

Brodeur also mentions phone-free zones and Yondr, which provides a case in which you place your phone in spaces for artists, educators, organizations, etc. and the case, with a lock, prevents you from temporarily accessing your phone. Seems unnecessary. For all that, you could just agree to turn off your phone.

But the hard part is that so far in the articles we've read about phone addiction, we've come across three types of solutions:

1. Rely on Apple and others to design smartphones that are less addicting.
2. Ask Congress to find a way to regulate big tech to reduce distractions.
3. Identify lifehacks (as in the bullet above) to weaken your addiction.

Of the three, the most likely to happen is #3. But we're open to suggestions. One of us goes on a Facebook hiatus for a week at a time, and combined with the decision to stop checking whenever an alert lights up his phone, finds himself less tense and anxious. But in our business, you can't go cold turkey on news and social media. Which doesn't mean we can't try to break the addiction, just that find ways to scale back and find a better balance.

Suggestions? Send them our way!

First Big Retail Bankruptcy Validates Prediction About Retailpocalypse Due to Amazonification

We're interested in retail as a bellwether of our consumer-based economy. Or, more accurately these days, the canary in the coal mine. 

Last year we raised concerns about problems affecting the retail sector because there are a number of other parts of the economy that rely on retail, including real estate, newspaper and other local advertising, employment, and logistics. So when retail hit a downturn, there's a trickle-down affect.

We mentioned those issues and made it our top prediction for this year. We wrote about it further in a subsequent blog post: The Wall St. Journal Validates Our Prediction in a Column Entitled, "How Retailers Can Thrive in the Age of Amazon."

Today, Fortune reported that "Bon-Ton Stores Becomes Latest Retailer to March Into Bankruptcy Protection."  Here's the key sentence:

The Milwaukee-based retailer, whose chains include namesake stores as well as Carson’s, Elder-Beerman, Herberger’s and Younkers, has been struggling for years with declining sales amid challenged traffic at the malls it occupies, an assortment redundant with what rivals sell, and difficulty adapting to the emergence of e-commerce.

Those factors are exacerbated by Amazonification. And they will continue to impact other mall-based retailers in 2018 and beyond.

Interestingly, much of the coverage to date has focused on bankruptcy filings or impact on shares without taking a bigger perspective such as the impact of store closings. Bon-Ton had already announced it was shutting 40 stores but the chain has 260 stores overall, and with it, significant real estate leases and obligations. In fact, filing for bankruptcy makes it easier to break leases.

So what's not getting reported is the trickle-down nature of the suddenly unemployed retail staff, both on the sales floor and logistics, maintenance, and other services -- people who will face a hard time finding new jobs since few retailers are expanding -- as well as the impact on the malls themselves (because boarded up stores don't attract customers so it can start a downward spiral impact on the health of that particular mall location), and newspaper ad revenue (since those stores no longer need to advertise to bring in local customers).

 The reason this isn't getting covered is that, even in good times for retail, the sector is dynamic with new stores opening and other ones closing. But our concern is that we don't think there will be enough new stores to replace the ones that have closed. And even if Bon-Ton restructures its debt and gets out of Chapter 11 -- for now -- it still hasn't developed a strategy to address Amazonification.