Self experimentation helps me become the best version of me. Declaring my experiments before seeing the results keeps me honest. This is the first of many planned self experiments.
Hypothesis
Exposure to social media is negatively correlated to self reported happiness.
Experiment
I will use Memair DNS on my computer & mobile device to pseudorandomly block social media on 50% of days. Every morning of the experiment, I will self report my happiness on a scale from 0 to 10 using Memair emotions. The nature of the pseduorandonly blocking leads to runs of blocked days followed by runs of unblocked days. In order to counter cross-over effect, the first two days after a state change (from blocked to unblocked or vice versa) will be ignored.
The experiment started on the 4th of May and will run for 60 days. The results & calculations will be published on GitHub.
I welcome any feedback, comments, or advice on experiment design. Make a prediction in the comments below!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
- ---
title: "Self Experimentation with Social Media"
description: "I randomly blocked social media via DNS on half the days over 60 days to measure the effect on my happiness."
image: /wp-content/uploads/2019/05/experiment.gif
author: Greg
layout: post
permalink: /2019/05/self-experimentation-with-social-media/
date: 2019-05-12 11:55:03 -0400
comments: True
licence: Creative Commons
categories:
- personal
tags:
- quantified self
- ---
Self experimentation helps me become the best version of me. Declaring my experiments before seeing the results keeps me honest. This is the first of many planned self experiments.
<p align="center">
<img width="75%" height="75%" src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/experiment.gif" alt="Experiment GIF" title="Experiment GIF">
</p>
### Social Media's effect on my self reported happiness
**Hypothesis**
Exposure to social media is negatively correlated to self reported happiness.
**Experiment**
I will use [Memair DNS](https://memair.com/dns) on my computer & mobile device to pseudorandomly block social media on 50% of days. Every morning of the experiment, I will self report my happiness on a scale from 0 to 10 using [Memair emotions](https://memair.com). The nature of the pseduorandonly blocking leads to runs of blocked days followed by runs of unblocked days. In order to counter cross-over effect, the first two days after a state change (from blocked to unblocked or vice versa) will be ignored.
The experiment started on the 4th of May and will run for 60 days. The [results & calculations](https://github.com/memair/experiments/blob/master/2019-05-04%20Social%20media%20effect%20on%20self%20reported%20happiness.ipynb) will be published on GitHub.
I welcome any feedback, comments, or advice on experiment design. Make a prediction in the comments below!
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----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=n4ZJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----