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To learn more, 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:33.760 visit about hb X dot com slash how Stuff Works. 0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:36.560 Are you looking for brand new episodes of a short 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:40.319 how Stuff Works podcast that explains the everyday world around us, 0:00:40.560 --> 0:00:44.080 Then check out brain Stuff with me Christian Sager. New 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:48.320 episodes hit every Monday and Wednesday on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:55.840 or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff 0:00:55.880 --> 0:01:05.280 to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:07.000 welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is 0:01:07.080 --> 0:01:10.679 Robert Lamp and my name is Christian Seger. So we're 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:14.360 recording this a week after the election here in the 0:01:14.440 --> 0:01:19.240 United States. Uh, and we're kind of reeling not just 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:23.640 from the election, but from the social media reverberations around it. 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:25.960 And so Robert and I were talking about it, and 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.800 we said, you know, there's a lot of research. We 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:32.000 see a lot of research fly across our screens about 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:36.640 mental health and social media. Let's do a dive and 0:01:36.760 --> 0:01:40.039 figure out what we know so far about this, because 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.000 it seems like a topic at least from my social 0:01:43.000 --> 0:01:46.360 media feeds, that people are interested in right now. Yeah, 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.200 I mean, there's there's absolutely no escaping it, um, because 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.680 here we are at the the tail end of s 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:54.960 and uh, you know, just looking back on it, taking 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:57.360 into account everything that sort of happened with social media. 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:00.960 Let's say we had billions of tweets and Facebook status 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.760 updates about the US election as they were happening. Yeah. No, 0:02:05.200 --> 0:02:09.079 I don't know about you, but like everything, I'm seeing everything. 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:11.000 But I'd say a good fifty percent of the people 0:02:11.000 --> 0:02:13.080 in my feet are saying, like, sorry, I've got to 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.000 take a step away from this. On top of this, uh, 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:20.519 political activity and political inactivity. Um, you also have seen, 0:02:20.600 --> 0:02:24.720 of course, a lot of slanted and misinformed articles that 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:26.919 have made the rounds, and that is something that is 0:02:26.960 --> 0:02:29.960 being covered in the media currently, How does uh, how 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:34.440 does Facebook? How does Google as um uh as a 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:36.720 as a as a manager of these different properties, as 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:40.320 a curative of these properties, how does how do they 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:45.240 factor into this equation? Um? You know, and and of 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:47.760 course on top of that, we also had a really good, 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:50.839 in a really depressing season of black Mirror. Just put 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:54.480 it all in the perspective. But but you know, we 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:56.720 we have to we come back to looking at social 0:02:56.760 --> 0:02:59.480 media and what its role is this thing that we've created, 0:02:59.520 --> 0:03:02.919 this thing that we use every every day. So how 0:03:03.000 --> 0:03:05.720 much of what we're feeling now? And uh and and 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.959 these um, these opinions, these these emotions that are being expressed. 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:13.120 How much of that can we blame on social media itself? 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.240 How much of it is just what people have always felt? Uh? 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:19.320 You know, it's just the immediate concern is always more pressing, 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:22.480 more real, there's always more fire to it. So and 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:24.560 you know, are we just are are we just blowing 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:28.600 everything out of out of proportion and simply looking for 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:32.160 forces to blame? Yeah? I think, uh, well, we're gonna 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:34.600 really get into it with the research today. But I 0:03:34.760 --> 0:03:36.520 just like to say that I think that there's a 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:40.960 certain amount of technological determinism that goes along with the 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:45.560 idea that it's social media's fault quote unquote. UM. And 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:48.040 from the research, the big lesson that I learned, and 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:51.280 maybe you know at the end we'll revisit this is 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:54.520 that it's not the medium, it's how we approach the 0:03:54.560 --> 0:03:59.080 medium and what we bring to it. Um. And before 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:00.920 we start, I think, I think, like I just want 0:04:00.920 --> 0:04:02.960 to share a little bit with the audience. I have 0:04:03.600 --> 0:04:07.680 personal social media policies already in place. I've talked about 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.200 these on other shows before. I probably talked about them 0:04:10.200 --> 0:04:14.760 on here before. Um, this one's a little weird. I 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:19.839 only read Facebook, my Facebook personal stream if I'm in 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:24.120 a bathroom. Yeah, I that's my My policy is, I 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.799 don't want to read it at my desk. I don't 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:28.599 want to read it if I'm in my living room 0:04:28.640 --> 0:04:32.559 or my bedroom, or if I'm on bus whatever. Uh, 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:37.760 it stays in the bathroom and and whatever it brings 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.160 up for me, if it's anger or sadness or frustration 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:45.960 or even happiness or whatever, I keep it there. Um. 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:50.000 Now that's for personal stuff. We always advocate at the 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.040 end of every episode. Hey, visit us on social media 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.120 My job is to look at social media for stuff 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:57.800 to blow your mind and how stuff works in our 0:04:57.800 --> 0:05:00.640 other brands. Yeah. I wish I could step away from Facebook, really, 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:03.720 but it's this thing I gotta do every morning. Yeah. Yeah, 0:05:04.839 --> 0:05:09.680 And I curate all my feeds, meaning for both Twitter 0:05:09.720 --> 0:05:13.560 and Facebook. So on Facebook, if i'm quote friends with 0:05:13.640 --> 0:05:17.840 a person and they're posting things that upset me, then 0:05:17.880 --> 0:05:20.640 I'll do the I forget what the terminology is hide 0:05:21.040 --> 0:05:24.120 or uh. I basically make it so I can't see 0:05:24.120 --> 0:05:26.000 their stuff, but I don't say to them I hate you, 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:28.880 I don't want to be friends. And there's there's unfollowing, 0:05:29.000 --> 0:05:32.840 there's there's fighting, there's requestion to see the less of somebody. 0:05:32.960 --> 0:05:35.400 I mean, that's the That's the thing is that everyone engages. 0:05:35.800 --> 0:05:39.880 Unless you're just like a rare and novice user of 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.279 say Facebook or Twitter or what have you. There's always 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:44.800 a certain amount of curation. You're choosing who to follow, 0:05:45.080 --> 0:05:48.560 then you're choosing who to unfollow or hide. The algorithm 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.360 on Facebook is U is accounting for your preferences and 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:57.000 you're getting this custom stream of information and uh. On Twitter, 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:00.080 I make use of lists tremendously. I mean, and I 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:04.000 think I probably follow six hundred people on Twitter, and 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:07.120 I actually follow less than a hundred people on Twitter 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:09.640 because I have a list of what I actually look at. 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:12.400 You know, I don't want to offend people by unfollowing 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:16.479 them or you know, I use Twitter for networking. Uh 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:19.880 you know, so sometimes if I'm seeing stuff that's just 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.000 overwhelming me, I say, you know what, you don't need 0:06:22.000 --> 0:06:23.960 to be in the list anymore. I'm gonna You're gonna 0:06:23.960 --> 0:06:26.200 take a break from you for a little bit. Um 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:29.080 And all this is, you know, in my posting, I 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:31.200 just try to share things that I enjoy about the 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:33.880 world or communicate with people who are in my areas 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:37.080 of interest. Podcasting, we talk a lot about horror on 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.640 the show, things like that, and especially with people who 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.000 are physically far away. I mean, I won't deny social 0:06:42.000 --> 0:06:44.520 media has been a great tool for me to meet 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:49.960 people within our field and to make friends. Um. So, again, like, 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.240 there are problems here, and we're gonna talk about a 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:55.600 lot of problems that have been found with the research 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.120 in this, But I don't want to be technologically deterministic 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:03.680 and say Facebook is bad. Yeah, yeah, I mean I 0:07:03.960 --> 0:07:06.200 love Facebook as a as a as a method of 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:09.920 sharing pictures of my my son, pictures of my family, 0:07:10.160 --> 0:07:13.240 keeping up with with with with friends and family members 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:15.640 that are far away. Uh. And that's probably what I 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.240 use it for Facebook for the most personally, that and 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.600 just sharing of things that relate to my interests. Uh. 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:24.920 And then here at work, of course for stuff to 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:27.560 blow your mind. We share our content. We we curate 0:07:27.600 --> 0:07:29.880 content that fits either our show brand or sort of 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:32.920 the loose host brand. So if you follow our our 0:07:32.960 --> 0:07:35.320 our Facebook feed, you'll see a lot of stuff that's 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:37.200 not really attributed. But if something's like a little more 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:40.120 of a Christian thing or a little more Robert thing, etcetera, 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:42.800 then you're gonna see that we've we've tagged it, or 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:44.480 if the statement on is a little more in our 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.160 individual boys usually try to put our initials or something 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.880 like yeah yeah, But you know, it's basically comes to really, 0:07:50.920 --> 0:07:54.120 I guess my approach to all the very social media 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:57.240 uses that I I use them as a way to 0:07:57.360 --> 0:07:59.040 share things that I think are pretty cool or I 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:02.040 think are important. Yeah. I remember reading a blog post 0:08:02.080 --> 0:08:05.720 when smartphones first started becoming popular, and it was basically 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.600 like a like a sort of guide for for newbies 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.000 on like, what should you be posting to social media? 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:12.400 You want to get involved in this, how do you 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.520 do it? And you know, obviously we've gone awry since then, 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:21.360 but it was basically, what throughout your day as you 0:08:21.400 --> 0:08:24.000 go throughout the world do you see that's wondrous that 0:08:24.120 --> 0:08:26.920 makes you laugh or that you find interesting or insightful 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:30.080 or mean? Like, do you physically see something, take a 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.680 picture of it, share that and that excites you. Or 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:35.040 if you read an article that you think is insightful, 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:38.360 share that something along those lines. That's and that that's 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:40.440 for the most part, how I've always held it. I 0:08:40.480 --> 0:08:43.480 am absolutely guilty any stuff to blow your mind. Listeners 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.520 who have followed me on Twitter know that I like 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:50.720 a good presidential debate and I like to live tweet 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:53.600 and make jokes during it that that I'm totally guilty 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:56.000 of that. But you know, for the most part, I 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.120 try to make it a curation of things that I 0:08:58.160 --> 0:09:00.120 find in the world that are great. One thing that 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:04.000 really like about your social media feed is your wife's 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:08.400 a photographer, and so there's always these gorgeous pictures of 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.520 either your family or stuff that she's shooting out in 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:14.160 the world. As you guys travel around. Yeah, yeah, I'm 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:17.840 looking in that regard because the imagery is so important 0:09:17.960 --> 0:09:21.200 on social media. And even though I know less about 0:09:21.240 --> 0:09:24.080 photography and how to work the camera than virtually anybody 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:26.640 I know, my wife does all that, and uh, we're 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:28.640 able to get a good image out there. But you know, 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:30.360 that's that kind of ties into a lot of what 0:09:30.400 --> 0:09:34.480 we're going to discuss today. It's the the image, the representation, 0:09:34.600 --> 0:09:36.800 the thing that you put out there. Because ultimately, what 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:39.040 we're getting around to with all of this is that 0:09:39.320 --> 0:09:42.640 your social media presence is kind of a is a 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:44.400 piece of you, but it is not the whole of you. 0:09:44.480 --> 0:09:47.400 It is a version of yourself. And then everything that 0:09:47.480 --> 0:09:51.120 you consume out there is a version of reality. So 0:09:51.200 --> 0:09:54.960 you have this creation of the subjective self, a creation 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:57.920 of the subjective reality. And that is where we find 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:03.840 ourselves here, Um at the close and the dawn. We're 0:10:03.840 --> 0:10:07.920 all performing ourselves in different ways. It always makes me 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:14.480 think of um, the great monologue play actor, uh Spalding Gray. 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:17.040 I don't know if you've ever listened to Spalding Gray's 0:10:17.040 --> 0:10:19.960 stuff before, but he would give these long, hour long 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:22.520 monologues about events in his life and people felt like 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:24.839 they knew him, they felt like he was their best friend. 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:29.080 And he would say that person who you're listening to 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:32.520 on stage, that's me, but that's not actually me. That's 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:38.360 a performance of myself. And he committed suicide before social 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:40.760 media really got big. So I would I would be 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:44.959 curious to see how what his opinion of Facebook or 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:47.640 Twitter would be, because I think that we're all kind 0:10:47.679 --> 0:10:49.920 of doing the same thing. Now. Yeah, I mean, I've 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:52.840 I've read very compelling arguments that really even outside of 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.280 social media, where none of us are a particular individual, 0:10:56.320 --> 0:10:59.560 where there's kind of this chorus of selves, right, with 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.040 some with louder voices than others, some with with voices 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:05.200 that are trailing off as we age, some with the 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:08.880 voices that are growing louder um. But yeah, the idea 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:12.400 that there's a particular you maybe doesn't even hold up 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:15.199 in the real world or in social media. Yeah, sure, 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:18.440 where that's that's I guess. Uh, this is the hippiest 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:20.040 thing I'm gonna say on stuff to bile your mind. 0:11:20.080 --> 0:11:22.640 The beauty of humanity is where a myriad of identities. 0:11:24.640 --> 0:11:27.280 All right, Well, that on that note, let's let's move 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:29.360 into a little bit let's uh, let's let's get into 0:11:29.360 --> 0:11:32.800 the meat of this episode and uh and discuss where 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.679 we are with social media, where we what the research 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:41.360 is saying. Okay, So, reportedly one in four people worldwide 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:45.760 are on social media, and fort of online adults are 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.199 using multiple social networking sites. That would include both of us. 0:11:50.200 --> 0:11:54.760 On average, Americans spend seven points six hours a month 0:11:55.040 --> 0:11:59.040 using social media. That sounds really low to me. I 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:02.440 would think it would be more like three hours a 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:06.680 day or something like that. There's a lot of of 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:10.640 of using social media while you're doing everything everything else, right, Yeah, exactly, 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:14.000 So I wonder if there's some misreporting going on there 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:18.200 or something. I'm not quite sure. Um, sixty of American 0:12:18.240 --> 0:12:25.680 Facebook users logging daily, of them logging multiple times a day? Again, guilty, 0:12:25.840 --> 0:12:28.200 So I'm I'm even though I'm only doing it in 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.160 the bathroom, it's multiple times a day. Uh. And a 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.400 good starting point for this episode that I found was 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.839 an article called Online Social Networking and Mental Health. It's 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:41.720 written by a guy named Igor Pantic and it was 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:46.640 published in the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking. 0:12:47.720 --> 0:12:50.200 So it's two years old. It's a little there's there's 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.480 a little bit more research that's been published out there, 0:12:52.960 --> 0:12:55.839 but it's basically a review of all the research on 0:12:55.880 --> 0:12:59.000 this topic that was done up until this point. Uh, 0:12:59.040 --> 0:13:00.920 And so we're gonna throw it in along with the 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:04.839 research that we did for this episode. Before we get started, though, 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:10.360 let's let's acknowledge it's difficult to assess social media's effects 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:12.640 on mental health. Most of the studies that we're going 0:13:12.679 --> 0:13:16.480 to present here, they use an approach a methodology of 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:22.840 correlation analysis. And remember, correlation doesn't actually equal causality. So 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:26.480 for example, we can't tell if Facebook causes low self 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:30.600 esteem or if people who already had low self esteem 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:32.760 are more likely to use it. We just we can't 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.079 tell which is the cause and which is the effect. 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:38.520 But regardless, there seems to be a relation, as we're 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:42.439 gonna talk about between low self esteem and Facebook. UM, 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:44.640 So just keep that in mind as we're going through 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.680 these studies. Yeah, and some of the studies we turned 0:13:47.679 --> 0:13:50.160 to as well, like they're they're more general media studies, 0:13:50.160 --> 0:13:53.000 so they may refer either to an earlier mode of 0:13:53.160 --> 0:13:56.600 the Internet they may or social media use. They may 0:13:56.640 --> 0:14:01.240 refer even to other media um services out there or 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:05.440 platforms such as television, so as far as our social 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.400 media age, the place where we're currently standing in the 0:14:08.480 --> 0:14:12.720 needed uh it it all started innocently enough. Um. The 0:14:12.760 --> 0:14:16.840 author Nicholas Carr has a wonderful article from Ian magazine 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.640 published earlier this year titled The Worldwide Cage, in which 0:14:20.640 --> 0:14:23.720 he discusses the rise and in a sense, the spiritual 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:27.040 fall of social media. So you know, he points back 0:14:27.080 --> 0:14:29.520 to the summer of two thousand five just being the 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:32.680 time when when Web two point oh really arrived and 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.480 and pump new life and money into my space flicker 0:14:36.640 --> 0:14:41.440 linked in in the recently launched Facebook. Car rights quote cyberspace, 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:45.720 with its disembodied voices and ethereal avatars, seemed mystical from 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:49.720 the start. It's unearthly vastness a receptacle for the spiritual 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:53.240 yearnings and tropes of the US. What better way, wrote 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:57.720 the philosopher Michael him in The Erotic Ontology of Cyberspace, 0:14:58.960 --> 0:15:02.320 to emulate God knowledge than to create a virtual world 0:15:02.600 --> 0:15:07.200 constituted by bits of information and uh and Car points 0:15:07.240 --> 0:15:10.800 to an August two thousand five Wired magazine cover article 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:13.920 that proclaimed the birth of a new world, empowered by 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:18.080 what he referred to as the electricity of participation. And 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.160 this is the quote from that particular article by Kevin Kelly. 0:15:21.200 --> 0:15:25.080 We are the web. The electricity of participation nudges ordinary 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.560 folks to invest huge hunks of energy and time into 0:15:28.600 --> 0:15:32.080 making free Encyclopedia is creating public tutorials for changing a 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.560 flat tire or cataloging the votes in the Senate. More 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:38.480 and more of the web runs in this mode. One 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.600 study found that of the web is commercial, the rest 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:45.359 runs on duty or passion. So we have this, this 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:49.280 this idea that the electricity of participation. It sounds great, right, 0:15:49.680 --> 0:15:52.840 it does sound great, but it's also from the from 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:57.160 the inside of the media organization looking out. We know 0:15:57.880 --> 0:16:00.000 that this is something that comes around and around again, 0:16:00.000 --> 0:16:02.800 and if you google it you can learn more about it. 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:07.560 User generated content is the term that is used to 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:10.520 describe a lot of what Kevin Kelly is talking about here. 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:16.000 Now everything from reviews on Amazon to comments on a 0:16:16.080 --> 0:16:21.280 YouTube video or every post on Facebook. Right, all of 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:26.800 it is content that's generated that makes somebody money. But 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:29.120 the but the people who are creating and the people 0:16:29.160 --> 0:16:31.240 who are writing it or posting it or taking these 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:35.400 pictures or whatever, they're just doing it. Out of their participations. 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.880 Electricity of participation. Um, And I can't tell you how 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:42.440 many times as I've been working in this business. Every 0:16:42.480 --> 0:16:44.480 couple of years it comes back around again. What if 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:48.000 we figured out some way to get the audience to 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:52.120 make something and then we can make money off of it. Right? Well, 0:16:52.480 --> 0:16:55.640 and for me, the electricity of participation, it makes me think. Certainly, 0:16:55.680 --> 0:16:57.880 you can think of all sorts of positive modes of 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:03.520 people getting involved, participating and creating great things, creating some 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.880 of the most amazing things in human history. But there's 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:09.880 also an electrictyer of participation to say, burning a witch 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:13.960 or something. Sure so yeah, so in these cases, particularly 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:16.959 what Kevin Kelly was talking about, it's really summoning up 0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:20.160 to like the best high minded futuristic ideas of what 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.120 this could mean. But his car lays out these notions 0:17:23.160 --> 0:17:26.639 were essentially blown up by quote over indulged rich guys 0:17:27.280 --> 0:17:31.080 unquote who often went a bit cessational and forecasting the 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:34.040 coming tech utopia. So they based their predictions on their 0:17:34.040 --> 0:17:36.359 early web, which was a smaller system and it was 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:40.399 populated by a smaller sampling of society. Yeah, you know, 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:43.359 I feel like the the ideal here was that like 0:17:43.400 --> 0:17:45.520 the Internet was supposed to become sort of like the 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:49.080 modern era public coffee house, where there would be civilized 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.800 discourse and critical thought and everybody would respect one another. 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.840 And hey, it's early days yet, maybe it'll become that 0:17:55.960 --> 0:17:59.359 at some point. But the most part what we see 0:17:59.640 --> 0:18:02.600 is people trying to express really complicated ideas in a 0:18:02.680 --> 0:18:06.239 hundred and forty characters or less. I'll read one more 0:18:06.320 --> 0:18:08.919 quote from from car here, but I and and encourage 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.800 everyone to check out the article in full length. I'll 0:18:11.840 --> 0:18:13.440 include a link to it on the landing page for 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.280 this episode. But he said, the culture that emerged on 0:18:16.280 --> 0:18:19.320 the network and that now extends deep into our lives 0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:24.240 and psychees, is characterized by frenetic production and consumption. Smartphones 0:18:24.280 --> 0:18:27.880 have made medium machines of us all but little real 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:32.320 empowerment and even less reflectiveness. It's a culture of distraction 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:38.159 and dependency. Uh so here we are, Yeah, yeah, we 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:40.520 really have. I mean, it's it's kind of crazy to 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:44.840 me when I think back on how ingest a little 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.080 over ten years, we've just gone from zero to sixty 0:18:48.119 --> 0:18:51.760 with social media. You know. Um, and this isn't to 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:54.199 be like I'm older or anything like that, but like 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:58.960 I remember getting my first iPod Touch and being like, oh, 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.400 I can take this with me anywhere where there's WiFi. 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:03.560 At the time, I had to have WiFi, and I 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.000 can write an email, or I can take a picture 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:09.600 or whatever, you know. And it was it literally was 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:12.679 like a sci fi thing had happened and just dropped 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:17.280 into my hand. And now it's just every day, you know. 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:19.800 And it's not just every day for our generation or 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:22.680 the generation before ours. I have friends who are baby 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.879 boomers that are in their mid to late sixties, and 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.240 they're using smartphones and Facebook and Twitter just as much 0:19:29.280 --> 0:19:31.840 as the rest of us. It's a misconception to think 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.080 that it's just a tool for young people. Yeah, indeed, 0:19:35.119 --> 0:19:37.480 I mean it's it's everywhere. It's it's through throughout society 0:19:37.520 --> 0:19:39.800 and and the sci fi aspects of it. I can't 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:43.200 help but think back to to Doone Frank Herbert's done, 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:46.200 and the idea of the Butlerian Jahad, where people rose 0:19:46.320 --> 0:19:49.840 up against against machines again, and we're empowered by this 0:19:49.880 --> 0:19:51.960 notion that thou shalt not make machine and the likeness 0:19:51.960 --> 0:19:55.200 of the human mind, which was never completely fleshed out 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.880 in Herbert's books. But it lends itself to different interpretations, 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.040 either the straight up termin or robots are coming to 0:20:01.040 --> 0:20:06.200 get this idea, or machinery. Technology has changed the way 0:20:06.200 --> 0:20:08.159 that we think too much, has changed the way that 0:20:08.200 --> 0:20:11.479 we interact with the world, the way we process the world, 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:15.320 and that there is something inhuman about it it should 0:20:15.320 --> 0:20:18.920 be rebelled against. Well, I'm gonna throw an idea out 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:22.040 here and then maybe let's go to an ad break. Uh. 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:24.320 This is based on a recent sci fi movie I saw. 0:20:24.359 --> 0:20:25.760 I'm not going to say the name because I don't 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:30.439 want to spoil it, but we know there's a theory 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:35.720 that language. Different languages change the way we think. Yeah, yeah, 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:39.159 so if you think of social media as a language, 0:20:39.800 --> 0:20:42.840 then of course the way we think is going to 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:49.840 be uh malleable around that absolutely. All right, Well on that. 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:51.359 Now we're gonna take a quick break and we come back. 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:53.960 We're gonna jump back into into the topic. We're gonna 0:20:53.960 --> 0:20:57.359 get into some more research, some more stats, and see 0:20:57.359 --> 0:21:01.800 where we are in terms of social media sanity. The 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.080 holiday is almost here. You don't have time to go 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:06.840 to the post office. There's traffic, there's sparking. It's gonna 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.879 be packed with everyone mailing holiday gifts and packages, so 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.159 do what we do use stamps dot com instead. 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