In the category with white chocolate M&Ms for things that I wish I had thought of first, MissRepresentation’s #NotBuyingIt app is one of the coolest things I’ve heard of recently. It joins the ranks of other apps I just love.

From the same folks that brought us that eye-opening film a couple years ago comes an app that brings media literacy to your finger tips.

The #NotBuyingIt idea was first made popular as simply a hashtag on Twitter. PolicyMic reports that the hashtag accompanied over 10,000 tweets during this year’s Super Bowl and reached almost four million people. The app takes that kind of grassroots consumer power to the next level.

The app combines the power of social media (Twitter, namely) as a higher tech “complaint department.” Users of the app can slap “#NotBuyingIt” onto an ad that they find offensive or degrading and let the company using the ad know how they feel. The app also allows mapping of where the most offensive ads are originating and which communities are taking the biggest stand.

The app is still in development and the creators are working to raise money to make it available. If it’s something you want to support, check out the fundraising page.

Back when I was doing research on media literacy and would go into schools to teach high schoolers about navigating the media’s mixed messages, one of my favorite things to talk about was guilt. Specifically, I loved initiating a dialogue with these young people about how the media capitalizes on our individual and collective moral conscience when it comes to food choices.

An all-too-common advertising angle in marketing “healthy” food or. more often, “healthy alternatives” is to frame food as a moral issue. The media uses the concepts of guilt and shame freely to craft a very specific message — to be a good person, make good food choices.

Sometimes the reference is explicit — an advertising campaign will use the idea of “sin” to frame the food messaging. Advertisements for dessert-type foods are often accompanied by phrases like “indulgent”, “sinful”, or even “being bad” (with an obligatory wink). Chocolate gets an unfairly bad rap with this type of advertising. Conversely, advertisement for foods meant to be seen as “good” are often marketed by telling us that we can “ditch the guilt” and elevate our moral superiority by making having this food instead of that. It’s not uncommon to use specific religious imagery to highlight these ideas. The idea of an angel and devil on the shoulder in making a food choice is time-honored marketing image.

These tactics are fraught with problems — perhaps not for the millionaire advertising executives making a pretty penny off our collective shame, but certainly so for the rest of us. First of all, it’s dangerous – and unhelpful – to frame food as good or bad. They are arbitrary labels based on — well, what? There’s no universal rubric for how to identify what special ratio of fat to protein to sodium to iron to whatnot constitutes a food being good or bad. My perspective is that food doesn’t fit into simple categories like this. It’s food. It just is. It’s all good. It’s best when there’s a variety. That’s it.

Further, confusing food with morality leads us down a slippery slope. Guilt and shame, in my opinion, too often define individuals’ experiences of themselves, and this is particularly true for women. So many of us spend out lives feeling guilty for this choice or that choice — I didn’t call my friend back when I said I would. I’m a bad mom for choosing to work outside the home. I use plastic instead of resuable grocery bags. The last time I worked out was 2008. And the litany goes on. Do we really need to add “I ate a piece of chocolate” to that list?

Last, shame is a notoriously bad motivator for change. Rather than inspire us to be a better version of ourselves, shame tells us we are   bad and deeply flawed. We can’t expect people to make choices in line with their health values from a place of unworthiness and shame. So while people might buy your box of veggie crisps the first time because you’ve guilted them into it, unless they like them and they fit into their food repertoire, they’re not going to keep buying them. I’ve said it before and I’ll said (one hundred times) again, shame doesn’t work to change people!

Interestingly enough, a study actually showed that people tend to report enjoying food more when they experience a sense of guilt. So marketing your product by telling us how we don’t have to feel guilty anymore may actually be counterproductive.

But more than that, I just want corporate advertisers to quit telling us how to feel about the choices we make. We make thousands of choices in a given day that define our character. Whether we eat a Hershey Kiss doesn’t need to be one of them.

{image via pinterest}

Once I learned that as a graduate student in psychology, I would be forced to take at least two semesters of statistics courses, it suddenly became my prerogative to figure out how minimize this trauma. When I was interviewing for various programs, I would ask the current students about their experience in the class, the professor, the rigors and challenges.

“Don’t you want to know how many graduates get jobs or if we feel respected by our faculty?”

“No, I just need to know if I have chance in hell of passing that stats class. Thanks.”

A surprise ending

For all of my whining and foreboding, I turned out to not be a half-bad amateur statistician. And while I would never profess any kind of love for this mathematical science, I can honestly (and with a straight face) say that I’ve come to appreciate my statistic training immensely.

Why? Well, I’ve oddly discovered that I enjoy research. And while conducting studies isn’t currently a major part of my work, I find myself using research constantly. And beyond that, I can now easily see through the loads of statistical crap thrown at me in the media.

Being able to apply a critical eye to what we hear, see, and read makes us smarter consumers and can prevents us from getting totally duped. Or unnecessarily panicked, as is often the case.

Facebook causes eating disorders?

Take for example, the claim that spread like wildfire mid-last year. Headlines around the globe touted, “Facebook causes eating disorders.” In The Register article posted online, the headline was followed by the first line, “A survey carried out in Israel shows that the more time young girls spend on Facebook the more likely they are to develop an eating disorder.”

So what you’re telling me then is that Facebook does NOT cause eating disorders?

This is an example of likely the most common error the media makes in reporting research. They report correlation as causation. Here’s a primer: Correlation means that two things (Facebook usage and eating disorders, in this case) are related in some way. When there is a positive correlation, as the rate of one increases (time on Facebook), the rate of the other increases (eating disorders).

But take this classic example to see why this does not mean that one causes the other. Researchers have found a positive correlation between ice cream sales and murders in a small town (really, I’m serious). Does that mean that ice cream causes murder? Are there enraged lactose-intolerant violent criminals out there who just can’t handle their sundae and turn into predators? Simply, no. In this case, researchers suspect that there’s actually a third variable that contributes to both of these – high temperatures. But if we’re not measuring that third variable, we get lost in believing that our Rocky Road is jail bait.

Chicken or the egg?

For those of you who are curious, the Facebook study looked at 248 Israeli girls’ media habits and eating issues. The problem is that this correlation does not reveal which direction the relationship goes. Meaning, it could be (and it would be my contention, to go out on a limb here) that girls who have or are likely to develop eating disorders spend more time on Facebook, rather than the reverse (that they “catch” eating disorders by being on Facebook). It makes much more intuitive sense that girls who are more focused on image, concerned about body weight and shape, possibly somewhat isolated (i.e. girls with risk factors for eating disorders) would spend more time on social networking sites. And sometimes intuition is just as important as hard data.

Generalizing schmeneralizing

So say a study actually does involve experimental conditions, meaning it can point us to causation. Does that mean that the results are going to be true for all of us? Absolutely not. As you probably know, the majority of studies are conducted using participants from the college campuses where the researchers work, meaning that the sample is quite often college students. Not only does this mean that the participants are usually of a certain age range (18-23), but they also disproportionately represent a certain segment of the population – those that go to college. While some diversity exists, we can reasonable conclude that certain segments are going to be underrepresented, such as the poor, the illiterate, racial and ethnic minorities, and people following Bill Gates lead.

It’s also important to consider where the study is being conducted, meaning what geographic area. If the study took place in Israel or Poland or Texas, it makes a difference. Even subtle things that one wouldn’t assume would depend on location (e.g. genetically determined variables) can be impacted.

The point is, you have to know who exactly the study was looking at and where before assuming that it applies to you.

What are you telling me, really?

Yet another question to ask ourselves in this confusing web of statistics reporting is: Is any of this really meaningful? And, further, is it useful to me personally?

I read an article recently claiming, “Soy doesn’t boost brain power in older women, says study.” Okay… I’m not exactly sure my life was enhanced by knowing this fact. It doesn’t make me want to kick my tofu to the curb (it didn’t say it lessens brain power, after all). You have to consider how meaningful the statistics really are, because before you know it you become that 8%* who spout totally useless information just to sound smart. (*Disclaimer: I made that up.)

And more importantly, statistics often don’t mean a whole lot when it comes down to your individual life. Take the recent study that claims that delivering a baby via cesarean section increases the chances of the child being obese by age three. Last time I asked any woman delivering her child, she wasn’t making the decision to deliver vaginally versus a c-section based on her child’s future penchant for Capri Suns. In fact, she wasn’t basing it on anything other than what her doctor and she decided was best for her and the child (let’s be honest, usually the child) in that moment. No woman I know who’s had a c-section made the decision lightly, and research like this, though potentially valuable in certain ways, isn’t useful when it’s directed at mothers who already feel guilty for just about every little thing they do. Because, after all, mothers are to blame for everything, right?

The bottom line

The bottom line is that you have to be careful when interpreting statistics, and even more careful when deciding how much stock to place in them. Because, honestly, when it comes down to it, when you learn you have a 10% chance of getting an illness, and then you get it, your chance just went to 100%. And that’s all that really matters.

When I first saw the recent Citi commercial in which athletes profess all of the sacrifices they’ve made to get where they are today, it didn’t sit well with me. To put it in perspective, I was at the time, enjoying a bowl of chocolate chip ice cream with hot fudge sauce as a male athlete voice-over proclaimed, “I haven’t ordered desert in two years.”

I cringed in that moment. Not because I felt guilty for my delicious desert (I’ve already made it clear I eat chocolate every day.) but because I thought of all of the vulnerable men, women, boys, and girls who would hear that proclamation and take it as an indication of what should be rather than what one silly advertising company felt might represent sacrifice.

The commercial goes on to feature supposed athletes claiming all of the things that they gave up for their sport – from not reading the latest bestseller (c’mon, they are clearing talking 50 Shades here…) to not participating in many other “typical” joys of life. The picture painted is of the single-minded, tenacious athlete whose greatest sacrifices beget his or her greatest glories.

Blah. Blah.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired of that cultural standard. I’m not suggesting that the athletes that have made it to the Olympic games have not given up a number of things, and that this hasn’t in part allowed them to succeed. Sure it has. But does one’s life have to be consumed by fourteen hours per day of training with no time for socialization, recreation, or education (or a flippin’ Kit Kat bar) in order to achieve greatness? I don’t think so.

Granted, it may come down to how we define success. If being considered the best in the world at a particular endeavor is your measure of success, then surely your priorities might have to shift a little. But for most of us, and I’ll include myself in that group, success in life means living a well-balanced and well-nourished life. And I don’t believe that a singular pursuit can nourish anyone. Man cannot live on bread alone, the saying goes. Well, he can’t live on Power Bars and time trials alone either.

If you’ve seen the Citi commercial, my wish for you is that you were able to recognize the message as a gross distortion and still enjoy your trashy novel and dessert. If you haven’t seen it, don’t both. Watch this parody instead:

Olympians Have No Lives