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Admit it.  Who isn't a little sick of all the selfies? People eating in restaurants.  Pouring wine. Throwing a snowball (that's just in the Northeast).  A Real Housewife who claims she has Lyme disease posting IVs and other medical appliances plugged into her pasty body. Now a new study is finding that too many can plug up your romantic life, too. Researchers have found that too many Instagram selfies may create romantic conflict, according to newswise.com.  Florida State University researchers have discovered the more selfies an individual posts on the social media site Instagram, the greater the likelihood he or she might experience romantic relationship conflict and dissolution.   “Although we cannot directly assume cause and effect due to the correlational nature of this study, the results here show that body image satisfaction can be detrimental to Instagram users’ romantic relationships, especially when users’ body image satisfaction is prom...

I admit I do it, too.  In fact, I just did it last week, when my son gave a brief talk at Princeton (yes, University) at age 13.  The reality is that Princeton was just the location of the talk, but he did give it to an audience of IEEE members. That's The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (to people like me who can't even pronounce double-precision floating point format), and yes, we were very proud. So, of course, the minute we got home, I put it up on Facebook, and went on to get over 30 likes (hey, I know, not much, but it's the most I've ever gotten!). And now researchers are saying this isn't such a good idea.   “By the time children are old enough to use social media themselves many already have a digital identity created for them by their parents,” says Sarah J. Clark , M.P.H., associate director of the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health and associate research scientist in the ...

So now I get it.  It's that electric jolt I get when my views top 75 (OK, only once, but come on, people, tell your friends about this blog!).  Facebook is our high. An op-ed in The Sunday Review put it the best:  we love the instant approval we get when we post something and our friends immediately respond.   The essay was mostly about the bad things Facebook encourages us to do, like pose in a thong, when  mommy panties make more sense, or post how much you hate your boss, or, to me, the worst, deface places like the Grand Canyon or saguaros in the desert just so you can post it online.  But as Jenna Wortham puts it, "That feedback loop of positive reinforcement is the most addictive element of social media." Whether you're a mom posting your son's championship baseball win, or your latest cedar-planked salmon, let's face it.  It feels good when friends come back with praise and accolades. “For people who get a lot of motivation out of knowi...