Latest / Why We Do What We Do / Nostalgia: Social Media Addiction pt. 1

Transcript

Nostalgia: Social Media Addiction pt. 1 · Why We Do What We Do

0:00
Hello, Why We Do What We Do? Crew, This is Abraham here,
0:03
and I am excited to let you know that this Friday, May first,
0:07
at five pm Pacific time, in celebration of our three year anniversary,
0:12
we are doing a live stream event. Anybody who would like to may join
0:16
us there. We will be able to interact with you via the chat.
0:20
Some people may be invited to even join us as part of the episode,
0:24
and more details about that can be found at our website as well as our
0:28
Facebook page, our Twitter account, Instagram. We will be streaming to Facebook
0:32
Live and YouTube and Twitch, as well as maybe a couple of other platforms.
0:36
But we are excited to see you there and we are so happy to
0:39
be able to celebrate our third anniversary with you. So thank you for helping
0:42
us make this happen, and we will see you at the live stream event
0:46
on Friday. You're listening to Why We Do what We Do? All right,
1:02
welcome to Why We Do What We Do. I will be your host,
1:04
Abraham, and I'm Shane. And so today we have what seems like
1:08
a lot of content may end up being a multi part episode. We'll see
1:12
how it goes. Yeah, we're gonna play it by year. It's fine.
1:15
Now we are recording this at the time of I don't know if it's
1:19
the height of the coronavirus COVID nineteen pandemic, but it's certainly on an accelerated
1:25
trajectory right now. Yeah, it is a current peak, like it is
1:27
the peak of the situation that we're in at the moment, and as many
1:32
of you will maybe know or depending on how things go by the time this
1:36
is released. May remember the world had transitioned to an online presence, at
1:41
least here in the United States, and so pretty much everybody was using Zoom
1:47
video conferencing or other forms of video conferencing. They were spending all their time
1:51
on social media looking at the explosion of memes that happened in the fallout of
1:56
this shelter in place, lockdown, stay home, whatever campaign is relevant for
2:01
you. People are online a lot. Yes, there is, Like you
2:05
mentioned a meme explosion. There are two camps right now that I can safely
2:08
say exist. One is the Tiger King meme camp and the other one is
2:13
this coronavirus meme camp. So it is like if there were a stock market
2:16
for memes, you would invest in those two, Like you would be a
2:19
billionaire if you had invested in those two. Yeah. So anyway, there
2:25
is this online forum where people are because they can't hang out with one another,
2:30
they're hanging out with one another virtually, and sometimes that is via videos
2:35
they can see each other. Sometimes that is via phone. I definitely have
2:38
been making more phone calls in the last month than I had in my like
2:42
the several years proceeding all put together. And then there's also people who just
2:46
sort of talk to each other on by posting on people's Facebook pages, by
2:51
tweeting, by responding to things that people posted. That sort of thing,
2:54
and that whole mailstrom of online activity is called social media. Yes, so
3:00
Abraham and I have the fortunate honor to be part of a generation that remembers
3:06
the time before social media existed and lives in a current age of social media,
3:10
which is a unique space to be in. We could do a whole
3:13
episode on the generation that kind of like knew what it was like before and
3:15
after. I remember when live journal first came out and everybody was big on
3:21
that and friends there in MySpace, and like those are the big, the
3:23
big things. Yeah, and today it's you know, it's one of the
3:28
greatest but one of the worst things that's ever been created as far as humankind
3:31
goes. It definitely has pros and cons, to say the least, right,
3:37
and I mean, people use this to creep on one another, their
3:40
classmates, or their neighbors, or their coworkers. There's it's vitriolic use and
3:46
contemporary politics. It can also bring a lot of people together, help create
3:50
a safe place for people to even I guess organize in a way that would
3:54
allow them to have that organization without fear of reprisal from their governing body potentially,
4:00
And it has this vice aspect, and it has potentially a good aspect.
4:04
This can be used Essentially, This is this endless list of ways it
4:08
can be used because it's so flexible. And so then the question becomes what
4:11
does across the line of use from just sort of casual interaction to obsession,
4:17
distraction and what you might even ultimately call addiction, right, And that's going
4:23
to be kind of the primary focus of what we talk about today. Like
4:26
one of the questions that we do answer is like, what is this idea
4:28
of social media addiction specifically, And we're going to kind of talk about that,
4:30
but We're also going to ask the question of whether there are certain types
4:33
of people, like say, personality wise, or maybe people who are kind
4:36
of like predisposed to or more prone to I guess is the word to becoming
4:42
more addicted to something like social media. Yeah, and then how does this
4:45
compare to what we normally understand psychologically speaking and otherwise, But what is addiction
4:51
and when we look at what you might think of more addiction with other substance
4:57
abuse and things like that, or other habits that are addictive, and then
5:00
how it is different from those other habits as well, and whether there can
5:03
be sort of this healthy balance. You know, I've heard people say everything
5:06
in moderation, and I think there may be some things you should never do
5:10
and that doing it even a little bit is not okay. Yeah, Like
5:13
this is kind of a little bit glib, but I would say, you
5:16
know, maybe meth is not something that is okay in moderation, probably doesn't
5:19
work that well. Yeah, So right, you know, we're going to
5:23
kind of talk about this a little bit differently than that, because it is
5:26
a little bit different than say, like a really harsh drug addiction. But
5:30
we're going to kind of draw some parallels and kind of talk about what it
5:31
looks like, how it's diagnosed, how it's treated, and kind of really
5:34
dig into what it means to have or maybe if you are somebody who has
5:40
experienced this, what could be considered social media addiction. I think a useful
5:44
way to organize this conversation would be sort of how different sources have described elements
5:49
of social media addiction and what that means. So we'll have some statistics that
5:54
they've provided, as well as some definitions and even acute lie questionnaire, a
6:00
diagnostic questionnaire that we'll get to in a moment. Yeah, all right,
6:04
before we continue, just want to let everyone know that we will be discussing
6:08
addiction, and so we do talk about drugs and the use of drugs,
6:12
and so just want to warn everyone before we jump into that conversation that we
6:15
will be talking about that at various points. So if that's a topic that
6:17
is of concern, you may want to skip that part of the episode or
6:20
skip this one altogether. So let's start with the source, the Chronicle,
6:27
which many people, of course have heard of, and according to the Chronicle,
6:30
of course, many people use social media around the world, But how
6:33
many people use social media. Well, according to them, about eighty six
6:38
percent. I didn't set that up very well. I was hoping to do
6:40
the like, so many people use social media? So many people? Yeah,
6:46
how many people use it? Eighty six percent of people around the world
6:48
use it daily. According to this source, twenty percent of adults use it
6:51
for at least five hours a day, which is so much. And then
6:57
since twenty fourteen, there are describing that Instagram's user base has increased by one
7:02
hundred million users per year. I have heard people say that they've sort of
7:06
moved away from things like Twitter and Facebook toward Instagram. But then, of
7:12
course TikTok blew up really fast, and I think there's even some more that
7:15
are coming on the scene now that they'd sort of flame up like a giant
7:19
explosion and users. Yeah, I mean you'll see some kind of new platform
7:25
will show up, and then sometimes it'll take and sometimes it doesn't. I
7:28
remember Vine picked up for a little bit really quickly. It blew up really
7:32
it was huge for like a year, and then it went away when Instagram
7:35
added video. And then you now you have TikTok, which is a little
7:39
bit different. So yeah, I mean you'll see especially this day and age,
7:42
Like there's kind of like these flashes in the pan that that will show
7:44
up, but some kind of stick when Instagram seems to be one that's stuck
7:46
for a little while Facebook is one that's kind of stuck around. Twitter is
7:49
one that stuck around. So you'll see those are kind of like the Big
7:51
three with TikTok creeping up there. Yeah, and this is just on those
7:57
flash in the pan things. I feel like such a short memory for these
8:01
because it's like almost nobody even remembers that that happened. And when we first
8:05
started this podcast, fidget spinners were all the rage. Everyone had them,
8:11
you could get there were just there were so many. And I said at
8:15
the time, I think this is gonna be over in a year, And
8:18
it was a little longer than a year. But I like, do we
8:20
really see like everyone caring of fidget spinners anymore? Like there are some,
8:24
but not nearly to the extent it was. It was like a plague of
8:28
fidget spinners, which is maybe not an appropriate term to use given that's going
8:31
on right now. There was a lot of fidget spinners a day. There
8:35
were many, There were many. I mean, it's like when we were
8:37
kids, did do you remember hacky sacks? Like everybody had hacky sacks for
8:39
a little bit and POGs, Oh yeah, yeah, fogs. You know,
8:43
so when you start talking about this paradigm Malibu, which is another site
8:46
that we looked at here, they referenced that teens check their phones about one
8:50
hundred and fifty times per day, which, when you put it like that,
8:54
sounds like quite a bit. That's quite a few times. Look at
8:56
your phone. Yeah, I'm actually gonna see how many o that mine.
9:01
It looks like I'm averaging a little over one hundred myself, although I don't
9:05
know exactly how to interpret that. What does that mean? Yeah? I
9:07
mean that doesn't talk about quality or anything like that. And really, you
9:11
know, one of the questions that we have to ask within that is is
9:13
it because you know that high number one hundred and fifty, which you know
9:18
we're on average. Within that, is it because there's maybe fewer competing responsibilities
9:22
like a day job, like maybe most adults do. Maybe most adults check
9:26
it less because they're working more. Maybe there's some other things going on that
9:30
are kind of contributing to that. We don't really know that yet. And
9:33
Also, I'm kind of curious what counts as like a phone check, because
9:37
I will check what time it is, or just to see if I'll just
9:39
like tap the screen to see if there's been any new messages things like that,
9:43
or if I just lift it up just because I'm moving it and then
9:46
the screen registers is being turned on as I count. Yeah. But anyway,
9:50
a point being that you combine this with the fact that you have someone
9:54
whose brain is developing as a teenager, their decision making and habits are developing,
9:58
and they have not really worked out a good repertoire for how to navigate
10:01
their own behavior. You sort of have the recipe for, I don't want
10:05
to say necessarily disaster, but you certainly set them up for the ability to
10:11
form the social media addiction like thing. Yeah. I mean, these are
10:15
formative years, so it's very possible that something that can get shaped up pretty
10:18
quickly. All right, Shane. What attracts us to social media anyway?
10:22
Oh? Well, in the day and age of technology, one thing that
10:24
you'll hear a lot when like you're designing websites or anything like that is user
10:30
interfaces, and most social media is designed to be pretty easy to navigate.
10:33
It's pretty easy to kind of set up and run, but it's also free.
10:37
So you've got this situation where it's like there's this cool platform where there's
10:41
not really a lot of restrictions and it's really easy to use. And we'll
10:46
talk about this more later, but I don't know if anybody really saw that
10:50
one of the most prolific technology or sectors of technology development was going to be
10:56
in communications more generally. You know, in the Internet came on, there
11:00
was a lot of people who were skeptical that it was going to be very
11:03
useful. When cell phones were coming around, no one ever thought that cell
11:07
phones would be capable of doing a tenth of the things they're capable of doing
11:11
now, right, right, And yeah, I think honestly, the fact
11:15
that we're social creatures that we have a lot of sort of interaction seeking behaviors.
11:22
I think betting on communication is pretty safe, and so essentially with the
11:26
social media platforms, no matter how you interact with it, you're almost always
11:31
going to get some kind of immediate reward from doing so. You don't have
11:35
to wait for anything because there's always people on it, and because even if
11:39
the people don't necessarily immediately reward your interaction with that platform. The platform will
11:45
for you, and so it sort of serves as an intermediary to make sure
11:48
that you never go a second without being able to contact some level of success.
11:54
And to add to that, like when people do interact with you,
11:56
you've got this unlimited type of social currency that exists. Right, So the
12:00
more likes that I get, the more responses that I get, the more
12:03
comments that I get, the more shares that happen on my post, whatever
12:05
that might be, there's always more of it. There's an unlimited resource for
12:09
it as long as the social media platform exists. And while we can't just
12:13
print more money, we can kind of set up a situation where maybe likes
12:18
are more available. And sometimes and I think calling this this like digital currency,
12:22
that's not bitcoin, but you know, this form of currency in terms
12:26
of social currency is right on is with what's going on here, because and
12:33
as you pointed out, this can translate to real money, you know,
12:35
real fame, real notoriety. This can have you have access to things you
12:39
wouldn't otherwise have access to and get you on a momentum of even more money
12:45
and fame and notoriety. And that sort of thing, so and kind of
12:48
anybody can do that if they can use a platform in a savvy way,
12:50
like you don't have to know the right people. This one's this is pretty
12:54
democratic in that way, if you will. And the other thing too is
12:58
with our phones available to us and us being essentially in a place where we
13:03
are never without connection to the Internet, the accessibility of this is unmatched,
13:11
like anybody can use the space. Yeah, I mean again, going back
13:15
to this idea, you know, we are the age where we remember dial
13:18
up and how hard it was to get on the Internet, and then when
13:20
somebody would pick up the phone we lost Internet and it was like come on.
13:26
You know, here we're in a space where it's like it's in our
13:28
pockets, Like we have these supercomputers in our pockets that allow us to access
13:31
this. I don't think that's either a good or bad thing. I think
13:33
what I what I would say here is that it sets the occasion for things
13:37
like social media to be successful. It allows for things like social media and
13:41
even for people to work longer hours than they should. It allows for those
13:46
types of It does occasion that type of behavior right now. Another thing is,
13:50
and going back to this idea of that sort of immediate reward because there
13:54
are so many people using it. One of the ways that you can sort
13:58
of predict what will be a six sccessful social media platform or not is how
14:03
popular it gets and how quickly and maybe not necessarily how quickly, but definitely
14:07
how popular it gets. And basically because the more people that are using that
14:11
platform, the more valuable that platform is, and because the whole purpose is
14:16
to communicate with as many people as possible. So if I were to sell
14:18
you the super fancy, amazing, crazy high tech Tony Stark phone, but
14:26
it couldn't connect to any networks and you couldn't actually use it to communicate with
14:30
anybody, Like, it might be cool to show off, but you wouldn't
14:33
really engage with it very much. So these social media platforms, what they
14:37
do so well is that when they become accessible enough to enough people, then
14:41
the more people that join it, the more people will join it, so
14:45
the snowball effect. And it's similar to this idea of sort of the hopping
14:48
on the bandwagon. It's just that it continues to increase in value the more
14:52
participation that there is. You'll kind of see this a little bit computer World
14:56
dot Com talks about this as a network effect, where you'll see a network
15:00
becomes more valuable as more people join it, right, So, and you'll
15:03
see like within that though, you'll see something like intermittent information where seeing a
15:07
number of likes, a number of comments, notifications. It could be backed
15:11
up by pretty much anything that's going on, Like, it could be backed
15:13
up by whatever you're posting. It could be backed up with you know,
15:16
some kind of maybe monetary value, right you know, later we'll talk about
15:20
something like algorithms and stuff that kind of boosts your posts. But this idea
15:24
that like the more likes that you get, that's already positively reinforcing, it's
15:28
pushing up you know, your your post, making it so that you have
15:31
more likes, more exposure. You know, we had on our Instagram,
15:35
we post stuff all the time, and one of the posts that we got
15:39
the most likes on was a meme that somebody else had created that we credited.
15:43
We were like, hey, here's this funny thing, and we've gotten
15:46
more likes on that post than anything that we've created on our own, which
15:48
is kind of ridiculous, but that was super reinforcing. I mean, we
15:52
shared it, and we talked about it within our crew. We were like,
15:54
look at this, this is really really interesting. So it's just funny
15:56
how that kind of turns into, you know, something that is generally a
16:00
neutral notification that doesn't really mean anything, a like doesn't really mean anything.
16:04
I mean, somebody double tapped your photo becomes something a little bit more,
16:10
and then it becomes like this weird cycle of reinforcement and checking your phone and
16:15
just kind of like it spirals a little bit. You can't be the life
16:18
of the party if you don't join the party, so just just gotta hop
16:22
on and ride along with everybody on their party boat. Virtual party about it
16:26
not encouraging people to violate physical distancing recommendations, but yes, anyway, So
16:32
I talked about this fact that there's essentially no time at which you can't be
16:34
successful, but that's not necessarily true. And also there are various levels of
16:37
what functions as a successful outcome. So having someone respond to you, having
16:44
someone like something that you have done, having it be retweeted, those might
16:48
have different types of values, and you're not always going to get the thing
16:51
that's the most valuable to you. Every time that you interact with that platform.
16:56
And there's actually an interesting phenomenon here that I'm going to compare to gambling,
17:00
because you think when you go gambling, you don't win money every time,
17:03
right, If you did, people do it more. But one of
17:06
the things that establishes that habit so that it maintains for a very long time
17:12
until people are betting their houses and doing crazy stuff like that and betting their
17:17
mortgages and they feel like they're out of control. What their their impulsiveness and
17:21
gambling is that they don't win very much. Every time. They will get
17:25
some amount, they'll get sometimes they'll get some pretty big payoffs, and then
17:29
most of the time, if they get anything, it all will be fairly
17:32
small. But and that's exactly the same overlay as what's happening with social media.
17:37
Is like sometimes you get little payoffs here and there, and sometimes you
17:40
get really big ones. But what we know from the research is that those
17:45
sporadic or periodic big payoffs will maintain a habit stronger than anything else that you
17:52
can create. Oh absolutely, And it's a problem, right because then you'll
17:57
see people posting and posting and posting, and it becomes like this bigger,
18:00
larger challenge that people have to kind of overcome. Right now, One thing
18:06
too to consider when we start talking about social media is that there are algorithms
18:10
that are built into these programs, into these platforms, right, and so
18:12
every day, as they gather new information and they gather new data, they
18:17
become smarter and smarter. So it's very much so a very scary AI type
18:19
of situation. But what ends up happening is content is being further curated and
18:25
thus more addictive. So basically what's happening is, like, you know,
18:29
an algorithm on your profile. Let's say that you have, like an Instagram
18:32
profile. You like certain photos, so you like this photo, this vote
18:34
of this photo, and they kind of have a common theme or maybe they
18:37
have the same kind of hashtag, and so then what's going to happen is
18:41
your feed that you see is going to produce the same types of photos or
18:45
similar enough photos or similar enough profiles that it kind of maintains that behavior of
18:51
attending to those particular like the features, the salient features of those photos or
18:56
whatever it is about that profile. And every social media platform has something like
19:00
that. You know, if you're on Twitter and you're liking certain politicians and
19:03
liking their and retweeting their you know, sound bites and doing all that,
19:07
You're gonna start getting more from that group or similar content. Like almost like
19:11
you end up in an echo chamber and it's like it's really bizarre kind of
19:15
reinforcement cycle that you get stuck in. All Right, now, we've been
19:18
talking so far about what social media is, how the internet works, how
19:25
different you know, a lot of this is going to be somewhat now,
19:27
and maybe some of this will be new information, but the whole point of
19:30
this discussion is to build up to what social media addiction is. So,
19:37
Shane, what is the diagnostic criteria for someone to be officially called BIA psychologist
19:45
an addict of social media? Ah? So that's kind of the big mystery
19:51
here. There is not currently a diagnostic criteria for social media addiction in the
19:55
DSM five. What I know, there's no standard evaluation. There's nothing really
20:00
there that says this is what social media addiction is, but skills that are
20:04
out there. Anytime they kind of talk about that, they seem to consider
20:07
the following bits of information as far as how this might be a problem for
20:11
somebody who is suffering from it and The first one is time spent. People
20:15
who are generally addicted to anything tend to spend a lot of time engaged with
20:21
what that is. That is one big criteria they look at for addiction in
20:23
general. Yeah. Absolutely, of course. One thing that you'll look for
20:27
in as a sign that is become addictive, which is to say it is
20:32
interfering with your life, is that it's interfering with your life and specifically that
20:37
you'll see damage to normal routines and potentially damage to what was once considered a
20:42
valuable relationship. That's a pretty common thread across most diagnostic criteria is that it
20:48
does interrupt some kind of routine that you're engaged in. Right. A third
20:52
criteria that they might consider as part of these skills is whether the person that
20:56
is maybe suffering from this engages in some kind of withdrawal behavior when they're denied
21:00
access, So maybe there's some kind of problematic event that occurs that removes them
21:06
from accessing that or may when they do lose access, like if I can't
21:10
get onto my phone, is there going to be a problem. And that's
21:12
that's something you might see as part of the scales that they look at when
21:15
they start evaluating this. So can we call this addiction? I don't know,
21:21
you know, there's it's hard to say because of how different this does
21:25
seem to be from a lot of other forms of addiction that have been described.
21:27
I just heard recently they're considering adding video game addiction. So basically,
21:33
any pattern of behavior where you see these sort of criteria that we've just described,
21:37
an enormous proportion of every time is being spent there is disruptive to other
21:41
routines and relationships which you might expect if you're spending a lot of time there,
21:45
and that you get this reactivity to having that taken away. That could
21:52
be applied to just a lot of different things that are really firmly established habits
21:56
for somebody. And so whether we call this addiction is just tough. Like
22:00
a name is just a name, Like those are just words that happen,
22:03
but they can actually carry really important real world effects, and calling something addiction
22:10
might free up something like requirements or money for treatment, and so the words
22:15
we choose to use here are important. We can't just blow those off,
22:18
you know, So just something to consider. We don't know if this process
22:22
the line, but we're going to spend the rest of this discussion talking a
22:25
lot more about the kind of habits that show up around this thing called social
22:30
media, and then how this compares to those other addictions to kind of further
22:33
elaborate on this idea of what it's like to be obsessed with something like social
22:37
media. The Guardian is another site that we looked at, and it kind
22:41
of takes into account this idea of abnormalities, you know, social media use.
22:45
Abnormalities might be something like using in the middle of the night, blindly
22:48
offering deeply personal opinions to unknown audiences. Those two things are are just examples,
22:53
but there's plenty of other ones, like maybe people are skipping work to
22:56
spend more time on it too, you'll see that. But I, you
23:00
know, using it in the middle of the night, I think it depends
23:02
on is it disrupting your sleep? Is it something that you are waking up
23:06
at like two am just to get a post out, Like, like what
23:08
are you doing with that? You know? So those are some abnormalities that
23:11
are mentioned as part of this. There's also a consideration regarding what is considered
23:17
abnormal or normal that depends on sort of what the cultural the culture that you
23:22
belong to is doing with that sort of thing, So it might not be
23:26
abnormal if everybody does it, Like that's just the expectation as you wake up
23:30
at two am to like check a post or to post something youth. I'm
23:33
not saying that that's what happens, but meeting that criteria for whether we call
23:37
it addiction does depend a little bit on how we're saying that it deviates from
23:41
what we consider quote unquote normal based on what everyone else in that culture is
23:45
kind of doing or how other people are using in that platform. And another
23:48
thing is that we start to get used to these patterns of behavior and not
23:53
even necessarily think or detect that it's causing harm. And I think if you
23:59
were to go back fifteen twenty years to before cell phones were capable of what
24:03
they were doing now, if we saw people looking at their phone, just
24:07
looking at it, pulling it out of their pocket, checking it, interacting
24:11
with it, touching it, even remotely approaching the frequency of the way that
24:17
they do now, then that would look very strange to people of two thousand
24:21
and five. You know, that just wasn't something people did. There wasn't
24:25
I mean, in two thousand and five, people were still using like palm
24:27
pilots to play games, yeah, and sidekicks and sidekicks yeah, to do
24:33
this sort of thing. So you definitely saw it emerging at that time,
24:36
but like the phones just weren't capable of doing what they're capable of doing now,
24:40
so you still wouldn't see that level of interaction. And now we don't
24:44
see that and think necessarily that that's weird or out of place. So let's
24:47
just think about this, how that fits into what people are doing in sort
24:49
of the zeitgeist. Yeah, and the kind of like maybe shine a little
24:53
bit more light on this too. We're going to use a twenty sixteen reference,
24:56
so it's more current because two thousand and five was a very strange year.
25:00
So if you think about it, I think I just graduated high school
25:04
the year before, so that was an event. So in twenty sixteen,
25:08
it was a pretty volatile year to be online, given things like the election
25:11
that was going on and kind of everything that happened with the United States election
25:15
and really polarized opinions, and basically what you saw on social media was it
25:19
was weaponized. It was weaponized towards, you know, pushing a certain political
25:23
agenda into plays. It was used as a political tool, and there's whether
25:26
you're debated or not. You can go look at the Muller Report. There
25:30
was some stuff out there, and that's not getting political, just trying to
25:33
get the facts. But you'll see that during those times, and you can
25:36
see it right now if you spend a little bit of time on Facebook.
25:38
It is people are aggressively using social media to push certain thoughts, certain agendas.
25:44
I mean, you'll see a lot of pseudoscience gets pushed out through this,
25:48
and it's it's weaponized in a very strange way. Yeah. Absolutely,
25:52
And I think just to spend a moment on that because I think it's useful
25:56
to point out a lot of people have said, well, how could they
25:57
actually en fluence real world events like election doing something like a campaign on social
26:03
media? And I think that it's reasonable to be skeptical of that kind of
26:08
thing. And essentially, just to break it down, what ended up happening
26:11
was there were people going online targeting vulnerable are people who were likely to be
26:17
susceptible to this, which is a lot and essentially either trying to if they
26:22
thought that they could be pushed in a particular direction, then trying to feed
26:26
them a bunch of misinformation to push them in that direction. If they thought
26:30
they couldn't be pushed in that direction, then instead it was just don't vote.
26:33
That was like the huge campaign like your vote doesn't matter. There's the
26:37
whole rhetoric of you know, one vote's not going to change the outcome of
26:41
an election, so it doesn't matter, and so they would really try and
26:45
dissuade people from even participating in that election. And that's also true with the
26:49
coronavirus going around, is you have people with their own agenda who have gotten
26:52
much better at manipulating people by trying to exploit where their bias. And it's
27:00
like they don't even care whether they're right or you're right or anything. They
27:03
want you to act a particular way and they're going to figure out what your
27:07
bias is and they're going to pull on that threat as hard as they can
27:11
to get you to do one thing or another. And people don't even they
27:15
can't catch that's happening. And this is only made available on these platforms for
27:21
the most part. You know, they're not running these ad campaigns through the
27:25
through most major television networks. This is only available online. And so if
27:30
you are using this habitually the point where that makes up twenty percent of your
27:34
day, you know, then you are highly of your waking hours. You
27:40
know. Even more if it's just considering your waking hours, then that's you
27:44
are going to be much more susceptible to those kind of attacks. That's kind
27:47
of another route that we're getting at here when we start talking about this idea
27:49
of addiction is like part of being on that platform as much as people who
27:56
are quote unquote addicted to this as they might be, like they are getting
27:59
a lot of information that's unverified, untrue, weaponized, like you want to
28:03
say, like however you want to look at it. But on top of
28:06
people posting misinformation, you've also got algorithms that are if you're interacting with that
28:11
misinformation, then more information is going to come to you. And so now
28:15
this person who is spending all this time on this platform is getting exposed to
28:18
all this stuff and it is going to influence their behavior on some level simply
28:22
because now they're setting these like rules, right, this idea of like oh
28:26
this is true of this, oh you know, in New York, they're
28:30
stealing masks and they're selling them, which is ridiculous. So like that type
28:34
of stuff though, influences behavior, and that's why exposure to this on this
28:37
level can be even more hazardous, right, And so the important thing I
28:41
think, just to follow up on what you're saying with those algorithms is that
28:45
they find the thing that you're most likely to interact with and they use that
28:48
as your reward. So they're monitoring what you do online. I mean they
28:53
meaning the algorithms essentially, not not the deep state exactly too many people for
29:00
that to even be remotely realistic. But these algorithms essentially just track the things
29:04
that you do, and then where you spend the most time, where you
29:07
spend the most clicks, where you'd spend the most likes, whatever. It's
29:11
going to aggregate that into feeding you content that works as a reward to keep
29:15
you coming back to that platform. And again it doesn't necessarily always have an
29:18
agenda, but people can exploit that algorithm to sort of manipulate you in a
29:23
particular way. It's very easy to see where conspiratorial thinking begins to emerge in
29:29
some of this. Something I was thinking about is, you know, part
29:33
of this whole toilet paper thing that's going on right now. I think it's
29:41
very complex. I think there are a lot of variables that are wrapped up
29:44
inside of why people are buying toilet paper and it's selling out its stores.
29:48
And I've read a lot of different sources that have had some ideas that make
29:49
a lot of logical sense, and some of them actually have data to back
29:52
it up. But one of the things that happened definitely was hype about toil
30:00
That would maybe not the biggest, maybe not the biggest factor, but it
30:03
was at least one of them. For some people. They had like what
30:06
they're selling out of toilet paper, I use toilet paper. I need to
30:08
get down to the story immediately. And so I was thinking that. I'm
30:12
like, I wonder if I were to create like a big thing about how
30:15
we're running out of floss, if all of a sudden people would start selling
30:19
out of loss. Yeah, well, that's and that speaks to cultural selection
30:23
when we get into that, Like, I mean, that's that's a whole
30:26
topic that we could probably spend a lot of time on. But yeah,
30:29
I mean, people are influenced by what they're seeing, They're influenced by what
30:32
is going on and like this kind of mass cultural movement that's really being up
30:36
to me as the biggest contributor. Yeah, we've got a lot more to
30:38
cover here in terms of some of the data on addiction and whatnot, and
30:42
I want to make sure we use our times somewhat efficiently since we have so
30:47
much to cover. Yeah, but yeah, So according to Addictioncenter dot org,
30:51
psychologists estimate that approximately five to ten percent of Americans do meet the criteria
30:56
for social media addiction. And that's sort of modern, like that up to
31:00
date information. And this is with respect to people feeling an urge to log
31:04
into the social media account, as we mentioned before, spending a lot of
31:08
time on it, and then how it might otherwise impair their sort of normal
31:12
daily routine and quality of living. So, Shane, we're at that time
31:17
where I'm going to see if I can diagnose you as a social media addict.
31:22
Well I am ready great, all right, So I'm gonna ask you
31:25
six questions to consider to see if you might be at risk or being a
31:30
social media addict. Okay, all right, So do you spend a lot
31:33
of time thinking about social media or planning to use social media? I would
31:38
say no, okay. Do you feel urges to use social media increasingly?
31:45
No? Okay? Do you use social media to forget about personal problems that
31:49
you have say every now and again? Yeah? Okay. Do you often
31:53
try to reduce use of social media but fail to be able to do so
31:57
successfully? I would say no to that one. Okay. Do you become
32:01
restless or troubled if you are unable to use social media? I would say
32:06
maybe last year, Yeah, this year I've gotten a little bit better about
32:08
it. Okay. And finally, do you use social media so much that
32:14
it has a negative impact on your job or your studies? And for that
32:16
I would say no, Okay, you are not at risk? Yes.
32:22
Essentially, the criteria here is that if three or more of these would be
32:24
a yes, then you might be at risk, But most of them were
32:28
no. So yeah, So those are some of the questions that are set
32:30
up. Again, this is not an actual formal diagnostic test. Taking answering
32:36
these questions yes does not actually mean that you have an addiction, but it
32:40
might mean like maybe we need to look more closely at this. So maybe
32:44
considered a screener and not a diagnostic tool. Yeah, I mean, it's
32:47
definitely worth asking those questions because they all tend to lend themselves to the idea
32:51
that, like, there might be a challenge that you're experiencing that's worth getting
32:55
help with. Right. My favorite part of this though, I do have
32:58
to make a note that Allen and who put together our notes, made a
33:00
really great point about this that when you start looking at these questions about social
33:05
media, do you feel the urge to use social media more and more?
33:07
Like those questions, if you fill in the term social media with any of
33:10
the other more conventional or like more well known types of addiction that are out
33:15
there, it gets a little bit strange, right, Like it starts to
33:19
kind of you see those parallels like do you use coke to forget about your
33:22
personal problems? Do you often try to reduce the use of porn without success?
33:27
Like when you start adding those other things in there, it gets a
33:30
little bit nefarious. So you can see how this kind of goes down that
33:32
path. I always personally like playing that game of if I'm making an argument
33:37
and I simply swap out the phrase that's sort of the position that I'm taking
33:43
for the opposite one, with the argument still stand, and if it does
33:46
it's a poor argument, yeah, but also thinking about like if you take
33:52
something where it's like you're trying to decide the relative importance of something and I'm
33:57
like, okay, let's swap it out for something that we know is important
34:00
and see how that argument stands. And this isn't this isn't a logical test
34:04
that passes all of the like scientific meritive burden of proof. But I do
34:08
like using it as a way to challenge myself so that I don't get too
34:12
comfortable patting myself on the back every time I think I have a good idea,
34:15
you know, as instead, so if it sounds like I have a
34:19
lot of terrible ideas, or I make a lot of invalid points, you
34:21
have no idea. How much has been filtered out it's a problem exactly.
34:29
But this is I'm trying to trying to better myself, if you yeah,
34:35
I mean, I think those are those are worthy thought experiments. And when
34:37
you start, if you're going to use the term addiction in describing social media
34:40
addiction, it's worth using that thought experiment to compare it to relatively significant addictions
34:46
that do exist, that do have evaluations, that do have empirically supported treatments,
34:52
right, Like, if you're going to go so far as a call
34:53
this is an addiction, it's worth looking at it in comparison to real addictions
34:57
that are out there. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about toilet
35:00
paper or planning to use toilet paper these days? You know? Do you
35:05
feel the urge to use toilet paper more and more? Listen, I'll say
35:07
this. I'm at the stage right now where I know where to get toilet
35:12
paper, and I don't want to share it with anybody because I'm like,
35:14
I don't want to have to deal with having to seek it out, Like
35:15
I know there's a spot in my town where you can get it, and
35:19
nobody knows where it is. We had a toilet paper dealer for a little
35:21
bit, honestly, Like we're at a point where toilet paper has become a
35:24
form of currency. And I was really moved, actually, And it's funny
35:29
that this is such an important symbolic gesture given the context that we're in.
35:34
But this is something that I always really like as an opportunity to reflect on
35:38
our culture. Someone at work where I work actually had put out several roles
35:42
of toilet paper off their own and just put a little sticky note on it
35:45
and said, if you really need it, then take it. And I
35:46
was like, that's such an incredibly sweet thing to do, and it's funny
35:50
that like that's that's a thing that somebody would even need to do. But
35:53
that was actually so. We had done a subscription based toilet paper delivery service
36:00
long time, and of course the most recent one was delayed because there is
36:05
none to be shipped. But usually what happens is we already have a lot
36:10
of toilet papers saved up, and the reason being just that, like I
36:14
hate going to the store to buy toilet paper on regular intervals, so I'm
36:16
like, I'm just gonna have a bunch of it sort of stockpiled, so
36:20
like I was never hoarding it or anything. It was just like I wanted
36:22
to have it available for refill whenever I needed to have it, and just
36:25
having it be constantly delivered made sure that I always had back up. Well,
36:29
now that we're not getting those deliveries anymore, I was thinking about and
36:34
like, all right, what do we need to do to take care of
36:35
this, because like other people are like legitimately like getting napkins and Kleenex and
36:42
paper, towels, and whatever they have lying around that they can use to
36:45
like clean themselves. I saw a thing online about people like cooking up a
36:50
little motor, like one of those little pumps to pump water and use again
36:53
to like a spray nozzles they could use their own homemade bidet and stuff,
36:59
And I was like, I honestly like, at this point, I just
37:00
want to go out and get toilet paper so I can give it to people
37:02
who are in that situation where they feel a desperate need. But anyway,
37:07
we got way off track on that. No, But I think that's important
37:08
to highlight how powerful something like a social media platform can be. Like that
37:14
speaks to the general population who is accessing this thing, right, Like,
37:19
so you're not even on social media, and you're experiencing some of the fallout
37:22
of how powerful social media platform can be and how powerful communication can be.
37:28
Because most people who are on social media see all the stuff about toilet paper,
37:30
they go out and get all the toilet paper, and now there's no
37:32
toilet paper for the people who are that need it. Right, So you
37:36
can just see in that instance, right now, in this moment, how
37:38
powerful that can be. So this isn't my recommendation for the show, but
37:42
I'm going to make it just a recommendation. If you do have a lot
37:45
of extra toilet paper and you know people who need it, like give them
37:47
a roll or two. Like, yeah, part ways with that. You
37:50
will be fine, They'll be happy. It's just a kind thing to do,
37:52
exactly. That's my call to action, if you will. All right,
37:55
let's move on with what we were talking about here in terms of yes,
37:59
social media so important. Note obviously, and I was speaking to this
38:02
about how this is changing our culture. But most people are perfectly fine with
38:07
social media. They don't need a lot of monitoring. It's sort of like
38:09
alcohol, honestly, Like most people drink alcohol just fine and don't develop an
38:13
addiction. But when the use of social media or alcohol starts to impact relationships
38:20
or hinder your safety. And I've seen this happen recently. People who are
38:23
walking across the street using their phone without looking, who are checking their Facebook
38:29
while driving, they're putting themselves in others in harm's way. We actually had
38:34
mentioned this on our episode that we did about why people do stupid things,
38:37
and one of them was like, when you're on social media walking across the
38:40
street then like why do people do that sort of thing? But just the
38:45
point being that this starts to be more of an indicator that the habit or
38:51
the pattern that this person is engaged with with that platform have become problematic to
38:54
kind of elaborate on that or to kind of like just expound upon that.
38:59
You've got this idea that like according to Mark D. Griffiths, which was
39:01
a news article that kind of talked about this topic. You know, going
39:06
back to those six questions from the Addiction Center, Okay, if you answer
39:07
yes to all six, right, because you said most people are fine with
39:10
this, but if you answer yes to all six, you might need a
39:14
professional away in there might be something going on. If you answer yes to
39:16
a few of those questions before, it's likely just habitual and maybe a deed
39:22
Talks program is needed or something kind of like just getting used to not being
39:24
in it on as much. So like things like turning off notifications sounds like
39:29
you know, maybe do not disturb is like has been really great for me.
39:32
Setting check times or some on some fixed schedule, So when are you
39:36
gonna check? Maybe you establish some nonscreen times during the day, or maybe
39:38
you keep your phone in a separate room whatever that looks like. There are
39:42
a few things that you can do on your own that that can help kind
39:45
of maybe resolve some of the problems that you might be facing as a result
39:47
of this. A number of the OS's now will come built in with software
39:52
to set up for yourself rules about how much you use your phone and maybe
39:55
even certain apps. I know that there are apps you can download that we'll
40:00
will monitor your use of other apps, and then if you reach a threshold
40:02
that you can set, say like I really want to try and reduce my
40:06
use of social media to two hours a day or something, then you can
40:08
set that up on the app. And then once you are starting to approach
40:12
that threshold, the app will just come up with a like a badge reminder
40:15
thing or notification and say, hey, you're about to go over your goal,
40:19
consider putting your phone down or something like that. And so those are
40:22
some of the things to potentially aid in that detox. So we've talked about
40:28
this a bit, I think we need to cover how the social media addiction
40:32
thing compares to other type of addictions, specifically like substance type addictions. And
40:38
one of the ways that they're similar is that you see generally a kind of
40:43
reclusive behavior where people will withdraw from the physical nearness of others well, which
40:49
is not because of a pandemic ravaging the planet. But if you are doing
40:53
this voluntarily because of your need and your consistent use of this platform, where
41:00
you actually aren't spending more time online with people than you are in their presence,
41:06
and you sort of get this physical removal to only digital life again,
41:10
not because you're forced to do so, then that is comparable to what other
41:15
addictions start to look like. Yeah, and it's important to kind of note
41:17
that addiction doesn't look like that stereotype of a basement dweller that's like Jones in
41:22
for their next hit. Like, it's not always like that, Like addiction
41:24
can be something a little bit less overt. So you'll see that it kind
41:30
of like the reclusive behaviors are really good indicator that there might be a challenge.
41:32
Now, there are physiological effects to social media too to consider. When
41:37
we talk about those physiological effects, we're talking about something that happens in your
41:38
body. Right. One thing that can happen is this neuronal firing, similar
41:43
to gambling and recreational drugs, So you'll see kind of like some of that
41:45
happen within your in the neurology of what's going on, the same sort of
41:50
effect that you'd get from any type of immediate gratification or reinforcement. Essentially,
41:54
you get that pleasure or fulfillment right away, like as soon as as part
41:59
of acting with that habit, you get that sort of pleasure. So,
42:04
as we mentioned earlier some other things like immediate gratification, we talked about this
42:07
being an unlimited type of currency, and the platforms are designed to be easy
42:10
and free. Those all contribute to making social media have this like psychologue or
42:15
physiological effect on us. And that physiological effect it starts to have a similar
42:21
look to what drugs do when we look just at sort of what is happening
42:25
in the brain, and I all caveats that we've mentioned a thousand times about
42:31
how to consider the cause effect relationship here, But for some people who are
42:37
engaging with the platform in a way that starts to look like addiction when they
42:40
get those retweets, those likes, people sharing their posts, that can actually
42:45
trigger a similar surge of neurotransmitters, often dopamine as you might expect to also
42:51
see if they were, for example, snorting cocaine. Yeah, so,
42:55
for example, ten minutes of social media can cause an oxytocin spot similar to
43:00
those emitted on a wedding day. So that brief amount of time can actually
43:04
cause a whole lot of good things happening in the body real quick. And
43:07
according to the Chronicle, they list a quote here that twenty seven percent of
43:13
children who spend three or more hours a day on social media exhibit symptoms of
43:17
poor mental health. End quote. I mean, I'm not entirely show what
43:22
they're considering poor mental health here to make that sort of claim, but it
43:25
would be a concerning number if it was a valid criteria, right, absolutely.
43:31
So another thing that you'll see here is that the user, for lack
43:37
of a better term, the person who's using the social media, what you'll
43:38
see is that they tend to move away from those things they used to find
43:43
fun and enjoyable, and they'll start moving more towards where they're contacting more pleasurable
43:47
events or more reinforcement, if you will. And so what they'll do is
43:51
they'll start using these platforms a little bit more and avoiding things they used to
43:54
do more often. Right, so maybe they're not going outside as much,
43:58
maybe they're not riding their bike as much because they're spending more time accessing some
44:01
kind of social media from the comfort of their home. Goes back to that
44:05
reclusive behavior too, like, so they have no tolerance for the things they
44:07
used to like. They don't really care about the things they used to like.
44:10
They really only care about where they're going to get that next hit,
44:14
yeah exactly, and thinking about how this might work, and just sort of
44:16
the I don't know, cause and effect isn't exactly the word I want to
44:20
use, but sort of how these factors are related to one another. Things
44:23
like sharing a cup of copy with somebody or reading a book, or even
44:28
like cleaning and just having sort of a clean house to live in. Those
44:31
are things that are not inherently positive for us. We start to develop value
44:37
for those things based on like having that be sort of reinforced by our culture,
44:43
by people around us who maybe don't want to be in our house if
44:45
it's weird, And so those become important through sort of a history of exposure
44:51
to them and being built up culturally as being valuable and what's really common just
44:55
as you pointed out, is with these other types of addictions, all those
45:00
things that you that had become important that now undercuts those and they're not intrinsically
45:05
important anyway, and so they would sort of lose that effectiveness that they once
45:10
had. Now things like that we don't have to learn as having value,
45:15
such as sleep, food, drink, I'll just say pleasurable gratification in whatever
45:22
form that might take. Those things will maintain their value because those are essentially
45:27
biologically important to us. But all those other things that are sort of culturally
45:30
valuable, those start to go away when they're being undercut by whatever the addiction
45:35
thing is. And that's the same here we're talking about the social media.
45:37
So that's another way that they're similar. And you'll see this too from the
45:39
Addiction Centers dot Org kind of when they talk about similarities to other addictions.
45:44
What they'll talk about is this idea of mood modification where you'll see some favorable
45:47
changes in some kind of an emotional state once that person contacts that reinforcer or
45:52
whatever that thing is, like, whatever that thing is that they're addicted to,
45:55
once they contact it and they get that high from it, then their
45:59
mood will change in a way that is more desirable for really everybody involved,
46:04
but specifically for that person. They'll feel better when they contact that totally.
46:07
Another similarity that you might see to other addictions is that it's kind of obvious
46:13
that you see their changes in their behavior, how they sort of get preoccupied
46:16
with things that shift away from things to shift toward interaction with that platform or
46:22
that whatever drug of choice in this case, social media might be. It's
46:27
fairly obvious to watch from the outset. Yeah, another thing too, you'll
46:30
see as a development of tolerance. So you'll see that person kind of as
46:34
they get exposed to whatever that stimulus is, or whatever that thing is that's
46:37
the gratifying piece, they will have to increase it their use more and more
46:43
and more as time goes on, kind of like chasing the dragon, right,
46:45
Yes, so like the first time is always really good, but then
46:49
it's never going to be as good as that first time, so they have
46:51
to continually do more to satisfy the need, which is related to this point
46:54
of when it's taken away, then you can get these unpleasant side effects and
47:00
this sort of withdrawal thing where again just it almost looks like depression in a
47:06
way, just nothing matters because the only thing that was important to you is
47:08
no longer necessarily available. This is another where you can see that same sort
47:14
of thing happening with excessive use of social media. That can also lead it
47:17
to or contribute to this idea of conflict. Right, so you'll have some
47:21
interpersonal relationships that become a problem. Maybe some challenges with close family members or
47:25
friends or something along those lines can arise because maybe that person's getting in the
47:30
way of use, or maybe that relationship isn't as valuable as compared to the
47:35
use of whatever that social media is. And then of course the idea of
47:37
relapse that if someone has been away from social media for a period of time,
47:42
that if under the right circumstances, they might sort of fall back into
47:45
the same pattern of behaviors as after that sort of abstinence period, and that
47:51
would look like that relapse thing. So those are just some of the things
47:54
that are common with addiction. And then of course we mentioned the fact that
47:58
you get at the neurologic level, you might see what looks like similar brain
48:02
chemistry happening or rush of dopamine when you get to have those rewards hit.
48:07
How useful that is I think is potentially questionable, but it is something that
48:10
is at least observed, and I think we can say has been observed.
48:14
I don't know if it's diagnostic or not, but because I honestly I think
48:17
anything that can function as a potential reward, you're going to see a similar
48:22
overall reaction to that, and you have to just have to look for other
48:24
things to make a more complete sort of diagnosis, if you will. Yep.
48:29
Now, there is a thought here that when we look at alcohol and
48:31
drug use, and we consider that to be particularly problematic when someone gets to
48:37
the point that they are doing those dangerous things like driving under the influence,
48:40
or they're operating machinery while intoxicated, or if they're charged with taking care of
48:45
vulnerable populations. What about the fact that we are on our phone all the
48:52
time, and that can look similar to trying to use your phone when you're
48:54
driving, When you are at work and you're supposed to be doing a job,
48:59
when you're supposed to be taking care of your of somebody potentially you know,
49:02
children or whatnot, this can be equally reckless. And you can see
49:07
people driving who veer into the wrong lanes, that they accidentally hit people,
49:12
that they end up neglecting their things, people they're supposed to be caring for,
49:16
or they fail to react appropriately to something that urgently needs their full attention.
49:22
So you know, I think it is worth keeping an eye on this.
49:27
That being said, I think that this is a really good time to
49:30
sort of break this conversation is part one. We'll come back for another part
49:34
of this. I think this will be at least a two parter. I
49:37
don't know if we'll need three parts, but we might, but at least
49:39
I think break it up there. And I just want to end with calling
49:43
something an addiction is very complicated. We haven't actually done a full blown episode
49:46
in which we discussed what addiction is in a really thorough objective, scientific manner,
49:53
and so we can't pull from that to help guide a lot of this
49:57
conversation. And so we're just going to sort of a lot of this inside
50:00
of the fact that we can compare it to what other addiction looks like and
50:07
what the features of that might be. And so I'm hesitant, honestly to
50:10
even say that habitual social media use meets all the same criteria as other addiction,
50:15
and I also am hesitant to say that we should be dismissive of it
50:20
because it certainly could impact people in serious ways. And I finally want to
50:24
just close with the fact that I'm not trying to demonize social media at all.
50:29
I think that social media has done a lot of really good things,
50:32
and that we don't just want to throw out the baby with the bathwater,
50:35
as the saying goes. You know that we pay attention to sort of a
50:38
complete picture, and we're in a new territory right now trying to understand how
50:45
this works psychologically, how it relates to things like other mental health disorders and
50:51
conditions like addiction, and what other roles there is to play with the internet
50:54
and social media. So this is you know, we're trying to grapple with
50:58
that, and part of this is under standing the context and how it compares
51:02
two things that we understand a little better. I want to add to you
51:06
know, this is certainly not to diminish people who are really dealing with like
51:10
really intense addiction. You know, addiction in itself is pretty complex, like
51:15
you mentioned, and the challenges that go with getting better and healing from it
51:19
and working towards recovering from it. It's unique in its individual and it's it's
51:24
incredibly complex. So as we start talking about this, if it sounds like
51:29
we're kind of I don't want to say, like being insensive, maybe being
51:31
intensitive, that's probably a way if we're if we're being inadvertently insensitive to the
51:36
idea of somebody having an addiction, That's not what we're trying to do.
51:39
We know that it's very serious, we know that it's very intense. We
51:42
know that people lose their lives from it or they end up in squalor because
51:45
of it, and we know that it gets really bad. So that's not
51:49
what we're trying to do at all. We're just trying to really paint a
51:51
picture of what the social media addiction looks like in draw comparisons where we can,
51:55
and hopefully we can kind of better define this as we go forward.
51:59
That's a great point. I'm I'm glad you said that, and I do
52:00
want to make sure we do end by saying like, I no way want
52:02
to say that I think that addicts are bad people or should be treated as
52:07
immoral. This is just another place where people would benefit from additional support agreed
52:13
and potentially trioge if I can plug her episode, right. I think this
52:20
is a good place, as I said, to sort of transition to do
52:22
sort of our our take home for the well, I think we should really
52:24
just hit our take home instead. Yeah, let's make a couple of recommendations
52:29
and then well you can join us back for part two. So let's go
52:30
to recommendations. Recommendations, Shane, do you have a recommendation for us?
52:45
Yes, I do, so my recommendation for part one is an actor by
52:50
the name of Jake Johnson. If you're not familiar with Jake Johnson's work,
52:53
he was in The New Girl on TV. He was in a movie called
52:58
Tag, which was a lot of fun, Paper Heart. He's been in
53:00
a few different things. He is on the hundred TV show I was telling
53:02
you about, Oh Yeah No, and he's wonderful and so I I really
53:06
do enjoy his like comedic work. But what I really want to recommend right
53:09
now is that he did this really great thing while everybody's being quarantined, and
53:14
he basically set up an email that you could email him and tell him a
53:17
little bit about your kid, and he would record a voiceover for your child
53:22
using the voice of Peter B. Parker from into the Spider Verse. So
53:29
he has been doing that where he's been doing individualized like voicemails for kids while
53:32
he's stuck in his apartment or wherever he's at in New York. And he
53:37
actually sent me one for Ethan for my son. Wow. And it was
53:39
super sweet and super kind. It was like maybe like thirty seconds as a
53:43
quick little snippet and he sent it to me and it's great. So I
53:46
just really appreciate people that kind of like do that out of the kindness of
53:49
their heart. And you know, when celebrities kind of reach out and they
53:52
set stuff like that up, you never really hear from them, or maybe
53:54
you do. But this was like a really cool bit of kindness that he's
53:57
doing for literally because he can, because he's got the time to do it.
54:00
What an awesome human. I thought that was really neat way to go,
54:02
Jake Johnson. Seriously, we support you. Thanks Jake Johnson. Hashtag
54:07
Jake Johnson cool. I'm glad you went first because my mind is not nearly
54:13
as important. But thinking about people being stuck at home, I have been
54:17
thinking I would recommend a bunch of board games. These are my favorite thing.
54:22
And so the one I'm gonna recommend is called Mystic Veil, and this
54:25
is a deck builder. Do you know what that is, Shane, I
54:29
have no idea what that is. I assume it's something like Magic. Yes,
54:31
Actually it has it in that it's a card game and that you start
54:37
you acquire cards for your deck. Now Magic is different because you go out
54:40
and like buy cards and then you choose ones to add to your deck,
54:43
and your deck has a limit and all that sort of things. Most deck
54:45
building card games are where in the game you essentially are going to try and
54:50
acquire there's like a pool of cards, and you'll try and buy strategically cards
54:54
to add to your deck, and then you'll try and get rid of less
54:59
valuable cards of your decks that you have a deck that allows you to buy
55:01
a lot of points or to be really effective at fighting monsters or what have
55:06
you. Now, in Mystic Veil they set up this really creative system where
55:09
the cards are actually on transparencies and they're broken to thirds and you slip them
55:14
inside of a little plastic sleeve so that the artwork and the effect of the
55:19
card you can have up to three cards in a single sleeve, and because
55:22
of transparencies, you can see all the different artworks and then you can make
55:27
it to the cards build off one another, and there's only twenty cards.
55:30
There's only twenty sleeves in your deck to begin with, so you'll never you'll
55:32
always at least go through the same amount. You won't end up with this
55:37
giant's deck of cards. You never get to see the ones at the bottom
55:38
that you've acquired. Instead, this allows you to just sort of always have
55:43
them. And the reason I'm actually recommending this in particular is for those people
55:49
who have been playing board games virtually by setting up like cameras and looking at
55:51
their table, you don't have to hide your hand. Everybody's hands are always
55:54
visible, so there's nothing like anybody can just sort of play if someone has
55:59
the set. And the other reason is there's a mobile app that's really good
56:04
and you can set up online games to play with other people have the mobile
56:07
app, and then you just play together and there's like a chat and or
56:12
you could like FaceTime someone while you're playing or whatever, and you can see
56:15
the whole table set up on the mobile app, and it's really cool and
56:17
it's really well designed too, So that's my recommendation for playing games if you
56:22
want to do that. I like it. It's a really cool game too.
56:23
It's what's one of my absolute favorites. That's awesome. I love that
56:27
cool. All right, Well let's wrap it up there. Thank you so
56:30
much for recording with me today, Shane, Thank you for listening. Please
56:34
join us next time for our second part of social Media Addiction. We're going
56:37
to talk more about some of the treatment possibilities, some other considerations for maybe
56:43
who is responsible for dealing with addiction, as well as some other features of
56:47
what you might call addiction and that sort of thing. And if I would
56:51
like to reach out to us and tell us about your social media addiction,
56:52
please do so. You can reach us on social media while you're spending all
56:58
your time there. You can also find us via email. Well, please
57:00
consider rating and reviewing us wherever you listen to us and share this episode with
57:04
a friend. And I think that is it. Do you have anything else,
57:07
Shane? No, I think that's it. All right. This is
57:07
Abraham and this is Shane. We are out ya. You've been listening to
57:14
Why we do what we do? Why we do what we do is support
57:16
it in part by our amazing patrons. Thank you. If you like what
57:22
you heard, consider becoming a patron by heading to Patreon dot com slash WWDWWD
57:28
podcast. You can also rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts,
57:31
or share this episode with your friends. If you have any comments or questions
57:35
we'd love to hear from you, find us at WWDWWD podcast on your favorite
57:39
social media platforms. You can learn more about this and other episodes by going
57:45
to wwdwwdpodcast dot com. There you'll find links, as well as detailed and
57:52
sharable show notes. Why we do What we do is researched and produced by
57:55
Abraham, Ryan, O, Shane and Miranda. Artwork and logo design by
58:00
Andrew Pollock at Knogdesigns dot com. Video and production assistants from Tyler Bracer,
58:06
with music courtesy of Justin Greenhouse. Thanks for listening, and we hope you
58:09
have an awesome day. Neronal neuronal neuronal neronal likenaronal neuronal sounds good. Sounds good