Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
Speaker 3: they don't want you to know. Shout out to whatever
Speaker 3: social media app you're on right now, if you're in
Speaker 3: a chat, tell them you're listening to our show.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Why don't weaponize it?
Speaker 5: Oh man, you might as well s already weaponized against us.
Speaker 4: Yeah as well. Turn the tables, flip the script.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, just so we we were talking about this
Speaker 3: just a little bit off air. A question I've been
Speaker 3: asking a lot of people recently. What is the longest
Speaker 3: you have gone without checking your phone?
Speaker 4: No more than a day? I mean a day is
Speaker 4: nearly impossible.
Speaker 5: I fully copped offline to being an absolute phone junkie,
Speaker 5: and I've had to initiate some kind of self imposed
Speaker 5: phone restrictions, like keeping it charging in a different room
Speaker 5: while I do things around the house or work on projects.
Speaker 5: But I'm absolutely addicted to the damn thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to talk about an author, Johann Harry,
Speaker 2: who did a little experiment with that whole thing. But
Speaker 2: when I think about vacations I've taken with my son
Speaker 2: or my family's, those are the times I've put it
Speaker 2: away the most. But I am still constantly checking for
Speaker 2: work stuff, checking for conversations and a text thread, checking
Speaker 2: social media, performance of a video, all that stuff.
Speaker 3: And shout out to Hari Graceland doesn't make it easier either.
Speaker 3: I remember, I think we're talking about the same article
Speaker 3: there too, for a lot of us, or I should
Speaker 3: answer this as well. I've been trying, like you guys,
Speaker 3: to be more intentional about this, I think for a
Speaker 3: lot of us in the audience tonight. Technically, the longest
Speaker 3: you've been without your phone was the first few years
Speaker 3: of childhood and adolescence before you got your own phone.
Speaker 5: Right Well, yeah, I mean, and now it's like you
Speaker 5: can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Kids expect
Speaker 5: to get a phone at a certain age. If they
Speaker 5: don't have one, they feel excluded. It's not impossible to
Speaker 5: deprive them of that. You almost would be looked at
Speaker 5: as some sort of monster by society. How dare you
Speaker 5: not give your kid a phone at age thirteen or whatever?
Speaker 3: You'd be in an out group and that's not good
Speaker 3: for social networking. Quick question, just curious here. What is
Speaker 3: the like, what's the going wisdom now for parents on
Speaker 3: the appropriate age for a kid to have some kind
Speaker 3: of phone, even if it's restricted access like a learner phone.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Matt, wouldn't you say that? There's always the argument
Speaker 4: of the safety.
Speaker 5: That does seem to be a thing that comes up,
Speaker 5: and then of course all the other stuff that follows
Speaker 5: along because you can't really, you know, pick and choose.
Speaker 5: Once they have the thing, they kind of have the thing.
Speaker 5: But what's your philosophy on that?
Speaker 2: Well, we are all connected, and you do want to
Speaker 2: know where your child is right and we have these
Speaker 2: institutional programs like school and daycare that you send your
Speaker 2: child to and you just trust that the adults in
Speaker 2: those places are doing their jobs and doing them well.
Speaker 2: But in the times between it is it is weird
Speaker 2: to think about the transit between school and wherever they're
Speaker 2: going to or you know that as they get a
Speaker 2: little older, going to a friend's house, you want to
Speaker 2: be able to connect to them, and if they don't
Speaker 2: have a personalized device. We don't have landlines and houses anymore.
Speaker 2: You can't call Chris's house anymore and say, hey, Chris,
Speaker 2: is my son doing okay? But I guess you could
Speaker 2: call the parent, which is nice. But yeah, so sorry,
Speaker 2: long witted answer, just to say, I think as soon
Speaker 2: as a child can kind of go out and do
Speaker 2: things on their own, you were going to want as
Speaker 2: a parent to have some sort of direct connection to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's a solid rubric.
Speaker 3: You know, in most countries it's absolutely normal to constantly
Speaker 3: refer to your phone. And I love the point you made.
Speaker 3: Know that there are safety concerns too. We're talking about
Speaker 3: people growing up moving into the wide world. For some
Speaker 3: of us adults, you might constantly need to do it
Speaker 3: for your job, emails, text right. Like you were saying, Matt,
Speaker 3: A ton of people are constantly clicking on social media
Speaker 3: apps your TikTok, Instagram, Facebook x, Snapchat, we chat, all
Speaker 3: the apps. Reddit is social media as well, and it's
Speaker 3: weird how quickly it became normalized. We have to remember
Speaker 3: being normal doesn't necessarily mean a thing is good. So
Speaker 3: as we're looking into in tonight's episode, there are serious
Speaker 3: concerns that social media has become a kind of accidental
Speaker 3: conspiracy against your brain, particularly your attention span.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry what.
Speaker 3: We'll be back after a word from our sponsors. Here
Speaker 3: are the facts. I guess first, we have to explain
Speaker 3: the term social media. It seems like it came out
Speaker 3: of the blue, you know, and no one really questioned
Speaker 3: what it was because we all understood what it was.
Speaker 3: But I think it's worth us digging into it just
Speaker 3: a little.
Speaker 2: For sure. Social media is something we've covered a lot
Speaker 2: on this show, and it is weird to think that
Speaker 2: the text app on your phone is kind of social media,
Speaker 2: A little bit to email, Gmail, that's kind of social media.
Speaker 2: But they but a lot of companies, individuals figured out
Speaker 2: ways to connect human beings even closer to basically, it's
Speaker 2: all a conspiracy to make you overshare on the internet
Speaker 2: and then get some attention for oversharing.
Speaker 5: I mean, the currency is your time, and these apps
Speaker 5: are designed and psychologically designed to make you spend as
Speaker 5: much time as humanly possible and you know, this is
Speaker 5: capitalizing on a very common human need, the idea to
Speaker 5: have a peer group, the idea to be connected with others,
Speaker 5: making clubs, for example. We've been doing that since you know,
Speaker 5: time immemorial. For most of human history, people have gathered
Speaker 5: in groups of shared interests, like minded individuals, you know,
Speaker 5: chopping it up, sharing ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love that point. No, social media and social
Speaker 3: networking are ven diagrams. They're two related, overlapping yet distinct
Speaker 3: concepts because, as you said, people have been so social
Speaker 3: networking since the days of tribes, right, what we have
Speaker 3: in common, and the first thing was the thing we
Speaker 3: have in common is we're related and we want to survive.
Speaker 3: The only thing that has changed about social networking as
Speaker 3: a group of tactics over time was what a giving
Speaker 3: group prioritizes, your tribe, your religion, the state, a career interest,
Speaker 3: who you want to date, et cetera. And then when
Speaker 3: we see the advent of the age of information mass
Speaker 3: communication technology, now social networking just has new vectors in
Speaker 3: group the outgroup. That's not going to change for the
Speaker 3: foreseeable future. Social networking is a way to build communities.
Speaker 3: Social media is a way to build an audience, or
Speaker 3: that's why a lot of people are there. The platforms
Speaker 3: need the user generated content for now until the AI
Speaker 3: slops through, and those users are often hoping to garner
Speaker 3: the large audience possible, which can then be monetized.
Speaker 4: Oh it's interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean it's we're almost entering an era where social
Speaker 5: media celebrities are more powerful or just as powerful than
Speaker 5: traditional celebrities, movie stars, pop stars.
Speaker 4: I mean, a certain generation.
Speaker 5: Cares way more about YouTubers and Instagram influencers than they
Speaker 5: do about you know, film actors for example.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you don't have to look forward to see the
Speaker 3: sudden sea change here. I think about this whenever I'm
Speaker 3: doing a career day. Children of past generations, you know,
Speaker 3: wanted to be president or a famous athlete, right. I
Speaker 3: want to be the next Lebroad or the next Michael Jordan.
Speaker 3: I want to be a rock star. More and more
Speaker 3: kids now dream of being a social media celebrity or
Speaker 3: an influencer. And it was really interesting series of studies
Speaker 3: won by a group called Morning Consult that found social
Speaker 3: media star is the four most popular career aspiration for
Speaker 3: kids these days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes sense. My kid saw our George Washington videos,
Speaker 2: and after that we had a couple more talks about
Speaker 2: what he really likes, what he's into, and he said,
Speaker 2: I want to make videos like you, Dad, And I went,
Speaker 2: oh crap.
Speaker 4: And I think it's.
Speaker 5: Sort of easy to be dismissive of influencers and social
Speaker 5: media stars and all of that, but you know, we
Speaker 5: can tell you firsthand that there's a lot of work
Speaker 5: that goes into it. It does require a constant vigilance
Speaker 5: of posting and creating content and kind of never sleeping
Speaker 5: on it because you can lose that audience as quickly
Speaker 5: as you can gain it. But there is a certain
Speaker 5: sense of frivolousness around this type of celebrity. I would argue,
Speaker 5: it's like you're famous for being famous, you know, yeah,
Speaker 5: Art Dashian level, Right, it's the argument there.
Speaker 2: In the end, it depends on what ideas you're putting
Speaker 2: forth into the world, right, what ideas do you generate
Speaker 2: right in the people that look at your sixty second video?
Speaker 2: And often it is as you know, we kind of
Speaker 2: slid that in there, that is about monetization. Social media
Speaker 2: influencers get used as a way to have ads get
Speaker 2: thrown in people's faces, even if they don't realize it.
Speaker 3: There was a great South Park episode about that, a
Speaker 3: real brutal one. I don't know if you guys remember so.
Speaker 3: And I also love the point that, yeah, it can
Speaker 3: seem frivolous to some generations or some demographics, but it
Speaker 3: makes sense to aspire to these digital heights. You know,
Speaker 3: for a lot of younger folks. Most of the success
Speaker 3: stories you see, most of the media you encounter, it's
Speaker 3: on a platform you enjoy. It's you know, a twitch
Speaker 3: streamer you really like, or if you're into aviation, you
Speaker 3: can go to a certain agglomeration of hashtags and you
Speaker 3: can meet tons of people who will give you short form, dense,
Speaker 3: accurate scientific information about aviation. So we're not trying to
Speaker 3: throw the digital baby out with the bathwater. But it's
Speaker 3: so weird. This is a funny story. Did you guys
Speaker 3: know nobody knows who made up the phrase social media?
Speaker 4: Hmm.
Speaker 5: I guess I would have thought that it would have
Speaker 5: been associated with somebody, like a coined kind of moment, but.
Speaker 3: Some kind of influencer maybe, Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's pretty cut and dry though, right,
Speaker 5: I mean, media, it is a medium. It is the
Speaker 5: conduit for digital socialization. So certain terms like that just
Speaker 5: kind of almost invent themselves, like with a form of
Speaker 5: parallel thinking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's an accurate way to put it.
Speaker 3: If we go to if we go to some great
Speaker 3: conversations Forbes journalist Jeff BERKOVICI had he talked to a
Speaker 3: lot of tech executives from the nineties, right the days
Speaker 3: when AOL was still sending you a CD so you
Speaker 3: didn't run out of Internet. And one of the most
Speaker 3: prominent contenders claiming to create the phrase social media is
Speaker 3: Tina Sharky, who is a former executive at I Village
Speaker 3: and AOL and BabyCenter dot com. And she described it
Speaker 3: kind of the way you said. No. When she's talking
Speaker 3: this journalist back in twenty ten, she says, it's not
Speaker 3: service media, it's not quite informational media. It's social media.
Speaker 3: It wasn't media we were creating, it was media we
Speaker 3: were facilitating. And I think that's a big point, right,
Speaker 3: because you are, if you were using these products, you
Speaker 3: are making the stuff that they want to cycle through
Speaker 3: in between the ads.
Speaker 2: So that's like in the nineties, ninety fourish times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's when she said we know the origin. I
Speaker 3: feel like at OED, we know the origin starts popping
Speaker 3: up in the early nineties. No one's quite sure when,
Speaker 3: and probably one of the I know you guys love this.
Speaker 3: One of the favorite contenders for the crown of coining
Speaker 3: social media is another AOL guy, or a couple of them.
Speaker 3: Ted leons I'm not sure how to pronounce that, and
Speaker 3: Steve Case. They said they were throwing it around, and
Speaker 3: Ted has the best line where he says, uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: if it really mattered, I'm sure we can find a
Speaker 3: deck somewhere that talked about social networking and social media
Speaker 3: from that time. But what does it matter?
Speaker 4: Okay, weird flex.
Speaker 2: Steve, Yeah, well, Ted, just everybody who doesn't know a
Speaker 2: deck is like a PowerPoint presentation.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, techy kind of business type presentations. He's basically saying,
Speaker 5: we did it, but I'm not gonna lie. It's not
Speaker 5: worth my time to show the receipts, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 2: There's another guy named Darryl Berry that has kind of
Speaker 2: a similar thing that he's like, yeah, we were throwing
Speaker 2: around the term back in the day, in around ninety four.
Speaker 3: I think everybody was yeah, yeah, yeah, and these folks
Speaker 3: are right, by the way, there is no official award
Speaker 3: for coining that phrase. It'subiquitous. Nobody owns it. What you
Speaker 3: get are bragging rights. But still, a rose is a
Speaker 3: rose is a rose. Right. Social media, whatever you call it,
Speaker 3: is one of the most successful communication phenomena in all
Speaker 3: of human history, and you don't have to look far
Speaker 3: to see it. The statistics are crazy, and we're also
Speaker 3: all of us in full disclosure recording this. Now we
Speaker 3: are part of those statistics, folks.
Speaker 5: Hell Man, the app we used to record could in
Speaker 5: some way be considered like a facilitator of social media
Speaker 5: at the very least.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's count. Let's count that app riverside in this conversation.
Speaker 3: As of October.
Speaker 2: Twelve, guys, was Dungeons and Dragons the first social media media?
Speaker 3: It could be Yeah, that's yeah, I guess. Yet we
Speaker 3: don't have to. We should then carve out the definition.
Speaker 3: We're talking about current electronics social media, social media that
Speaker 3: uses the Internet. If you're looking at that, then I
Speaker 3: don't think this statistic surprises anybody. As of October twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four, kind of the best time we have recent
Speaker 3: numbers for there were five point five two billion people
Speaker 3: somehow using the Internet across the globe. That's more than
Speaker 3: a two thirds of the global population overall.
Speaker 5: Well it's interesting too because in the really early days,
Speaker 5: AOL type days they were talking about I remember having
Speaker 5: a friend whose mom was super online, early adopter, and
Speaker 5: she was into all of these kind of chat rooms,
Speaker 5: and there was this whole thing. There's a thing called
Speaker 5: the Palace that I remember, where you could have a
Speaker 5: little avatar that you could create with like a rudimentary
Speaker 5: photo editing you know, Photoshop type graphic editing app. And
Speaker 5: they were all just like these little avatars on these backgrounds.
Speaker 5: They were like kind of like you know, think of
Speaker 5: like wallpaper, like old school like desktop wallpaper. But it
Speaker 5: was like, you know, some sort of weird clue style
Speaker 5: mansion and theme, different rooms, a tiki party, whatever the heck,
Speaker 5: and you would be these little JPEGs and there would
Speaker 5: be speech bubbles coming out of your you know, little
Speaker 5: jpeg And that was a form of social media, but
Speaker 5: it was a lot more niche and you had to
Speaker 5: kind of be in the know to find those groups.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember Ultima Online in nineteen ninety seven when I
Speaker 2: could chat and hang out with my friends in an
Speaker 2: online environment that was in game, right, yes, and we
Speaker 2: could hunt monsters together fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yet I remember earlier things like the BBS stuff, the
Speaker 3: bulletin boards right where you would post for specific forums.
Speaker 3: A lot of those got weird, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: This is all presidential right, This is a sets a
Speaker 3: precedent for the more than five point two zero bill
Speaker 3: users of social media networks across the globe. So the
Speaker 3: vast majority of people who are on the Internet in
Speaker 3: the first place are on a social media network. That's
Speaker 3: sixty to sixty four percent of the entire human population.
Speaker 3: And no matter what people might say about, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: quitting meta or whatever, those numbers keep on rising year
Speaker 3: after year after year.
Speaker 2: Do you think that accounts for individual users or people
Speaker 2: who have you know, different social media accounts or you know,
Speaker 2: like somebody who has two or three Facebook accounts, or
Speaker 2: somebody who has you know, multiple Instagrams or multiple stuff.
Speaker 2: I mean, I just I wonder if you could designate it.
Speaker 5: Out depend on the nature of the metric, like who's
Speaker 5: doing the measuring, Like if it's an industry thing, then
Speaker 5: it would probably benefit the industry to count each of
Speaker 5: those as separate, like the way downloads are counted kind
Speaker 5: of unusually in pot casting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cough cough, I didn't. I didn't pull the specific
Speaker 3: numbers from like a marketing place because to your point, no,
Speaker 3: I think they would be more incentivized or a private
Speaker 3: company would be more incentivized to as Homer Simpsons said
Speaker 3: him big in their numbers. So I believe this statistic
Speaker 3: is just counting individual people, no matter how many accounts
Speaker 3: they have. So one tick mark is a person with
Speaker 3: five different Instagram accounts or five different Reddit accounts where
Speaker 3: they argue with each other, and it's counting them the
Speaker 3: same as one person who just has their one Snapchat
Speaker 3: or what have you.
Speaker 5: Still a pretty staggering number, however, it's counting. I think
Speaker 5: people should try to be more like Christopher Walkin. Have
Speaker 5: you seen the news making the rounds lately. He's never
Speaker 5: owned a cell phone, he doesn't have any streaming. He
Speaker 5: has to watch episodes of Succession on like DVDs that
Speaker 5: they send him in the mail. I just don't know
Speaker 5: there's something charming now about that kind of unplugged off
Speaker 5: the grid attitude, because it is increasingly more and more
Speaker 5: difficult to accomplish and to just not be kind of
Speaker 5: like ostracized by society.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it also gives him, uh, you know, it gives
Speaker 3: us a chance to shout out, Christopher Walken, you know,
Speaker 3: good on you for getting up getting on board with
Speaker 3: DVDs man for.
Speaker 4: Sure keeping keeping keeping physical media alive.
Speaker 3: Well, for him, it might be new. He might have said, look,
Speaker 3: a VHS was good enough for me.
Speaker 5: This is this guy is the only new piece of
Speaker 5: technology that I will touch.
Speaker 4: And great, d answer that guy.
Speaker 3: And look for some of us, this massive proliferation of
Speaker 3: social media and online existence is great. Podcasters are part
Speaker 3: of that. It guarantees folks like us can have increasing
Speaker 3: potential avenues for sharing our work. The nutso thing is
Speaker 3: that all of the big social media apps or platforms
Speaker 3: kind of have their own shiny statistics and specialities. Right.
Speaker 3: We know that Facebook, even though here in the US
Speaker 3: a lot of us might say Facebook, that's for old people,
Speaker 3: it has the lie and share of active social media users.
Speaker 3: If you're just you know, again going one person counts
Speaker 3: for whatever they're doing. It has three point zero seven
Speaker 3: billion active users across the globe in twenty twenty four. Matt, again,
Speaker 3: you know, we'd have to get under the hood of
Speaker 3: the metrics. That's pretty impressive, but the methodology could be suspect.
Speaker 3: And that's not for Instagram. That's just for Facebook. And
Speaker 3: we have to remember, especially in developing countries, Facebook is
Speaker 3: the Internet. A lot of people are only interacting on
Speaker 3: their I have of course right by me. A lot
Speaker 3: of people are only interacting on their phone, and they're
Speaker 3: only really going to stuff through Facebook. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Facebook is the first one that popped up and
Speaker 2: so popular, and it became a place for families to connect.
Speaker 2: I know my family used that way. A lot of
Speaker 2: my friends they still keep up with their families via Facebook.
Speaker 2: I know that using that like if I jump on
Speaker 2: and check it, and I don't do it very often.
Speaker 2: There are people that I went to high school with
Speaker 2: that are still on Facebook active doing that thing. And
Speaker 2: it is so strange for me, just because I kind
Speaker 2: I gave up that ship a long time ago because
Speaker 2: I kind of felt like I had to. And it's
Speaker 2: exactly what we're talking about today, the addictive nature of
Speaker 2: this stuff and where your attention goes. But it does
Speaker 2: feel like you will be missing out if you do
Speaker 2: not have a Facebook account to keep up with the
Speaker 2: folks that you knew around the time when Facebook came about.
Speaker 5: I keep the Messenger app on my phone just in
Speaker 5: case somebody who's more of a Facebook person hits me
Speaker 5: up that way, but I don't ever look at it,
Speaker 5: and I've exclusively kind of migrated to Instagram. This is
Speaker 5: more of like a visual form, I guess of social media,
Speaker 5: which I enjoy. I follow a lot of like graphic
Speaker 5: artists and designers and things like that, but there's also
Speaker 5: a lot of good reposts from other social media platforms
Speaker 5: end up on there. But of course it's also owned
Speaker 5: and operated by Madass, so you.
Speaker 2: Know, and it just feels like one of those things
Speaker 2: that has been around for so long. That's why their
Speaker 2: numbers are so crazy. It's not because it's superior or
Speaker 2: something like that. It has just been around. It kind
Speaker 2: of reminds me of bud shows.
Speaker 3: And yeah, just to add to like the personal experiences
Speaker 3: that we're sharing here, I don't trust Messenger enough to
Speaker 3: have it on any phone that I would use, so
Speaker 3: I keep one computer with desktop access to Facebook and Messenger.
Speaker 3: And I'm a little sour on it too.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: It's it's a first of the post thing, But also
Speaker 3: you kind of have to thread that needle of you
Speaker 3: want to meet people where they're at. Right, if there
Speaker 3: is a loved one that is more active on this
Speaker 3: thing and you worry about them or you want to
Speaker 3: check in with them, then you naturally are going to
Speaker 3: go the easiest route, right, the best way to find
Speaker 3: them and interact with them. So there's a give and
Speaker 3: take to all of these things. For example, TikTok has
Speaker 3: only nine hundred million users in twenty twenty four, but
Speaker 3: those users spend an average of fifty eight minutes and
Speaker 3: twenty four seconds on it every twenty four hours. That
Speaker 3: works out that twenty three hours thirty minutes or so
Speaker 3: each month. Again, it's why ballpark average, but that's almost
Speaker 3: a full day out of each month when you add
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I'm you know, I am no exception.
Speaker 5: I don't use TikTok, but I definitely scroll some Instagram
Speaker 5: reels and stories, you know, pretty chronically. And when you
Speaker 5: do see that screen time adding up, if you dare
Speaker 5: to check the stats on your device, it can be
Speaker 5: pretty staggering.
Speaker 3: Pretty arrowing, especially if you're twenty two percent of US
Speaker 3: teens who spend two to three hours per day on
Speaker 3: average on TikTok. Look, on the surface, is a huge
Speaker 3: success story right now. Imagine we're social media execs. Our
Speaker 3: platform has replaced so much older media for other people, TV, radio,
Speaker 3: long form film, reading newspapers. But the problem is for
Speaker 3: the critics the way that they teach you to encounter
Speaker 3: and interrogate and digest information. So the big question, could
Speaker 3: regular social media use like we all do, could it
Speaker 3: actually make you less intelligent?
Speaker 5: We'll find out after a quick word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. Collect sigh of relief at
Speaker 3: our cliffhanger. There. No, it's not going to automatically knock
Speaker 3: your IQ down twenty points.
Speaker 5: Or whatever, not like the long term effects of leed
Speaker 5: exposure to the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2: But it can make you less effective at using your intelligence.
Speaker 3: It can knock down your performance on tests including IQ
Speaker 3: test for sure. It's because it appears to have over time,
Speaker 3: clear and damaging effects on things like comprehension, memory, retention,
Speaker 3: and most troublingly and most well researched at this point,
Speaker 3: attention span.
Speaker 5: Well, the thing about social media in that respect is,
Speaker 5: at least as far as I'm concerned, is it sort
Speaker 5: of promotes this idea that you can do all the
Speaker 5: things at one time right equally well, and that's just
Speaker 5: not true. It's this like myth, this kind of lie
Speaker 5: that we've been sold that you can like multitask by
Speaker 5: you know, looking having fifty tabs open, looking at different
Speaker 5: articles and also scrolling your social media and watching a
Speaker 5: movie in the background. And the reality is we only
Speaker 5: have a finite amount of attention to give, and when
Speaker 5: we start cutting it and cutting it and cutting it,
Speaker 5: it's almost like we're not giving anything to any one thing.
Speaker 5: It's all so far flung that we're kind of not
Speaker 5: really doing anything. It's like a jack of all trades,
Speaker 5: master of none kind of mentality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well said, do you want to We'll get into
Speaker 3: that further in depth in a little bit, nol, Do
Speaker 3: you want to introduce us to Tessa Nussenbaum.
Speaker 5: Absolutely writing for The Standard in December of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 5: like so many other folks over the past few decades,
Speaker 5: she anecdotally noticed something kind of disturbing that she was
Speaker 5: having a hard time reading, researching, and writing. Just every
Speaker 5: couple of minutes, it would seem she had almost unconsciously
Speaker 5: this urge to stop what she was working on, actively
Speaker 5: working on, pickup her phone for a quick break, and
Speaker 5: then boom, before you know it, you're just locked down
Speaker 5: to that doom scroll.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and let's talk about why this is so important
Speaker 2: coming from Tessa specifically, she is writing for The Standard,
Speaker 2: which is a school paper for the American School in London,
Speaker 2: which means that she is a student giving you direct
Speaker 2: access to a basically a teenager's mind as they are
Speaker 2: going through this. And it's a teenager that's intelligent enough
Speaker 2: to write this kind of paper and have the self
Speaker 2: awareness right as she's actively going through it. It's not
Speaker 2: no offense, guys. It's not us looking back on our
Speaker 2: teenage years and thinking about it. This is somebody in
Speaker 2: that moment knowing what it feels like.
Speaker 3: In situ immedia arrests. Yeah. And no matter what Nussin
Speaker 3: Bouten does, no matter how many times she attempts to
Speaker 3: scope in and focus she finds, she continually returns back
Speaker 3: to the apps before any significant amount of time is passed.
Speaker 3: So this leads her on a disturbing journey of discovery,
Speaker 3: and it's one that we see echoed by momultiple other students,
Speaker 3: multiple other journalists, as well as a small army of researchers, marketers,
Speaker 3: and academics and of course social media giants. This is
Speaker 3: what you find from all these reports, anecdotal and quantitative.
Speaker 3: Social media is purposely designed to be addictive. You didn't
Speaker 3: get a dopamine rush from that last post or real
Speaker 3: or interaction that you know, that singing raven didn't quite
Speaker 3: do it for you, No worries, don't bother thinking too deeply.
Speaker 3: There's a shiny other video about a raven. It's also short.
Speaker 3: Just scroll down.
Speaker 4: So much good COVID content.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know what it reminds me of, guys,
Speaker 5: is the time that we all went to Vegas together
Speaker 5: and sort of, you know, strolled the casino floors and
Speaker 5: honestly I got sucked in to some of those bright
Speaker 5: and shiny and noisy video you know, gambling machines. It's
Speaker 5: a very similar thing. You're chasing that. When you're chasing
Speaker 5: that as the effects and the the graphics that explode
Speaker 5: across the screen, it's very similar to chasing that piece
Speaker 5: of content that scratches just that right psychological edge.
Speaker 3: You could call it over simulation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh for sure, it's rapid fire novelty. I think
Speaker 2: there's something to that, and.
Speaker 3: It's not how the human brain evolved to digest information,
Speaker 3: not necessarily, not at this level and not at this
Speaker 3: cadence when you don't have access to frenetic, fast moving cavalcades.
Speaker 3: This endless ephemera, that's what a lot of it is, right,
Speaker 3: mixed in with things of note. Then you're forced to
Speaker 3: really think about information you encounter. You analyze it, you
Speaker 3: synthesize it, you digest, you connect it with other pieces
Speaker 3: of information you have encountered and assimilated before. That's why
Speaker 3: you're able to think more critically. It also allows you
Speaker 3: the superpower of sniffing out false claims and bs uh.
Speaker 3: It's pretty big and it's a muscle, rights, That's only
Speaker 3: a cliche because it's true. Your brain is a collection
Speaker 3: of different cognitive muscles. What happens when this set of
Speaker 3: muscles the ability to analyze and exercise critical thought. What
Speaker 3: happens when it gets atrophied or muted? You get a
Speaker 3: processing issue?
Speaker 4: Right, Well, you're not actually doing anything.
Speaker 5: I mean, you mentioned the terms of the word simulation, Ben,
Speaker 5: It's like it's stimulation simulation, you know, you're actually just
Speaker 5: getting all of this. You're living this whole kind of
Speaker 5: internal you know, life without leaving your couch or without
Speaker 5: looking up from your phone. So it's almost like you're
Speaker 5: you're living but not really living. It's it's a very
Speaker 5: matrix y kind of you know, proposition.
Speaker 3: It also codifies the ways of which you can participate
Speaker 3: in information, right, the ways you can respond to a thing.
Speaker 3: And you have you know, like comment, et cetera. You
Speaker 3: don't have the same ability to imagine or interrogate a
Speaker 3: response as you would if you were, say, reading a book.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, think about how exciting that activity is, right,
Speaker 2: having something new hit your face, your mind, your ears, everything,
Speaker 2: your you know, your eyes that quickly something new, something
Speaker 2: different every time you do it. Take one little action
Speaker 2: with your finger, and something new happens.
Speaker 5: You don't have to work for it. You don't have
Speaker 5: to like really put in that much effort. It's just
Speaker 5: kind of right there, presented to you on a silver platter,
Speaker 5: and it learns what you like to Sorry, no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, you're right. But that versus as you're saying,
Speaker 2: bent reading a book, sitting there and going through words
Speaker 2: and synthesizing those words into ideas and thoughts and images
Speaker 2: in your own head that those two things compared. One
Speaker 2: is so easy and exciting. The other is could be
Speaker 2: exciting if you really thought about it, but it it
Speaker 2: is less exciting on the surface, and the immediacy of
Speaker 2: the excitement that you get isn't there when you're thinking
Speaker 2: about a book or doing chores or you know, just
Speaker 2: doing anything else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk about let's talk about this as we
Speaker 3: hone in on that. There's a somewhat controversial study where
Speaker 3: people will tell you what's controversial in twenty fifteen by
Speaker 3: the eggheads of Microsoft, and they found the following. You
Speaker 3: can clock an overall trend as we step through this
Speaker 3: in two thousand in the year two thousand. Excuse me,
Speaker 3: it's the awkward as that that's what I always think about.
Speaker 3: I feel like you need to add someone on there anyway,
Speaker 3: the straight up two thousand, Microsoft found the average human
Speaker 3: attention span and their estimation was twelve seconds. That does
Speaker 3: not sound impressive, honestly, So try it at home. Turn
Speaker 3: on a timer, don't look at anything, don't listen to anything,
Speaker 3: maybe just close your eyes and breathe, wait and see
Speaker 3: how long twelve seconds really is, which is why we're
Speaker 3: not going to do it on the show, because we
Speaker 3: hate dead air. Twelve seconds so long for us. That's
Speaker 3: the idea I had originally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you should use your original idea.
Speaker 5: Let's meditate, guys, let's take it. Come on as the
Speaker 5: least we can do. We owe it to David Lynch okay,
Speaker 5: in his memory. Let's meditate for twelve seconds.
Speaker 2: We should put some sound in there, right, all right,
Speaker 2: ocean waves.
Speaker 3: Perhaps I'll count down to from three and then I
Speaker 3: get to one. Give us a beep. I'll start a
Speaker 3: timer here for twelve seconds.
Speaker 2: If you're driving, obviously, you know, maintain your eyes, your
Speaker 2: eyes open.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, do this when you're not operating machinery.
Speaker 4: All right?
Speaker 6: Three to one?
Speaker 4: Interminable?
Speaker 5: God, what a waste of time. No, I'm getting it's important.
Speaker 5: Still in this is important. Mindfulness is important. We have
Speaker 5: to claw that back in lives.
Speaker 3: How long did that twelve seconds feel for you, folks,
Speaker 3: assuming you weren't, you know, hopping on your phone, how
Speaker 3: did your thoughts fly in that short length of time.
Speaker 3: It's interesting, especially we consider again the Microsoft study, which
Speaker 3: people say is imperfect. In twenty thirteen, the same study
Speaker 3: found the average attention span had dropped down to eight seconds,
Speaker 3: as Nisenbou pointed out, and as a lot of other
Speaker 3: people clocked as well. According to Microsoft, that attention span
Speaker 3: was shorter than that of the average goldfish. These little
Speaker 3: lunatics can stay focused on something for about nine seconds
Speaker 3: if it interests them that if it's food.
Speaker 4: Could last, that thing be a goldfish. The idea of like, you.
Speaker 5: Know, that is as a superpower, not a bug, you know,
Speaker 5: being able to clear your mind and not remember the past.
Speaker 3: Which is maybe a maybe good advice. It depends, you know.
Speaker 3: There are other studies that find different specific nuts and
Speaker 3: bolts numbers, but they all kind of map out that
Speaker 3: same trend. Like doctor Gloria Mark you can listen to
Speaker 3: you could read her work, and you can also listen
Speaker 3: to a couple of podcasts she's done. She found that
Speaker 3: in two thousand and four, the average attention to just
Speaker 3: any kind of screen was about two minutes and thirty seconds,
Speaker 3: and then years after that it declined to like seventy
Speaker 3: five seconds, and then by about twenty twenty three to
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four the number drop to forty five seconds,
Speaker 3: so much less weird right, but also still the same trend.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about just reading an article that is
Speaker 2: on a phone or on a screen of any kind,
Speaker 2: like when we're doing our research. Think back ten years ago, guys,
Speaker 2: Think about the ads that would show up if you
Speaker 2: were reading an article on a place like CNN or
Speaker 2: Fox News, any of that stuff. Think about the ad
Speaker 2: space that would be taken up on the screen and
Speaker 2: how it functioned on that screen. Sure, then think back
Speaker 2: to early you know, if you were on AOL news
Speaker 2: or something like, when you're getting it a full article
Speaker 2: that you're reading. The experience, at least in my mind,
Speaker 2: was that of reading a book with every once in
Speaker 2: a while and ad showing up on the sides, on
Speaker 2: the rails, or an ad showing up in the center
Speaker 2: between paragraphs, but every once in a while.
Speaker 3: Not inundated all around, not where you had to actually
Speaker 3: search for the thing you were trying to read on
Speaker 3: the page.
Speaker 5: Yes, not only that, though, I mean it just feels
Speaker 5: like the content has just overall been tailored to that
Speaker 5: experience and just gotten shorter, like each piece of content
Speaker 5: is an ad in and of itself, and rather than
Speaker 5: having like long form writing journalism obviously there's still folks
Speaker 5: out there that do that. It's about having tons of
Speaker 5: little nuggety bits to serve these ads.
Speaker 2: Well, okay, so just but just I had that experience
Speaker 2: reading a Guardian article today where this article was written
Speaker 2: by Johan Harry that we mentioned at the top of
Speaker 2: the show. It is written in actual paragraphs, and then
Speaker 2: I realized, why does this feel so strange to me?
Speaker 2: Because I then looked at some of the other articles
Speaker 2: that I had opened my other tabs, and they are
Speaker 2: literally sentences, then a break, then sentence, then a break,
Speaker 2: then a break, then a break after sentence after sentence.
Speaker 2: And these companies, a lot of them, are putting ads
Speaker 2: between every third sentence or something, and in the paragraphs
Speaker 2: you get at least three or four paragraphs before you
Speaker 2: get an ad break. And just the way content is
Speaker 2: being tailored to not it's not to make you understand
Speaker 2: the concepts that are written in the article or anything
Speaker 2: like that. It is to get those ads hitting your
Speaker 2: face as rapidly as they can, and you only if
Speaker 2: you can break it up by sentence. You only need,
Speaker 2: you know, three or four paragraphs worth of thought in
Speaker 2: order to sell the same number of ads that this
Speaker 2: huge Johan Harri article had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's why some people will go toward ad blockers,
Speaker 3: which becomes its own argument, right, because then are you
Speaker 3: making it ultimately impossible for those journalists to do that
Speaker 3: same level of work you.
Speaker 4: Know exactly well.
Speaker 5: And it also creates an environment where there are fewer
Speaker 5: And maybe this is just conjecture on my part, but
Speaker 5: it would seem that it creates an environment where the
Speaker 5: demand for that real, hard hitting long form stuff, at
Speaker 5: least online is significantly diminished because it does not fit
Speaker 5: that new or rubric to maximize sales dollars.
Speaker 3: Do you mean demand from an audience or readers or
Speaker 3: do you mean demand from corporation?
Speaker 5: Corporation the people that are paying the journalists, the people
Speaker 5: that are filling the pipes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, the and the ads just one last thing here.
Speaker 2: The ads are not your standard two thousand and eight.
Speaker 2: You know a picture right that has some information on
Speaker 2: it that is trying to.
Speaker 4: Product sound videos.
Speaker 2: It is it's like scrolling through social media as those
Speaker 2: ads load, and you're going through and try again. CNN.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but I cannot read stuff on your page
Speaker 2: unless I alter your page so that I can read
Speaker 2: it it sucks.
Speaker 3: Sorry, and so yeah, it's perfect and it's honest. And
Speaker 3: going back to what we're saying about, you know, Harry's work,
Speaker 3: which we'll get into later, and then also Mark's work.
Speaker 3: Harry is a journalist, right, but heavily researched into this
Speaker 3: and as well as you know, even the controversial Microsoft study.
Speaker 3: We see that this overall trend has come about. Now,
Speaker 3: why do the numbers seem to differentiate and why do
Speaker 3: we say their commonalities are more powerful than their differences?
Speaker 3: Will tell you after a word from our sponsors and
Speaker 3: we've returned. All right, First, it's important to note not
Speaker 3: all of the numbers agree. That's I would argue you, guys,
Speaker 3: that's probably likely to the nature of the sample size,
Speaker 3: the demographics of the people in a sample size, where
Speaker 3: they are life, the types of media they are consuming,
Speaker 3: their education level, and so on. You know, if you
Speaker 3: went and you asked a group of a group of
Speaker 3: people who are academics and all they do is study
Speaker 3: the Old Testament, their attention span ratings are going to be,
Speaker 3: you know, a little bit higher than average.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't you also say that for generations that like grew
Speaker 5: up completely online, like there's really nothing to measure that
Speaker 5: change with. It's just brains have been wired from the start.
Speaker 5: And then the quest and then becomes like, is it
Speaker 5: just a new way of dividing attention?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're measuring the effectiveness of the platforms as
Speaker 2: well with those folks, right, how effective has Instagram become?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you would you would be able to compare
Speaker 3: gen Z. You would just need to take a group
Speaker 3: of people of the same age who were not from
Speaker 3: a part of the world where this where cellphal technology
Speaker 3: was ubiquitous, right, So you could maybe see it that way.
Speaker 3: But then it becomes who's going to fund the study?
Speaker 5: I guess what I'm saying though, is like, you know,
Speaker 5: my kid is gen Z, and my kid's best friends
Speaker 5: got to twin brothers who are the most gen alpha
Speaker 5: of kids I've ever seen brain rod digit exactly. But
Speaker 5: it's like they are also intensely creative and weird with
Speaker 5: their creativity. So there's something to be said about that too,
Speaker 5: Like I don't want to just completely demonize this stuff
Speaker 5: and say the kids there's no hope because of this
Speaker 5: toxic internet culture. Like there's something about the way the
Speaker 5: brain is wired and these folks that are like online
Speaker 5: from birth. That is different and is interesting. I don't
Speaker 5: know what it means, but I've witnessed it, and there
Speaker 5: is something going on with these kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a similar argument to the older one about
Speaker 3: Indigo children, which is a whole different bag of badgers.
Speaker 3: And also it's a great tip. It reminds me of
Speaker 3: the second aspect that we have to talk about with
Speaker 3: these studies, which is attention is also not necessarily across
Speaker 3: the brain and across the world hardwired to the media
Speaker 3: you're encountering so much as it is hardwired to the
Speaker 3: task at hand. If you like reading in general, you're
Speaker 3: going to stick with the text longer than someone who
Speaker 3: doesn't really like reading. If you are playing your favorite
Speaker 3: video game, you might experience a similar level of focus.
Speaker 3: If you're studying for a test on a subject that
Speaker 3: you really dig, then you're probably not gonna have as
Speaker 3: tough a time focusing as in like, let's say you
Speaker 3: hate what's a subject? People hate? H math?
Speaker 4: Okay, you know.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 5: Some people love it and are great at it, and
Speaker 5: some people are inherently great at it and has an
Speaker 5: aptitude and a type of attention that is very well
Speaker 5: suited for that kind of analysis, you know. I mean,
Speaker 5: I know, I'm stating the obvious. Some people are better
Speaker 5: at some things than others. But for me, I'm so
Speaker 5: bad at math. But when I work on music and
Speaker 5: I'm engaging with like sound design or synthesis, it's a
Speaker 5: way of interacting with math, which is a subject that
Speaker 5: I hate. I just had to find a different path
Speaker 5: to it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I just experienced this with my son. We were studying
Speaker 2: for a test on Indigenous Americans and all, like all
Speaker 2: the aspects like a social studies test that he was
Speaker 2: working on, and he wanted to sit with me and
Speaker 2: study and just go over stuff, and he wanted to
Speaker 2: learn it at all. But then we sat down to
Speaker 2: learn about pollution, and he did not like that subject
Speaker 2: because it made him feel a little scared and uncomfortable
Speaker 2: and all of that. So that that anxiety that he
Speaker 2: felt is what caused him to lose focus when we
Speaker 2: were attempting to study that one. And I wonder if
Speaker 2: overall generalized anxiety has anything to do with the desire
Speaker 2: to move to these social media things versus you know,
Speaker 2: actually studying what's happening in the news or something.
Speaker 3: Like that, right, the brain wants to uh, well yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: So here's the brain and the heart want what they want.
Speaker 3: A task accomplishment is really what it is. And the
Speaker 3: immediate gratification of learning something easy that is not hard
Speaker 3: to your brain, You're still accomplishing a task, right. And
Speaker 3: I think anxiety to that point does play a role
Speaker 3: in it. I'm not going to get into an anecdote,
Speaker 3: but I've definitely encountered what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: Well, in this in case, it was a subject that
Speaker 2: was hard, that had a ton of dense information, but
Speaker 2: he was into it. And the other thing was a
Speaker 2: ton of generalized information but it made him nervous.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And the idea here regarding anxiety, it kind of speaks
Speaker 3: to the level of there are certain things people may
Speaker 3: be more comfortable learning, right, and the brain hates tackling
Speaker 3: something and then having to get it wrong and go
Speaker 3: back and redo it. That's another big part of it.
Speaker 3: So the brain is naturally incentivized to look for easily
Speaker 3: accomplishable task and seeing a video and reacting to it
Speaker 3: and hitting that like button is an easily accomplishable task,
Speaker 3: and the brain response and says boom, we just did something.
Speaker 3: Here's a little shout at dopamine. Now it's on to
Speaker 3: another task. We are killing it today.
Speaker 5: Yeah, stimulation, simulation. It's weird, man, and we're all totally
Speaker 5: subject to it. You know, there's really very hard to escape,
Speaker 5: you know, sort of completely unplugging, and that's just not
Speaker 5: very practical anymore.
Speaker 3: Right, And I wonder too, if there's some attention span alarmism.
Speaker 3: Right to which degree is this really affecting people? I mean,
Speaker 3: is it hyperbolic? A we are we overdoing it? With concern?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, I'm with you, Matt, and I will
Speaker 5: say that I do have a hard time sitting and
Speaker 5: focusing and reading a book, reading a novel. We do
Speaker 5: a ton of short form reading and papers and things
Speaker 5: like that for the podcast. But I have really struggled
Speaker 5: with maybe it's that multitask culture that we've sort of
Speaker 5: become a part of, you know, against our will maybe
Speaker 5: at times, but that's not great. I'd love to be
Speaker 5: able to enjoy a book and enjoy a moment of
Speaker 5: stillness and meditate. But I'm also very high functioning, and
Speaker 5: I enjoy my job, and I spend good time with
Speaker 5: my family, and I don't feel like I'm living some
Speaker 5: sort of existential nightmare.
Speaker 4: So I don't know. I think results may vary.
Speaker 2: I think I think my own I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think I've read a little too much to Yoan Hari.
Speaker 2: He wrote a book called Stolen Focus, Why you Can't
Speaker 2: pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. And I
Speaker 2: am on board the guys arguing basically, we need to
Speaker 2: start a revolution against this stuff, because how do you
Speaker 2: solve hard problems if you can't focus on a hard
Speaker 2: problem for years? You know? And I don't know.
Speaker 5: Would you guys argue that in some small ways social
Speaker 5: media could be considered an existential threat, Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 3: Not to maybe an individual, but to an individual's abilities,
Speaker 3: and perhaps to a civilization's capacities or capabilities.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 5: And and secondly, are we not, especially in this country,
Speaker 5: especially with some of the oligarch type situations that are
Speaker 5: creeping into politics and government, you know, living in a
Speaker 5: society where the knock on effects of this stuff are
Speaker 5: more or less ignored, and the research into how this
Speaker 5: will affect people down the road is absolutely not part
Speaker 5: of the conversation when it comes to figuring out how
Speaker 5: to get the most eyeballs on a product or Yah.
Speaker 3: It's not part of maybe the more the wider public
Speaker 3: mainstream conversation, but I do believe the downward trend and
Speaker 3: intention span does have what we could call knock on consequences.
Speaker 3: You know, cognitively, look, and I think this is so
Speaker 3: important because I hate when people are condescending about this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. Cognitively, you're not less intelligent for using
Speaker 3: social media. It is more difficult for you to do
Speaker 3: certain things to become engaged in long term focused to
Speaker 3: what we call deep thought. We've mentioned it before. But
Speaker 3: the theory I always like to I've made this up,
Speaker 3: so I okay, you know what my opinion then not.
Speaker 3: A theory unpublished is if you think of learning on
Speaker 3: an X and Y axis, learning anything right, and the
Speaker 3: Y axis above and below that X that is the
Speaker 3: depth of knowledge, right, So the deeper you go on
Speaker 3: the why, the more you know about a single thing.
Speaker 3: The X axis is how many different kinds of things
Speaker 3: you know? And to the jack of all trades master
Speaker 3: of none concept proposed earlier people used to have very
Speaker 3: deep knowledge about very specific things, and now we kind
Speaker 3: of all know the first paragraph of Wikipedia on a
Speaker 3: thing but how.
Speaker 2: Does the person who knows the first paragraph on Wikipedia
Speaker 2: build a rocket? You know, yeah, I guess what I
Speaker 2: mean is like I do. I mean, I don't mean
Speaker 2: to be condescending to anybody, but I do feel like
Speaker 2: the use of this stuff does cause our intelligence to flatten,
Speaker 2: maybe like that the way you're saying, rather than get
Speaker 2: those spikes that I think humanity needs.
Speaker 3: They do. But it's recoverable. And that's why I'm saying,
Speaker 3: like your base and intelligence has not changed the ability
Speaker 3: of engaging, but the information can be lost and regained,
Speaker 3: kind of like getting out of shape and then doing
Speaker 3: your push ups again.
Speaker 4: Absolutely such, it does make complete sense.
Speaker 5: And again I would just say, you know, when I
Speaker 5: was trying to fumble out earlier is like, you know,
Speaker 5: I definitely think this is something that I need to
Speaker 5: curtail in my life, and it's something that I am
Speaker 5: making some steps towards. But I also spent the last
Speaker 5: like two and a half days really locked in and
Speaker 5: focused on working on this remix of a song for
Speaker 5: my friend's band, and I feel like it's one of
Speaker 5: the best things I've ever done. And I've like absolutely
Speaker 5: focused in on every single detail, and I was completely
Speaker 5: able to stay locked in.
Speaker 4: So I'm just saying, like, I'd love to hear it. No,
Speaker 4: I I'd love to share it.
Speaker 3: And it's and it's task specific. Again, that's something that
Speaker 3: you care about that already kind of scratches behind your
Speaker 3: ears cognitively. So you can lose, you can get lost
Speaker 3: in the sauce of that beautiful moment.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: That's that helps you.
Speaker 4: Get But that's the thing. Social media simulates a flow
Speaker 4: state without you actually having to accomplish anything.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a synthesized flow state, and.
Speaker 3: The brain is reacting the same way, kind of like
Speaker 3: how your brain doesn't really on some levels, doesn't really
Speaker 3: know the difference between a fake laugh and a real laugh.
Speaker 3: It encourages some of the same physiological mechanics to occur.
Speaker 3: That's those feel good chemicals that you get. We have
Speaker 3: to tell you your brain is not the villain here.
Speaker 3: If anything, your brain is just again trying to accomplish
Speaker 3: checklist and rewarding itself when you when it feels like
Speaker 3: a task has been accomplished. So the short term stuff
Speaker 3: is immediate. It's the immediate rush of feel good chemicals
Speaker 3: as you build a tolerance. But finishing a book, attending
Speaker 3: to lecture, working on an album. That's a lot more
Speaker 3: time for that shot of feel.
Speaker 5: Good watching a movie at home without multitasking, without looking
Speaker 5: at your phone. Executives that now Flicks and other streamers
Speaker 5: have openly talked about, or at least maybe it's more
Speaker 5: of an open secret kind of thing that they make
Speaker 5: movies the green light movies that have a second screen appeal,
Speaker 5: meaning that you don't have to be locked in because
Speaker 5: they know ninety percent or whatever high percentage of viewers
Speaker 5: are gonna be half paying attention and looking at their phone.
Speaker 5: And I would argue that a lot of that stuff
Speaker 5: really set in deeply during COVID.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, well it's also time. Do you have an
Speaker 2: hour and forty five minutes to dedicate to one thing,
Speaker 2: to sit in one place and focus on one thing.
Speaker 3: Especially when you're fighting a fomo war on multiple fronts.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure. It took me three sittings to
Speaker 2: watch Saturday Night recently, three sittings. I had to start it,
Speaker 2: and then I had know I had to stop and
Speaker 2: go away and do some other stuff because my brain said, oh,
Speaker 2: we got to go do these other things. I can't
Speaker 2: just sit here and watch a movie.
Speaker 4: Yeah, God, help us try to get through the brutalist
Speaker 4: y'all right.
Speaker 3: The last time I watched I was thinking about that too.
Speaker 3: So when the last time I watched the film without
Speaker 3: a second screen was in a theater, because I didn't
Speaker 3: want to be rude. For another biological comparison, think of
Speaker 3: it this way. Tell me what you think, guys, I
Speaker 3: really like this one. I don't know how accurate it is,
Speaker 3: but lifting from you know, the old analogy test in
Speaker 3: l SAT or SAT or whatever, social media is to
Speaker 3: attention span as smoking is to lung capacity. The more
Speaker 3: you use the one thing, the more you lose of
Speaker 3: the other. But you can regain it with you know,
Speaker 3: a little bit of moderation, a little bit of self care.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about these knock on consequences as your
Speaker 3: detention span lowers. First, you begin grabbing multiple inputs. And
Speaker 3: I remember in the Brain Stuff Days did a video
Speaker 3: that pressed a lot of people off. It was about multitasking.
Speaker 3: You're mistaken about it. Nobody can actually multitask. No human
Speaker 3: being can multitask on these conscious focus like pay attention
Speaker 3: to kind of pursuits because your brain is already multitasking
Speaker 3: and keeping your blood flowing, keeping your heart pumping, all
Speaker 3: this others, making sure you don't automatically crap yourself. Your
Speaker 3: brain has so much to do and we don't acknowledge it.
Speaker 3: When you are trying to focus on conscious things multiple
Speaker 3: at once, you're switching your focus, and every time you
Speaker 3: do this, your brain has a little reset and it says, oh,
Speaker 3: what was that thing that was just doing? How did
Speaker 3: I feel about it? Where did I leave off? What
Speaker 3: do I want to go to next. That happens every
Speaker 3: time you're like, let me pick up my phone for
Speaker 3: a second, Oh, let me get back to this email.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: This technology.
Speaker 5: I mean, look at like you know, Apple Vision pro whatever,
Speaker 5: like the idea of having fifty virtual screens surrounding you,
Speaker 5: you know, Minority Report style. It's this technology and these
Speaker 5: technology companies that have us believe that this kind of multitasking.
Speaker 4: Is possible through technology extensions of our meat bodies.
Speaker 3: But it's just not true, right, Yeah, the average human
Speaker 3: being absolutely cannot multitask. Your brain is just so good
Speaker 3: at switching between discrete tasks that from far enough away
Speaker 3: in your conscious mind, it looks like you're doing it
Speaker 3: at the same time, and that's how the grift works.
Speaker 5: Well, it's like having too many tabs open in your browser.
Speaker 5: All of a sudden, your whole computer crashes.
Speaker 2: Well in every time you switch that task, your brain
Speaker 2: has to reboot that task it is not and that
Speaker 2: means you have to remember what you were thinking about
Speaker 2: when you were doing that task, right.
Speaker 3: Remember what you just did, how you felt about it,
Speaker 3: and where you left off.
Speaker 5: It's almost like existing in this fugue state where you're
Speaker 5: sort of between things all the time.
Speaker 2: I know that feeling, specifically when doing the voicemails for
Speaker 2: this show, where I will get into a minor flow
Speaker 2: state doing that, and then all of a sudden I
Speaker 2: have the need to check Instagram and I do. It
Speaker 2: throws me off completely, and then I will leave and
Speaker 2: go do something else because I got out of flow
Speaker 2: state before having to find my way back there somehow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we've all encountered some versions that all
Speaker 3: of us in the audience tonight as well. So I
Speaker 3: want to go back to this Netflix thing, you guys,
Speaker 3: because this is really If you notice this, you're not crazy,
Speaker 3: NOL you had mentioned it earlier. I think we all
Speaker 3: clocked it up. This is part of why you see
Speaker 3: more and more characters putting in exit exposition of what's
Speaker 3: happening at that moment. And it reminds me a little
Speaker 3: bit of weird improv, but it's in a very serious way.
Speaker 3: Someone's going ethan you've just walked in. Yes, and I
Speaker 3: know about Bolivia, which you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 5: Indeed, it's like the way soap operas operate is not
Speaker 5: conducive to good quality writing and art.
Speaker 4: It's super pandery and like not very interesting, not very creative.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I don't want to que people of lazy writing,
Speaker 2: but it is a way to get stuff across without
Speaker 2: having to show anybody anything. You just tell them real quick.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It also helps, you know, for the people who
Speaker 3: maybe have a favorite character in an ensemble cast of
Speaker 3: some sort. Like let's say there's a modern version of
Speaker 3: Lost and you only like trying to remember Lost characters Flock,
Speaker 3: the Man in Black or Lock. Yeah, no spoilers, but
Speaker 3: but then you uh, you're you're on your phone, right
Speaker 3: and you're kind of listing, kind of not listening, and
Speaker 3: then you hear them say the name of the character
Speaker 3: you like. Phone down for a second, I'm tuned in.
Speaker 5: Er that time I accidentally spoiled Lost by telling a
Speaker 5: bad joke, like about what it wasn't supposed to be,
Speaker 5: and then people got mad because of anything.
Speaker 4: I don't It was a long time ago. It was
Speaker 4: on this show, but people wrote in and were angry
Speaker 4: that I even at that point the finale had been.
Speaker 3: Because I said Lost. The writers of Lost spoils I.
Speaker 5: Think I just said something to the effective it was all,
Speaker 5: which is not a spoiler, because that's not true, and
Speaker 5: it's something the writers said would they would never ever.
Speaker 3: They would never do that.
Speaker 2: Guys, I just want to say one last thing that
Speaker 2: comes directly from you and Harry. I'm sorry I've become
Speaker 2: a Haryeite. And this. You can read this in the
Speaker 2: Guardian title is your Attention didn't collapse, It was stolen.
Speaker 2: It was written January second, twenty twenty two. This is
Speaker 2: just a quote from the end of the article. Read
Speaker 2: it though, and get to this quote.
Speaker 4: He says.
Speaker 2: At the moment, it's as though we're all having itching
Speaker 2: powder poured over us all day, and the people pouring
Speaker 2: the powder are saying, quote, you might want to learn
Speaker 2: to meditate. Then you wouldn't scratch so much. Meditation is
Speaker 2: a useful tool, but we actually need to stop the
Speaker 2: people who are pouring itching powder on us. We need
Speaker 2: to band together and take on the forces stealing our
Speaker 2: attention and take it back.
Speaker 4: I really like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree, because we oh, we've got to tease this,
Speaker 3: We've got to deliver on this tease. That same article
Speaker 3: as one of my favorite beginnings that are read in
Speaker 3: the way these things are introduced as concepts. It's all
Speaker 3: about talking to his godson and taking him on a
Speaker 3: trip to Graceland. And it's amazing. Please do check it out.
Speaker 3: It's it's a banger stem disturn. But that's what we're
Speaker 3: talking about when you said grace Land at the very
Speaker 3: top of tonight's show, And can I just.
Speaker 5: Really quickly just give a shout out to I think
Speaker 5: someone that we all admire who recently passed away, David Lynch,
Speaker 5: who is an incredible painter, artist, polymath, filmmaker and thinker,
Speaker 5: and you know he is a huge was a huge
Speaker 5: proponent of transcendental meditation and the idea of needing that
Speaker 5: stillness in order to be able to kind of pluck
Speaker 5: these ideas out of sort of the cosmic ether, and
Speaker 5: I think we can learn a lot from him, And
Speaker 5: if anybody out there isn't super familiar, I do recommend
Speaker 5: you know, looking up some of his interviews on the subject,
Speaker 5: because you know, people like him and like at Heart Polly,
Speaker 5: for example, are our folks that I think are really
Speaker 5: important when it comes to thinking about mindfulness and being
Speaker 5: able to kind of like shut off that part of
Speaker 5: our brain that craves that dopamine hit that we've been
Speaker 5: talking about.
Speaker 2: Dude, dude, Johann ends it with. The more our attention degrades,
Speaker 2: the harder it will be to summon the personal and
Speaker 2: political energy to take on the forces stealing our focus.
Speaker 5: And that's why they're stealing it, isn't it. That's that's
Speaker 5: the whole point. I mean, it is a conspiracy in
Speaker 5: many ways. I don't maybe I don't know if it
Speaker 5: started that way, but the way the technocrats are now
Speaker 5: like in league with the government, it just seems like
Speaker 5: that's just they're going to push it even further and
Speaker 5: the idea of taking over TikTok using it as a
Speaker 5: propaganda So I don't know, it's it's I was not
Speaker 5: I would.
Speaker 3: Say that's a I would call it again an accidental conspiracy.
Speaker 3: The first conclusion social media is not going away for
Speaker 3: many people. It is the internet from many people, it
Speaker 3: is they're also their prime method of interacting. And then
Speaker 3: second the science continues, how relatively new is this stuff.
Speaker 3: We have to remember widespread online social media comms are
Speaker 3: a little young to have true longitudinal studies. It's going
Speaker 3: to be difficult to account for all the differing variables involved.
Speaker 3: But as everybody is wrestling with this, we can say
Speaker 3: for sure, no matter how the science works out, it's
Speaker 3: great to put your phone down once in a while
Speaker 3: a long time if you can manage it. Slow day,
Speaker 3: weekend off, go outside, do something fun. Your brain will
Speaker 3: consider this exercise and with each iteration, just like lifting
Speaker 3: some dumbbells, your attention SPAN's going to get stronger. And
Speaker 3: I really don't think social media tycoons care if you
Speaker 3: know about this, not yet, because they say people are
Speaker 3: already addicted. From their perspective, you're never going to get
Speaker 3: so fed up that a large number of people actually
Speaker 3: leave for good. And this is where we once again
Speaker 3: want to sho shout out the various authors and scholars
Speaker 3: and journalists that we've mentioned here. We also want to
Speaker 3: ask you, since you're the most important part of this show,
Speaker 3: what's your take on this? What's your experience? We raised
Speaker 3: a lot of questions that don't quite have answers yet
Speaker 3: outside of people's personal experience, so please share it with us.
Speaker 3: After we talked about how dangerous social media is, guess what,
Speaker 3: you can find us online?
Speaker 5: Right and Ben, you had also mentioned being interested in
Speaker 5: folks writing in about their experiences with flow state, you know,
Speaker 5: like tell us about a positive way or that you've
Speaker 5: counteracted some of the damaging effects of social media. You
Speaker 5: can find us all over the internet. We are conspiracy
Speaker 5: Stuff on YouTube or we have video content Calora for
Speaker 5: your enjoyment. We also exist at that handle on x FKA,
Speaker 5: Twitter and on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
Speaker 5: it gets crazy on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are
Speaker 5: conspiracy Stuff show and we're also people. You can find
Speaker 5: me on Instagram at how Now Know Brown?
Speaker 4: How about you? Ben?
Speaker 3: Is it an individual or a group effort? There's one
Speaker 3: way to find out. Go to app ed all wherever
Speaker 3: people use apps, or go to the website Ben and bullet. Hey,
Speaker 3: if you don't like to sip the social beads. There
Speaker 3: are other ways to find us, but Matt, the masses
Speaker 3: are dying to know an any update on social media.
Speaker 2: My name is Matt Frederick and we have a phone number.
Speaker 2: It is one eight three three std WYTK. Why don't
Speaker 2: you call in and tell us what you think about
Speaker 2: a social media tycoon gaining full access to the federal
Speaker 2: payment system like you did yesterday. As we record this,
Speaker 2: that makes me nervous. What do you think when you call?
Speaker 2: Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
Speaker 2: we can use your name and message on the air.
Speaker 2: You've got three minutes. Say whatever you want, just you know,
Speaker 2: do make it fun and exciting. If you've got something
Speaker 2: else to say, if you want to write it out,
Speaker 2: if you want to send us a link or maybe
Speaker 2: a picture, why not send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3: We are Oh, let me hold off there for a second. Folks,
Speaker 3: Please please please write in as well with your opinion
Speaker 3: on what kind of qualifications someone needs to create or
Speaker 3: destroy a federal department, and especially if you work on
Speaker 3: the frontline. We want to thank everybody who wrote in
Speaker 3: to us with some of their experience with the recent
Speaker 3: let's say changes here in the US. To the degree
Speaker 3: that you are comfortable, let us know if anonymity is key.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every email we receive.
Speaker 3: Be well aware, yet I'm afraid. Sometimes the void writes back,
Speaker 3: join us out here in the dark conspiracy. At iHeartRadio
Speaker 3: dot com, everyone have a great day.
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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