Latest / Freshwater Yankee / The First Rule Of Social Media Is You Should Talk About Social Media

Transcript

The First Rule Of Social Media Is You Should Talk About Social Media · Freshwater Yankee

• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, and welcome back to the Freshwater Yankee Podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: As always, I am your host, Wendell Riley.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for joining.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it's been a while since I published an episode.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Part of it is because this was actually more tricky than I thought it would be to put together.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: As promised, this is an episode on social media.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I honestly had too much to say on the matter.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is something that I teach as a class.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: I teach social media marketing at Centenary College, and I've taught it at LSU Shreveport.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So when it came to putting together an episode on social media, I really had to do a lot of editing, self-editing.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: This has gone through multiple drafts.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so I apologize for taking this long.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted this to be meaningful and impactful, but also relevant to what we talk about on the show.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why I spent the last episode talking about the pervasiveness of smart devices and how that affects us.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And now talking about social media in particular is because these things have become part of our cultures, like globally.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: They in many ways bring us closer together.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, we all know that in many ways it pushes us apart.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, it is impossible to ignore the fact that these things have become part of our daily lives.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: And as such, it is important for us, if we are talking about culture, to bring this into the conversation about what culture actually means.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I think by now most people are aware of the ills of social media.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: And as a general rule, this podcast is meant to be an escape from the pervasive negativity that we are all bombarded with in all media.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: But there really wasn't a way to examine social media without it going into this dark, depressing exploration of, you know, the weight of tech companies and the balance of our daily lives and an even darker examination of the addiction triggers and how companies play on those triggers.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of taking that approach, I've decided to produce a shorter, leaner episode that focuses on some tips and tricks that I use to examine my own social media use.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully this will give you the opportunity to examine your own use and an opportunity to use these platforms in a healthier way.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is important in the context of this episode to define social media.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: For you know, social media runs the gamut of sites like Facebook and TikTok, but they also include platforms such as WhatsApp, Pinterest, and Discord.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, when I talk to you guys today about social media, I am focusing mostly on microblogging and social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X Threads, and so on.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So just keep that in mind.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Social media is a much broader category than most people think.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: But for our purposes, we are going to focus mostly on social networking.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So social media has, of course, revolutionized us as a society.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: It has changed the way we communicate with family, friends, colleagues, elected officials, public and private service providers and corporations.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: It also allows us to interact with people all over the globe in real time.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It has created a critical framework for building and sharing personal and boutique brands, whether you're a celebrity, an influencer, or a lowly podcaster.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It has helped amplify social and political movements and has become synonymous with our technological landscape.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: It also helps us learn new things, share ideas and cultures through videos in a way that we have never, or that has never been possible in human history.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And misinformation aside, and that's a huge aside, social media facilitates the sharing of experiences of people all over the globe.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: It gives us a window into how people live and how people work and play in foreign lands.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It shows us how people celebrate religious holidays and traditions.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it also teaches us about language, sports, food, literature, art, religion, and so much more.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And even as someone who grew up in a relatively analog world long before social media was even a concept, it is hard for me to remember a time where I didn't have so much immediate access to friends and family all over the globe.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And also strangers, right?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: If kids born into this age are called digital natives, many of us older folks, I guess, are digital immigrants.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And to put this in perspective, here are some statistics.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: According to the Visual Capitalist, if we compare the length of time, it took major innovations to reach 50 million users.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: We see that airlines took 64 years.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it took 64 years for 50 million people to fly, right?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: It took 62 years for automobiles to reach uh 60 million units.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um electricity took 46 years.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh TV took 22 years.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 14 years for computers, 12 years for mobile phones.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It took the internet seven years to reach 50 million users.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: It took Facebook four years to reach 50 million users.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: It took TikTok one year to reach 50 million users, and it took about 19 days for Pokemon Go to reach 50 million users.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: According to data compiled by Stukant, of the total population on planet Earth, right?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: 8.25 billion people, 5.78 billion, or 70% of the population own mobile devices, 6.04 billion or 74% use the internet, and 5.66 billion or 68.6% of the global population are active on social media.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: That is over two-thirds of the planet.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, much of these numbers are of course driven by commerce.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Remember in the last episode where I talked about the conversation a decade ago about whether or not digital advertising was a viable avenue for corporations?
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, according to Densu, in 2022, digital advertising accounted for over 50% of global ad spends, meaning it outpaced spending on TV, radio, print, out-of-home, like billboards, and cinema advertising combined.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: That number is expected to increase in 2026.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Much of this spending has been driven by social media platforms.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Social media income from commerce went from$82 billion in 2018 to an expected trillion dollars in 2028, according to Statista.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Of all digital platforms, users go to social media the most for product research.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we see similar trends with people interacting with companies and brands from a customer service perspective.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you're still with me and you are connecting the dots in your head, you have probably come to the conclusion that social media platforms are now commerce engines that use digital social interactions and pathways as their framework.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is a paradigm shift that most people haven't really wrapped their heads around yet.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how and why social media platforms continue to lure us into their honeypots with free accounts, sexy interfaces, and quite frankly, ubiquity.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is hard to not be on social media right now.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, alright.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now that we've gotten all of that knowledge under our belt, let's jump right into my personal tips and tricks for navigating social media use.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I am not telling you how to live your life online or off it.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just sharing my approach as someone who has seen behind the curtain, right?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And understands like what social media actually is.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: But also I am very open about the fact that like social media is as impactful on my life as most people who don't even study this as a an intellectual field, right?
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So this is my approach for navigating the social media landscape.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You could take it or leave it.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh hopefully you will get some good nuggets here that you can use for yourself and share with with those in your family and friend circles.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing to know is that social media platforms, again, are no longer apps where social interaction is the only goal.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So back in the ancient times of the Facebook and MySpace, social media was a place to connect.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, it was a digital space that facilitated human interactions in a unique and streamlined way.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: You created a profile, you listed your likes and dislikes, shared thoughts, ideas, music, and how you felt in a fun, dynamic environment.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Social media today is not that.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: At least, not any platform where advertising is served to you between posts from friends and colleagues.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: These are no longer just platforms for connection.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: They have evolved into commerce spaces and quite frankly, some of the most sophisticated marketplaces in human history.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: A good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that most of what is served to you is not, in fact, organic content.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: What social media does really well is convincing us that all of us are still, for the most part, looking at the same information when we log on to our favorite platforms.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this still, and more than ever, isn't it's just simply not true.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I've used this analogy before, but think of it like this.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us have this idea that social media is like this giant room where everybody sits and talks, and you can interact with the people closest to you, but then also make connections with people on the other side of the room.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you or we are all, for the most part, looking at the same sets of content on giant screens all over the walls, right?
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: In reality, social media has become a conditioning space where the content that you see is unique to you.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: And while some of the content might be the same, right, some some of the same content, sorry, might be shared between you and your friends and your colleagues, for the most part, it is a tailored experience based on your prior behavior on the platform.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of us all being in one big room, we are actually sequestered into individual boxes that only provide views of a small fraction of what's on display at any given time.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, if these platforms are curating content for you, they are only showing us, depending on how you engage, content that reinforces your worldview.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: The goal of social media in general is engagement.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: The more you engage on these platforms, the longer you stay on them, and the longer you stay on them, the likelihood of you purchasing something or clicking on an ad increases over time.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: As we discussed in our last episode, this type of learning technology has changed our behaviors as consumers.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, it guides our online behavior every time we log on.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So now the tail is wagging the dog.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So, my first personal rule is always remember what social media is, but more importantly, what it is not.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Social media is also designed quite simply to elicit an emotional response.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: These platforms want you to get on there and stay on there, and they understand that emotions, negative or positive, are both useful and depending on the individual, impactful for engagement.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you get angry about some political post that you saw or saw some comment that somebody made on a post, you are often drawn to responding in some way.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you rage, that is a win for the platforms, right?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you are happy about something and you engage in content to escape from the negativity that you see on other people's posts, then that's also useful engagement for the platform.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that social media platforms want just to keep us there.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Whether we're happy, sad, depressed, angry, proud, but negative emotions are very, very useful and coveted.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Arguing online is a losing battle, no matter how elegant your prose is, how well constructed your arguments are, how wittily your comebacks are delivered.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: And whether you're incessantly arguing with a real person or a bot from a farm on the other side of the globe, the only real winner here is the platform.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Keep in mind the people who you desperately want to see your point of view, so you could change their hearts and minds, likely will not see your content unless they have a pattern of behavior where they actually argue against it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, arguing on social media is a losing battle.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is my second rule, and this is the rule I tell people all the time.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: No one wins an argument on social media.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: You are much better off seeing something that frustrates you and just moving on.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Social media, however, is addictive.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So whether you trade in dog or cat videos, uh posts showing how idiotic your political and ideological enemies are, or you bathe in the glory of likes and comments on a post that you put up showing your new sneakers or whatever it is, each of these interactions are designed to elicit a physiological response.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So for me, stress is a trigger, right?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes when I'm stressed out or I think of something stressful, before I know it, my phone is out of my pocket and I'm staring down at my screen.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is without me even knowing it.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, boredom is also a trigger for me.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the stillness of mind that I had in my younger days are gone, replaced by a conditioned need to open my phone and look at content when I'm on my way to the bathroom, or I'm in the bathroom, and don't pretend like you don't do it too.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Also, gross.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or when a commercial comes on TV, or when I'm watching a show and I start to lose interest, and so on.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: Social media and the devices we use them on have replaced daydreaming.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, they've replaced stillness and they've replaced healthy reflection.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: And these are critical mental functions that help us continuously recalibrate our brains as we navigate the ups and downs of daily life.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to be clear, social media addiction is nothing to be ashamed of, right?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: I am saying that I am addicted to social media.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is nothing to be ashamed of because, in my opinion, it does not indicate some type of weakness on my part or on our parts, but it does highlight the strength of these corporations and the products that they give us for quote unquote free.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now remember, if you are up against a group of corporations who have over$8 trillion in revenue coming in just from ads, think of how much of that trillion goes into research and development to keep us using these platforms more and more.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the um the analogy I used in the last episode of the casino, where casinos generally don't like you to know what time of day it is, so they don't have windows, right?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Same khaki pants as we say in Trinidad.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if you at some point in the last month have maybe like at 1 a.m.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: looked up from your phone and you're not sure where the last hour went, you are not alone.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is not by chance.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: This is what these platforms are designed for.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to quit social media is next impossible for a lot of us, especially if uh you have to use it for work, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or for your kids' school or your place of worship or your favorite sports team.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody has a social media account now.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Every brand has a social media account.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is part of doing business in the modern world.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the way I deal with that is my third rule for myself, which is knowing my triggers, understanding why I get on these platforms and what I do when I'm there.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if I can do that and catch myself enough times, then it helps me make a good decision about whether or not to get on or stay on, or just go back to doing the thing that I was doing or should have been doing in the first place.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a growing body of research on the impact of social media on our psyches, particularly young kids.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And as a parent, this is something that I stress over all the time because I mean, I want my kid to be a kid for as long as possible before I lose her to the digital space, right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I want her to read books instead of staring at her computer.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want her to uh, you know, socialize with friends instead of just staring at her phone.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Or when she's hanging out with her friends, not stare at her phone like all her other friends are while they are together, which is more and more common.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just look around you, look up from your phone and look around you when you are in public spaces.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And unlike most real-world social environments where there are rules and microcultures that kids can navigate within with some degree of safety, social media is a largely wide open, unregulated space.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, we sip content on social media.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: These bite-sized short videos or images with captions or one line or couple sentence witty observations that are fracturing the way we engage with content.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: It it slowly erodes our ability to pay attention for long periods of time.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: We often get frustrated with videos that are four and five minutes long versus 30 seconds long.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when we engage in other spaces in our lives, the lack of consensus.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Concentration becomes readily apparent.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, you know, and and this happens to me as well.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I have to force myself to read a full page of information without skimming.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: There are lots of kids, and let's be real, a lot of adults who can't sit and watch an entire film without getting distracted.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, films and television are now being written in a way that there's much more expository dialogue to give the listener key information about what's happening on screen, what they should be paying attention to, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: We have this rule in filmmaking where you show and don't tell.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Our devices and our addiction to our devices and the platforms on those devices are rewriting that adage.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a lot more content has to tell versus showing because they know that we are staring at a second screen.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: So my fourth rule for myself is to try and concentrate on one thing at a time.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Watch movies with my phone out of sight, make reading a solitary pursuit, not one punctuated by checking up on my friend's statuses, or if I see something on TV, don't immediately grab my phone to uh text somebody about it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Another major thing that social media does is it forces us into binary thinking.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: We have been pushed into a way of engaging with the world in either a like or dislike posture.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And we've also been programmed to look at each other in the same binary way.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone say has an opinion about trans athletes that I disagree with, we are conditioned to push them into the fringes of the other side.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Despite the fact that I may align with them on more things than I disagree with them on, and and we we are forced to take sides, right?
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And essentially use one bit of content and decide what category to put that person in.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Are they with us or are they with the other side?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: The truth is, and we all know this, life is not binary.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Life is not black and white.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Life happens in the gray.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, despite the limited options that we have for engaging with social media posts, there should be more room for us to simply say, I don't know.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have to have an opinion on everything.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can't have a reasonable, reasonable opinion on everything.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And saying I don't know, in my opinion, is one of the most impactful starting statements anyone can make because it opens the door to curiosity and real meaningful discourse.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, seriously, when was the last time you saw a comment section with people adopting a posture of curiosity on a social media post?
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: We're terrified to approach things in that way because we are afraid of being ridiculed or there's a fear of recrimination because uh we refuse to take a stand.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that just quite frankly gets exhausting.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: So my fifth personal rule is this I don't have to have an opinion on everything.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it is okay that I don't know how I feel about a specific subject.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoy not knowing things because I love to learn, I love being curious, and I try not to be an asshole.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to curiosity, I try to fact-check before I believe and share things.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Most informational posts, right?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it's just a video about um 10 things that uh Trinidadans do, or you know, um, here's this cool new recipe, um, or here's uh a fact about how creatine helps your brain, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Most informational posts like that have competing priorities.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: The first is to deliver content, but the second is to do it in a way that attracts the most attention.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: So this means that so much of the information that we consume is now delivered through the moral scale of the person or the bot providing it.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: There is no one regulating somebody who is creating a video that tells you that creatine is the worst thing ever.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, fact-checking is more important than ever.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: A quick Google search will tell you if you are on the right path to information or not.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it doesn't mean that you will always find the right information, because there have been instances where AI offers incorrect information because it is just pulling from online garbage.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: But as a general rule of thumb, the more sources you check, the more likely you are to be able to discern whether or not what you are looking at is true or accurate.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm of the opinion that people my age and older have much more trouble navigating these spaces.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because we came up in a time that if something was published, it had to have gone through some type of editorial process, right?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So back in the day, if something made it into a newspaper or it made it onto television, it meant that an editor looked at it and ultimately gave it a thumbs up.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully they would have done that with a willingness to stand up to fact-checking and questions about, say, the integrity of their sources.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that of course still opened the door to exploitation even in an analog analog world.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And this is why, say, the National Enquirer was so popular, despite its wild stories of um bat boys and bearded girls or whatever, right?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: But it is now how information, misinformation, sorry, spreads like wildfire on social media.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: And older people are very, very culpable in this because we don't fact-check stuff that we see online.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: We share it because it's easy to share.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere in the deep recesses of our mind, we still are under the impression that if it was published online, then there must be some level of truth to it.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this is stuff that is easy to consume, easy to share, and before you know it, something that is not remotely true becomes widely accepted as fact.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: Here's another crazy idea.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: What we could do is ask somebody who subs who studies subject matter for a living, right?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you see a post about something, maybe go to an expert who spent their entire lives uh researching and practicing in in those specific fields, right?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And believe them when they tell you stuff because they have spent so much time actually doing this.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: They may not always be right, but your odds are much better than if you're just sharing something blindly by, again, some podcaster who said, you know, sorry to keep talking about creatine, but that creatine made them grow two inches taller in 16 weeks, right?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just dismiss researchers just because a talking head or a pundit or a politician that you like discredits that person.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's not fair.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: And you should, at the very least, do your own fact-checking.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of the day, you might get to the same conclusion.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: You may find out that that that person who did the research may be incorrect or you don't you don't agree with what they say.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: But you would have at least put it through some type of intellectual and academic rigor to get to that point, which gives you an opportunity to potentially weed out a ton of misinformation.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's my rule number six.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Have a healthy skepticism when it comes to content, even from people you generally agree with.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I.e., don't believe everything you see online.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: And please don't just share something randomly as fact if you cannot validate that it is fact.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, it goes without saying that we should never, ever, ever compare ourselves with the version of someone else that is presented on social media.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now think about the stuff that you post.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is it how you look when you wake up with crust in your eyes and bad breath?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it the best-looking shot that you took or that you like where your body is angled in just the right way, and you know, you have one foot in front of the other and your knee is propped up so you can look slimmer.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: That is what everybody is posting on social media.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: But it is also human nature for us to compare the totality of our lives to a small fraction, and quite frankly, the best-looking fraction of someone else's life that they post on their feeds.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is no way, if you do that, that you are going to feel good about yourself.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that leads to a lot of enmity, jealousy, feelings of inadequacy, and the comparisons that lead us to not appreciating the things that we have and constantly striving for things that we don't because we think that other people are winning and we are not.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Which, by the way, is the perfect time for a company to swoop in and try to sell you a product or service to fill that emotional void.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: See how it all comes back to that?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know for many of us, social media is a way to stay connected with friends and family.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: For others like me, I spend time more time on Facebook than I would like because I have to think about my personal branding, the branding of Robinson Film Center, um, the Facebook page for Freshwater Yankee, plus I have Instagram accounts, a LinkedIn account, and it was almost like a full-time job keeping up with this stuff.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this is this amount of time, you know, I could spend doing something else, like interacting with people.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like um yeah, I constantly tell myself this.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and this is the whole point of this podcast.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to people.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like talk to them face to face on the phone or even on Zoom.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, don't just exchange comments online.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Don't just, you know, um share Reddit links, don't just send gifs back and forth.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Pick up the phone, call somebody, meet them for lunch, ask them about their lives.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Meet somebody who didn't grow up the way you grew up, who who doesn't sound the way you sound, who doesn't look the way that you do.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, ask them about their lives.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: Ask them to tell you what it's like to live in their shoes.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: Not one photo or or or video at a time, but one meaningful conversation and one real question at a time.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that is my final rule of thumb.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Socialize, but do it in the real world.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Be curious about other people.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Social media has destroyed our curiosity about each other.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: It makes our curiosity selfish, where we only seek out things that we think are meaningful to us and we shy away from things that frustrate us or make us feel sad or bring us down.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Calling somebody and telling them that you are there to support them is way more impactful than a prayer hands emoji or thoughts and prayers, you know, comment that you could put under a post.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, laugh at somebody's joke in real life instead of posting a ha ha ha or whatever.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, talk to a kid, talk to a teenager, tell them that it's okay, that life sucks right now because it gets better eventually.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that the social part of this whole thing is the truth.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: The media part is the fiction.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we all of us have the agency to take our lives offline and live in it and with it where social media becomes a contextual part of a larger, bigger tapestry, and not the majority of how we interact with and view the world.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: I try not to get preachy on this one, but it is something that I obviously have a lot of uh passion about and it's something that I've done a lot of research on.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: So uh I thank you for listening.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and I appreciate your time.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, after you share this on social media, you will go talk to somebody and ask them how their day was, or something like that, as a starting point for reconnecting as human beings.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that is all I have for now.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: And as we say in Trinidad, we could talk later.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Our contributing producers are David McMillan and Lauren Leon McMillan.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: Music was provided by Peter Sandy of Home Based Productions, and I am your host, Wendell Riley.