WEBVTT - Social Media Is Killing Your Brain Unless It's Not 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:07.400 Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to 0:00:07.560 --> 0:00:14.400 Forward Thinking. Hi. There in Love and afford Thinking, the 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.639 podcast that looks at the future and says, Bob doo Wop, 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:21.120 Bob doo wop, debtop, Bob doo Wop. I'm Jonathan Strickland, 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.680 I'm Lauren Bob. That's always what we say. I'm Joe McCormick. Yeah, 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:26.920 And together we look at the future and we really 0:00:27.000 --> 0:00:29.200 kind of break it down. We look at sort of 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:31.280 the technologies and trends that are in the present. We 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:33.519 try to project out to the future can be kind 0:00:33.520 --> 0:00:36.560 of tricky, and today we're talking about something that's particularly 0:00:36.600 --> 0:00:39.920 tricky and a little maybe controversial is not the right word, 0:00:39.920 --> 0:00:42.640 but there's debate about it, and it's all that might 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:46.760 be the right word. Yeah, there's there's discussion about social media, 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.400 it's role in society and how it may be affecting 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:57.480 us on perhaps a biological level, affecting us. Yes, you 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.440 mean we're not just totally resilient past, you know. You 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.640 mean the media that we consume also consumes us. There 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:09.160 is this thing called plasticity. The brain has it, as 0:01:09.200 --> 0:01:12.399 it turns out, and it means that that the brain 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:16.400 can change based upon the things that we encounter, and 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:20.480 normally this is something that can happen over a fairly 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:23.200 significant amount of time. But the whole that's one of 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:25.440 the reasons why human beings are so resilient is that 0:01:25.480 --> 0:01:28.880 we are capable of adapting to changes in our environment. Right, 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.920 But it can happen both ways. So if you have, say, 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:34.440 a traumatic experience, like you're in a car accident or 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:39.160 something like that, it can change your brain thereafter, right, Yeah, yeah, 0:01:39.880 --> 0:01:41.560 we see that. I mean there are lots of and 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:44.200 oh sorry, and I don't mean just like physical damage 0:01:44.240 --> 0:01:46.000 to the brain, but that you can have a traumatic 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:48.760 experience and be it can change the way that your 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:51.559 thought patterns work later on. I would are you post 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:55.160 traumatic stress disorder is a manifestation of that. We also 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:58.960 see this in ways that are not necessarily associated with trauma. 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:01.840 I mean, they are are people who are very well 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:05.600 adjusted because of their uh, well, because of multiple reasons. 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:07.400 We can't really boil it down to one thing. But 0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:10.520 that's kind of getting ahead of ourselves. To really understand this, 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.000 we thought we'd first start with a quick discussion about 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:15.839 where we are with social media right now, Like how 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:18.000 big a deal is it? Is it? Is it really 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:20.280 a big deal? I think it's officially a big deal. 0:02:21.040 --> 0:02:23.200 I'm not only saying that because that's my job here, 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:27.760 Lauren's Lauren is both justifying her position and making a 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:30.800 valid argument. It's kind of scary that I can't remember 0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.040 a time without it. I mean I can, but I 0:02:33.560 --> 0:02:38.120 just feel like, oh yeah, I remember. I remember being 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:40.799 on my Space and thinking this new Facebook thing is 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:44.840 never gonna take off. I felt like that about Twitter. Yeah, 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:47.120 when Twitter first came out, I was like, hundred and 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:50.799 forty characters who can say anything in that, That's right. 0:02:50.880 --> 0:02:53.040 I made fun of Twitter when it first came out. 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:55.520 I was like, this is ridiculous. I wrote the article 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:57.079 on Twitter and I made fun of it. It was 0:02:57.120 --> 0:02:59.440 only about it. It was only about three months after 0:02:59.480 --> 0:03:03.000 I wrote the iCal that I actually created an account 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.919 and stuck with it. But the point being that this 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.800 is a trend that has really taken off over the 0:03:09.880 --> 0:03:12.280 last several years. When you get to the point where 0:03:12.280 --> 0:03:17.400 Facebook has over one billion registered users, it's a big thing. Yeah. Yeah, 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.480 as of as of their six hundred and sixty five 0:03:20.600 --> 0:03:24.880 million daily active users on Facebook, that's huge. And then 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.160 we've got all these different surveys, we can talk about 0:03:27.200 --> 0:03:31.880 that sort of extrapolate how much people rely on social 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:36.520 networks and what they use it for. Uh. According to 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.800 the Pew Internet, Personal Networks and Communities Survey, it pulled 0:03:40.840 --> 0:03:43.720 two thousand, five twelve adults. So first of all, let's 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:46.960 go ahead and acknowledge that that's a relatively smallies, right, 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.440 and then they extrapolate from that, Um, so let's keep 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:54.120 that in mind. They said that American adults said they 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:58.520 used the Internet, and nearly half of adults, which was arout, 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.520 said that they use at least one social networking service. 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.119 So this was in two thou eight that they took 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:07.880 this survey, right, So that's also I think these numbers 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:12.760 have changed. But remember and again as random people, we 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:14.920 don't know who they called. They could have called a 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:18.200 couple of senior living centers and the seniors might say, no, 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:20.280 I don't use anything like that. I do get on 0:04:20.320 --> 0:04:23.440 the Internet, but I don't use a social networking service. Um. 0:04:23.680 --> 0:04:25.640 And they said that out of the ones they serve, 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:31.480 of them used Facebook, so it was overwhelmingly the social 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:36.800 networking service of choice. Among the people they surveyed said 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:39.680 that they used my Space, so they I would hope 0:04:39.720 --> 0:04:42.039 this would be back in two thousand eight and eighteen 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.960 percent used linked In and used Twitter. And again that 0:04:46.040 --> 0:04:48.080 makes sense again if you're talking about two thoight, that's 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.520 young days for Twitter. Sure. As as of as of December, 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:56.039 Twitter had about two hundred million monthly active users, so 0:04:56.160 --> 0:05:03.560 um compared to that sixty yeah, And I mean it's 0:05:03.560 --> 0:05:06.600 hard to say because people some people never send out 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:08.919 a Twitter message at all. You know, they get on 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:11.640 Twitter and they follow people, but they aren't generating their 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:14.600 own messages. They're just following other folks. Only a relatively 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.159 small percent of people on the Internet are actually creating 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:19.960 new content, It's something like less than a fourth, and 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:23.800 everyone else is basically just reposting. I'm one of those 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:26.880 people creating. No one's reposting it though, so I'm not 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:30.640 really contributing in any meaningful way. And that's fine. I'm 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:34.120 alright with that. I wouldn't repost myself either, and now, um, 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:37.239 so on top of that, we also have some stats 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:41.280 from a Nielsen and in m Insight social media report 0:05:41.760 --> 0:05:44.159 that gives us a little bit more data about some 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:47.320 of the more recent trends. One of those being that 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:50.599 if you look at all the time being spent on 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:54.400 the Internet, and this is social networking sites included, but 0:05:54.760 --> 0:05:57.680 everything else added on top of that, they found that 0:05:57.720 --> 0:06:01.960 in July two thousand twelve, uh, that people spent five 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:08.279 twenty point one billion minutes on the Internet, so you know, 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:12.080 more than half a trillion minutes in one month on 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:15.159 the Internet. Now, out of that, of the time that 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.640 was spent on PCs was on some sort of social 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.640 networking site, and thirty percent of the time spent on 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:25.440 mobile devices would be on social networking sites. So that 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:28.520 tells us also that the growth for the mobile market 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:32.160 is exploding. That's what you hear. Mobiles the trend right 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.800 social media, they're trend to down to that form exactly, 0:06:36.880 --> 0:06:40.080 And that same survey said that that mobile accounted for 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.039 sixty three percent of year over year growth in social media. 0:06:44.080 --> 0:06:47.039 In fact, I believe PCs took a little bit of 0:06:47.080 --> 0:06:51.160 a dip in the in that trend, but mobile more 0:06:51.200 --> 0:06:53.920 than made up for it. And uh, we're seeing that 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:56.440 more and more. And you know that just means that 0:06:56.480 --> 0:07:01.400 we it's always just uh a touch away. You've often 0:07:01.440 --> 0:07:04.360 got one of these devices between between WiFi and three 0:07:04.400 --> 0:07:07.240 G it's you're you're never really not connected if you're 0:07:07.839 --> 0:07:11.480 in the you know, continental United States, certainly. Yeah, So 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:16.040 that raises some questions. If you are always, or for 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:20.720 all practical purposes, always connected to social media and the internet, 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:25.080 how could that possibly affect you beyond just the fact 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.720 that you can tweet out what you're eating any given 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:30.360 time of the day. So this is actually where we've 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:35.480 got some disagreements in in various circles about how much 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.480 does all this social networking actually affect us. Does it 0:07:39.160 --> 0:07:41.640 just give us yet another outlet so that we can 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:46.160 connect with people, or is it supplanting our our our 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:50.200 tendency to form real lasting relationships with people, or is 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:54.120 it actually rewiring our brains to the point where the 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.000 normal kind of social interactions we would associate with face 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:02.520 to face meetings no longer are supported that we we 0:08:02.600 --> 0:08:05.520 are we are essentially raising a generation of people who 0:08:05.520 --> 0:08:09.720 are incapable of having a an interaction face to face 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:12.520 and pick up on things like facial cues and other 0:08:13.120 --> 0:08:18.400 little social cues rewiring brains. Now, I just saw this 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.640 language come up all over the place on this topic, 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:25.000 and it got me a little curious, Uh, does that 0:08:25.040 --> 0:08:29.160 originate anywhere? What rewiring the brain? Well, I mean this 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:33.079 this exact language, that it's going to rewire your kid's brain. 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:35.800 I would argue that. Well, I'll tell you someone who 0:08:35.840 --> 0:08:41.120 definitely used that phrase and similar phrases over and over again. 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.679 And it's someone who is very prominent in science scientific circles, 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:49.480 particularly in the UK, and that was Susan Greenfield. And 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:52.760 Susan Greenfield better known as Baroness Greenfield, where she does 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:58.720 hold that title. She's a neuroscientist, neuroscientist and was until 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:03.760 the director the Royal Institution of Great Britain and as 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.440 such she had a very prominent role as a scientist, 0:09:08.080 --> 0:09:12.520 someone who would popularize science and was very active in 0:09:12.720 --> 0:09:16.400 courting the media to talk about science and that's an 0:09:16.400 --> 0:09:19.679 important job. We've seen lots of people take up that mantle, 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:22.640 either officially or unofficially. We've seen a lot of it, 0:09:23.280 --> 0:09:26.760 ironically enough on social media. Absolutely, people like Phil Play 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:30.760 and people you know talking professor Brian Cox, not the 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.440 actor but the but the professor out of the UK 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:38.040 who who does some fantastic work. Um, he talks a 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:40.719 lot about fusion. Phil Plate, of course, the bat astronomer 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:42.840 talks a lot about astronomy. There are a lot of 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:46.360 others too, who have used social networking to get information 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:50.400 about science across and make people excited. Susan Greenfield has 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:55.280 has used her position UH to talk about her concerns 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:59.000 about social media and its effect on the way we 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:03.080 think and the we create these interpersonal relationships, and maybe 0:10:03.080 --> 0:10:07.000 even the way our brains develop. One of the fears 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:12.800 that she has expressed was that by kind of channeling 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:17.839 people's interactions online and removing that face to face interaction, 0:10:18.160 --> 0:10:21.240 at least to some extent through the traditional personal model 0:10:21.280 --> 0:10:24.920 of friendship, right, that this would lead the human brain 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:28.280 to develop differently, and the parts of the brain that 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:32.120 would develop with all that interaction, that face to face interaction, 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:35.680 would a trophy and or not even not even develop 0:10:35.720 --> 0:10:38.000 in the first place. And that so you would have 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:42.160 again this this sort of generation of children who grow 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.480 up to be adults who cannot really interact in a 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:49.800 in a face to face physical environment UH effectively. Well, 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:53.439 that sounds alarming if we have research indicating that social 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:57.040 media is destroying our children's brains. It would in fact 0:10:57.080 --> 0:10:59.679 be alarming if we had such research. But there in 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.200 line is one of the problems. Uh So, one of 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:08.120 the big criticisms leveled against Greenfield and and many many 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.760 people have brought this up, is that she would tend 0:11:11.800 --> 0:11:16.240 to have these discussions but not really have an actual 0:11:16.400 --> 0:11:19.679 study that she was citing to show that there was 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:23.200 a demonstrable effect. Uh that. It was almost like it 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:27.960 was armchair psychology or armchair neural biology, the idea that, well, 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:30.760 I do know that the brain can be affected by things, 0:11:31.040 --> 0:11:34.679 and I know that this is a growing trend that 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.920 is becoming more and more important. And using that, yeah, 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.000 using that, I have to come to the conclusion that 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:43.400 this trend is affecting people's brains. But without the act. 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:45.280 And she may very well be right. Let's go ahead 0:11:45.280 --> 0:11:48.199 and say that she could be absolutely right, but there's 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:53.840 no real hard evidence to point that way. Yeah. From 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:56.160 what I read, it seemed more like this was emanating 0:11:56.240 --> 0:12:01.000 from the intuitions of an established authority rather than empirical day. Right, 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.400 the argument from authority, which is a logical fallacy, right, Um, 0:12:04.440 --> 0:12:06.680 And and there there is plenty of research being done 0:12:06.720 --> 0:12:09.080 about this. Back in two thousand five, one of the 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:12.559 big studies that you might hear quoted about about social 0:12:12.600 --> 0:12:15.880 isolation and the Internet UM was done by Norman ny 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:19.760 and the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society UM, 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:23.600 and it found that uh, people who use the Internet 0:12:23.960 --> 0:12:26.840 at that time, it was one of the US population. 0:12:26.920 --> 0:12:31.560 They uh had extrapolated of of those that use the 0:12:31.559 --> 0:12:36.479 internet frequently, UM, they spend seventy minutes less daily interacting 0:12:36.480 --> 0:12:40.439 with their family UM, which which sounds which sounds scary, 0:12:40.480 --> 0:12:42.200 I mean because you know, family interaction is a big 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.320 important thing. And uh, and that in seventy minutes, you know, 0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.280 of twenty four hours, that's a you know, that's a 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.160 that's a sizeable chunk of time. However, you know this 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:53.880 was a and two thousand five before social media, social 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:56.360 networking was really out there. You know, people weren't going 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.200 to be on Facebook in two thousand five talking to 0:12:59.240 --> 0:13:03.160 their aunt. Uh. So so that's that's part of that. 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:06.720 And also it's uh Norman and I has has admitted 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:10.280 to being a an Internet addict. He's self professed in this, 0:13:10.400 --> 0:13:13.160 and so I feel like possibly his findings are a 0:13:13.200 --> 0:13:17.080 little bit colored by that. And that therefore, Yeah, when 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:19.400 when people throw around numbers from the study, that it's 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:23.360 maybe not as unbiased or as a clear cut here 0:13:23.400 --> 0:13:26.719 in as it otherwise could be. Right, Well, I mean 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.120 the difference between two thousand five and ten. It might 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.760 be one thing, and I don't know bacteriology, but in 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.760 internet use, in social media, this is a this is 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:43.360 like a century. You know, it's so different now. Yeah, 0:13:43.400 --> 0:13:46.040 and again you know, this is one of those things 0:13:46.080 --> 0:13:49.400 where I think the problem is that it's so young 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:54.640 that we don't have enough scientific rigor there to really 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:57.560 be able to say one way or the other. Well, 0:13:57.679 --> 0:13:59.600 there are a lot of problems with this, right, I mean, 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:04.040 first of all, yes, it's the widespread social media phenomenon 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.800 is extremely new, and so there has just hasn't been 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.280 enough research. Number two, even if it had been around 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.040 for a while, it's hard to conduct studies on this 0:14:13.120 --> 0:14:16.360 kind of thing because you're studying social phenomenon where there's 0:14:16.440 --> 0:14:21.120 a lot of variables and it's difficult to pin down causes, 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:26.120 exactly like in a in a traditional scientific inquiry. Let's 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:28.920 say that we are studying we're trying to determine the 0:14:28.960 --> 0:14:34.680 effects of a particular chemical reaction, for example, and if 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:37.120 you were really studying that in a scientific way, you 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:40.520 would try to eliminate as many other variables as possible, 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:44.320 so that you could be reasonably certain that any effect 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:48.480 you observed was in fact a result of that chemical reaction. Right, 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:50.960 So you would want to make sure that your instruments 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.640 were properly cleaned and calibrated and all of this so 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:59.680 that you could you could eliminate, right, yeah, eliminate, eliminate 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:01.480 anything that's going to cause a problem. The problem with 0:15:01.520 --> 0:15:03.920 the social science is not maybe a problem is the 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:08.320 wrong word. The challenge is that you can't eliminate the variables. 0:15:08.360 --> 0:15:12.360 It's if you were one of the most uh frequently 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:15.320 used methodologies is the survey, which you know, we kind 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:18.920 of opened up talking about surveys, but surveys themselves, you 0:15:19.000 --> 0:15:22.360 can't eliminate all those other variables that go into a 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:26.440 person's background that may guide him or her to make 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:29.880 certain choices. So you could say, out of all the 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:34.200 people we survey said, they're using social networking services more 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:38.120 and interacting with people real people less. But and I 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:40.560 mean in a study like that, to be honest, I 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:43.320 have no idea how much I use social media. Like 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:45.400 if you were to ask me, I'd have to guess, 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:47.360 and that would show up on a survey as some 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:50.400 kind of guess, you know, whatever number I estimated, they 0:15:50.480 --> 0:15:53.160 might have really no bearing on on how much time 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:55.800 I actually spend staring at Facebook. And and also that 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:58.440 can change. Oh of course, yeah, a day to day, 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:00.600 hour to hour. You know, how fully they would be 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.280 using some kind of a computer tracking method, some kind 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:06.560 of digital tracking method to actually look at the number 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:08.840 of hours you did spend doing that thing. I mean 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:11.000 that that would be more accurate. But but but but 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:13.600 a survey is yeah, usually the way that these things go. 0:16:13.880 --> 0:16:16.920 And also, even if you were able to show that 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:19.640 there was some sort of correlation between the two, you 0:16:19.680 --> 0:16:22.320 can't be certain that there's causation because there could be 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:25.480 other factors that you did not control for that are 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:30.760 impacting that situation. That the experiment even more difficult, because 0:16:30.760 --> 0:16:33.760 you'd have to isolate all the differing how many troll 0:16:33.960 --> 0:16:37.440 for different variables, how many of those people moved away 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:40.600 from home to go work somewhere else, And therefore all 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:42.800 of the people that we were part of their social 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:47.280 network are now a thousand miles away. Maybe the social 0:16:47.360 --> 0:16:50.480 networking sites is how that's how they maintain the real 0:16:50.560 --> 0:16:53.360 relationships they've already developed. Absolutely, there's been a bunch of 0:16:53.400 --> 0:16:56.800 medical research done into people with physical and mental disabilities, 0:16:57.160 --> 0:16:59.840 figuring out that actually for these for these folks, social 0:16:59.880 --> 0:17:04.320 media is very useful in maintaining and foraging new relationships. 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:09.680 Right And according to the Pew Internet study, which again 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:12.600 dated from several years ago, they said that the people 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:16.399 who were using social networking sites were forty percent more 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:20.400 likely to visit a cafe, more likely to visit a library, 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:23.760 percent more likely to visit a fast food restaurant, more 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.680 likely to visit other restaurants, and forty two percent more 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:32.400 likely to visit a public park, saying that the the 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.560 the image that people have in their minds of the 0:17:34.600 --> 0:17:39.040 person who has sequestered him or herself into the basement. Yeah, 0:17:39.080 --> 0:17:41.199 they're just sitting down and on the computer and they 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.480 never go outside. That that is a fallacy. Um. But 0:17:44.520 --> 0:17:47.840 they also said that uh that that bloggers, people who 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:52.880 are actively uh posting things on the Internet for others 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.359 to read, were more likely to belong to a local 0:17:56.440 --> 0:18:00.399 voluntary association than those who do not blog, and that 0:18:00.600 --> 0:18:03.560 six of all the people who are using the web 0:18:03.600 --> 0:18:07.560 regularly often talked to a neighbor at least once per month, 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.040 and that that may in fact be higher than people 0:18:11.040 --> 0:18:16.879 who don't use the web frequently. So these are not Again, 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.760 nothing here is is telling me specifically that internet use 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:26.600 and social networking sites in particular are positively or negatively 0:18:26.720 --> 0:18:30.879 impacting our ability to socialize outside the realm of the web. 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:35.399 There's conflicting information. Some of it, you know, seems very intuitive. 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:38.240 Like if you were to tell me that people using 0:18:38.240 --> 0:18:41.840 social networking sites more and more frequently is resulting in 0:18:42.440 --> 0:18:47.800 UM higher instance of people misunderstanding social cues and physical settings, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.080 I would think that makes total sense to me. Intuitively, 0:18:51.160 --> 0:18:55.040 that makes sense, But we don't have the hard data 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:57.760 there yet, so we really need to to hold off 0:18:57.800 --> 0:19:02.560 on making any assumptions, even though we may have some 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:07.640 preliminary information that seems to either support or contradict that 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:11.840 that that conclusion right and their overall societal trends UM 0:19:12.040 --> 0:19:14.080 that are that are in effect here and have been 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:17.280 working I think since the Industrial Revolution at least UM 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.960 wherein you know, A couple of the numbers that get 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:22.040 thrown around is that as of the nineteen eighties or so, 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:26.160 before the internet really hit UM, people had about three 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:29.800 close social conducts UM. And they're talking about confidence, they're 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:31.840 talking about someone who you can go to when you 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:34.560 have a serious problem and hash it out with them. Um, 0:19:34.840 --> 0:19:38.560 and who am you know, strange package wrapped in a 0:19:38.600 --> 0:19:41.159 carpet and right, yeah, the people who will help you 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.399 move a body. Yeah, yeah, the the what's in the 0:19:43.400 --> 0:19:48.600 box people? And uh and that this number has has 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:52.280 gone down to about one point eight um since since 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:55.720 you know whatever, you know, a few decades ago, and 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:58.159 that's I don't know, I mean, you know, it's it 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:02.040 is significant certainly. However, I don't think that the internet 0:20:02.280 --> 0:20:05.440 the other things have gone on on the planet because 0:20:05.720 --> 0:20:08.680 the Internet since then. Again, that's why the whole social 0:20:09.000 --> 0:20:12.679 science stuff is so complicated, because while it's simple for 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.639 us to say, hey, this coincides with the rise of 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:18.359 the Internet, there are all these other things that also 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:21.280 happened in that span of time. And you know, we've 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:24.240 we've also seen the move to UH to urban areas 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:27.960 growing year over year over year. So that's another UH 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:31.760 factor that you have to consider when you're thinking about 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:34.719 these things. It's it's complicated what we're saying. It's very complicated. 0:20:34.720 --> 0:20:37.560 And also you know that the fear that the media 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.360 that we use changes us is certainly not a new thing. 0:20:40.440 --> 0:20:44.439 Socrates was really concerned that that reading and writing was 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:47.320 going to ruin people's brains, that you know, that that 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:49.960 memory was going to be so weakened that we would 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:52.920 all be infants. And then the two generations there were 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:55.400 people who are afraid that the printing press was going 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:59.680 to completely ruin the brains of everybody. I think those 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:03.360 most a monks who are really hoping to keep on 0:21:03.400 --> 0:21:08.360 that illumination and manuscript writing. Uh, then you had things radio, 0:21:08.680 --> 0:21:12.280 television anytime. And this this also really applies to the 0:21:12.280 --> 0:21:15.520 youth as well, where there's this fear that social networking 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.840 sites is really changing the way young people think. But 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:22.920 the same argument has been made time and time again 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.960 for lots of different stuff like rock and roll. You know, 0:21:26.960 --> 0:21:29.399 I think of the children, Yeah exactly, And I think 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:30.879 it also this is why this is why you know, 0:21:30.920 --> 0:21:33.840 horror movies today are things like, you know, children like 0:21:33.920 --> 0:21:36.280 Samara in The Ring showing up being a product of 0:21:36.320 --> 0:21:40.760 technology versus Rosemary's Baby being a product of Satan. Satan, 0:21:40.880 --> 0:21:43.800 yeah so well, or or or medical science or whatever 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.000 you wanna, yeah, whatever you want to attribute that kind 0:21:46.000 --> 0:21:49.400 of thing. Too nice that the pop culture references are 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:56.320 flying fast and furious there's another one. Uh then diesel there. Um. Now, 0:21:56.359 --> 0:21:58.359 I do want to say that even though we don't 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:01.840 really know right now what the effects of social networking 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:06.560 services are on us neurologically, Uh, that's not to say 0:22:06.560 --> 0:22:09.840 that there isn't an effect and that we won't you know, always, 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:11.520 we won't always be in the dark about it. I 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:13.760 do think that we will figure that out as time 0:22:13.800 --> 0:22:16.160 goes on. I think that's going to change as time 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:20.760 goes on. But I also I am not so worried 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:25.359 about saying, you know, stay away from social networking sites. Uh, 0:22:25.400 --> 0:22:27.640 it's going to ruin your kid's brains. I don't really 0:22:27.640 --> 0:22:29.879 believe that. I think the humans are more resilient. I 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:33.960 think that we are capable of adapting to new situations 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:37.520 and to retain old methods of communication as well. I 0:22:37.520 --> 0:22:39.000 don't think we're ever going to get to a point 0:22:39.520 --> 0:22:43.240 where people are so concentrated on social networking sites so 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:44.840 that if you put two people in a room together, 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.480 they can't have a meaningful conversation. I think that's that's unrealistic. 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:52.359 I think part of the the fear here is the 0:22:52.400 --> 0:22:57.160 old cyborg fear. Yeah, I mean, people are um at 0:22:57.200 --> 0:23:00.440 at the core of it, they're afraid of having kind 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:05.480 of human biological essence corrupted by the invasion of this foreign, 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:12.160 synthetic kind of thing. And that's what the technological incarnation 0:23:12.320 --> 0:23:17.240 of a social network represents. Um. It seems more steel 0:23:17.400 --> 0:23:22.000 and wires and plastic than than human flesh. But I 0:23:22.040 --> 0:23:23.879 think it's something we're going to get over, because we 0:23:24.000 --> 0:23:27.640