Latest / Kenny Wallace Media / SHOULD TikTok Be Banned & Are Screens Destroying Our Kids' Brains? | Charlie Marlow & Eric Messersmith
Transcript
- 0:00I want to start out talking about this Tiktok ban because I
- 0:03think it's a, it's an interesting, relevant
- 0:06discussion, not just about Tiktok, but social media and
- 0:09screens and all that. And I, I would not be for
- 0:13banning Tiktok just because it's something that's very addictive
- 0:19for kids. And it is.
- 0:21I, I think all of these social media, I, I think they're all
- 0:23bad for kids. To me, the reason that I'm at
- 0:26least considering, or I guess on the side of, you know, should we
- 0:29ban TikTok is the fact that it is.
- 0:33Controlled. Operated by a Chinese company.
- 0:36I think it's pretty fair to say that the United States and
- 0:39China, we're not always on the best terms.
- 0:41So if it was, if it was a United States owned company and it did
- 0:45the same things it was doing right now, I would not be on the
- 0:49side of of banning TikTok. And I'm not even sure I'm really
- 0:53even on that side. But.
- 0:55But if this company is able to get our our private information
- 1:02or sell it or compromise American citizens, especially
- 1:06prominent American citizens, which I wouldn't rule out.
- 1:09That's where I am on this. Now we can further the
- 1:12discussion and talk about just kids who are getting on at
- 1:16teenagers and just scrolling and and ruining their lives and just
- 1:19wasting their their lives away. But to me, the whole issue is,
- 1:23is China, which I, I, I think that's the issue because clearly
- 1:27you don't see United States senators, Congress, people
- 1:32trying to ban Facebook or trying to ban Instagram or trying to
- 1:35ban Twitter. Hell, Donald Trump is now in bed
- 1:37with essentially Elon Musk with Twitter, even even knowing that
- 1:41all those other social media, they have kind of the same
- 1:44issues TikTok has. But to me, it's all about the
- 1:46China piece. Oh, absolutely.
- 1:48It's, it's the combination of the power of social media, which
- 1:51we all have seen and maybe we didn't.
- 1:54I would say we definitely didn't realize what social media could
- 1:57become when it started. And now we see the damaging
- 2:00effects, and that's why we're regulating it or pushing to
- 2:03regulate it more and more, almost like we do tobacco when
- 2:07it comes to kids or something like that.
- 2:08And there's all these laws that have been proposed about
- 2:11limiting screen time, especially with minors and having them opt
- 2:14in. And that stuff is separate from
- 2:17this because of the Chinese connection, the companies called
- 2:20Bike Dance. And look, they have an American
- 2:24office and they say that they're not really controlled by the
- 2:27Chinese government. But every company in China
- 2:29that's owned by Chinese business people, entities, is
- 2:33essentially, at the end of the day, controlled by the
- 2:35government because the government of China can tell
- 2:37them to do whatever they want. So maybe at this moment, the
- 2:39Chinese government's not saying, hey, give us all the data you
- 2:42have on all your American users, but they could do that
- 2:45theoretically at any time. And based on what they've done
- 2:48in the past, we obviously shouldn't put that past them.
- 2:51That's why it passed overwhelmingly, House and
- 2:53Senate, Republicans and Democrats both voting for it.
- 2:56Biden signed it into law and it did.
- 2:58By the way, this it's we went to the Supreme Court on Friday.
- 3:02Any day now, by the time you hear this, the Supreme Court is
- 3:04probably going to make a decision on that law, whether it
- 3:07was constitutional or not. The people who support Tick Tock
- 3:10are saying, well, it's a free speech thing and that and yet
- 3:13you can't allow this law to go forward because of free speech.
- 3:18But what the Supreme Court Justice has said in the
- 3:19argument, what they ultimately I think will roll is that this
- 3:22really isn't about free speech because Congress is not saying
- 3:26we're trying to censor any kind of speech on TikTok.
- 3:29What they're saying is you either have to sell the company
- 3:33or shut it down because of the Chinese ownership.
- 3:37They're not saying we're banning TikTok.
- 3:39They're giving you the out of sell it, sell it to an American
- 3:43company. And so far, Byte Dances refused
- 3:46to even entertain publicly any kind of talk of a sale, which is
- 3:50interesting if you consider it because the company is worth a
- 3:53lot of money. It's a huge asset.
- 3:56The price for it I imagine would be very high.
- 3:59And so far, they haven't agreed to do that.
- 4:01But Kevin O'Leary, Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, he is publicly
- 4:06come out with a group of investors saying he wants to
- 4:09buy. He says they've made a bid for
- 4:11it. There was a report the other day
- 4:12that the Chinese government was considering selling it to Elon
- 4:16Musk, which would be interesting.
- 4:18Now, China has publicly said that isn't true.
- 4:21With the Chinese government and Byte Dance, who knows what they
- 4:24might do. But the deadline is Sunday.
- 4:26It is supposed to either be sold to an American company, which
- 4:30seems almost impossible that that would happen in a few days,
- 4:32or be shut down on Sunday, meaning shut down, meaning you
- 4:35could no longer buy it or or get it in the app stores on on
- 4:41Google or on Android or iPhone. So we'll see what happens.
- 4:45I think probably what will happen is the Supreme Court will
- 4:48say the law is valid and that Bytedance will lose their
- 4:54appeal. And then Trump will be sworn in
- 4:57Monday and he will try to work out some type of deal or sign
- 5:01some type of executive order to keep it up and running until it
- 5:04can be sold to some American investors.
- 5:07And that would be the best case scenario because as you said,
- 5:11it's there's something it, it feels kind of weird to ban
- 5:14things in America, free speech or platforms of speech, even if
- 5:18they are potentially dangerous. On the other hand, you can't
- 5:22have a foreign adversary that has that kind of control because
- 5:26of the power of social media. It's not just the data, which is
- 5:30that's one scary thing, but also the algorithm.
- 5:32Like we all know TikTok is has an incredibly addictive
- 5:36algorithm and China does the, the TikTok in China is
- 5:41completely different than the TikTok that we see in the United
- 5:44States. All the crap we put on it, they
- 5:47don't allow that in China. It's about like education and
- 5:50playing the violin and stuff. But if they wanted to alter,
- 5:54like, we know that that is the way that our adversaries have
- 5:57interfered in our elections going back to 2016.
- 6:00The bots stirring division in America along racial lines,
- 6:05socioeconomic lines, political lines, that is something that
- 6:10China and Russia are doing already.
- 6:12Now you have this platform essentially controlled by, if
- 6:16they want to, the Chinese government, think about what
- 6:19they could do to alter and shape opinion in America with the
- 6:23power of that algorithm and then the data they have on top of it.
- 6:27Brett Kavanaugh brought this up at the Supreme Court hearing.
- 6:29Think about how they could get information on young people,
- 6:33blackmail them and essentially try to recruit a new generation
- 6:37of spies in America. You don't have to recruit spies
- 6:42like you used to face to face. Now you can do it potentially by
- 6:45blackmailing people through a social media app like TikTok.
- 6:48Like these are real concerns. And I I just can't imagine that
- 6:53we that it will ultimately survive with its current
- 6:56ownership. If it survives, I think it will
- 6:58have to be with US ownership and I think that's the way that it
- 7:01should be. I don't want to see TikTok
- 7:03banned but it can't go on like this and also we need to work
- 7:07out a solution because I do feel bad for the people who make
- 7:10their living on Tiktok right? I'm, I'm thinking about them as
- 7:14well now that I'm kind of a, of a YouTube and, and Speaking of
- 7:17Youtubers, I also saw, I don't know if he was serious, but Mr.
- 7:20Beast, you have Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Beast.
- 7:22I think Mr. Beast also said he was interested in buying Tiktok.
- 7:26I'm not sure if he was 100% serious.
- 7:28He probably made a a video about that and got a billion views off
- 7:32discussing that. But.
- 7:35To me, so I, I was on TikTok like two years ago, I started an
- 7:39account and I put a couple videos and I, I just, I'm too
- 7:43busy. But then I started doing this
- 7:46NASCAR stuff even more where I'm starting to make those vertical
- 7:49videos no matter what. And so I, my thought was this,
- 7:52if I'm going to take a good, sometimes it takes me 3045
- 7:55minutes to make a really good vertical video.
- 7:59OK, so I produce it myself and I'm like, if I'm going to do
- 8:01that and it takes me 30 to 45 minutes, I'm going to put on
- 8:05every single social media platform.
- 8:07So right now I put it on YouTube, I put it on XI, put it
- 8:11on Facebook, I put them on Instagram and I put them on
- 8:14Tiktok. Now what's interesting to me
- 8:17about Tiktok, and this is where you're, you're talking about the
- 8:20algorithm is Tiktok. I've I've found you can go
- 8:24quote, UN quote viral off Tiktok way quicker.
- 8:28Like you don't need a ton of followers.
- 8:31A lot of times with these other social media, like it's hard for
- 8:34a smaller channel or smaller platform.
- 8:37But I've seen we've posted videos that have gotten
- 8:40something like 40 thousand 50,000 views on TikTok and I
- 8:43only have 200 followers. So if you get in something
- 8:47that's trending, I can see how young people are like, oh, look,
- 8:50I made a video on TikTok. All of a sudden, Oh look, I
- 8:52nobody but 60,000 people are watching my video.
- 8:56The other thing I saw which which made me kind of depressed
- 8:59because we're talking about TikTok but also social media in
- 9:02general. I saw this tweet the other day.
- 9:05I don't have the exact publication, but they said like
- 9:08the average American last year spent 2 1/2 months on their
- 9:13phone. Think about that, 2 1/2 months.
- 9:17So if you're spending roughly a third of your time sleeping,
- 9:21let's say roughly a third of your time working.
- 9:24But also, let's be real, a lot of people that are working or
- 9:27working from home, they're also on their phone.
- 9:29And some people work with their phone.
- 9:31I, I work with my phone. But that was depressing.
- 9:33And you just think about screens.
- 9:36You think about how much time we're spending kind of bent over
- 9:40just looking at her phone and how that's going to affect like
- 9:42our hands and our spine and all that.
- 9:45I mean, Eric, you, you have a son.
- 9:48I got a couple kids. Like there's been times where I
- 9:50haven't seen my kids. They're at school, right?
- 9:53I pick them up, I bring them back.
- 9:55I should be spending quality time and like, I'll be over
- 9:58there looking at my phone and 20 minutes will go by.
- 10:01And by the way, I'm not on TikTok.
- 10:02I'm more of an ex person. But I'll think to myself, what
- 10:05am I doing? Like my kids have been at
- 10:07school, I haven't seen them. I just picked them up.
- 10:10So we got a little bit of quality car time, but like I'm
- 10:14already looking on my phone when I should be spending time with
- 10:18them and playing with them. And that's the difference now
- 10:20compared to when we grew up. Like our parents were on the
- 10:23floor with us playing, which I am too.
- 10:26But like every once in a while I need to get slapped in the face.
- 10:29Like take this phone and just put it in a different room
- 10:32because they are freaking addictive.
- 10:34Oh it's incredible. Does your phone do that thing
- 10:36where it tells you each week what how many minutes of screen
- 10:39time you average the prior week? Yeah, the screen time
- 10:42notification, I used to, so I used to like really look at that
- 10:47and I would feel good about myself.
- 10:48So if like one week or whatever it said you're on just whatever,
- 10:528910 hours a day, I'd be like, OK, so the next day I would try
- 10:56to, I'd try to beat that. I'd try to do less the next week
- 10:59and I would really kind of monitor that.
- 11:01But now I don't know how it works because like I spend so
- 11:03much time on this stupid laptop and I don't know if it's
- 11:06connected to my phone. Like it sees both of that.
- 11:08Like I, I spend way too much time on screens.
- 11:11But yes, that can also be very depressing.
- 11:14Look, I think it it's interesting if you would have
- 11:17told people 50 years ago or 40 years ago or maybe even 30 years
- 11:21ago, we are going to have an invention that will allow you to
- 11:25have allow basically everybody in the world to have the
- 11:30entirety of human knowledge in their hand.
- 11:33And it will also be a camera and it will also be a communication
- 11:36device. And we will all have access to
- 11:39that instantly at any time. You would have thought we would
- 11:43be on the verge of the of a new age of productivity.
- 11:48It's certainly an American, a wealthy country.
- 11:51But that really hasn't happened. If you look at productivity, it
- 11:54hasn't exploded like you would think it would.
- 11:57And the reason is because I think of what you're saying,
- 12:00along with all the positives of that, you get TikTok and you get
- 12:06the X algorithm and you get Instagram.
- 12:08And not that any of those things are per say bad, but they are
- 12:12time wasters and they steal your attention.
- 12:15And I think the evidence is pretty clear.
- 12:17They change your brain to some degree.
- 12:20I think it's happened with me myself and I and I didn't
- 12:22obviously grow up on the stuff because I'm older, but I have my
- 12:26attention span. I see it in myself is not what
- 12:28it used to be. Now I fight it by trying to
- 12:30limit my my time on it by really trying to like take a step back
- 12:34and refocus. But I've seen it.
- 12:36I have less patience for things. I I want it right now and just
- 12:42the part I want and I don't want to deal with anything else.
- 12:45And I get distracted more easily, I think than I used to.
- 12:48And like I said, for me, I'm older so it's, it's less of an
- 12:52effect on me. But I think with younger people,
- 12:54you see it to a huge, to a large degree and look for some people,
- 12:59it's not that big of a deal. It's, it's, it's makes them less
- 13:04productive. Maybe it makes them a little bit
- 13:06less good as a parent or a spouse, which that's not a great
- 13:10thing. But the real problem I think is
- 13:13young people and I think people who grew up on this who, who,
- 13:17who know nothing else and are addicted to those algorithms and
- 13:21the negative consequences they can have, especially for young
- 13:24girls and the body image problems and the self harm and
- 13:29the mental health issues. I think it's had a negative
- 13:31impact by and large on dating. I think dating apps of one of
- 13:35the reasons I think that we don't, we don't have as many
- 13:37kids and we don't have as many marriages or even even if you
- 13:41want to say just cohabitation, we have the marriage rates have
- 13:45birth rates have dropped with the drop in the rate of people
- 13:49coupling together, whether that be marriage or just living
- 13:52together. I think being online has
- 13:54something to do with that. People are spending less time
- 13:58interacting with each other. So it's changed our society in
- 14:01ways large and small that I think we don't even fully
- 14:06understand yet and will be grappling with for a long time
- 14:09to come and and look for adults. Adults, you know, can do
- 14:12whatever they want. And if if the repercussions are
- 14:14bad, if it makes you less attentive as a a parent or a
- 14:17spouse or it makes you less likely to get in a relationship,
- 14:20there's really not much I think we can do about that other than
- 14:23make people aware of it. But for kids, I think we're
- 14:26going to head toward, and I mentioned this in the TikTok
- 14:29discussion, you're already starting to see this.
- 14:31We're going to start regulating social media.
- 14:33And I think we should as a harm, because it is a harm by and
- 14:37large to kids. The studies have been pretty
- 14:39overwhelming on that. And we're not going to ban it,
- 14:41just like we we don't ban other things that are harmful.
- 14:44But I think for kids, we're going to more and more limit
- 14:48their access. And the social media companies
- 14:49are trying to get ahead of this by instituting their own things,
- 14:53their own accounts for kids that are restrictive because they
- 14:55know what's coming. They know the restrictions that
- 14:58are likely to come eventually when Congress can get its act
- 15:02together. If they survive challenges in
- 15:05the courts, we'll see. Utah, I think it was passed some
- 15:08a ban like this and it's been challenged in court.
- 15:11We'll see if it'll hold up. But we really have to take a
- 15:13look at it cuz you're right. It is changing all of us.
- 15:17And it's some of it is good, but man, the negative consequences
- 15:20are so bad. And I like I said, it's just I
- 15:23like, I like it, but I, I look at my own usage, I'm like, what
- 15:27am I doing? Why did I just waste 45 minutes
- 15:30doom scrolling on X? Like what did that do for me?
- 15:34That's another thing the doom scroll it also, it's changing
- 15:38the way we think in the sense of you see the the most negative,
- 15:45right, whatever's going to be clicked on.
- 15:47Like for some reason on the 4U tab I see, I don't know if you
- 15:51see this too, but I see all those fights right like now in
- 15:54high school, middle school, whatever it is, junior high, all
- 15:58the kids are they're filming these fights and I just maybe
- 16:01because I always watch them. I do watch them.
- 16:03Some I feel like are from five years ago, 10 years ago.
- 16:06They're the same fights shown over and over.
- 16:09But what is that doing now? Where OK, now some kids probably
- 16:12want to be on those videos. They want to win the fight.
- 16:14You got other kids bullying others and all that.
- 16:18And the other part is you mentioned, you mentioned young
- 16:21girls, teen girls. Now my daughter, she's about to
- 16:24turn 7, just here in a couple days.
- 16:27So God knows I'm not looking forward to what happens down the
- 16:30road when she's a teenager. But even last night I'm helping
- 16:33coach out her basketball team. And these are a bunch of six and
- 16:36seven-year old girls. And when girls and kids get
- 16:38together, they have fun and all that.
- 16:39But I did notice I was like, man, and maybe I'm a terrible
- 16:42coach. Really.
- 16:43Maybe it comes down to me being a terrible coach.
- 16:46I was like, man, these girls really are not paying attention.
- 16:50And the other coach with me said the same thing.
- 16:53He's like, man, you got about 3 seconds of attention span.
- 16:56And so my daughter obviously isn't on social media.
- 17:01But I think it's not just the social media, it's the screens,
- 17:04it's the iPads, it's the tablets, it's the unbelievable
- 17:09when I look at my TV over here, how freaking big these TV's are
- 17:13and 4K and how amazing the graphics are.
- 17:17And think about you and I are both in our 40s, OK, it was fun
- 17:21to watch TV back in the day, but you're watching, you're sitting,
- 17:23you got like the TV with the wooden encasement that your
- 17:27grandma had and you got to go switch it.
- 17:31And we didn't have HD growing up.
- 17:33And I just think the colors and the sounds and the addictive
- 17:36nature of screens now, for example, so my son, my son's 3
- 17:411/2 and he's a big reactor. My daughter wasn't like this.
- 17:45I also think we've probably given my son too much screen
- 17:49time because if I don't let him watch Gigantosaurus or Wild
- 17:53Kratts, which by the way are pretty educational, we try to
- 17:56keep it educational. If I turn the TV off, he will
- 18:00have a freaking just throw a shit bit dude.
- 18:03And it's, it's insane. I'm like the fact that you
- 18:06reacted that way as if somebody in your family died from just me
- 18:11turning the TV off. And again, we're watching, we're
- 18:15trying to find educational type program.
- 18:17There's another show called Dino Dana.
- 18:19I don't know if you're familiar with Coco Melon, though.
- 18:21Have you heard about Coco? Melon.
- 18:23Oh my God, it's dude. It's like crack for children.
- 18:26That's what I'm saying, and it's so obvious.
- 18:28The songs are addictive and you feel like you're transfixed.
- 18:31So we stopped watching Coco Melon.
- 18:34We talked about this before, all these things, social media
- 18:37screens, casinos, whatever it is, they are using the perfect
- 18:41sounds, the perfect colors, the perfect whatever it is to addict
- 18:46you. And they're doing it on purpose.
- 18:47They're they're testing these colors, they're testing the
- 18:49sounds, they're testing what the characters look like, they're
- 18:52testing their voices to addict us and our children.
- 18:55It is, it is crazy. It it is pretty scary and I feel
- 18:58like I've noticed it especially even the difference between my 7
- 19:01year old daughter and 3 1/2 year old son.
- 19:03It's pretty stark. Yeah, Coco Melon, like I said,
- 19:07it it is, it is like crack for children.
- 19:09It's like a dopamine hit to their brain.
- 19:11They they did it intentionally. It's their algorithm,
- 19:14essentially. And it worked.
- 19:16You know, when we were younger, we had commercials, we had
- 19:20limited options. We couldn't carry it around.
- 19:23We if you wanted to watch TV, you had to sit your ass in front
- 19:27of the television. You had to wait through
- 19:28commercials. We had more than three channels
- 19:31like our parents, but we didn't have 1000 things on instantly
- 19:35where we could watch basically any entertainment we ever wanted
- 19:38that's been consumed or been made in the history of the
- 19:41world. And and that's a massive change
- 19:43in a fairly short period of time.
- 19:45And as I said before, it's amazing how technology has
- 19:49developed, but yet we haven't gotten more productive.
- 19:54And in some ways we've gotten less productive.
- 19:55And it's because we as humans have a weakness where we can't.
- 20:00Keep our attention and these companies, whether it be Coco
- 20:03Melon or TikTok or or the YouTube, they know how to get
- 20:08you to stay engaged with the algorithm.
- 20:11And so the technology that make could make you more productive
- 20:14and give you more information is also at the same time working
- 20:17against you to find new ways to make you waste time.
- 20:21It's probably going to be that way with AI too, Like AI is here
- 20:24and, and it, AI is a wonderful thing in a lot of ways, a huge
- 20:29time saver for people already who know how to use.
- 20:31And it's not even what it's going to be yet.
- 20:34And it, but it's also going to be a huge time waster.
- 20:37Like you can imagine. People are going to have these
- 20:39AI chat bots someday. They'll be robots.
- 20:42I mean, Tesla's already making robots and what are they going
- 20:45to do with these AI robots? They're going to end up like
- 20:48wasting time with them, probably having sex with them.
- 20:51I mean, I was going to say yes. The sex robot thing is going to
- 20:54be a huge deal. So rather so you're going to
- 20:57have this incredible technology. It's kind of, it's like the show
- 21:00Black Mirror. That's probably what the
- 21:02future's going to be. We're going to have, it's going
- 21:04to be ironic access to this incredible technology that can
- 21:08make our lives so much better and richer.
- 21:10And we're going to do things like, you know, mess around with
- 21:15it, have sex with it, get it to do crazy things.
- 21:17Like people are going to have it do like all these crazy stunts
- 21:20and blow it up, blow it up. And that's kind of, you know,
- 21:23how we are as humans, I guess, something about human nature in
- 21:27there. Yeah, it's crazy.
- 21:29So I just started messing around with Croc and I started making
- 21:33YouTube thumbnails off Croc and they're pretty Dang good,
- 21:37especially if it's with a prominent person.
- 21:39If you're talking about a prominent famous person, they're
- 21:41going to give you 4 options of a picture.
- 21:44It looked pretty Dang good and it's just starting.
- 21:46How much better is it going to be months, years from now?
- 21:49And I'm thinking about that. I'm like, this is probably
- 21:53eliminated. Graphic designers, you're going
- 21:55to have people who are photographers.
- 21:58Their job for the most part is going to be eliminated because
- 22:01and I had a, a wife and a friend of mine said this, I was, I was
- 22:05looking for, for head shots basically for YouTube
- 22:08thumbnails. And she texted me and said I, I
- 22:12went and found this dude and I gave this guy just a picture of
- 22:16me and through AI he sent me back whatever it was 10/15/20
- 22:21unbelievable headshots, which are are all AI.
- 22:25But it looks exactly like her. I mean, they're using a picture
- 22:28of her. Think about a photographer with,
- 22:30with your family. You can probably send AIA
- 22:32picture of your family and they're going to give you the
- 22:34Christmas picture, the Halloween picture, the Thanksgiving
- 22:38picture, right? We'll probably all save a lot of
- 22:40money. But the other part was I do I
- 22:44think about this a lot because I try not to be on my phone.
- 22:47I, I kind of hate the fact even though I like my job right now,
- 22:51I kind of hate the fact that it's all looking at a screen,
- 22:54whether it's YouTube, my laptop, my phone.
- 22:56The other day I was at one of my kids Taekwondo class.
- 23:00I don't remember which one, but I'm looking at my phone.
- 23:03I look over and I swear probably 90% of all parents were looking
- 23:09at their phones. And we do talk and get to know
- 23:11each other a little bit. But I'm thinking back in the
- 23:15day, your parents and we do, we, we do talk like at my, my
- 23:20daughter's basketball games, everybody's kind of standing up.
- 23:22So nobody, nobody's on their phones.
- 23:24Everybody's chatting. You're getting to know people.
- 23:26But in this particular setting, I'm thinking you can make great
- 23:29friends with another couple. You can be sitting next to a
- 23:31couple who's watching their kid. I'm watching my kid.
- 23:33And all of a sudden you strike up a conversation, you become
- 23:36great friends. You start going out to dinner,
- 23:37having drinks and all that. How much of that is lost on the
- 23:41fact that people aren't even really conversing, They're just
- 23:44looking at their phone. It is funny too, because you'll
- 23:47catch somebody and you'll you'll kind of see what they're looking
- 23:50at. I'm not even trying, but it's
- 23:51not work related. It's just total crap.
- 23:54And then X even X has so much whatever it is porn or all kinds
- 23:59of stuff like. Is it one of those X feeds that
- 24:01says you you won't last two minutes on this?
- 24:05Right, all that and I'll just look at X.
- 24:08That's the one thing about X2. I don't like the pornography
- 24:10there. If you want pornography, you
- 24:13should be able to go to a site that's for that.
- 24:16But the fact that it can just pop up and we've got into this
- 24:20discussion back in the day on radio, people will be like, no,
- 24:22that's you looking at, that's your algorithm.
- 24:24We tested this out. We tested this out before you
- 24:27tab. It's going to show you that
- 24:29stuff. It's going to show you a bunch
- 24:30of that crap, right? You're looking, Oh my God, like
- 24:33there's somebody next to me and all of a sudden that comes up
- 24:34and you're like, just get out of it.
- 24:38Well, and, and also I, for some reason certain times I check, I,
- 24:42I see Elon Musk's tweets here or there, his expose, but I don't
- 24:45like hover over them or interact with them.
- 24:48But yet sometimes at certain times, I will see like the 1st
- 24:5110 things in my 4U tab, 9 of them would be Elon Musk post.
- 24:54And I'm like, wait a minute, this algorithm is being, is
- 24:57being manipulated, but we are losing something.
- 25:00And if you look at we have an epidemic of loneliness in this
- 25:04country, particularly with men. And if you look at surveys of
- 25:09just asking questions like how many close friends do you have,
- 25:12how you know, how happy and engaged do you feel like those
- 25:15numbers are way down from what they used to be a particularly
- 25:20for men. And it's because we are losing
- 25:23those institutions that bring us together.
- 25:26It's not all because of technology.
- 25:27Some of it's because of the loss of religion in our country.
- 25:29Church used to be that place for a lot of people and we're much
- 25:32less religious. But things like bowling leagues
- 25:36have dramatically fallen off. And as you pointed out, even
- 25:38when we are brought together for basketball games or kids
- 25:42sporting events, we're not engaging like we used to because
- 25:45we're all on our phones. If your same situation 30 years
- 25:48ago, someone in your position, they would have been there and
- 25:52they would have been talking to the other parents the whole time
- 25:54because there literally would have been nothing else to do
- 25:57except, you know, obviously you're watching the event.
- 25:59But there are breaks, there are time outs there.
- 26:01You're in between sessions, whatever the case may be.
- 26:04You would be just talking to the people, people around you.
- 26:06You would be making friends. And that's not happening with
- 26:09older people. It's not happening with young
- 26:11people. It's one of the reasons that I
- 26:13said the marriage rates and cohabitation rates are going
- 26:16down, the birth rate is going down and it's just the kids
- 26:21growing up like that. Imagine what their lives are
- 26:25going to be like if that's all they've ever known from the time
- 26:28they were a child. It's really, it's really a weird
- 26:32time we're entering into where human beings kind of had certain
- 26:36structures and behaved a certain way for a very long time.
- 26:40And that has changed so quickly in time in terms of like the the
- 26:45course of human beings. It's change is inevitable, but
- 26:51this change has happened so dramatically and so quickly that
- 26:56I don't know if we're if we're going to be able to grapple with
- 26:59the consequences for a very long time.