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Speaker 1: visit about hb X dot com slash how Stuff Works.

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Speaker 1: Are you looking for brand new episodes of a short

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Speaker 1: how Stuff Works podcast that explains the everyday world around us,

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Speaker 1: Then check out brain Stuff with me Christian Sager. New

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Speaker 1: episodes hit every Monday and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify,

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Speaker 1: or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamp and my name is Christian Seger. So we're

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Speaker 1: recording this a week after the election here in the

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Speaker 1: United States. Uh, and we're kind of reeling not just

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Speaker 1: from the election, but from the social media reverberations around it.

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Speaker 1: And so Robert and I were talking about it, and

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Speaker 1: we said, you know, there's a lot of research. We

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Speaker 1: see a lot of research fly across our screens about

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Speaker 1: mental health and social media. Let's do a dive and

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Speaker 1: figure out what we know so far about this, because

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Speaker 1: it seems like a topic at least from my social

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Speaker 1: media feeds, that people are interested in right now. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's absolutely no escaping it, um, because

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Speaker 1: here we are at the the tail end of s

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Speaker 1: and uh, you know, just looking back on it, taking

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Speaker 1: into account everything that sort of happened with social media.

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Speaker 1: Let's say we had billions of tweets and Facebook status

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Speaker 1: updates about the US election as they were happening. Yeah. No,

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Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but like everything, I'm seeing everything.

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Speaker 1: But I'd say a good fifty percent of the people

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Speaker 1: in my feet are saying, like, sorry, I've got to

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Speaker 1: take a step away from this. On top of this, uh,

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Speaker 1: political activity and political inactivity. Um, you also have seen,

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Speaker 1: of course, a lot of slanted and misinformed articles that

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Speaker 1: have made the rounds, and that is something that is

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Speaker 1: being covered in the media currently, How does uh, how

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Speaker 1: does Facebook? How does Google as um uh as a

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Speaker 1: as a as a manager of these different properties, as

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Speaker 1: a curative of these properties, how does how do they

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Speaker 1: factor into this equation? Um? You know, and and of

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Speaker 1: course on top of that, we also had a really good,

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Speaker 1: in a really depressing season of black Mirror. Just put

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Speaker 1: it all in the perspective. But but you know, we

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Speaker 1: we have to we come back to looking at social

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Speaker 1: media and what its role is this thing that we've created,

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Speaker 1: this thing that we use every every day. So how

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Speaker 1: much of what we're feeling now? And uh and and

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Speaker 1: these um, these opinions, these these emotions that are being expressed.

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Speaker 1: How much of that can we blame on social media itself?

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Speaker 1: How much of it is just what people have always felt? Uh?

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Speaker 1: You know, it's just the immediate concern is always more pressing,

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Speaker 1: more real, there's always more fire to it. So and

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Speaker 1: you know, are we just are are we just blowing

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Speaker 1: everything out of out of proportion and simply looking for

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Speaker 1: forces to blame? Yeah? I think, uh, well, we're gonna

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Speaker 1: really get into it with the research today. But I

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Speaker 1: just like to say that I think that there's a

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Speaker 1: certain amount of technological determinism that goes along with the

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Speaker 1: idea that it's social media's fault quote unquote. UM. And

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Speaker 1: from the research, the big lesson that I learned, and

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Speaker 1: maybe you know at the end we'll revisit this is

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Speaker 1: that it's not the medium, it's how we approach the

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Speaker 1: medium and what we bring to it. Um. And before

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Speaker 1: we start, I think, I think, like I just want

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Speaker 1: to share a little bit with the audience. I have

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Speaker 1: personal social media policies already in place. I've talked about

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Speaker 1: these on other shows before. I probably talked about them

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Speaker 1: on here before. Um, this one's a little weird. I

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Speaker 1: only read Facebook, my Facebook personal stream if I'm in

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Speaker 1: a bathroom. Yeah, I that's my My policy is, I

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Speaker 1: don't want to read it at my desk. I don't

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Speaker 1: want to read it if I'm in my living room

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Speaker 1: or my bedroom, or if I'm on bus whatever. Uh,

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Speaker 1: it stays in the bathroom and and whatever it brings

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Speaker 1: up for me, if it's anger or sadness or frustration

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Speaker 1: or even happiness or whatever, I keep it there. Um.

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Speaker 1: Now that's for personal stuff. We always advocate at the

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Speaker 1: end of every episode. Hey, visit us on social media

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Speaker 1: My job is to look at social media for stuff

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Speaker 1: to blow your mind and how stuff works in our

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Speaker 1: other brands. Yeah. I wish I could step away from Facebook, really,

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Speaker 1: but it's this thing I gotta do every morning. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And I curate all my feeds, meaning for both Twitter

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Speaker 1: and Facebook. So on Facebook, if i'm quote friends with

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Speaker 1: a person and they're posting things that upset me, then

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Speaker 1: I'll do the I forget what the terminology is hide

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Speaker 1: or uh. I basically make it so I can't see

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Speaker 1: their stuff, but I don't say to them I hate you,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to be friends. And there's there's unfollowing,

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Speaker 1: there's there's fighting, there's requestion to see the less of somebody.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's the That's the thing is that everyone engages.

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Speaker 1: Unless you're just like a rare and novice user of

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Speaker 1: say Facebook or Twitter or what have you. There's always

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Speaker 1: a certain amount of curation. You're choosing who to follow,

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Speaker 1: then you're choosing who to unfollow or hide. The algorithm

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Speaker 1: on Facebook is U is accounting for your preferences and

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Speaker 1: you're getting this custom stream of information and uh. On Twitter,

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Speaker 1: I make use of lists tremendously. I mean, and I

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Speaker 1: think I probably follow six hundred people on Twitter, and

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Speaker 1: I actually follow less than a hundred people on Twitter

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Speaker 1: because I have a list of what I actually look at.

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Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to offend people by unfollowing

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Speaker 1: them or you know, I use Twitter for networking. Uh

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Speaker 1: you know, so sometimes if I'm seeing stuff that's just

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Speaker 1: overwhelming me, I say, you know what, you don't need

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Speaker 1: to be in the list anymore. I'm gonna You're gonna

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Speaker 1: take a break from you for a little bit. Um

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Speaker 1: And all this is, you know, in my posting, I

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Speaker 1: just try to share things that I enjoy about the

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Speaker 1: world or communicate with people who are in my areas

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Speaker 1: of interest. Podcasting, we talk a lot about horror on

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Speaker 1: the show, things like that, and especially with people who

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Speaker 1: are physically far away. I mean, I won't deny social

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Speaker 1: media has been a great tool for me to meet

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Speaker 1: people within our field and to make friends. Um. So, again, like,

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Speaker 1: there are problems here, and we're gonna talk about a

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Speaker 1: lot of problems that have been found with the research

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Speaker 1: in this, But I don't want to be technologically deterministic

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Speaker 1: and say Facebook is bad. Yeah, yeah, I mean I

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Speaker 1: love Facebook as a as a as a method of

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Speaker 1: sharing pictures of my my son, pictures of my family,

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Speaker 1: keeping up with with with with friends and family members

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Speaker 1: that are far away. Uh. And that's probably what I

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Speaker 1: use it for Facebook for the most personally, that and

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Speaker 1: just sharing of things that relate to my interests. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then here at work, of course for stuff to

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Speaker 1: blow your mind. We share our content. We we curate

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Speaker 1: content that fits either our show brand or sort of

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Speaker 1: the loose host brand. So if you follow our our

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Speaker 1: our Facebook feed, you'll see a lot of stuff that's

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Speaker 1: not really attributed. But if something's like a little more

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Speaker 1: of a Christian thing or a little more Robert thing, etcetera,

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Speaker 1: then you're gonna see that we've we've tagged it, or

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Speaker 1: if the statement on is a little more in our

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Speaker 1: individual boys usually try to put our initials or something

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Speaker 1: like yeah yeah, But you know, it's basically comes to really,

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Speaker 1: I guess my approach to all the very social media

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Speaker 1: uses that I I use them as a way to

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Speaker 1: share things that I think are pretty cool or I

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Speaker 1: think are important. Yeah. I remember reading a blog post

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Speaker 1: when smartphones first started becoming popular, and it was basically

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Speaker 1: like a like a sort of guide for for newbies

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Speaker 1: on like, what should you be posting to social media?

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Speaker 1: You want to get involved in this, how do you

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Speaker 1: do it? And you know, obviously we've gone awry since then,

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Speaker 1: but it was basically, what throughout your day as you

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Speaker 1: go throughout the world do you see that's wondrous that

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Speaker 1: makes you laugh or that you find interesting or insightful

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Speaker 1: or mean? Like, do you physically see something, take a

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Speaker 1: picture of it, share that and that excites you. Or

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Speaker 1: if you read an article that you think is insightful,

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Speaker 1: share that something along those lines. That's and that that's

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Speaker 1: for the most part, how I've always held it. I

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Speaker 1: am absolutely guilty any stuff to blow your mind. Listeners

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Speaker 1: who have followed me on Twitter know that I like

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Speaker 1: a good presidential debate and I like to live tweet

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Speaker 1: and make jokes during it that that I'm totally guilty

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Speaker 1: of that. But you know, for the most part, I

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Speaker 1: try to make it a curation of things that I

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Speaker 1: find in the world that are great. One thing that

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Speaker 1: really like about your social media feed is your wife's

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Speaker 1: a photographer, and so there's always these gorgeous pictures of

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Speaker 1: either your family or stuff that she's shooting out in

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Speaker 1: the world. As you guys travel around. Yeah, yeah, I'm

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Speaker 1: looking in that regard because the imagery is so important

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Speaker 1: on social media. And even though I know less about

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Speaker 1: photography and how to work the camera than virtually anybody

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Speaker 1: I know, my wife does all that, and uh, we're

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Speaker 1: able to get a good image out there. But you know,

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Speaker 1: that's that kind of ties into a lot of what

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Speaker 1: we're going to discuss today. It's the the image, the representation,

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Speaker 1: the thing that you put out there. Because ultimately, what

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Speaker 1: we're getting around to with all of this is that

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Speaker 1: your social media presence is kind of a is a

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Speaker 1: piece of you, but it is not the whole of you.

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Speaker 1: It is a version of yourself. And then everything that

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Speaker 1: you consume out there is a version of reality. So

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Speaker 1: you have this creation of the subjective self, a creation

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Speaker 1: of the subjective reality. And that is where we find

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Speaker 1: ourselves here, Um at the close and the dawn. We're

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Speaker 1: all performing ourselves in different ways. It always makes me

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Speaker 1: think of um, the great monologue play actor, uh Spalding Gray.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever listened to Spalding Gray's

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Speaker 1: stuff before, but he would give these long, hour long

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Speaker 1: monologues about events in his life and people felt like

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Speaker 1: they knew him, they felt like he was their best friend.

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Speaker 1: And he would say that person who you're listening to

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Speaker 1: on stage, that's me, but that's not actually me. That's

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Speaker 1: a performance of myself. And he committed suicide before social

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Speaker 1: media really got big. So I would I would be

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Speaker 1: curious to see how what his opinion of Facebook or

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Speaker 1: Twitter would be, because I think that we're all kind

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Speaker 1: of doing the same thing. Now. Yeah, I mean, I've

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Speaker 1: I've read very compelling arguments that really even outside of

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Speaker 1: social media, where none of us are a particular individual,

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Speaker 1: where there's kind of this chorus of selves, right, with

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Speaker 1: some with louder voices than others, some with with voices

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Speaker 1: that are trailing off as we age, some with the

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Speaker 1: voices that are growing louder um. But yeah, the idea

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Speaker 1: that there's a particular you maybe doesn't even hold up

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Speaker 1: in the real world or in social media. Yeah, sure,

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Speaker 1: where that's that's I guess. Uh, this is the hippiest

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Speaker 1: thing I'm gonna say on stuff to bile your mind.

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Speaker 1: The beauty of humanity is where a myriad of identities.

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, that on that note, let's let's move

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Speaker 1: into a little bit let's uh, let's let's get into

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Speaker 1: the meat of this episode and uh and discuss where

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Speaker 1: we are with social media, where we what the research

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Speaker 1: is saying. Okay, So, reportedly one in four people worldwide

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Speaker 1: are on social media, and fort of online adults are

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Speaker 1: using multiple social networking sites. That would include both of us.

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Speaker 1: On average, Americans spend seven points six hours a month

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Speaker 1: using social media. That sounds really low to me. I

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Speaker 1: would think it would be more like three hours a

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Speaker 1: day or something like that. There's a lot of of

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Speaker 1: of using social media while you're doing everything everything else, right, Yeah, exactly,

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Speaker 1: So I wonder if there's some misreporting going on there

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Speaker 1: or something. I'm not quite sure. Um, sixty of American

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Speaker 1: Facebook users logging daily, of them logging multiple times a day? Again, guilty,

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Speaker 1: So I'm I'm even though I'm only doing it in

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Speaker 1: the bathroom, it's multiple times a day. Uh. And a

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Speaker 1: good starting point for this episode that I found was

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Speaker 1: an article called Online Social Networking and Mental Health. It's

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Speaker 1: written by a guy named Igor Pantic and it was

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Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.

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Speaker 1: So it's two years old. It's a little there's there's

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Speaker 1: a little bit more research that's been published out there,

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Speaker 1: but it's basically a review of all the research on

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Speaker 1: this topic that was done up until this point. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And so we're gonna throw it in along with the

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Speaker 1: research that we did for this episode. Before we get started, though,

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Speaker 1: let's let's acknowledge it's difficult to assess social media's effects

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Speaker 1: on mental health. Most of the studies that we're going

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Speaker 1: to present here, they use an approach a methodology of

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Speaker 1: correlation analysis. And remember, correlation doesn't actually equal causality. So

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Speaker 1: for example, we can't tell if Facebook causes low self

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Speaker 1: esteem or if people who already had low self esteem

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Speaker 1: are more likely to use it. We just we can't

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Speaker 1: tell which is the cause and which is the effect.

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Speaker 1: But regardless, there seems to be a relation, as we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk about between low self esteem and Facebook. UM,

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Speaker 1: So just keep that in mind as we're going through

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Speaker 1: these studies. Yeah, and some of the studies we turned

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Speaker 1: to as well, like they're they're more general media studies,

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Speaker 1: so they may refer either to an earlier mode of

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Speaker 1: the Internet they may or social media use. They may

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Speaker 1: refer even to other media um services out there or

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Speaker 1: platforms such as television, so as far as our social

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Speaker 1: media age, the place where we're currently standing in the

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Speaker 1: needed uh it it all started innocently enough. Um. The

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Speaker 1: author Nicholas Carr has a wonderful article from Ian magazine

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Speaker 1: published earlier this year titled The Worldwide Cage, in which

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Speaker 1: he discusses the rise and in a sense, the spiritual

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Speaker 1: fall of social media. So you know, he points back

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Speaker 1: to the summer of two thousand five just being the

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Speaker 1: time when when Web two point oh really arrived and

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Speaker 1: and pump new life and money into my space flicker

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Speaker 1: linked in in the recently launched Facebook. Car rights quote cyberspace,

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Speaker 1: with its disembodied voices and ethereal avatars, seemed mystical from

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Speaker 1: the start. It's unearthly vastness a receptacle for the spiritual

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Speaker 1: yearnings and tropes of the US. What better way, wrote

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Speaker 1: the philosopher Michael him in The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace,

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Speaker 1: to emulate God knowledge than to create a virtual world

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Speaker 1: constituted by bits of information and uh and Car points

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Speaker 1: to an August two thousand five Wired magazine cover article

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Speaker 1: that proclaimed the birth of a new world, empowered by

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Speaker 1: what he referred to as the electricity of participation. And

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Speaker 1: this is the quote from that particular article by Kevin Kelly.

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Speaker 1: We are the web. The electricity of participation nudges ordinary

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Speaker 1: folks to invest huge hunks of energy and time into

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Speaker 1: making free Encyclopedia is creating public tutorials for changing a

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Speaker 1: flat tire or cataloging the votes in the Senate. More

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Speaker 1: and more of the web runs in this mode. One

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Speaker 1: study found that of the web is commercial, the rest

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Speaker 1: runs on duty or passion. So we have this, this

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Speaker 1: this idea that the electricity of participation. It sounds great, right,

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Speaker 1: it does sound great, but it's also from the from

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Speaker 1: the inside of the media organization looking out. We know

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Speaker 1: that this is something that comes around and around again,

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Speaker 1: and if you google it you can learn more about it.

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Speaker 1: User generated content is the term that is used to

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Speaker 1: describe a lot of what Kevin Kelly is talking about here.

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Speaker 1: Now everything from reviews on Amazon to comments on a

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Speaker 1: YouTube video or every post on Facebook. Right, all of

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Speaker 1: it is content that's generated that makes somebody money. But

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Speaker 1: the but the people who are creating and the people

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Speaker 1: who are writing it or posting it or taking these

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Speaker 1: pictures or whatever, they're just doing it. Out of their participations.

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Speaker 1: Electricity of participation. Um, And I can't tell you how

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Speaker 1: many times as I've been working in this business. Every

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Speaker 1: couple of years it comes back around again. What if

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Speaker 1: we figured out some way to get the audience to

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Speaker 1: make something and then we can make money off of it. Right? Well,

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Speaker 1: and for me, the electricity of participation, it makes me think. Certainly,

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Speaker 1: you can think of all sorts of positive modes of

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Speaker 1: people getting involved, participating and creating great things, creating some

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Speaker 1: of the most amazing things in human history. But there's

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Speaker 1: also an electrictyer of participation to say, burning a witch

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Speaker 1: or something. Sure so yeah, so in these cases, particularly

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Speaker 1: what Kevin Kelly was talking about, it's really summoning up

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Speaker 1: to like the best high minded futuristic ideas of what

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Speaker 1: this could mean. But his car lays out these notions

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Speaker 1: were essentially blown up by quote over indulged rich guys

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Speaker 1: unquote who often went a bit cessational and forecasting the

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Speaker 1: coming tech utopia. So they based their predictions on their

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Speaker 1: early web, which was a smaller system and it was

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Speaker 1: populated by a smaller sampling of society. Yeah, you know,

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Speaker 1: I feel like the the ideal here was that like

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Speaker 1: the Internet was supposed to become sort of like the

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Speaker 1: modern era public coffee house, where there would be civilized

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Speaker 1: discourse and critical thought and everybody would respect one another.

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Speaker 1: And hey, it's early days yet, maybe it'll become that

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Speaker 1: at some point. But the most part what we see

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Speaker 1: is people trying to express really complicated ideas in a

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Speaker 1: hundred and forty characters or less. I'll read one more

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Speaker 1: quote from from car here, but I and and encourage

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Speaker 1: everyone to check out the article in full length. I'll

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Speaker 1: include a link to it on the landing page for

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Speaker 1: this episode. But he said, the culture that emerged on

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Speaker 1: the network and that now extends deep into our lives

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Speaker 1: and psychees, is characterized by frenetic production and consumption. Smartphones

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Speaker 1: have made medium machines of us all but little real

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Speaker 1: empowerment and even less reflectiveness. It's a culture of distraction

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Speaker 1: and dependency. Uh so here we are, Yeah, yeah, we

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Speaker 1: really have. I mean, it's it's kind of crazy to

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Speaker 1: me when I think back on how ingest a little

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Speaker 1: over ten years, we've just gone from zero to sixty

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Speaker 1: with social media. You know. Um, and this isn't to

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Speaker 1: be like I'm older or anything like that, but like

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Speaker 1: I remember getting my first iPod Touch and being like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I can take this with me anywhere where there's WiFi.

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Speaker 1: At the time, I had to have WiFi, and I

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Speaker 1: can write an email, or I can take a picture

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Speaker 1: or whatever, you know. And it was it literally was

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Speaker 1: like a sci fi thing had happened and just dropped

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Speaker 1: into my hand. And now it's just every day, you know.

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Speaker 1: And it's not just every day for our generation or

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Speaker 1: the generation before ours. I have friends who are baby

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Speaker 1: boomers that are in their mid to late sixties, and

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Speaker 1: they're using smartphones and Facebook and Twitter just as much

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Speaker 1: as the rest of us. It's a misconception to think

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Speaker 1: that it's just a tool for young people. Yeah, indeed,

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Speaker 1: I mean it's it's everywhere. It's it's through throughout society

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Speaker 1: and and the sci fi aspects of it. I can't

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Speaker 1: help but think back to to Doone Frank Herbert's done,

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Speaker 1: and the idea of the Butlerian Jahad, where people rose

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Speaker 1: up against against machines again, and we're empowered by this

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Speaker 1: notion that thou shalt not make machine and the likeness

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Speaker 1: of the human mind, which was never completely fleshed out

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Speaker 1: in Herbert's books. But it lends itself to different interpretations,

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Speaker 1: either the straight up termin or robots are coming to

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Speaker 1: get this idea, or machinery. Technology has changed the way

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Speaker 1: that we think too much, has changed the way that

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Speaker 1: we interact with the world, the way we process the world,

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Speaker 1: and that there is something inhuman about it it should

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Speaker 1: be rebelled against. Well, I'm gonna throw an idea out

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Speaker 1: here and then maybe let's go to an ad break. Uh.

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Speaker 1: This is based on a recent sci fi movie I saw.

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to say the name because I don't

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Speaker 1: want to spoil it, but we know there's a theory

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Speaker 1: that language. Different languages change the way we think. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so if you think of social media as a language,

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Speaker 1: then of course the way we think is going to

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Speaker 1: be uh malleable around that absolutely. All right, Well on that.

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Speaker 1: Now we're gonna take a quick break and we come back.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna jump back into into the topic. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: get into some more research, some more stats, and see

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Speaker 1: where we are in terms of social media sanity. The

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Speaker 1: holiday is almost here. You don't have time to go

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Speaker 1: to the post office. There's traffic, there's sparking. It's gonna

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Speaker 1: be packed with everyone mailing holiday gifts and packages, so

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Speaker 1: do what we do use stamps dot com instead. With

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Speaker 1: right from your desk by in print official US posted

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Speaker 1: using your own computer and printer. Print postage for any

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Speaker 1: mail person just picks it up. It's easy and convenient.

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Speaker 1: Here at how stuff works. We use stamps dot com

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Speaker 1: when we need to send out the odd bit of

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Speaker 1: merge or correspondence, and we want you to try it

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Speaker 1: dot com right now before you do anything else. Click

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Speaker 1: on the microphone at the top of the home page

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Speaker 1: and type in stuff that stamps dot com, Enter stuff

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Speaker 1: and start mailing things. All right, we have returned. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So in the late nineteen nineties, studies were originally published

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Speaker 1: that indicated that the internet's use had general effects on

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Speaker 1: our social relationships and our participation in community life. The

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Speaker 1: findings here were that increased time spent online related to

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Speaker 1: a decline in communication with family members, as well as

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Speaker 1: a reduction of the internet's user or the internet users

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Speaker 1: social circle, and all of this led back to depression

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Speaker 1: and loneliness. Let's step back from this for a second, though,

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Speaker 1: and evaluate these early studies weren't able to take into

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Speaker 1: account the new ways in which humans were creating communication

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Speaker 1: and social relationships outside of real life. Uh. And some

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Speaker 1: of these studies really read to me like a long

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Speaker 1: history of academia's phobia of new media when it first

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Speaker 1: comes up. Think of television, think of comic books, even right,

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Speaker 1: all of them had this backlash when they had a

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Speaker 1: urgent popularity. Now, for instance, these studies refer to social

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Speaker 1: media interactions as being shallow and unable to replace every

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Speaker 1: day face to face communication. I agree that they can

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Speaker 1: often be shallow, but there's also a possibility for meaningful,

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Speaker 1: deep communication there that might not be facilitated in real life,

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Speaker 1: especially for some people who maybe have real life social anxiety. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: or you're you're you know, you're you find yourself in

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Speaker 1: an area where like minded individuals are not necessarily there,

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Speaker 1: or or individuals who maybe um have a philosopher have

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Speaker 1: ideas that are beneficial to your identity. Um. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: I always have to remind myself, you know, it's we

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Speaker 1: shouldn't forget that there was There was this time not

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Speaker 1: long ago, when there was this definite weird otherness to

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Speaker 1: online society and relationships. Like I remember not to sound

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Speaker 1: old or to sound like I'm trying to make myself

428
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:02,080
Speaker 1: sound like this was you know, asked, Yeah, yeah, but

429
00:24:02,280 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 1: you know, like what ten years ago or so or

430
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:07,320
Speaker 1: more like the MySpace era. Uh. You know, I remember

431
00:24:07,400 --> 00:24:10,280
Speaker 1: when you you maybe were less inclined to mention that

432
00:24:10,359 --> 00:24:13,240
Speaker 1: you met your significant other online because that would would

433
00:24:13,240 --> 00:24:14,719
Speaker 1: be kind of weird, Like that the kind of thing

434
00:24:14,800 --> 00:24:16,960
Speaker 1: you would in the best case scenario, you might make

435
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:20,159
Speaker 1: an amusing rom com about it. But it's like what

436
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:23,639
Speaker 1: you're meeting people online and dating them? Uh, there was

437
00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:27,879
Speaker 1: a weirdness in discussing online friends versus real friends, like

438
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:30,600
Speaker 1: and and maybe even processing it, like coming to terms

439
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:33,639
Speaker 1: with the fact. And I've certainly been there where like

440
00:24:33,760 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 1: the the there have been times in my life where

441
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:38,880
Speaker 1: I feel like the online relationships and discussions I'm having

442
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:42,119
Speaker 1: we're definitely more meaningful than than the ones I was

443
00:24:42,200 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: having in the real world. Yeah I had, I don't know.

444
00:24:46,880 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: It's a profound experience with this. Uh. That definitely changed

445
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: how I approached electronic media mediated communication, which was I was.

446
00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:00,560
Speaker 1: I am a recovering World of Warcraft addict, and I've

447
00:25:00,600 --> 00:25:04,960
Speaker 1: talked about this on on our sister podcast here Stuff

448
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:08,160
Speaker 1: of Life before with Tracy V. Wilson Um. We both

449
00:25:08,200 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 1: played World of Warcraft. I replaced my social relationships with

450
00:25:13,880 --> 00:25:16,200
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft when I moved to Atlanta because I

451
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:21,200
Speaker 1: didn't know anybody, and my wife and I would spend

452
00:25:21,280 --> 00:25:23,639
Speaker 1: I would say, eight to nine hours a day on

453
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:26,520
Speaker 1: it um and the people who were on that with

454
00:25:26,840 --> 00:25:29,720
Speaker 1: us were our friends, and that was where we had

455
00:25:30,280 --> 00:25:32,480
Speaker 1: social relationships and we talked about what was going on

456
00:25:32,520 --> 00:25:35,480
Speaker 1: in the real world and and it was and I

457
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:38,440
Speaker 1: knew people who were all who were even deeper into

458
00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 1: it than I was, and they would say things to

459
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: me like I like this better than the real world.

460
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 1: I would rather be in here. And so we would

461
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:48,840
Speaker 1: remember all the articles that were coming out around that

462
00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:50,960
Speaker 1: time of like like I believe that there was one

463
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:55,480
Speaker 1: pretty infamous World of Warcraft player who died and they

464
00:25:55,560 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: had a funeral for this person in the game, hundreds

465
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:01,320
Speaker 1: of thousands of avatars all showed up in this one

466
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:04,840
Speaker 1: location and maybe crash the server or something like that. Uh.

467
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:09,680
Speaker 1: And I have to say that during that time I

468
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 1: was depressed and was certainly addicted to that game, especially

469
00:26:16,520 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 1: like when I read through the research for today's episode,

470
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:23,879
Speaker 1: I recognized behaviors in myself from that era. Uh. That

471
00:26:24,160 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 1: doesn't mean like I was like, oh, I'm never gonna

472
00:26:25,800 --> 00:26:27,840
Speaker 1: play video games again, you know it could we talk

473
00:26:27,880 --> 00:26:29,399
Speaker 1: all the time on the show about video games and

474
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 1: stuff like that. But but immersing myself like that, the

475
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:35,720
Speaker 1: way I did it, it wasn't healthy. So do you

476
00:26:35,760 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 1: feel like it was? It was more of a detriment

477
00:26:38,080 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 1: than a coping mech And because because you can, I

478
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:41,680
Speaker 1: can also see like you could do the spin on

479
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:43,399
Speaker 1: it where you could say, hey you it was a

480
00:26:44,240 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: kind of a lonely time and this was a social

481
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:50,680
Speaker 1: um and biblical cord to connect you to like a

482
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:54,040
Speaker 1: social existence. Yeah, it was both. Frankly, I mean like

483
00:26:54,240 --> 00:26:56,800
Speaker 1: it was it was one way to connect me with

484
00:26:56,920 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: people I had just moved to a new city where

485
00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:01,760
Speaker 1: I didn't know all to people. But then at the

486
00:27:01,840 --> 00:27:04,879
Speaker 1: same time, it was also like the the how do

487
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:07,080
Speaker 1: I put this? World of Warcraft is a really good

488
00:27:07,200 --> 00:27:10,360
Speaker 1: job of stringing a carrot along in front of your face,

489
00:27:10,440 --> 00:27:13,360
Speaker 1: so you you have to keep playing right, And sometimes

490
00:27:13,440 --> 00:27:16,399
Speaker 1: it became outside of the social relationships. It was just

491
00:27:16,560 --> 00:27:18,880
Speaker 1: like I have to be on to do the thing.

492
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:22,760
Speaker 1: I can't miss the thing. Uh, And man, did I

493
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:26,600
Speaker 1: see a lot of human beings have meltdowns in that game?

494
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: So uh, it's just it's interesting. I mean, also, if

495
00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:33,680
Speaker 1: you if you go and look, I'm sure there's probably

496
00:27:33,840 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 1: a hundred dissertations that are written about social communication and

497
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:41,160
Speaker 1: World of Warcraft. But that's just my personal experience with it. Yeah,

498
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: I don't have any personal experience with World of Warcraft,

499
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:46,600
Speaker 1: but I've certainly turned to games at times, like I

500
00:27:46,680 --> 00:27:49,240
Speaker 1: remember when the first SIMS game came out. Yeah, I

501
00:27:49,400 --> 00:27:55,200
Speaker 1: was that like kind of a an unemployed, un unguided

502
00:27:55,320 --> 00:27:57,080
Speaker 1: phase in my life. I want to say, it was

503
00:27:57,200 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: like the it came out like the one of the

504
00:27:59,320 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: summers after I graduated high school, and I just wasn't

505
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:04,040
Speaker 1: sure what I was doing. But you could go in

506
00:28:04,119 --> 00:28:07,760
Speaker 1: and play the SIMS game, and it was It got

507
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:10,760
Speaker 1: surreal and depressing pretty quickly when you realize you're sending

508
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:14,920
Speaker 1: your fake people out for job interviews and they're buying houses,

509
00:28:15,000 --> 00:28:16,680
Speaker 1: and then you're like, God, what am I doing? And this?

510
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:20,480
Speaker 1: What am I listening to? This this awful ambient piano music. Um,

511
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:23,840
Speaker 1: do you want to hear a really messed up story

512
00:28:23,880 --> 00:28:25,920
Speaker 1: about the SIMS that will probably make you think less

513
00:28:25,960 --> 00:28:29,320
Speaker 1: of me? Okay? And that goes for you too, audience.

514
00:28:29,840 --> 00:28:32,000
Speaker 1: When I played the SIMS, I got addicted to it

515
00:28:32,080 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: for about a month or so. And what I would

516
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 1: do is I was in a job that I was

517
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:37,920
Speaker 1: very unhappy and at the time, and I used the

518
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:42,920
Speaker 1: SIMS to construct my office uh floor plan exactly like

519
00:28:43,080 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 1: my office was. And then I would put SIMS in

520
00:28:45,880 --> 00:28:49,120
Speaker 1: who are all of my coworkers, including my boss, who

521
00:28:49,200 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: we all really hated at the time, and they gave

522
00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: them personality attributes that were similar to what their's were

523
00:28:54,800 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 1: in real life. And then I would occasionally do things

524
00:28:57,720 --> 00:29:00,640
Speaker 1: like my boss would, you know, go into the bathroom

525
00:29:01,080 --> 00:29:04,239
Speaker 1: and I would freeze time and some put a put

526
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: a cement wall in front of the door. And and

527
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:08,920
Speaker 1: lock him in there for a week with no food,

528
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 1: and that came fed into every like dark fantasy, you know,

529
00:29:17,000 --> 00:29:19,600
Speaker 1: and I would just sit there and and laugh at it,

530
00:29:19,640 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: and it was cathartic. But it's also looking back on it,

531
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:27,000
Speaker 1: that's some that's some messed up stuff. Yeah. I certainly

532
00:29:27,160 --> 00:29:28,920
Speaker 1: can relate to some of that with some of the

533
00:29:28,960 --> 00:29:30,920
Speaker 1: Grand Theft auto games. I guess the Vice City when

534
00:29:30,960 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: that came out, I remember spending way too much time

535
00:29:32,640 --> 00:29:35,240
Speaker 1: in that. And it's not always being a you know,

536
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 1: like a positive expression of self. Yeah, this is very

537
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:43,160
Speaker 1: West World now, Yeah, getting into that territory. Well, you know,

538
00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:46,080
Speaker 1: any of Philip K. Dick readers out there, if you've

539
00:29:46,080 --> 00:29:50,320
Speaker 1: read the story The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldric, there's this, uh,

540
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:52,800
Speaker 1: there's this little plot. I don't know if it's even

541
00:29:52,800 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 1: a plot points, but once since I've read it, but

542
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:57,680
Speaker 1: there's this thing that comes up. These perky pat dolls

543
00:29:57,720 --> 00:30:00,880
Speaker 1: they're called, that people were assed with and they build

544
00:30:00,920 --> 00:30:04,200
Speaker 1: these little houses, or that they buy these little houses

545
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:05,959
Speaker 1: and they film with these dolls, and these dolls kind

546
00:30:05,960 --> 00:30:07,640
Speaker 1: of live out their live out their own little lives,

547
00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 1: and people, you know, kind of live through them. I

548
00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: feel like that in a way like served as a

549
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:17,080
Speaker 1: as a as an excellent metaphor for a lot of

550
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:21,320
Speaker 1: what's going on today with virtual worlds and in the Internet. Again,

551
00:30:21,360 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: not to say that that that encapsulates all of it,

552
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:26,719
Speaker 1: not to discount all the positive aspects, but there's certainly

553
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:29,840
Speaker 1: a perky patentist to it. Weird easter egg that I

554
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: just figured out from you mentioning that short story. Isn't

555
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:35,720
Speaker 1: Palmer Eldritch the name of the bad guy in the strain?

556
00:30:36,080 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 1: So that must be an homage to Philip I think

557
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, I think the the old corporate guy

558
00:30:43,200 --> 00:30:45,719
Speaker 1: who's working together with the vampiresh How did I never

559
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:49,280
Speaker 1: put that together? It's strange anyways. All right, so let's

560
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: let's move on and discuss some more of the depressive

561
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 1: symptoms associated with social networking. Right, So, after these nineties

562
00:30:56,080 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: studies that were just sort of generalizing the Internet, it

563
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,840
Speaker 1: led to studies into pressive symptoms that were associated with

564
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:06,440
Speaker 1: social networking. One study found a correlation between high school

565
00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:09,480
Speaker 1: students and depressive symptoms, and the way they did this

566
00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: was by using something called the back depression inventory. Now, Robert,

567
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:16,239
Speaker 1: you wanna give us just like a primer on how

568
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:18,360
Speaker 1: that works. Yeah. So basically, this is a twenty one

569
00:31:18,480 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: question multiple choice self report inventory. So it's a common

570
00:31:22,000 --> 00:31:26,600
Speaker 1: psychometric test for measuring the severity of depression, scoring minimal

571
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: to severe depression based on questions such as, uh, which

572
00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 1: of which of these you know expresses your feelings? I

573
00:31:34,560 --> 00:31:36,680
Speaker 1: do not feel sad, I feel sad, I am sad

574
00:31:36,760 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: all the time and can't snap out of it. Or

575
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:41,280
Speaker 1: I am so sad and unhappy that I cannot stand it.

576
00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: And those would be like you would score like a zero,

577
00:31:43,640 --> 00:31:45,680
Speaker 1: a one, or two or three depending on which one

578
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:48,680
Speaker 1: you picked. Based on my Facebook feed in the last week,

579
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: I am seeing a lot of the last one. I

580
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:54,960
Speaker 1: am so sad or unhappy that I can't stand it. Um.

581
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:58,320
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's hyperbole or if it's

582
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:02,400
Speaker 1: what people are actually feeling or not, but these tools

583
00:32:02,480 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: seem to be adequate. Yeah, I mean it comes to

584
00:32:05,600 --> 00:32:08,560
Speaker 1: an important question, like the expression of feeling is his

585
00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 1: emotional reality? If you if you, if you, you know,

586
00:32:12,080 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: accuse somebody of expressing something and say like, oh, you

587
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:17,400
Speaker 1: shouldn't feel that or you don't feel that, Like that's

588
00:32:18,600 --> 00:32:22,000
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. Yeah, it's kind of like a paranormal experience,

589
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:27,360
Speaker 1: it's still an experience. What an individual's experience is their

590
00:32:27,440 --> 00:32:32,480
Speaker 1: subjective experience. UM, don't try and put this objective mold

591
00:32:32,560 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: over how they should be feeling A reactive Yeah. I

592
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: think we've said this on the show before, when we've

593
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:40,240
Speaker 1: talked about like the paranormal and science and relation to it.

594
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:43,640
Speaker 1: I may not believe in the paranormal, but I believe

595
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:48,320
Speaker 1: that that the people who are experiencing it believe it right,

596
00:32:48,480 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 1: and so therefore it's real to them. So when they

597
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:55,000
Speaker 1: use this study, they compared it to television, and they

598
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 1: found that there is no correlation between television and depression.

599
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:04,080
Speaker 1: Other authors argued that this isn't true for older adolescents.

600
00:33:04,120 --> 00:33:06,680
Speaker 1: It's only true for younger ones that they get depressed

601
00:33:06,720 --> 00:33:09,480
Speaker 1: when they're on social networking. So there's a possibility that

602
00:33:09,600 --> 00:33:13,960
Speaker 1: different age groups react differently to the challenges of social networking.

603
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:18,440
Speaker 1: Then there's this study that found that that young adults

604
00:33:18,640 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: subjective perception of well being and life satisfaction was possibly

605
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:27,560
Speaker 1: being undermined by social networking. The way that they did

606
00:33:27,640 --> 00:33:30,840
Speaker 1: this was they would text message the participants five times

607
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 1: a day for two weeks to evaluate at that point

608
00:33:34,480 --> 00:33:36,800
Speaker 1: in time, what their mental state was, what kind of

609
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:42,040
Speaker 1: social interactions they were having, and what their Facebook use was. Now, personally,

610
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:46,080
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine the challenges I went through in

611
00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:49,479
Speaker 1: a high school being kind of a nerdy, geeky kid,

612
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:53,160
Speaker 1: and I can't picture how Facebook would have made my

613
00:33:53,320 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 1: life better. I just I really can't. Uh So, It's

614
00:33:58,320 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 1: that's tough for me to wrap my head around. But

615
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,200
Speaker 1: the other tricky thing here is that researchers have found

616
00:34:04,160 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 1: that Facebook creates altered perceptions of physical and personality traits

617
00:34:09,280 --> 00:34:13,080
Speaker 1: of other users, leading us to incorrect conclusions about what

618
00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:16,480
Speaker 1: their characteristics are. So, for example, when four and twenty

619
00:34:16,560 --> 00:34:20,240
Speaker 1: five undergraduate students at a state university in Utah were studied,

620
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:24,720
Speaker 1: they reported that Facebook made them think other people's lives

621
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:28,360
Speaker 1: were happier than theirs, which lead them to constantly feeling

622
00:34:28,440 --> 00:34:32,080
Speaker 1: like life wasn't fair. And then this in itself doesn't

623
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:35,480
Speaker 1: lead to depression, but those who are already predisposed to

624
00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:39,960
Speaker 1: anxiety or depression may find that it negatively impacts their

625
00:34:39,960 --> 00:34:44,759
Speaker 1: mental health. And there's still no conclusive evidence that Facebook

626
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 1: causes depression. I want to reiterate that there's no there's correlation,

627
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 1: but there's not causation here. Um, where we are in

628
00:34:53,000 --> 00:34:55,160
Speaker 1: the infancy of these studies, there's still a lot more

629
00:34:55,239 --> 00:35:00,960
Speaker 1: to go. People have started confronting this on Facebook or

630
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:05,000
Speaker 1: Twitter or wherever by writing about how they may look

631
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:08,880
Speaker 1: okay in their profile or their feed, but in reality

632
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:13,000
Speaker 1: they're dealing with anxiety and depression, and they're confronting that

633
00:35:13,120 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: it's a curated version of reality. Even when we're being

634
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 1: honest about the negatives in our lives, it's still a

635
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 1: curated version of reality. So when researchers have tracked online behaviors,

636
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 1: they've found that there are certain Facebook habits that accompany depression.

637
00:35:29,960 --> 00:35:33,760
Speaker 1: For instance, people are more likely to focus on features

638
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:37,319
Speaker 1: that focus on depression tips and facts on Facebook if

639
00:35:37,320 --> 00:35:40,560
Speaker 1: they're depressed. Well, that seems like a no brainer. But

640
00:35:41,040 --> 00:35:44,040
Speaker 1: they've also found that depression is related to having fewer

641
00:35:44,160 --> 00:35:48,279
Speaker 1: Facebook friends. This one's weird to me. Location tagging, the

642
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:53,760
Speaker 1: whole geotagging phenomenon is has a correlation to depressed users

643
00:35:53,840 --> 00:35:55,239
Speaker 1: as well. I guess you kind of have to be

644
00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:57,799
Speaker 1: excited about where you are on some level to tag

645
00:35:57,880 --> 00:36:01,160
Speaker 1: yourself there. Like I don't really use duo tagging a lot.

646
00:36:01,280 --> 00:36:04,719
Speaker 1: But if I do, it's probably because say I went

647
00:36:04,880 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 1: to the zoo with my son and we had a

648
00:36:06,719 --> 00:36:08,840
Speaker 1: good time, or we went to the Center for Puppetry

649
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:10,919
Speaker 1: Yards we had a good time. You know, it's I'm

650
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: I generally don't do it, say at the doctor's office.

651
00:36:14,160 --> 00:36:17,120
Speaker 1: You know that's the right thing. Yeah. Um, And this

652
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:19,520
Speaker 1: seems like a good point. I want to remind everybody

653
00:36:19,680 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 1: of something. This pops up on a ton of house

654
00:36:22,160 --> 00:36:25,520
Speaker 1: stuff works programming, whether it's a video or text or podcasting,

655
00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:29,280
Speaker 1: something called Dunbar's Number. We have a brain stuff episode

656
00:36:29,320 --> 00:36:32,000
Speaker 1: of this. The way it goes is like this, it's

657
00:36:32,040 --> 00:36:34,440
Speaker 1: a study. First of all, there's a study that indicated

658
00:36:34,520 --> 00:36:37,720
Speaker 1: that the average American knows about six hundred people. Okay,

659
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:41,879
Speaker 1: another study said, no, that's wrong, the average American only

660
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 1: knows two hundred and nine people. Well why is there

661
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,040
Speaker 1: such a difference. Well, it depends on how well you

662
00:36:47,239 --> 00:36:52,160
Speaker 1: actually know them. So incomes Robin Dunbar, who's an anthropologist

663
00:36:52,200 --> 00:36:55,440
Speaker 1: and evolutionary psychologist from the University of Oxford, and he

664
00:36:55,600 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 1: proposes that our brains are hardwired to have a cognitive

665
00:36:59,520 --> 00:37:02,320
Speaker 1: limit on the number of people we know. This is

666
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: based on the correlation between the size of a primate's

667
00:37:06,480 --> 00:37:10,279
Speaker 1: brain and the size of its average social group. Now,

668
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:15,800
Speaker 1: for humans, Dunbar's number was one hundred and fifty on average.

669
00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:20,440
Speaker 1: This means you can only have stable social relationships with

670
00:37:20,640 --> 00:37:23,960
Speaker 1: between roughly a hundred and two hundred people. Again not

671
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:29,040
Speaker 1: conclusively proven though, Okay, but when researchers at Indiana University

672
00:37:29,160 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: analyzed the history of three million Twitter users, they identified

673
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:37,719
Speaker 1: that twenty five million of these conversations where people maintain

674
00:37:37,920 --> 00:37:42,640
Speaker 1: actual relationships only occurred between one hundred and two hundred people.

675
00:37:43,080 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 1: So this seems there seems to be evidence that's leaning

676
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:48,840
Speaker 1: towards this that you know, Yeah, I've got six hundred

677
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:51,839
Speaker 1: people I follow on Twitter or however many on Facebook, right,

678
00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:56,880
Speaker 1: but I'm really only having relationships that are like quality

679
00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 1: communication with somewhere between a hundred and two hundred people. Okay,

680
00:38:01,520 --> 00:38:06,000
Speaker 1: but that's online, right, exactly. Well, and in real life too, right,

681
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:11,160
Speaker 1: I mean you have to consider a lot of the people. Frankly, nowadays,

682
00:38:11,200 --> 00:38:12,839
Speaker 1: a lot of the people that are part of your

683
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,080
Speaker 1: real life world are also your online friends. Yeah, yeah,

684
00:38:16,120 --> 00:38:18,239
Speaker 1: and I think I certainly don't know a hundred and

685
00:38:18,320 --> 00:38:21,840
Speaker 1: fifty people in my real life. Yeah, Like, like I

686
00:38:21,920 --> 00:38:25,359
Speaker 1: think about say, for instance, you, me and Joe, we work,

687
00:38:25,400 --> 00:38:27,799
Speaker 1: we work together, we see each other like I see

688
00:38:27,840 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 1: you guys more than I see uh like most of

689
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: my friends. So we don't. We don't actually interact like

690
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,399
Speaker 1: socially on social media all that much because you kind

691
00:38:37,400 --> 00:38:41,680
Speaker 1: of don't have to. Likewise, um, you've probably seen these,

692
00:38:41,800 --> 00:38:44,799
Speaker 1: uh these little clouds of terms that come up where

693
00:38:44,880 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: people show like what they were facebooking about this year

694
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:51,640
Speaker 1: and and you know it'll be the big world center. Yeah,

695
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:54,560
Speaker 1: the word clouds. So so like, I found this this

696
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:56,879
Speaker 1: trend with a lot of people where like the thing

697
00:38:57,000 --> 00:38:59,319
Speaker 1: in the center of their life was not their significant other.

698
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:01,879
Speaker 1: And I'm one level you might say, like, oh, why

699
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:05,320
Speaker 1: why wasn't your your wife, your husband, etcetera in the

700
00:39:05,400 --> 00:39:07,840
Speaker 1: center of your cloud in big bold letters. Well, I

701
00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,880
Speaker 1: think part of that is that, like the relationship with

702
00:39:10,920 --> 00:39:12,879
Speaker 1: your signal now that goes beyond it goes beyond face.

703
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:15,480
Speaker 1: You see them every day, you're talking to them, uh,

704
00:39:15,680 --> 00:39:18,520
Speaker 1: so you're not having to tag them necessarily, you know,

705
00:39:18,680 --> 00:39:20,520
Speaker 1: in a post all the time. Yeah, I mean my

706
00:39:20,760 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: wife is one of the few people who's privy to

707
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,279
Speaker 1: what my actual life is. Like, Yeah, she knows about

708
00:39:27,320 --> 00:39:30,680
Speaker 1: the ups and downs. Uh, so I don't need to

709
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:34,440
Speaker 1: post to her. I mean we do, we chat on

710
00:39:34,520 --> 00:39:36,960
Speaker 1: Facebook occasionally and stuff like that and make jokes, but like,

711
00:39:37,640 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 1: you know, she knows what's really going on with me.

712
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:41,600
Speaker 1: I know what's really going on with her, So we

713
00:39:41,640 --> 00:39:44,879
Speaker 1: don't need to have that mediation in between. Yeah. Yeah,

714
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:47,680
Speaker 1: so that sometimes we lose sight of that, that fact

715
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:50,560
Speaker 1: that that the this, this social realm and the social

716
00:39:50,600 --> 00:39:54,520
Speaker 1: media realm is not the be all, and it's not

717
00:39:54,640 --> 00:39:57,160
Speaker 1: Also it's also not a one to one reflection of

718
00:39:57,560 --> 00:40:01,960
Speaker 1: what our social life consists of. So let's also remember this.

719
00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:05,520
Speaker 1: There's other research that's out there that online communication with

720
00:40:05,680 --> 00:40:10,239
Speaker 1: friends and family is associated with a decline in depression

721
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:14,759
Speaker 1: and can strengthen social ties to benefit mental health. So

722
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:18,160
Speaker 1: there's contrary views here. Once again, I think it's how

723
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:21,560
Speaker 1: you're using the medium, not necessarily that the medium itself.

724
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:27,560
Speaker 1: Um yeah, it. So there's this Pew research study. We

725
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: bring them up all the time on the show that

726
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:32,520
Speaker 1: I call them the Masters of Surveys. They do all

727
00:40:32,600 --> 00:40:35,040
Speaker 1: the surveys and they've got all this data on um,

728
00:40:35,840 --> 00:40:38,800
Speaker 1: just just contemporary life Uh, And they did a survey

729
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:41,920
Speaker 1: to establish whether and how much social media is stressing

730
00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:44,760
Speaker 1: people out. And to this end, they used a different scale,

731
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 1: it's called the perceived stress scale, to quantify how people

732
00:40:49,080 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 1: were upset, maybe out of control, feeling stressed, nervous, irritated,

733
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:56,960
Speaker 1: or they were unable to cope with things in their lives.

734
00:40:57,040 --> 00:41:00,880
Speaker 1: And these were their findings. Those who are more educated

735
00:41:01,000 --> 00:41:03,800
Speaker 1: and those who are married or live with a partner

736
00:41:04,200 --> 00:41:08,120
Speaker 1: have less social media related stress. So that's interesting. That

737
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:10,160
Speaker 1: relates to what we're just talking about, that you've got

738
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:14,800
Speaker 1: somebody to sort of be yourself with. I suppose the

739
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 1: frequency of social media use has no direct relationship in men.

740
00:41:20,400 --> 00:41:23,040
Speaker 1: And what they mean by this is that men that

741
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:26,759
Speaker 1: they've studied would have the same level of stress regardless

742
00:41:26,760 --> 00:41:29,920
Speaker 1: of whether they're using social media or not. But in women,

743
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:34,120
Speaker 1: the use of some technologies is actually tied to lowering

744
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: stress for them. Uh. Social media users may be more

745
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:44,120
Speaker 1: aware of stressful events happening to their friends and family,

746
00:41:44,600 --> 00:41:49,200
Speaker 1: and they perceive higher levels of social support within these networks. Generally,

747
00:41:49,560 --> 00:41:51,320
Speaker 1: we see this as a benefit. Right. It's sort of

748
00:41:51,400 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: like returning to the sort of what what's the term

749
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 1: like world village, you know, that kind of thing where

750
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,800
Speaker 1: we're we're interacting as if we do physically live in

751
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 1: proximity to one another, even though we don't. So it's

752
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:08,400
Speaker 1: seen as having a benefit. But but what if it

753
00:42:08,480 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: comes at a cost. So the average adult they interviewed

754
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:17,040
Speaker 1: experienced five out of twelve possible stressful events solely through

755
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:20,880
Speaker 1: their family and friends on social media. So social media

756
00:42:21,080 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 1: users are much more aware of major events in the

757
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:28,439
Speaker 1: lives of the people close to them. But also they're

758
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:33,040
Speaker 1: getting this surge of all these bad things are happening,

759
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:37,040
Speaker 1: all these major quote unquote negative events are happening. Oh

760
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:39,560
Speaker 1: my god. But when you pull back and you look

761
00:42:39,600 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: out at the lens, it's like, well, they're not all

762
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:47,680
Speaker 1: happening on your street. They're all they're just happening in

763
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:51,839
Speaker 1: the world. But it it comes back to a cultivation

764
00:42:52,480 --> 00:42:56,000
Speaker 1: and it it reminds me of mean World syndrome, which

765
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:59,760
Speaker 1: stems from cultivation theory. This is a social theory developed

766
00:42:59,800 --> 00:43:02,759
Speaker 1: by George Gerbner and Larry Gross of the University of

767
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania in the mid nineteen sixties, and their whole focus

768
00:43:06,160 --> 00:43:10,080
Speaker 1: was examining the long term effects of television. So very

769
00:43:10,120 --> 00:43:13,560
Speaker 1: different form of media. But but but but very related

770
00:43:13,600 --> 00:43:15,960
Speaker 1: in many senses, because in essence, the idea here is

771
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 1: that TV was slash. He is cultivating our culture. Like

772
00:43:21,239 --> 00:43:23,560
Speaker 1: I can't help but think of you know, Shepherd, Fairies,

773
00:43:23,680 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 1: Obey and John Carpenters they live. You know, the idea

774
00:43:29,040 --> 00:43:32,360
Speaker 1: that TV is feeding our brains, that it's informing our minds,

775
00:43:32,480 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: both explicitly and implicitly on who and what we are,

776
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:39,880
Speaker 1: what sort of world we live in, cultivating viewers conceptions

777
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:42,759
Speaker 1: of social reality. And it seems that you know, much

778
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:44,480
Speaker 1: of the same as going on in social media age.

779
00:43:44,520 --> 00:43:47,640
Speaker 1: We cultivate our cultivation to some degree, but we're still

780
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:52,200
Speaker 1: shackled to external views of social reality, social reality on individual,

781
00:43:52,239 --> 00:43:57,920
Speaker 1: on the individual, on subcultural cultural international levels. What should

782
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,640
Speaker 1: my life look like? What should my body, Addie look like?

783
00:44:01,360 --> 00:44:04,640
Speaker 1: What what should the world look like? Now? I'm thinking

784
00:44:05,040 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: that what the world needs, as John Carpenter to make

785
00:44:07,640 --> 00:44:10,640
Speaker 1: they live too. And it's all about social media and

786
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 1: it stars the rock and uh, you're more of a

787
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:16,399
Speaker 1: wrestling fan than I am. Who else would work in there?

788
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:21,080
Speaker 1: John Cena? I guess Uh, he's the roddy Roddy Piper

789
00:44:21,200 --> 00:44:24,640
Speaker 1: of our time. Either's not one that's true, you can

790
00:44:24,680 --> 00:44:27,320
Speaker 1: never be read, can't be replaced, and and he sadly

791
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 1: passed away. Um, but yeah, we need a roddy roddy piper,

792
00:44:31,120 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 1: somebody who's willing to fight through the subjective reality that

793
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:38,600
Speaker 1: are that that social media and uh, the media is

794
00:44:39,040 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 1: reflecting on its someone that passes the shades. Yeah, absolutely so,

795
00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 1: all right, before we get into whether social media is

796
00:44:46,000 --> 00:44:49,400
Speaker 1: quote unquote destroying our self esteem, let's back up what

797
00:44:49,600 --> 00:44:54,320
Speaker 1: self esteem. It's defined generally as the evaluative component of

798
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:58,600
Speaker 1: the self, the degree to which one prizes, values, and

799
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:02,360
Speaker 1: approves of or life makes oneself, and it's crucial to

800
00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 1: maintaining quality of life. If you have low self esteem,

801
00:45:06,719 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 1: that leads to depression. It can also lead to eating

802
00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:14,640
Speaker 1: disorders and addiction and other health problems. Now, one explanation

803
00:45:14,760 --> 00:45:18,320
Speaker 1: for a negative relationship between social networking and self esteem

804
00:45:18,440 --> 00:45:23,040
Speaker 1: is that self presentation is the primary user activity there,

805
00:45:23,120 --> 00:45:26,319
Speaker 1: and it seems like narcissistic behavior to us if we're

806
00:45:26,320 --> 00:45:28,800
Speaker 1: watching it from afar. Right, So, a study of a

807
00:45:28,920 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: hundred Facebook users at York University found that individuals with

808
00:45:33,360 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: low self esteem are more active online promoting their own

809
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:41,520
Speaker 1: content but another study included groups of students parts who

810
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:46,239
Speaker 1: are participants and exposed them to first a mirror and

811
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:51,080
Speaker 1: then second their Facebook profile, and third a control setting,

812
00:45:51,480 --> 00:45:53,800
Speaker 1: and the results show that there were positive effects on

813
00:45:53,880 --> 00:45:59,720
Speaker 1: their self esteem for Facebook. Uh. Objective self awareness theory basically,

814
00:45:59,760 --> 00:46:02,759
Speaker 1: see just that any stimulus that causes ourselves to become

815
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:05,799
Speaker 1: an object, like looking in a mirror, for instance, will

816
00:46:06,000 --> 00:46:10,520
Speaker 1: lead us to a diminished impression of ourselves. Now consider

817
00:46:11,000 --> 00:46:13,319
Speaker 1: when you're looking at your own Facebook profile, You're looking

818
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: at photos, biographical data, your relationship status, all of this.

819
00:46:17,719 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 1: So some people theorize this may lead to a reduction

820
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:24,560
Speaker 1: and self esteem. So again we've got some contrary research

821
00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:27,319
Speaker 1: and points of view going on here. There's also something

822
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:30,600
Speaker 1: called the hyper personal model, and it proposes that there

823
00:46:30,640 --> 00:46:36,000
Speaker 1: are advantages to computer mediated communication for self esteem. The

824
00:46:36,200 --> 00:46:39,279
Speaker 1: argument here is basically that online you have the time

825
00:46:39,360 --> 00:46:42,960
Speaker 1: to select the aspects of your character that you believe

826
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:47,480
Speaker 1: will be viewed most favorably by the receivers of your content.

827
00:46:47,840 --> 00:46:50,880
Speaker 1: When you contrast this to your real life interactions, you

828
00:46:51,080 --> 00:46:54,240
Speaker 1: don't have the time to constantly present your most positive

829
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: features to the people around you. So social media may

830
00:46:58,400 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: even spread happiness in some situations. So we we talked

831
00:47:02,719 --> 00:47:06,040
Speaker 1: about that Pew research study that said that women find

832
00:47:06,120 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 1: that it increases their their their happiness. Happy status updates

833
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:15,759
Speaker 1: encourage others to post happy status updates about themselves, and

834
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,799
Speaker 1: some some researchers even worry that it could cause something

835
00:47:19,880 --> 00:47:24,399
Speaker 1: that they're titling the epidemic of well being, that there's

836
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:29,040
Speaker 1: no Heaven forbid too much. Yeah, of showing how great

837
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,840
Speaker 1: your life is in the world. Uh, this is interesting

838
00:47:31,880 --> 00:47:34,560
Speaker 1: because this is something that will definitely come up later

839
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:39,880
Speaker 1: again in the podcast when we're specifically discussing Facebook's utilization

840
00:47:39,960 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: of their algorithms. Oh yeah. Uh. All in all, again,

841
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:47,520
Speaker 1: this is super complex. It doesn't necessarily seem that the

842
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:50,640
Speaker 1: medium itself is inherently leading to poor self esteem, but

843
00:47:51,120 --> 00:47:54,880
Speaker 1: the habits of being competitive, comparing your achievements with others,

844
00:47:55,360 --> 00:48:00,359
Speaker 1: incorrectly perceiving others, as well as jealousy and narcissism all

845
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:05,400
Speaker 1: contribute to negative self esteem. Now, from my point of view, uh,

846
00:48:05,560 --> 00:48:08,680
Speaker 1: you know, my my education background is in communication. This

847
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 1: all seems to relate to general communication theory and how

848
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:16,440
Speaker 1: interpersonal relationships are maintained and how conflict is managed. It's

849
00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: just in a different way, right, But but the general

850
00:48:20,160 --> 00:48:24,239
Speaker 1: sort of way that we model communication from one human

851
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: being to the next still applies here. Some studies even

852
00:48:27,600 --> 00:48:30,840
Speaker 1: indicate that social networking sites may actually be a useful

853
00:48:30,920 --> 00:48:35,040
Speaker 1: tool in identifying individuals with mental health issues. And I

854
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:38,600
Speaker 1: wrote next to this, you think after looking at Facebook

855
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:41,120
Speaker 1: profile for the last year, I think some of the

856
00:48:41,200 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: people I know who might have mental health issues are

857
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:47,759
Speaker 1: starting to realize that themselves. But there are indicators that

858
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:51,360
Speaker 1: there's fewer pictures, less communication, but maybe they have a

859
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:55,640
Speaker 1: really long filled out profile and fewer friends. These people

860
00:48:55,719 --> 00:49:00,160
Speaker 1: were more likely to experience social in headonia while there

861
00:49:00,239 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: on social media, meaning that they did not have the

862
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:06,560
Speaker 1: ability to encounter happiness from the activities in their life

863
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:09,759
Speaker 1: that they normally found enjoyable. All right, so we have

864
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: this thing that paradoxically it seems to make us happy

865
00:49:14,400 --> 00:49:17,319
Speaker 1: and you know, help us live our lives, but then

866
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:19,919
Speaker 1: at the same time just really pushes us to two

867
00:49:20,000 --> 00:49:25,200
Speaker 1: loads of of self loathing or you know, the apathy

868
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 1: and just despair. Uh. Are we addicted to it? Are

869
00:49:29,600 --> 00:49:33,240
Speaker 1: we addicted to this thing that makes us happy and miserable?

870
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:37,399
Speaker 1: It certainly wouldn't be the first, uh uh property. Yeah,

871
00:49:37,440 --> 00:49:39,800
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that. That's the way you're describing it.

872
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:41,719
Speaker 1: It's just it sounds like all the other things that

873
00:49:41,800 --> 00:49:44,839
Speaker 1: were It sounds like sounds like alcohol. Yeah. So we're

874
00:49:44,880 --> 00:49:46,440
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and we come back. We

875
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 1: will get into the social media addiction. Are you hiring?

876
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877
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Speaker 1: to zip recruiter dot com slash mind blown. That's zip

892
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894
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:53,759
Speaker 1: mind blown. Okay, we're back. So the big question here

895
00:50:53,800 --> 00:50:57,680
Speaker 1: on the table is are we actually addicted to social media? Well,

896
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:02,560
Speaker 1: whether or not it's addictive has not been debated for

897
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:05,800
Speaker 1: very long in psychiatric literature. But what would define it

898
00:51:06,360 --> 00:51:11,320
Speaker 1: is if social media users had a mental preoccupation with

899
00:51:11,680 --> 00:51:15,560
Speaker 1: social media that leads to their neglect of other social functions,

900
00:51:15,640 --> 00:51:19,640
Speaker 1: whether that's family or real life friends. In addition, they

901
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:24,640
Speaker 1: would suddenly cease their online social networking sometimes and that

902
00:51:24,719 --> 00:51:28,240
Speaker 1: would cause signs and symptoms that resemble those of people

903
00:51:28,320 --> 00:51:31,480
Speaker 1: abstaining from drugs and alcohol. It's one of the problems, right,

904
00:51:31,600 --> 00:51:33,959
Speaker 1: is that with addiction you kind of have lower case

905
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:37,959
Speaker 1: addiction and capital letter addictions. So there's there's the there's

906
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:41,879
Speaker 1: the there're the little addictions that we talk about in life, um,

907
00:51:42,560 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 1: and then there are the big ones that you know,

908
00:51:44,680 --> 00:51:46,279
Speaker 1: a lot of us are fortunate enough to not have

909
00:51:46,480 --> 00:51:51,360
Speaker 1: to deal with, yeah, or at all. But then there

910
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:53,880
Speaker 1: are things that seem to sort of uh, we've in

911
00:51:54,000 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 1: that space between yeah, I mean, for my part um.

912
00:51:57,400 --> 00:51:59,839
Speaker 1: So I grew up in a household with a parent

913
00:52:00,080 --> 00:52:04,239
Speaker 1: who was an alcoholic, and luckily they went through alcoholics anonymous,

914
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:09,279
Speaker 1: they're sober now. But I recognized within myself from that experience,

915
00:52:09,640 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 1: I have an addictive personality. It's something that I inherited.

916
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,879
Speaker 1: Uh And so yeah, I'm always conscious, especially if things

917
00:52:16,960 --> 00:52:18,920
Speaker 1: like this. You know, I mentioned that whole world of

918
00:52:18,960 --> 00:52:23,360
Speaker 1: warcraft thing earlier, that there's uh possibility there for me

919
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:27,200
Speaker 1: to get too far into something like if it has

920
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:31,080
Speaker 1: that addictive quality. Now with social media again, let's look

921
00:52:31,080 --> 00:52:34,520
Speaker 1: at some of the research. According to Dr Shannon m.

922
00:52:34,840 --> 00:52:39,480
Speaker 1: Rauch of Benedictine University, which is in Mesa, Arizona, one

923
00:52:39,520 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: of the main reasons we use social media is to

924
00:52:42,560 --> 00:52:46,440
Speaker 1: distract ourselves or maybe we're bored and we want relief

925
00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:50,000
Speaker 1: from that boredom. So every time we log in, we're

926
00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:54,279
Speaker 1: delivered reinforcement in the forms of likes and comments or

927
00:52:54,400 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 1: whatever people communicating back with us. So when behaviors that

928
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:03,359
Speaker 1: are reinforced are heated, it becomes hard to stop doing them. Right,

929
00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:06,960
Speaker 1: You're you're being You're given positive reinforcement for them. This

930
00:53:07,120 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 1: is like Pavlov one on one uh. In addition, researchers

931
00:53:11,239 --> 00:53:15,320
Speaker 1: at I Believe It's Free University in Germany found that

932
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:20,440
Speaker 1: this positive feedback correlation shows strong activity in the nucleus

933
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:25,640
Speaker 1: accumbents of our brains where we associate reward processing. So

934
00:53:25,719 --> 00:53:28,880
Speaker 1: in two thousand twelve, a group of researchers developed something

935
00:53:29,080 --> 00:53:35,799
Speaker 1: called the Facebook Addiction Scale to score mood tolerance, withdrawal, conflict,

936
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:39,000
Speaker 1: and relapse, and they tested it on four hundred and

937
00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: twenty three students and found that it was relatively reliable.

938
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:45,920
Speaker 1: What's worth noting here, though, is that there are a

939
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:49,280
Speaker 1: variety of activities that you can do on Facebook beside

940
00:53:49,360 --> 00:53:53,279
Speaker 1: quote unquote social networking, right, Like people play games on there.

941
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: They're doing all kinds of things. Facebook has made itself

942
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:59,880
Speaker 1: ubiquitous in our lives because it's not just social networking anymore.

943
00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:01,879
Speaker 1: I always forget that they have gains, Like they don't

944
00:54:01,880 --> 00:54:07,439
Speaker 1: get invites anymore to like whatever, you know, farm coaster. Yeah,

945
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:10,440
Speaker 1: it's never that was never my thing either. But maybe

946
00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:13,200
Speaker 1: that's just maybe we're a different generation or something. Maybe

947
00:54:13,200 --> 00:54:16,920
Speaker 1: they're really fun, we're just missing out. Yeah. Another study

948
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:22,280
Speaker 1: adapted the Internet Addiction Questionnaire, which was a pre existing document,

949
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:26,600
Speaker 1: to test Facebook dependence with students, and then they tested

950
00:54:26,760 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 1: the sleep quality of these Facebook users. What they found

951
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:34,560
Speaker 1: was that Facebook dependence may be related to poor quality

952
00:54:34,640 --> 00:54:37,680
Speaker 1: of sleep. What's worth remembering here is that we don't

953
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:41,560
Speaker 1: know if social media addiction is an actual disorder or

954
00:54:41,640 --> 00:54:45,160
Speaker 1: maybe it's a manifestation of other mental issues. As it stands,

955
00:54:45,680 --> 00:54:47,680
Speaker 1: the good old d s M, the d s M

956
00:54:47,760 --> 00:54:49,960
Speaker 1: five is our our current one, I believe, which is

957
00:54:50,040 --> 00:54:53,480
Speaker 1: the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It does

958
00:54:53,560 --> 00:54:57,800
Speaker 1: not list social media addiction as an actual mental disorder.

959
00:54:58,520 --> 00:55:01,840
Speaker 1: If it is an addiction, per the latest revision of

960
00:55:01,880 --> 00:55:06,640
Speaker 1: the International Classification of Diseases and Health Problems, it would

961
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:11,680
Speaker 1: have the following symptoms. A strong desire or sense of compulsion,

962
00:55:12,480 --> 00:55:21,200
Speaker 1: difficulty controlling consumption behavior, and psychological withdrawal after reduction or cessation.

963
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,640
Speaker 1: I can I can relate to all of those. I

964
00:55:24,719 --> 00:55:28,320
Speaker 1: think I've mentioned on past episodes that when it was

965
00:55:28,440 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 1: January when with my family to Jamaica and our our

966
00:55:34,120 --> 00:55:37,880
Speaker 1: crappy phone plan just did not work at all on

967
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:42,120
Speaker 1: on the island of Jamaica, so I just did not

968
00:55:42,239 --> 00:55:44,600
Speaker 1: use my phone and it was was it was maddening

969
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,240
Speaker 1: at first, like I kept like reaching from my pocket

970
00:55:47,320 --> 00:55:49,759
Speaker 1: to make sure it was there, and and it took

971
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: it took a couple of days to sort of move

972
00:55:51,760 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 1: through the idea that I was not connected to this

973
00:55:54,680 --> 00:55:58,480
Speaker 1: thing anymore, right, Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I mean I know

974
00:55:58,680 --> 00:56:01,279
Speaker 1: I've talked to Joe about this before. Well Joe, uh,

975
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:04,320
Speaker 1: not to speak for him here, but he for the

976
00:56:04,400 --> 00:56:06,840
Speaker 1: most part doesn't use social media, I think because of

977
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:08,440
Speaker 1: a lot of the things we're talking about here, but

978
00:56:08,560 --> 00:56:12,799
Speaker 1: he's definitely taken like internet vacations you know where I've

979
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:14,680
Speaker 1: done this before, to where you get you rent a

980
00:56:14,719 --> 00:56:17,120
Speaker 1: cabin in the woods somewhere, you have your phones but

981
00:56:17,200 --> 00:56:18,719
Speaker 1: you just don't look at them for a weekend or

982
00:56:18,760 --> 00:56:22,399
Speaker 1: something like that, and it could be cathartic. Uh. Last

983
00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:26,200
Speaker 1: thing here, Dr Cecil and Drayson from the University of

984
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:32,080
Speaker 1: Bergen in Norway has developed the berg Facebook Addiction Scale

985
00:56:32,560 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 1: and they use six criteria to measure this thing. What

986
00:56:36,200 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 1: they found is that people who are already anxious and

987
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:44,040
Speaker 1: socially insecure are more likely to use social networking. So

988
00:56:44,200 --> 00:56:49,680
Speaker 1: potentially Facebook addicts are using the site to gain attention

989
00:56:49,760 --> 00:56:52,320
Speaker 1: and boost their self esteem. So it becomes this like

990
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:55,640
Speaker 1: vicious circle. Basically that like they're using it to make

991
00:56:55,680 --> 00:57:00,239
Speaker 1: themselves feel better, but they're already insecure and depressed. They're

992
00:57:00,239 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 1: gonna circle back around to that and then go back

993
00:57:02,680 --> 00:57:06,800
Speaker 1: to the uh trough literally for this reward, you know.

994
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:10,160
Speaker 1: All right, So let's let's think about the children then

995
00:57:10,520 --> 00:57:12,560
Speaker 1: for a minute, as we we often do with the

996
00:57:12,719 --> 00:57:15,440
Speaker 1: technology and with the evolution of social media and the

997
00:57:15,600 --> 00:57:19,360
Speaker 1: and the Internet, because you always have the generation that

998
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:22,520
Speaker 1: came into it more or less fully formed, and then

999
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: there's the generation that's born into it. Uh. And I

1000
00:57:25,600 --> 00:57:28,280
Speaker 1: mean that's just going to continue. Uh. You know. For

1001
00:57:28,440 --> 00:57:30,560
Speaker 1: for us, it's like, oh, I remember growing up without

1002
00:57:30,600 --> 00:57:32,880
Speaker 1: the Internet in the house. Other people I remember growing

1003
00:57:32,960 --> 00:57:35,080
Speaker 1: up about Facebook in the house, and then it's gonna

1004
00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:38,760
Speaker 1: be I remember growing up with my my own organic

1005
00:57:38,840 --> 00:57:42,760
Speaker 1: eyes as opposed to these uh metallic implants that are

1006
00:57:42,800 --> 00:57:48,680
Speaker 1: now mandate eyes. Uh. Yeah. So a great quote that

1007
00:57:48,760 --> 00:57:50,400
Speaker 1: I found that I want to start this off with

1008
00:57:50,640 --> 00:57:56,400
Speaker 1: was from Time Magazines. Susannah Shrubsdorff. She wrote a piece

1009
00:57:56,560 --> 00:57:59,360
Speaker 1: in Time that was called the Kids Aren't All Right,

1010
00:57:59,560 --> 00:58:02,560
Speaker 1: and it uh is about general mental health issues in

1011
00:58:02,680 --> 00:58:06,360
Speaker 1: teenagers in America, but does discuss social media a lot.

1012
00:58:06,680 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: And she says in my dozens of conversations with teens, parents, clinicians,

1013
00:58:11,520 --> 00:58:15,080
Speaker 1: and school counselors across the country, there was a pervasive

1014
00:58:15,200 --> 00:58:19,320
Speaker 1: sense that being a teenager today is a draining, full

1015
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:24,080
Speaker 1: time job that includes doing school work, managing a social

1016
00:58:24,200 --> 00:58:30,600
Speaker 1: media identity, and fretting about a career. Climate change, sexism, racism,

1017
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:35,120
Speaker 1: you name it. Every fight or slight is documented online

1018
00:58:35,360 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 1: for hours or days after the incident, and it's exhausting.

1019
00:58:40,240 --> 00:58:43,720
Speaker 1: So again, I said this earlier, I can't imagine my

1020
00:58:43,920 --> 00:58:47,840
Speaker 1: high school experience, which I feel was challenging. I'm so

1021
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:50,000
Speaker 1: glad I'm not in high school anymore. I love being

1022
00:58:50,040 --> 00:58:53,440
Speaker 1: an adult. Uh, how it would be made better by

1023
00:58:53,480 --> 00:58:55,720
Speaker 1: social media? And then I think about these kids. I

1024
00:58:56,120 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: thought about about you and Bastion, because you've got a

1025
00:58:59,360 --> 00:59:01,880
Speaker 1: son who's grow growing up in a world of social media. Yeah,

1026
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:05,720
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's tough to think about. Hi, I

1027
00:59:05,800 --> 00:59:08,840
Speaker 1: worry about it quite a bit. So we worry, you know,

1028
00:59:09,280 --> 00:59:11,920
Speaker 1: about things that we've already discussed here today, like if

1029
00:59:12,000 --> 00:59:16,000
Speaker 1: social media is addictive, it's especially going to affect teenagers

1030
00:59:16,120 --> 00:59:18,640
Speaker 1: due to the social pressures to be involved in it.

1031
00:59:19,040 --> 00:59:22,360
Speaker 1: And as we learned previously, a study has shown that

1032
00:59:22,520 --> 00:59:26,240
Speaker 1: this could be damaging teenagers sleep and increasing their risk

1033
00:59:26,320 --> 00:59:30,960
Speaker 1: for anxiety and depression. So teenagers require more sleep than adults,

1034
00:59:31,000 --> 00:59:34,280
Speaker 1: which we know this, so waking up to use social

1035
00:59:34,320 --> 00:59:36,360
Speaker 1: media in the middle of the night is actually really

1036
00:59:36,480 --> 00:59:39,080
Speaker 1: bad for their health and this can subsequently lead to

1037
00:59:39,240 --> 00:59:43,640
Speaker 1: cold's flu and even gastro and nitas. Another study that

1038
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:47,360
Speaker 1: was done by Britain's National Citizens Service says that teenage

1039
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 1: girls seek comfort on social media instead of from their family,

1040
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:56,840
Speaker 1: So this suggests that they experience more stress more often

1041
00:59:56,920 --> 00:59:59,600
Speaker 1: than teenage boys don't do. And that kind of lines

1042
00:59:59,680 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 1: up with a Pew research stuff that we were talking

1043
01:00:01,640 --> 01:00:04,480
Speaker 1: about earlier as well. Yeah, I mean I remember in

1044
01:00:04,560 --> 01:00:07,680
Speaker 1: high school just watching like, you know, six hour blocks

1045
01:00:08,000 --> 01:00:12,360
Speaker 1: of of television and that was kind of my coping mechanism.

1046
01:00:13,000 --> 01:00:16,200
Speaker 1: Um and and playing magic the gathering. Now you do

1047
01:00:16,280 --> 01:00:20,240
Speaker 1: all of that online, um M, you could do both online,

1048
01:00:20,400 --> 01:00:24,440
Speaker 1: Yeah at the same time. Probably. Now where are you

1049
01:00:24,600 --> 01:00:28,400
Speaker 1: touched on, you know, cultivation theory and the and in

1050
01:00:28,520 --> 01:00:32,600
Speaker 1: the way that the are cultivated ideas of reality then

1051
01:00:33,240 --> 01:00:37,080
Speaker 1: manifest in our our own anxieties. Uh, there's a there's

1052
01:00:37,080 --> 01:00:39,160
Speaker 1: a spin on it. That's often referred to as thin

1053
01:00:39,320 --> 01:00:43,280
Speaker 1: World syndrome. Uh And in particular, there was an article

1054
01:00:43,360 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: two thousand three the effects of thin ideal television commercials

1055
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:53,320
Speaker 1: embodied U dissatisfaction and schema activation during early Adolescence published

1056
01:00:53,360 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 1: in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence by Dwayne Hargrives

1057
01:00:57,040 --> 01:01:01,480
Speaker 1: and uh Marika Tigerman. And. In the study, they presented

1058
01:01:01,560 --> 01:01:04,040
Speaker 1: two groups of girls with different sets of ads, once

1059
01:01:04,440 --> 01:01:07,920
Speaker 1: set with the undernourished women and one set without. So

1060
01:01:08,160 --> 01:01:10,200
Speaker 1: the results saw that girls who saw the ads with

1061
01:01:10,280 --> 01:01:14,560
Speaker 1: the emaciated models experienced immediate episodes of insecurity and distress

1062
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:17,880
Speaker 1: about their weight. What's more, two years later, those same

1063
01:01:17,960 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 1: girls still reported greater dissatisfaction with their bodies as compared

1064
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:25,520
Speaker 1: to other groups of girls. Continued exposure to unrealistic body

1065
01:01:25,600 --> 01:01:28,600
Speaker 1: types in the media affected the girls perceptions about what

1066
01:01:28,680 --> 01:01:31,960
Speaker 1: a normal, healthy human female body looks like. So again,

1067
01:01:32,000 --> 01:01:36,200
Speaker 1: if the idea that the media is cultivating our understanding

1068
01:01:36,200 --> 01:01:38,439
Speaker 1: of reality, our expectations for self and in this case,

1069
01:01:38,480 --> 01:01:42,520
Speaker 1: what a normal body looks like. And and it's certainly

1070
01:01:42,600 --> 01:01:45,600
Speaker 1: that I think that the evidence indicates that the case

1071
01:01:45,680 --> 01:01:48,960
Speaker 1: is stronger with with females, but that you also see

1072
01:01:49,040 --> 01:01:52,240
Speaker 1: varying levels of this with with males as well, because

1073
01:01:52,280 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: there's still there's still very much this, uh, this vision

1074
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:57,600
Speaker 1: of of what the perfect male body looks like, and

1075
01:01:57,720 --> 01:02:00,640
Speaker 1: it's out there and it maybe isn't as it's not

1076
01:02:00,760 --> 01:02:03,200
Speaker 1: stressed as much as the female model, but it is

1077
01:02:03,280 --> 01:02:05,520
Speaker 1: there and there are people that they have been out

1078
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:09,120
Speaker 1: of shape over it. I was actually talking about that

1079
01:02:09,240 --> 01:02:11,840
Speaker 1: we were preparing for this episode with our colleagues from

1080
01:02:11,880 --> 01:02:14,640
Speaker 1: Stuff Mom and Ever told You, and they mentioned to me, oh, yeah,

1081
01:02:14,680 --> 01:02:19,040
Speaker 1: we've done episodes relating to this before, and they said, yeah,

1082
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,040
Speaker 1: one study they came across and I definitely would recommend

1083
01:02:22,080 --> 01:02:25,120
Speaker 1: going and seeking out this podcast on their site. Uh

1084
01:02:25,400 --> 01:02:29,120
Speaker 1: found that the exactly what you're talking about with television

1085
01:02:29,160 --> 01:02:33,440
Speaker 1: ads and comparison of body types is actually worse on

1086
01:02:33,680 --> 01:02:36,720
Speaker 1: Facebook for people because they're comparing their body types to

1087
01:02:36,800 --> 01:02:39,800
Speaker 1: people they know in the real world and it's easier

1088
01:02:39,880 --> 01:02:43,600
Speaker 1: for them to create a disassociation. Still happens, but a

1089
01:02:43,680 --> 01:02:48,440
Speaker 1: disassociation from models that they've never met before versus people

1090
01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:51,120
Speaker 1: in their real life when they're looking at their collections

1091
01:02:51,120 --> 01:02:56,560
Speaker 1: of photos. Okay, so this all this stuff is going on,

1092
01:02:56,680 --> 01:02:59,240
Speaker 1: We're all stressed out. We're all anxious, our self esteems

1093
01:02:59,320 --> 01:03:02,120
Speaker 1: low or depres rest. We're trying to deal with it.

1094
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:04,600
Speaker 1: Maybe social media is helping, maybe it's making it worse.

1095
01:03:05,520 --> 01:03:09,480
Speaker 1: What are some coping mechanisms? What can we do? Yeah,

1096
01:03:09,520 --> 01:03:12,520
Speaker 1: I mean the terrible thing is that a lot of

1097
01:03:12,560 --> 01:03:15,080
Speaker 1: times the social media is the coping method because we

1098
01:03:15,160 --> 01:03:18,320
Speaker 1: have this environment and then something bad happens. Right, there's

1099
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:21,000
Speaker 1: a terrorist attack, there's a match shooting, there's political unrefts,

1100
01:03:21,000 --> 01:03:24,880
Speaker 1: there's a disaster, uh, be it local or larger in scale,

1101
01:03:25,040 --> 01:03:28,080
Speaker 1: and we take to social media. Well. I think one

1102
01:03:28,120 --> 01:03:31,520
Speaker 1: of the best localized examples is that you if you

1103
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:34,560
Speaker 1: hear gunshots in your neighborhood, what do you do you

1104
01:03:35,520 --> 01:03:38,400
Speaker 1: in around here, you often head to the local neighborhood

1105
01:03:38,400 --> 01:03:42,440
Speaker 1: association Facebook group and start asking questions, Hey, what's happening?

1106
01:03:42,520 --> 01:03:45,360
Speaker 1: What's going on? Someone tell me, Yeah, I don't know

1107
01:03:45,400 --> 01:03:48,520
Speaker 1: about other cities, but here in Atlanta. And this is

1108
01:03:48,600 --> 01:03:51,360
Speaker 1: no slight to our news organizations, but we don't really

1109
01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:54,280
Speaker 1: have reliable news sources that can very quickly tell you

1110
01:03:54,440 --> 01:03:57,120
Speaker 1: what's happening on the ground, especially in your neighborhood. Yeah,

1111
01:03:57,120 --> 01:03:59,680
Speaker 1: I mean, the the Atlanta Journal Constitution is great, but

1112
01:04:00,080 --> 01:04:01,800
Speaker 1: they're not going to have an up the minute story

1113
01:04:01,880 --> 01:04:04,080
Speaker 1: about the noise you just heard that it was just

1114
01:04:04,120 --> 01:04:08,240
Speaker 1: a transformer exploding, especially and and not a Transformer robot.

1115
01:04:08,440 --> 01:04:10,640
Speaker 1: I mean, I would hope they would really pick up

1116
01:04:10,680 --> 01:04:14,880
Speaker 1: on trans But this is especially true if you hear gunshots,

1117
01:04:14,920 --> 01:04:17,080
Speaker 1: which unfortunately, I guess you're getting a little insight into

1118
01:04:17,120 --> 01:04:19,400
Speaker 1: what the neighborhoods are, like the Robert and I live in.

1119
01:04:19,920 --> 01:04:23,720
Speaker 1: But uh uh, for me personally, when we hear gunshots,

1120
01:04:23,960 --> 01:04:27,040
Speaker 1: we turned, like you said, to Facebook or next door

1121
01:04:27,640 --> 01:04:30,439
Speaker 1: is the thing. And in fact, I finally, after doing

1122
01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:32,400
Speaker 1: all the research on this, I was like, all right,

1123
01:04:32,440 --> 01:04:34,480
Speaker 1: I gotta sign up for next door and so I

1124
01:04:34,560 --> 01:04:37,520
Speaker 1: can go to my neighbors to find out information. And

1125
01:04:37,640 --> 01:04:40,440
Speaker 1: this is just one example of how social media is

1126
01:04:40,720 --> 01:04:45,760
Speaker 1: replacing our investment in journalism. Right, we're defunding journalism and

1127
01:04:45,840 --> 01:04:48,360
Speaker 1: instead we're turning again, like I called it, user generated

1128
01:04:48,440 --> 01:04:51,560
Speaker 1: content earlier. I don't know if my neighbor down the

1129
01:04:51,600 --> 01:04:53,840
Speaker 1: street actually knows if it's a gunshot or not, but

1130
01:04:53,880 --> 01:04:56,280
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go to next door dot com and see

1131
01:04:56,320 --> 01:04:58,360
Speaker 1: what he has to say about it, you know. Yeah,

1132
01:04:58,560 --> 01:05:02,640
Speaker 1: uh so yeah, it's the confusing time. And all this

1133
01:05:02,800 --> 01:05:07,640
Speaker 1: is coming from a biologically authentic place. We're biologically hardwired

1134
01:05:07,680 --> 01:05:11,040
Speaker 1: to try to understand and control our environment. We need

1135
01:05:11,120 --> 01:05:12,960
Speaker 1: to know what's happening. We need to know the extent

1136
01:05:13,040 --> 01:05:15,800
Speaker 1: of the threat to us personally, to our family, our friends,

1137
01:05:16,000 --> 01:05:18,920
Speaker 1: and they figure out what to do next. But it

1138
01:05:19,080 --> 01:05:22,880
Speaker 1: often means that in our media age, and this entails

1139
01:05:23,080 --> 01:05:27,320
Speaker 1: certainly television news as well as uh as social media,

1140
01:05:27,520 --> 01:05:31,560
Speaker 1: but we end up binging on the chaos and disturbing details. Uh.

1141
01:05:32,080 --> 01:05:34,680
Speaker 1: You know that often just come detail after detail, right

1142
01:05:35,160 --> 01:05:38,520
Speaker 1: uh Um. We also binge on the compassion that spins

1143
01:05:38,560 --> 01:05:40,600
Speaker 1: out of it, also on the hate that spins out

1144
01:05:40,640 --> 01:05:43,200
Speaker 1: of it. Uh. And all the while we're trying to

1145
01:05:43,320 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 1: we're absorbing the fear, the anxiety, the story of the violence,

1146
01:05:46,160 --> 01:05:48,640
Speaker 1: and it brings it brings me back to the mean

1147
01:05:48,680 --> 01:05:52,920
Speaker 1: world syndrome which we mentioned earlier. So while while Gardner's

1148
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:55,680
Speaker 1: work centered around TV that the Internet is an even

1149
01:05:55,760 --> 01:05:59,840
Speaker 1: more powerful media fund. It just accelerates the news cycle

1150
01:05:59,880 --> 01:06:05,800
Speaker 1: and allows title pools of hermetically sealed extremism overreaction hate.

1151
01:06:06,280 --> 01:06:08,680
Speaker 1: Uh you can, you can. In a way, it's like

1152
01:06:08,720 --> 01:06:11,800
Speaker 1: a purification of it. It's it's it's it's uh. Um,

1153
01:06:11,920 --> 01:06:16,400
Speaker 1: you know, it's completely distilled into a sticky paste. Yeah. Yeah,

1154
01:06:16,760 --> 01:06:21,560
Speaker 1: and outright false information served up hot and steaming, just

1155
01:06:21,680 --> 01:06:23,760
Speaker 1: the way we like it. Yeah. As you mentioned at

1156
01:06:23,760 --> 01:06:26,680
Speaker 1: the beginning of the episode, this is a major debate

1157
01:06:26,760 --> 01:06:30,160
Speaker 1: that's going on through uh digital media news right now

1158
01:06:30,280 --> 01:06:34,520
Speaker 1: about the election in itself. Was it affected by false news? Yeah?

1159
01:06:34,560 --> 01:06:36,240
Speaker 1: And this is a top this is a topic that's

1160
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:39,200
Speaker 1: it's being discussed right now, even like Facebook is putting

1161
01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:41,280
Speaker 1: out new responses. So there's no way we're gonna be

1162
01:06:41,400 --> 01:06:45,160
Speaker 1: up to the minute on this story. But uh, I

1163
01:06:45,320 --> 01:06:48,640
Speaker 1: was just reading a New York Times article, uh that

1164
01:06:48,800 --> 01:06:50,480
Speaker 1: that that came out in the wake of the election

1165
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:53,200
Speaker 1: said that forty percent of American voters used Facebook to

1166
01:06:53,240 --> 01:06:56,280
Speaker 1: get their news. And Facebook, Uh, no matter, you know,

1167
01:06:56,400 --> 01:06:58,880
Speaker 1: no matter what else it is, it's important to realize

1168
01:06:58,880 --> 01:07:01,520
Speaker 1: that it is not a journal the stick organization. Yeah,

1169
01:07:02,000 --> 01:07:05,120
Speaker 1: I really want to spell this out for you out there,

1170
01:07:05,800 --> 01:07:08,480
Speaker 1: so our show stuff to blow your mind. We're a

1171
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:11,720
Speaker 1: part of a digital media organization, and in the last

1172
01:07:11,800 --> 01:07:15,920
Speaker 1: three years we've had to completely change our business approach

1173
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:18,600
Speaker 1: because of the shift from what is called organic reach

1174
01:07:18,680 --> 01:07:21,040
Speaker 1: which was basically like people going into Google and typing

1175
01:07:21,080 --> 01:07:25,520
Speaker 1: in stuff to blow your mind. Social media to social

1176
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:29,120
Speaker 1: media reach, most people are just getting their information from

1177
01:07:29,160 --> 01:07:31,800
Speaker 1: social media now rather than going out and searching for it.

1178
01:07:32,280 --> 01:07:34,640
Speaker 1: Like it or not. Facebook is not only changing the

1179
01:07:34,680 --> 01:07:37,200
Speaker 1: way that we're consuming news, but it's also changing the

1180
01:07:37,280 --> 01:07:40,160
Speaker 1: way that news is made. Right, So think about these

1181
01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:43,240
Speaker 1: organizations like ours. In order to survive, they need to

1182
01:07:44,240 --> 01:07:49,440
Speaker 1: curate for that medium, and so they're doing a variety

1183
01:07:49,480 --> 01:07:52,720
Speaker 1: of things to make them fit in better with Facebook. Right. Uh,

1184
01:07:53,000 --> 01:07:55,280
Speaker 1: think about this the next time that you click on

1185
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:59,040
Speaker 1: a news feed in your article, and also in that

1186
01:07:59,160 --> 01:08:01,040
Speaker 1: same vein, I'd like to remind you this is why

1187
01:08:01,240 --> 01:08:04,600
Speaker 1: there is an industry for fake news sites. They can

1188
01:08:04,680 --> 01:08:08,560
Speaker 1: monetize the web traffic by manipulating the social media game.

1189
01:08:10,160 --> 01:08:12,760
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this, and Robert Kennon too. It's a

1190
01:08:12,880 --> 01:08:15,360
Speaker 1: lot easier to write a fake news story, or even

1191
01:08:15,400 --> 01:08:18,240
Speaker 1: a poorly reported news story, than it is to do

1192
01:08:18,400 --> 01:08:22,280
Speaker 1: thoughtful research and critical evaluation. So for me personally, I'm

1193
01:08:22,360 --> 01:08:25,960
Speaker 1: always wary of any story that comes out super fast,

1194
01:08:26,360 --> 01:08:29,599
Speaker 1: even like I said, uh, whether I'm looking on Facebook

1195
01:08:29,640 --> 01:08:32,479
Speaker 1: or or next door or whatever. If it's some neighbor

1196
01:08:32,560 --> 01:08:34,680
Speaker 1: of mine and they're telling me something a little wary, like,

1197
01:08:34,920 --> 01:08:37,640
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's a true, So you know,

1198
01:08:37,840 --> 01:08:41,240
Speaker 1: give it some time. Uh. We we expect to have

1199
01:08:41,400 --> 01:08:43,920
Speaker 1: all this knowledge, all this information at our fingertips, like

1200
01:08:44,240 --> 01:08:47,160
Speaker 1: like where genies or something. Uh. And it's it's not

1201
01:08:47,400 --> 01:08:51,320
Speaker 1: that simple. Um, So don't necessarily trust things that just

1202
01:08:51,520 --> 01:08:55,720
Speaker 1: immediately come out, Yeah, such as and this is this

1203
01:08:55,840 --> 01:08:57,439
Speaker 1: is a real one. I did not see this in

1204
01:08:57,560 --> 01:09:01,240
Speaker 1: my Facebook feed, but apparently leading up to the U

1205
01:09:01,320 --> 01:09:04,360
Speaker 1: s presidential election, stories were making their rounds that the

1206
01:09:04,439 --> 01:09:07,559
Speaker 1: Pope u as in the the head of the Catholic Church,

1207
01:09:08,000 --> 01:09:13,439
Speaker 1: that endorsed Donald Trump for president. And I don't believe

1208
01:09:13,479 --> 01:09:16,920
Speaker 1: it happened. Um and uh And according to a report

1209
01:09:17,600 --> 01:09:20,519
Speaker 1: in BuzzFeed News. And I know, just mentioning BuzzFeed News

1210
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:25,439
Speaker 1: in this conversation might be a little tricky, But there

1211
01:09:25,520 --> 01:09:27,840
Speaker 1: was a report that a bunch of young people in

1212
01:09:27,920 --> 01:09:31,479
Speaker 1: a town in Macedonia ran more than a hundred pro Trump.

1213
01:09:31,560 --> 01:09:34,439
Speaker 1: But websites full of fake news and an attempt to

1214
01:09:35,479 --> 01:09:39,439
Speaker 1: manipulate the US presidential election. So there's all this fake

1215
01:09:39,520 --> 01:09:42,920
Speaker 1: news out here, this misinformation that is being Um that

1216
01:09:43,120 --> 01:09:46,919
Speaker 1: that is going through the the curator system. The curator

1217
01:09:47,240 --> 01:09:50,680
Speaker 1: is a business. The curator is not a journalistic uh

1218
01:09:51,160 --> 01:09:55,160
Speaker 1: um enterprise and uh and and that can have some

1219
01:09:55,400 --> 01:09:59,960
Speaker 1: very dire consequences. So Mark's upper Zuckerberg in the past

1220
01:10:00,200 --> 01:10:02,800
Speaker 1: has claimed that that Facebook doesn't actually cause anyone to

1221
01:10:02,880 --> 01:10:06,080
Speaker 1: make up their minds. And I'm and I'm not necessarily

1222
01:10:06,120 --> 01:10:10,080
Speaker 1: suggesting that's the case either here, but Facebook's own research

1223
01:10:10,200 --> 01:10:13,719
Speaker 1: suggests that it's no mere neutral arbitrator in the trade

1224
01:10:13,760 --> 01:10:16,599
Speaker 1: of real or fake news. Oh yeah, sure, well, especially

1225
01:10:16,760 --> 01:10:20,440
Speaker 1: again given the algorithm. We've sort of mentioned the algorithm obliquely,

1226
01:10:20,600 --> 01:10:23,839
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean the algorithm of Facebook is designed

1227
01:10:23,920 --> 01:10:27,760
Speaker 1: to feed you what it thinks you want to see. Yeah,

1228
01:10:27,920 --> 01:10:31,840
Speaker 1: and no matter where you stand politically, socially, what have you,

1229
01:10:31,880 --> 01:10:34,080
Speaker 1: you've probably come up against the algorithm and ask, huh,

1230
01:10:34,240 --> 01:10:36,160
Speaker 1: why am I seeing this? Why am I not saying

1231
01:10:36,240 --> 01:10:40,040
Speaker 1: that two thousand and ten experiment with go vote boxes

1232
01:10:40,479 --> 01:10:43,240
Speaker 1: with or without photos of friends who voted is one

1233
01:10:43,280 --> 01:10:45,640
Speaker 1: of the studies that comes up. The second version, the

1234
01:10:45,720 --> 01:10:49,200
Speaker 1: one with people actually turned out hundreds of thousands of

1235
01:10:49,479 --> 01:10:54,160
Speaker 1: voters in this particular exercise. Then in twelve they secretly

1236
01:10:54,320 --> 01:10:57,360
Speaker 1: tweaked the news feed, so that some users experienced slightly

1237
01:10:57,439 --> 01:11:00,880
Speaker 1: more positive or negative streams, and the nature of those

1238
01:11:00,920 --> 01:11:04,000
Speaker 1: streams influenced the nature of the user's own posts. So

1239
01:11:04,479 --> 01:11:09,040
Speaker 1: negativity begot negativity, positivity begot positivity, which ties in with

1240
01:11:09,120 --> 01:11:12,040
Speaker 1: some of the things we've been discussing here. Yeah. Um,

1241
01:11:12,200 --> 01:11:14,639
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing this play out in my own Facebook

1242
01:11:14,760 --> 01:11:16,880
Speaker 1: feed right now. There's a lot of people talking about

1243
01:11:17,040 --> 01:11:21,480
Speaker 1: the quote echo chamber effect of social media, especially on Facebook,

1244
01:11:21,880 --> 01:11:25,360
Speaker 1: that could have contributed to decision making for the election.

1245
01:11:25,800 --> 01:11:28,360
Speaker 1: But also I believe it's the Wall Street Journal, is

1246
01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:30,800
Speaker 1: that right, who has created this filter that allows you

1247
01:11:30,920 --> 01:11:34,800
Speaker 1: to see what a Facebook feed would be like if

1248
01:11:34,880 --> 01:11:38,200
Speaker 1: it was curated on like a quote unquote liberal algorithm

1249
01:11:38,360 --> 01:11:41,240
Speaker 1: versus a conservative algorithm that's been shown up in my

1250
01:11:41,360 --> 01:11:43,960
Speaker 1: feed as well. Links over to that. Well, there's a

1251
01:11:44,000 --> 01:11:45,600
Speaker 1: piece that came out in the New York Times just

1252
01:11:45,760 --> 01:11:47,200
Speaker 1: last week, so I guess it'll be like two weeks

1253
01:11:47,200 --> 01:11:49,280
Speaker 1: ago by the time this episode comes out, And it's

1254
01:11:49,320 --> 01:11:53,920
Speaker 1: from Za Nip to Feci and U two faccy rights

1255
01:11:54,400 --> 01:11:56,479
Speaker 1: and the dangers of Facebook's current set up are not

1256
01:11:56,560 --> 01:11:58,760
Speaker 1: limited to the United States. The effects can be even

1257
01:11:58,840 --> 01:12:01,760
Speaker 1: more calamitous and countries with fewer checks and balances and

1258
01:12:01,800 --> 01:12:05,240
Speaker 1: weaker institutions in independent media. In Mayan, mar for example,

1259
01:12:05,320 --> 01:12:09,280
Speaker 1: misinformation on Facebook has reportedly helped fuel ethnic cleansing, creating

1260
01:12:09,280 --> 01:12:12,920
Speaker 1: an enormous refugee crisis. Facebook may want to claim that

1261
01:12:13,040 --> 01:12:15,720
Speaker 1: it is remaining neutral, but that is a false and

1262
01:12:15,840 --> 01:12:19,719
Speaker 1: dangerous stance. The company's business model, algorithms, and policies entrenched

1263
01:12:19,800 --> 01:12:24,280
Speaker 1: echo chambers and fuel the spread of misinformation. I mean

1264
01:12:24,400 --> 01:12:26,920
Speaker 1: that that really strikes you right there. Like it's one

1265
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:29,479
Speaker 1: thing to say, like, oh, well this quote echo chamber

1266
01:12:30,160 --> 01:12:33,400
Speaker 1: affected how people voted, But then when you hear well

1267
01:12:33,479 --> 01:12:36,760
Speaker 1: this could have affected ethnic cleansing, you know, I mean

1268
01:12:36,840 --> 01:12:42,960
Speaker 1: that's heartbreaking. Yeah. Uh. In December of will Or Amous

1269
01:12:43,120 --> 01:12:46,160
Speaker 1: of Slate reached out to Facebook about the spread of

1270
01:12:46,200 --> 01:12:50,560
Speaker 1: false information on Facebook and reported the following quote. I

1271
01:12:50,680 --> 01:12:53,519
Speaker 1: ran this idea by Greg Mara, a Facebook news feed

1272
01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:56,880
Speaker 1: product manager, in a recent conversation about another of the

1273
01:12:56,920 --> 01:12:59,680
Speaker 1: company's efforts to improve the quality of users feeds. He

1274
01:12:59,760 --> 01:13:02,559
Speaker 1: saw it vaguely intrigued, but said his team probably wouldn't

1275
01:13:02,560 --> 01:13:05,960
Speaker 1: be making it a priority anytime soon. Quote. We haven't

1276
01:13:06,000 --> 01:13:10,200
Speaker 1: tried to do anything around objective truth. Mar amused, It's

1277
01:13:10,240 --> 01:13:13,160
Speaker 1: a complicated topic and probably not the first thing we

1278
01:13:13,240 --> 01:13:18,000
Speaker 1: would bite off. So yeah, objective truth. Yeah yeah, why

1279
01:13:18,160 --> 01:13:20,960
Speaker 1: why get involved in that? Uh? And then uh. I

1280
01:13:21,000 --> 01:13:23,639
Speaker 1: also ran across an excellent piece in Ian magazine from

1281
01:13:23,720 --> 01:13:27,040
Speaker 1: Liz Lenz and they shared the following quote. Facts are

1282
01:13:27,040 --> 01:13:29,759
Speaker 1: at our fingertips, but instead of liberating us, they seem

1283
01:13:29,840 --> 01:13:33,280
Speaker 1: to become a casualty in the war of ideas. My

1284
01:13:33,439 --> 01:13:37,479
Speaker 1: husband has an aphorism that states, if you google long enough,

1285
01:13:37,680 --> 01:13:43,680
Speaker 1: anything becomes the truth. That's nice. I like that. Uh.

1286
01:13:44,160 --> 01:13:47,160
Speaker 1: And none of this even takes into account the rise

1287
01:13:47,280 --> 01:13:50,840
Speaker 1: of bullying and trolling on social media. We're just talking

1288
01:13:50,880 --> 01:13:54,280
Speaker 1: about the mental health issues that are brought to it originally,

1289
01:13:54,360 --> 01:13:56,280
Speaker 1: not even the ones that are that are coming out

1290
01:13:56,360 --> 01:13:59,360
Speaker 1: of it. The majority of those on social media are

1291
01:13:59,479 --> 01:14:03,200
Speaker 1: under third two years old, and most of those are adolescent. Now.

1292
01:14:03,520 --> 01:14:08,960
Speaker 1: The Enough is Enough organization reports that of teenagers who

1293
01:14:09,160 --> 01:14:12,960
Speaker 1: have used social media have witnessed cyber bullying. And I

1294
01:14:13,040 --> 01:14:15,960
Speaker 1: just want to give a personal aside about our work.

1295
01:14:16,040 --> 01:14:19,160
Speaker 1: This isn't a SOB story, but um, given what we

1296
01:14:19,400 --> 01:14:23,519
Speaker 1: do and how Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, I'll play

1297
01:14:23,560 --> 01:14:26,439
Speaker 1: into our you know, our business, not just stuff to

1298
01:14:26,479 --> 01:14:28,680
Speaker 1: blow your mind, but how stuff works in general. We

1299
01:14:28,840 --> 01:14:33,320
Speaker 1: see a lot of cyber bullying and trolling, especially targeted

1300
01:14:33,560 --> 01:14:40,120
Speaker 1: at our hosts on various shows. Video, Uh, definitely on Facebook.

1301
01:14:40,640 --> 01:14:44,479
Speaker 1: And it's um, it's tough, you know, and it's it's

1302
01:14:44,600 --> 01:14:48,320
Speaker 1: something that kind of comes along with this gig that

1303
01:14:48,520 --> 01:14:50,960
Speaker 1: not a lot of people think about, Like the emotional

1304
01:14:51,080 --> 01:14:54,720
Speaker 1: toll of constantly seeing people tell you I don't like

1305
01:14:54,800 --> 01:14:57,400
Speaker 1: the way you move your hands or your hair is stupid.

1306
01:14:58,040 --> 01:15:00,519
Speaker 1: These are things that I get as a man. Our

1307
01:15:00,640 --> 01:15:07,599
Speaker 1: female colleagues get horrific abuse by trolls on the internet. Now,

1308
01:15:09,000 --> 01:15:10,840
Speaker 1: how do you cope with that? How do you cope

1309
01:15:10,880 --> 01:15:12,760
Speaker 1: with all of this? I often say, like, man, I

1310
01:15:12,840 --> 01:15:17,040
Speaker 1: wish we just had like a counselor Troy here in

1311
01:15:17,120 --> 01:15:19,160
Speaker 1: the office that we could go to to talk about

1312
01:15:19,200 --> 01:15:23,120
Speaker 1: this stuff. Um, is it realistic to just go completely

1313
01:15:23,200 --> 01:15:26,439
Speaker 1: cold turkey off of social media? Well after the election,

1314
01:15:26,520 --> 01:15:30,400
Speaker 1: the Seattle Times actually interviewed one of their local mental

1315
01:15:30,479 --> 01:15:34,720
Speaker 1: health counselors and several social media experts for how you

1316
01:15:34,880 --> 01:15:37,920
Speaker 1: can set boundaries. So these are a couple of things,

1317
01:15:38,000 --> 01:15:39,479
Speaker 1: And I'm also going to add in here that the

1318
01:15:39,520 --> 01:15:44,800
Speaker 1: American Psychological Association says that fifty of adults expressed that

1319
01:15:44,880 --> 01:15:47,640
Speaker 1: they felt stress related to the campaign. If that is

1320
01:15:47,680 --> 01:15:52,160
Speaker 1: the case, experts then recommend limiting social media engagement and

1321
01:15:52,280 --> 01:15:55,240
Speaker 1: definitely limiting engagement with the twenty four our news cycle.

1322
01:15:55,760 --> 01:15:57,800
Speaker 1: But hey, like we said before, some people turn to

1323
01:15:57,880 --> 01:16:01,800
Speaker 1: social media for support or to offer it, especially for

1324
01:16:01,960 --> 01:16:06,000
Speaker 1: those who are already suffering from addiction, depression, or anxiety. Right,

1325
01:16:06,080 --> 01:16:09,479
Speaker 1: so here's a couple of tips. One is, ask yourself

1326
01:16:09,520 --> 01:16:12,880
Speaker 1: if you really need to log in? Right. I found

1327
01:16:12,880 --> 01:16:15,160
Speaker 1: myself doing this today where I was just like sitting

1328
01:16:15,200 --> 01:16:16,680
Speaker 1: there kind of hanging out with my dogs, and I

1329
01:16:17,240 --> 01:16:19,599
Speaker 1: popped Twitter on and I was like, I don't need

1330
01:16:19,640 --> 01:16:21,760
Speaker 1: to do that. I'm just I'm just doing it out

1331
01:16:21,800 --> 01:16:24,080
Speaker 1: of habit. We'll log in. Is an interesting thing to

1332
01:16:24,120 --> 01:16:27,200
Speaker 1: bring up here because log in and and it brings

1333
01:16:27,240 --> 01:16:30,000
Speaker 1: the mind the idea that you're actually inputting your password. There,

1334
01:16:30,080 --> 01:16:32,800
Speaker 1: you're sticking a key into the horrible box that you

1335
01:16:32,920 --> 01:16:38,000
Speaker 1: keep under your bed umu. And either either way, like

1336
01:16:38,240 --> 01:16:40,599
Speaker 1: this is the decision to unlock, it is in play.

1337
01:16:41,040 --> 01:16:44,520
Speaker 1: But for the most like our browsers remember our passwords.

1338
01:16:44,640 --> 01:16:47,000
Speaker 1: It's like the it's just this thing you do. I mean,

1339
01:16:47,080 --> 01:16:51,160
Speaker 1: how many times have have have you the listeners found

1340
01:16:51,160 --> 01:16:53,400
Speaker 1: yourself just at the site that you go to every day.

1341
01:16:53,400 --> 01:16:55,439
Speaker 1: It's just like a muscle memory thing. And then you're there,

1342
01:16:55,479 --> 01:16:57,200
Speaker 1: you're reading it. You're like, what am I even doing here?

1343
01:16:57,240 --> 01:16:59,000
Speaker 1: I was here five minutes ago. There's not even any

1344
01:16:59,040 --> 01:17:04,240
Speaker 1: new content to look exactly. Yeah. Uh so just think

1345
01:17:04,280 --> 01:17:05,880
Speaker 1: to yourself. And I've been doing this in the last

1346
01:17:05,920 --> 01:17:08,599
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. Maybe there's something else you can do. Right.

1347
01:17:09,040 --> 01:17:11,360
Speaker 1: For instance, I've been listening to music a lot more

1348
01:17:12,240 --> 01:17:15,559
Speaker 1: rather than going on to social media. I I finally

1349
01:17:15,640 --> 01:17:18,000
Speaker 1: invested in one of those subscription services, and I'm just

1350
01:17:18,120 --> 01:17:19,920
Speaker 1: listening to a lot of new music and listening to

1351
01:17:19,960 --> 01:17:22,120
Speaker 1: a lot of music old music from when I was

1352
01:17:22,160 --> 01:17:24,800
Speaker 1: a teenager that I don't have anymore. And it's just

1353
01:17:24,920 --> 01:17:27,920
Speaker 1: been that's been very helpful. Maybe you could play a

1354
01:17:28,000 --> 01:17:32,479
Speaker 1: video game, you know, uh, or hey, here's a novel,

1355
01:17:32,520 --> 01:17:37,320
Speaker 1: idea exercise, or call a friend up you know, I

1356
01:17:37,439 --> 01:17:39,080
Speaker 1: have a friend. A number of these can be done

1357
01:17:39,080 --> 01:17:41,519
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah, I mean, I could play

1358
01:17:41,640 --> 01:17:44,160
Speaker 1: video games and talk to my friends at the same time.

1359
01:17:44,240 --> 01:17:47,720
Speaker 1: That's often how I have phone calls with them. But

1360
01:17:48,600 --> 01:17:51,719
Speaker 1: you know, so that's one thing is like just always,

1361
01:17:51,840 --> 01:17:53,840
Speaker 1: you know, ask yourself, do I need to be doing this?

1362
01:17:54,400 --> 01:17:56,360
Speaker 1: Then here's the thing. If you're still going to use

1363
01:17:56,439 --> 01:18:01,560
Speaker 1: electronic devices, prioritize which sites are important to you, and

1364
01:18:01,720 --> 01:18:04,639
Speaker 1: then set a time limit for yourself to log off.

1365
01:18:04,720 --> 01:18:07,320
Speaker 1: Don't just scan where we I do this so often,

1366
01:18:07,439 --> 01:18:09,280
Speaker 1: especially given the nature of our work where I'm just

1367
01:18:09,760 --> 01:18:14,320
Speaker 1: scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and looking for the next fix. Right,

1368
01:18:15,520 --> 01:18:17,920
Speaker 1: I'd also throw in turn off those updates if you don't,

1369
01:18:18,960 --> 01:18:21,639
Speaker 1: I've already yeah, I don't have any of that stuff.

1370
01:18:22,360 --> 01:18:25,400
Speaker 1: Decide how much time in your day is devoted to

1371
01:18:25,520 --> 01:18:28,600
Speaker 1: consuming news and whatever form, whether that's social media or

1372
01:18:28,680 --> 01:18:32,479
Speaker 1: on television. If you're really committed to getting a fix

1373
01:18:32,600 --> 01:18:37,560
Speaker 1: of news, look for well written, well reported articles, especially

1374
01:18:37,680 --> 01:18:40,639
Speaker 1: by someone who has views that oppose your own. Okay,

1375
01:18:41,320 --> 01:18:45,759
Speaker 1: try thinking from another person's perspective, even if you totally

1376
01:18:45,840 --> 01:18:48,720
Speaker 1: disagree with them. If it's well written enough, it'll at

1377
01:18:48,760 --> 01:18:54,160
Speaker 1: least give you pause for consideration. Uh. Also decide what

1378
01:18:54,320 --> 01:18:57,160
Speaker 1: to keep out of your feed, right, skip past the

1379
01:18:57,240 --> 01:19:00,760
Speaker 1: disturbing images or video h stuff that's in your feed.

1380
01:19:00,960 --> 01:19:04,320
Speaker 1: Acknowledge that some people are more important to you than others.

1381
01:19:04,760 --> 01:19:07,719
Speaker 1: So you know who to respond to and who to ignore.

1382
01:19:08,400 --> 01:19:10,240
Speaker 1: And you can always, as I mentioned at the top,

1383
01:19:10,320 --> 01:19:14,960
Speaker 1: as I do quietly unfollowed or unfriend people. I use

1384
01:19:15,080 --> 01:19:17,840
Speaker 1: lists for this on Twitter. It's great cure. Eight year

1385
01:19:17,920 --> 01:19:21,120
Speaker 1: feed You've become responsible for it yourself, and it's um,

1386
01:19:21,320 --> 01:19:23,360
Speaker 1: it's just better for your mental health overall. Yeah, and

1387
01:19:23,400 --> 01:19:26,080
Speaker 1: I want to drive home to that again. Remember that

1388
01:19:26,400 --> 01:19:29,800
Speaker 1: the person that an individual is online on Facebook, it's

1389
01:19:29,840 --> 01:19:31,880
Speaker 1: not the sum total of who they are. That's just

1390
01:19:32,040 --> 01:19:35,439
Speaker 1: one aspect of their person. And so there there there

1391
01:19:35,520 --> 01:19:38,679
Speaker 1: may be situations where you say, you know, I'm still

1392
01:19:38,760 --> 01:19:41,840
Speaker 1: totally friends with this person, but you know, maybe all

1393
01:19:41,920 --> 01:19:45,160
Speaker 1: they do is share turn up recipes on their Facebook

1394
01:19:45,600 --> 01:19:48,120
Speaker 1: and you love them, but you're just not into turn

1395
01:19:48,200 --> 01:19:51,120
Speaker 1: ups and you're not into turn up recipes, so maybe

1396
01:19:51,439 --> 01:19:53,920
Speaker 1: this is just not the platform where your friendship exists.

1397
01:19:54,120 --> 01:19:58,680
Speaker 1: I absolutely have relationships like that. Uh. And look, if

1398
01:19:58,720 --> 01:20:01,920
Speaker 1: you've got to engage with people, try to do it positively,

1399
01:20:02,080 --> 01:20:05,519
Speaker 1: either like those other people's posts or share something that

1400
01:20:05,600 --> 01:20:09,479
Speaker 1: you found inspiring. If it's a political matter, try using

1401
01:20:09,520 --> 01:20:11,920
Speaker 1: a neutral tone. I know it's tough, right now. I

1402
01:20:12,000 --> 01:20:14,280
Speaker 1: know it's real easy to say that, and it's difficult,

1403
01:20:14,640 --> 01:20:18,439
Speaker 1: but present evidence based information in your post or hey,

1404
01:20:18,560 --> 01:20:21,960
Speaker 1: here's something you could do. Get involved in constructive causes

1405
01:20:22,439 --> 01:20:25,680
Speaker 1: by signing petitions or writing letters, or calling politicians, or

1406
01:20:26,000 --> 01:20:28,439
Speaker 1: or getting involved with some local group that you support.

1407
01:20:28,800 --> 01:20:31,439
Speaker 1: The first thing that I saw when I um joined

1408
01:20:31,520 --> 01:20:34,080
Speaker 1: next door this morning was that there was a long

1409
01:20:34,200 --> 01:20:37,599
Speaker 1: post of my neighbors talking about, Hey, what local groups

1410
01:20:37,680 --> 01:20:40,120
Speaker 1: can I go out and volunteer for and get involved?

1411
01:20:40,160 --> 01:20:42,519
Speaker 1: Like I feel like I need to do something. Yeah,

1412
01:20:42,560 --> 01:20:45,160
Speaker 1: And that allows you to act, to to do actually

1413
01:20:45,240 --> 01:20:50,600
Speaker 1: act from from a position of of of of optimism,

1414
01:20:51,160 --> 01:20:54,920
Speaker 1: because it's it's difficult to act from a state of pessimism.

1415
01:20:55,360 --> 01:20:58,360
Speaker 1: And the last coping mechanism I would say is don't

1416
01:20:58,600 --> 01:21:02,040
Speaker 1: let yourself start worrying about something that may not have

1417
01:21:02,160 --> 01:21:06,040
Speaker 1: actually even happened. Remember what we said here about false

1418
01:21:06,160 --> 01:21:09,200
Speaker 1: news and rumors that spread real easily on social media.

1419
01:21:10,040 --> 01:21:13,280
Speaker 1: So people have researched this. It can take fourteen hours

1420
01:21:13,400 --> 01:21:18,479
Speaker 1: to debunk false claims online. So wait before you get angry,

1421
01:21:18,720 --> 01:21:22,000
Speaker 1: come back, do some research, look into whether this is

1422
01:21:22,000 --> 01:21:26,720
Speaker 1: a real thing or not, and then move forward and engage. Now,

1423
01:21:27,120 --> 01:21:29,920
Speaker 1: let's take this and flip it on its head. What

1424
01:21:30,040 --> 01:21:33,759
Speaker 1: if we used social media as a data mining tool

1425
01:21:34,200 --> 01:21:38,320
Speaker 1: to assist psychologists in community health forecast. Well, that is

1426
01:21:38,400 --> 01:21:41,760
Speaker 1: something that that a project called the World Well Being

1427
01:21:41,920 --> 01:21:45,920
Speaker 1: Project is talking about doing. They've evaluated a hundred million

1428
01:21:46,040 --> 01:21:50,080
Speaker 1: tweets and they found that the preponderance of negative tweets,

1429
01:21:50,160 --> 01:21:54,120
Speaker 1: especially those with anger or hostility linked in them, reliably

1430
01:21:54,320 --> 01:21:58,240
Speaker 1: predicts a rise in deaths from heart disease in their

1431
01:21:58,320 --> 01:22:01,680
Speaker 1: given locations. That's crazy to me that they can look

1432
01:22:01,720 --> 01:22:04,920
Speaker 1: at Twitter and say, what the death rate is going

1433
01:22:04,960 --> 01:22:08,000
Speaker 1: to increase, I don't know in Chicago or something like that. Well,

1434
01:22:08,080 --> 01:22:10,000
Speaker 1: it's not surprising. I want to say there was a

1435
01:22:10,479 --> 01:22:11,920
Speaker 1: I wish I had the study in front of me,

1436
01:22:11,960 --> 01:22:14,280
Speaker 1: but I believe there was a German study years back

1437
01:22:14,400 --> 01:22:19,560
Speaker 1: looking at like high engagement soccer games or football and

1438
01:22:20,080 --> 01:22:23,080
Speaker 1: in looking at rises in heart attacks or heart conditions

1439
01:22:23,479 --> 01:22:25,720
Speaker 1: around that. Just the idea that here's this thing that

1440
01:22:25,840 --> 01:22:29,200
Speaker 1: everyone's a number a large sections is the population are

1441
01:22:29,240 --> 01:22:33,679
Speaker 1: invested in. It's right right, raising everybody's blood their heart rate,

1442
01:22:34,280 --> 01:22:37,720
Speaker 1: and they're going to be physical ramifications of them. Yeah.

1443
01:22:38,200 --> 01:22:41,200
Speaker 1: Google is also tried doing this in a similar way

1444
01:22:41,720 --> 01:22:45,720
Speaker 1: with flu symptoms. Um, so they track in real time

1445
01:22:45,760 --> 01:22:48,560
Speaker 1: the emergence of flu outbreaks. They tried doing this and

1446
01:22:48,640 --> 01:22:52,519
Speaker 1: they stopped. But what if we could apply machine learning

1447
01:22:52,640 --> 01:22:56,880
Speaker 1: methods to determine areas where stress, anxiety, and depression are

1448
01:22:56,920 --> 01:23:01,440
Speaker 1: breaking out? We could provide those areas with more assistance theoretically,

1449
01:23:01,600 --> 01:23:05,280
Speaker 1: so could we end up in a situation where negative

1450
01:23:05,360 --> 01:23:07,880
Speaker 1: to too much negativity on social media it causes the

1451
01:23:07,920 --> 01:23:11,360
Speaker 1: metibots to come to your house they started administering give

1452
01:23:11,439 --> 01:23:18,800
Speaker 1: us impacts. Um. Okay, so we've got over a lot

1453
01:23:18,840 --> 01:23:22,240
Speaker 1: of stuff with you all in this episode. Let's extrapolate

1454
01:23:22,320 --> 01:23:25,720
Speaker 1: what we've learned here and take what's going on in

1455
01:23:25,800 --> 01:23:28,519
Speaker 1: the world right now with social media and and just

1456
01:23:29,520 --> 01:23:31,400
Speaker 1: you know, what do we get out of this? Well,

1457
01:23:31,439 --> 01:23:34,120
Speaker 1: first of all, Facebook could be altering our perceptions of

1458
01:23:34,240 --> 01:23:37,120
Speaker 1: people in the world right and in the sense that

1459
01:23:37,640 --> 01:23:40,719
Speaker 1: we may not be getting the full story through social

1460
01:23:40,800 --> 01:23:44,479
Speaker 1: media and you know, beyond mere perception. Uh, there's an

1461
01:23:44,520 --> 01:23:48,920
Speaker 1: ongoing conversation to what extent is Facebook empowering the dissemination

1462
01:23:49,120 --> 01:23:53,280
Speaker 1: of false information, building at times dangerous perceived realities for

1463
01:23:53,360 --> 01:23:55,639
Speaker 1: its users. Again, this is something that is an ongoing

1464
01:23:55,720 --> 01:23:58,679
Speaker 1: conversation and this episode is not going to be standing

1465
01:23:58,720 --> 01:24:00,880
Speaker 1: on the cutting edge of that, as there's a week

1466
01:24:00,960 --> 01:24:03,679
Speaker 1: delay in it coming out. Uh. And look, if you're

1467
01:24:03,720 --> 01:24:07,320
Speaker 1: already anxious, using social media could make your self esteem

1468
01:24:07,400 --> 01:24:10,680
Speaker 1: even worse, so consider that before you hop on. But

1469
01:24:11,560 --> 01:24:15,920
Speaker 1: positive feedback to political post is only going to reinforce

1470
01:24:16,000 --> 01:24:19,560
Speaker 1: your own beliefs, so it's less likely to challenge you

1471
01:24:19,640 --> 01:24:23,559
Speaker 1: to think from someone else's perspective. And this, in turn,

1472
01:24:23,800 --> 01:24:27,120
Speaker 1: from what we learned, becomes addictive in how it forms

1473
01:24:27,160 --> 01:24:33,880
Speaker 1: our worldviews. So we're combining our political philosophical society with

1474
01:24:34,640 --> 01:24:44,080
Speaker 1: have Love's reward system. And that seems dangerous. Yeah, it does. Um.

1475
01:24:44,200 --> 01:24:46,599
Speaker 1: As a final note, my personal advice, get a fish tank.

1476
01:24:46,680 --> 01:24:49,080
Speaker 1: Fish tanks are great, so soothing, They're so great. That

1477
01:24:49,160 --> 01:24:50,639
Speaker 1: does sound nice. I don't know how I've been living

1478
01:24:50,680 --> 01:24:52,160
Speaker 1: this long without a fish tank in my life, but

1479
01:24:52,360 --> 01:24:56,479
Speaker 1: I'm loving it so Uh. Here on stuff to blow

1480
01:24:56,520 --> 01:25:00,920
Speaker 1: your mind. We wanted to take this opportunity, uh to

1481
01:25:01,120 --> 01:25:04,280
Speaker 1: advocate for a group that would be related to this,

1482
01:25:04,760 --> 01:25:07,479
Speaker 1: an organization ourselves that we looked into and that we

1483
01:25:07,560 --> 01:25:09,400
Speaker 1: feel like we'd like to support, and the one that

1484
01:25:09,479 --> 01:25:13,960
Speaker 1: we found for this episode is called stomp Out bullying

1485
01:25:14,200 --> 01:25:17,559
Speaker 1: and they're a group that is the leading national bullying

1486
01:25:17,720 --> 01:25:21,439
Speaker 1: and cyber bullying prevention organization for kids and teens in

1487
01:25:21,439 --> 01:25:25,200
Speaker 1: the United States. They focus on reducing and preventing these

1488
01:25:25,320 --> 01:25:28,840
Speaker 1: things as well as sexting and other digital abuse. UH.

1489
01:25:28,880 --> 01:25:34,320
Speaker 1: They educate, educate against homophobia, racism and hatred, decreased school

1490
01:25:34,360 --> 01:25:38,360
Speaker 1: absentee ism, and deter violence in schools, online and in

1491
01:25:38,479 --> 01:25:41,720
Speaker 1: communities across the country. UM. We were looking at this

1492
01:25:41,840 --> 01:25:44,120
Speaker 1: this morning and it seemed like a great way to

1493
01:25:44,680 --> 01:25:46,719
Speaker 1: you know, if you're feeling I need to do something,

1494
01:25:46,840 --> 01:25:48,479
Speaker 1: this is this is something to take a look at.

1495
01:25:48,720 --> 01:25:51,200
Speaker 1: They've got seven ways that you can make a difference

1496
01:25:51,280 --> 01:25:54,080
Speaker 1: by by you know, working together with their group. Of course,

1497
01:25:54,160 --> 01:25:57,479
Speaker 1: the easy ways you can donate give them money. UH.

1498
01:25:57,600 --> 01:26:00,160
Speaker 1: You can also participate in their campaigns. They have these

1499
01:26:00,240 --> 01:26:03,960
Speaker 1: various campaigns that help with bullying prevention. UM. They have

1500
01:26:04,040 --> 01:26:07,360
Speaker 1: an online store where you can shop, and that's kind

1501
01:26:07,400 --> 01:26:10,439
Speaker 1: of like combining the donation with getting something that you can,

1502
01:26:10,720 --> 01:26:12,880
Speaker 1: I don't know where, or give to somebody else out

1503
01:26:12,920 --> 01:26:16,360
Speaker 1: in the real world. You can also volunteer. UH. They

1504
01:26:16,439 --> 01:26:20,080
Speaker 1: actually have a help chat line and peer mentoring groups

1505
01:26:20,160 --> 01:26:23,519
Speaker 1: in schools to help raise awareness about bullying, so maybe

1506
01:26:23,520 --> 01:26:26,640
Speaker 1: you want to participate that way. And then finally they

1507
01:26:26,720 --> 01:26:31,759
Speaker 1: partner with corporations, media, and celebrities uh to end bullying.

1508
01:26:31,960 --> 01:26:34,840
Speaker 1: So if you're any of those three things, if you're

1509
01:26:34,840 --> 01:26:38,240
Speaker 1: a corporation, media entity, or a celebrity of some kind,

1510
01:26:38,360 --> 01:26:40,720
Speaker 1: maybe you want to participate in this. Yeah. Yeah, So

1511
01:26:40,760 --> 01:26:42,360
Speaker 1: they seem like a really good group. They're doing a

1512
01:26:42,400 --> 01:26:44,320
Speaker 1: lot of good work, so we wanted to highlight them

1513
01:26:44,360 --> 01:26:46,320
Speaker 1: here real quick, and we would we'd like to do

1514
01:26:46,400 --> 01:26:48,720
Speaker 1: more of this in the future. So if there are

1515
01:26:48,720 --> 01:26:53,360
Speaker 1: any uh worthy causes out there, groups, nonprofits that are

1516
01:26:53,479 --> 01:26:56,960
Speaker 1: engaged in some real positive efforts in the world, let

1517
01:26:57,040 --> 01:26:59,320
Speaker 1: us know about them and uh and and we're gonna

1518
01:26:59,439 --> 01:27:01,800
Speaker 1: we're gonna try and make this a regular thank here

1519
01:27:01,840 --> 01:27:04,120
Speaker 1: on the show. And here's the irony of it. How

1520
01:27:04,160 --> 01:27:07,360
Speaker 1: do you let us know about it? Well, social media.

1521
01:27:08,360 --> 01:27:11,240
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're on Tumblr,

1522
01:27:11,360 --> 01:27:14,360
Speaker 1: and we're on Instagram. We are trying to make those

1523
01:27:14,439 --> 01:27:18,880
Speaker 1: positive places, uh. We do. We sometimes do live video

1524
01:27:18,960 --> 01:27:22,519
Speaker 1: performances where we talk about um monster movie trailers and

1525
01:27:22,600 --> 01:27:24,400
Speaker 1: how they relate to the science that we talked about

1526
01:27:24,439 --> 01:27:26,840
Speaker 1: on the show. Sometimes we share links to things that

1527
01:27:26,880 --> 01:27:30,760
Speaker 1: we're pretty excited about. Um. Sometimes we just share I

1528
01:27:30,800 --> 01:27:33,519
Speaker 1: don't know. I like to take photos of bizarre things

1529
01:27:33,560 --> 01:27:35,599
Speaker 1: that I find while we're doing research to give people

1530
01:27:35,760 --> 01:27:38,080
Speaker 1: a hint as to what's coming up on the show.

1531
01:27:38,800 --> 01:27:40,800
Speaker 1: But those are all places where you can reach out

1532
01:27:40,880 --> 01:27:44,760
Speaker 1: to us, to talk to us about um, what we're

1533
01:27:44,800 --> 01:27:46,800
Speaker 1: doing on the show, provide us with some feedback, or

1534
01:27:47,120 --> 01:27:49,639
Speaker 1: like Robert said, tell us about another organization that maybe

1535
01:27:49,680 --> 01:27:54,240
Speaker 1: we can promote here. Uh. The all those are in

1536
01:27:54,360 --> 01:27:57,840
Speaker 1: somewhere or another. Blow the mind, yes, and I if

1537
01:27:57,840 --> 01:27:59,160
Speaker 1: you want to cut all that out, just come straight

1538
01:27:59,200 --> 01:28:01,479
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, a social

1539
01:28:01,600 --> 01:28:04,680
Speaker 1: media free website as celebration of everything we do, all

1540
01:28:04,720 --> 01:28:07,600
Speaker 1: the episodes, the podcast, the blog post, you name it,

1541
01:28:07,800 --> 01:28:09,680
Speaker 1: it's there. There will also be links out to our

1542
01:28:09,680 --> 01:28:11,200
Speaker 1: so for media accounts, but you don't have to click

1543
01:28:11,240 --> 01:28:14,600
Speaker 1: on notes. You really don't. And finally, there is an

1544
01:28:14,640 --> 01:28:16,479
Speaker 1: old fashioned way to get in touch with us. Uh.

1545
01:28:16,720 --> 01:28:18,679
Speaker 1: And I'm not talking about finding us on the street

1546
01:28:18,680 --> 01:28:20,920
Speaker 1: and talking to us, though I guess that would work.

1547
01:28:21,000 --> 01:28:24,479
Speaker 1: They can use ravens Ravens, yes, owls, um, you know,

1548
01:28:24,720 --> 01:28:27,160
Speaker 1: whatever you have at your disposal. But Yeah, there's the

1549
01:28:27,200 --> 01:28:30,040
Speaker 1: email address. Yeah, that's blow the mind at how stuff

1550
01:28:30,040 --> 01:28:41,320
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of

1551
01:28:41,360 --> 01:29:00,040
Speaker 1: other topics. Is that how stuff works dot com. The

1552
01:29:00,280 --> 01:29:03,800
Speaker 1: homographic artises found back by