Guilt

• But even outside of being directly effected, there is evidence that mere awareness of climate change can be detrimental to your mental health and wellbeing.
• If just knowing about climate change is emotionally difficult, what is it like spending years focusing on and writing about the topic?

What can a genre do?

Cli-fi has been touted as one of the ways to help save the world, with an emphasis on how imagining our future might make us reconsider our relationship to the natural world.

• Fictions in this genre have primarily imagined dystopian worlds where the very worst has happened and humanity is (often barely) surviving in flooded or desolate wastelands.
• These apocalyptic visions are meant to serve as warnings, to galvanise us to action, making sure this bleak future doesn’t happen.
• This seems a good idea in theory, but do dystopian fictions help us engage with the climate crisis?

Waking in the night

• Their responses made it clear that writing about a climate-changed future does more than bring up the anticipated negative emotions.
• Writers of climate fiction are often drawn to the genre because they are already thinking about the climate and feeling anxious.
• I had waking patches in the night over that time, where I’d be very intensely imagining something and grieving it […] But to be fair, I do that anyway.
• But many of the writers spoke of the writing process as helping, not exacerbating, their anxiety.
• We have to imagine ten years in the future and we have to imagine 50 years in the future.

Read more:
Writing can improve mental health – here's how

Theraputic benefits

• The mental health and wellbeing benefits of creative writing have been established.
• Studies have explored how writing can reduce anxiety in those affected by natural disasters.

• Yet, as the writers quoted here have shown, the imaginative process of crafting fictional narratives about difficult topics comes with its own benefits.
• In discussing their findings from one of the few studies to focus on the wellbeing effect of writing fictional narratives, Catherine Deveney and Patrick Lawson state: “it is in the craft of writing, the combination of technique and emotional catharsis, that some of the therapeutic benefits of writing can be found”.
• We need to shift from worrying about the effects of cli-fi texts to thinking about the benefits of writing creatively as we imagine our possible futures.

This research receives funding from Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. Alex Cothren and Amy T Matthews do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• Most notably, Canadians’ current debt perception has reached an all-time low, with the impact of inflation and higher interest rates leaving them feeling the most pessimistic about their current debt situation.
• More this quarter perceive their current debt situation as much worse (22%, +2pts) and fewer rated it better (22%, -2pts) compared to a year ago.
• Looking back to five years ago, a rising proportion (28%, +3pts) say their debt situation has worsened, and nearly three in ten (27%, -1pt) say it has improved.
• Everyone’s situation is different, which is why it is so important to get customized, unbiased advice from a licensed professional.”

• Those with this condition experience an over-reaction to sensory stimuli, such as touch.
• When overstimulated, the brain triggers a fight-or-flight response, which can lead to irritability, withdrawing from people, and temper tantrums.
• Clothing plays a role in worsening these sensory issues because it remains in constant contact with the skin, providing sensory input.

Our study

• The team’s first study focused on school uniforms.
• The main reason for this is that they feel restricted and that the clothes are in very close contact with the skin.
• Parents also mentioned that children often preferred second-hand school uniforms, which they experienced as softer and more tolerable than new items.
• Apart from providing rich data about clothing and textiles, the study revealed the effect of the clothing on the participation of a child in their daily activities (such as education).

Simple interventions help

• The good news is that simple interventions can make a substantial, positive difference.
• Awareness of these realities should be highlighted and interventions should focus on improving outcomes not just for the child but for their entire family.

More to come

• We are also conducting a separate analysis on the tactile properties of various textiles used in children’s wear.
• The school uniform study was co-authored by Masters student Wenette Jordaan and Leoné Gouws, also a Masters student, is a co-author of the underwear study.

The work is based on the research supported wholly/ in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (Grant Number: 129842). Karin van Niekerk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

• These practices have become commonplace in the world of sport, even for amateurs.
• Some 90 per cent of amateur runners now use a smartwatch or mobile application.
• Becoming part of a community of exercisers can also increase motivation by interweaving systems of mutual encouragement and competition.

The discontinuation of connected devices

• First of all, we should recall that the adoption of connected devices for sports is not evenly distributed across the population.
• In addition, the 30-39 age group is the most equipped with smart bracelets and smartwatches.
• We believe that the rejection of these devices may be the result of a deterioration in the quality of the experience of a sport when using them.
• It’s a question of rediscovering a form of lost freedom, of lightness, or even of resonance.

The adherence to quantification tools

• While dropping the tools is a significant and explainable phenomenon, the reasons for sticking to them must also be considered.
• What are the conditions that enable amateur runners to continue practising and quantifying their performance numerically while deriving pleasure and well-being from the activity?
• We showed that the amateur runners who persevered in using digital tools were the ones who had developed a high level of expertise in self-quantification.
• They also learn to let go of certain areas of quantification (sleep, for example) in order to focus their efforts exclusively on running.

The nature of the attachment to the device

• We wanted to gain a better understanding of the connection runners formed with their digital tracking device.
• This change, which was out of the ordinary for most of them, turned out to be particularly destabilizing and revealed how deeply incorporated their use of, and attachment to the tool was.
• All the subjects we studied initially admitted to being very apprehensive about the idea of running without their watch.
• Ultimately, there’s nothing spontaneous, magical or automatic about interacting with your quantification device in a functional way.

• Matthieu Quidu received funding from the University of Lyon 1 for a research project entitled, "In search of sobriety: sociological insights into the emergence of minimalist sporting practices."
• Brice Favier-Ambrosini received funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) for a project entitled "Identifying the essential, eliminating the rest," an analysis of the trend towards minimalism in the consumption of sports leisure activities.