I’ve had it with Time. They have finally gone over the edge with their website ad practices. Video ads that always started up could be paused before they finished. No longer. Now I have to watch the whole damned ad before I can use pause.

The smaller video ads that always popped up down on the lower right of the page with an “X” in the upper right corner could be deleted by pressing the X. Try that now and the ad instead follows your cursor all over the page.

Time magazine, you truly are paragons of intrusion. You are evil. I teach courses in advertising and marketing and I will now use you as an example of what NOT to do in advertising and electronic media. May you rot in h$##.

You mental health may well be at risk if you are succumbing too often and too much to the siren call of your favorite social media app(s). Apparently our biology is having trouble adapting to the new app-reality, so our brains are chemically trying to compensate–and not having much success. Have a look at this article:

http://www.ibtimes.com/anxiety-social-media-brains-addiction-checking-accounts-2573690

Cal State University professor Larry Rosen is quoted: “We have kind of dug ourselves into a hole where we feel the need to check in often [on social media]. You’re constantly feeling this urge or need.”

And if you fail to scratch that itch, you get anxious, thanks to brain chemistry.

Article author Denisse Moreno notes, “Once you start feeling the need to look at your social apps, you’ll start showing signs like palm sweat, armpit sweat or butterflies in your stomach, depending on how your body usually reacts when you’re nervous. Because of those feelings, you give in and end up checking your social media to make the anxiety go away.”

The solution? Control the chemistry. But that may be easier said than done….