Babe, What Do You Know About?

Social Media

February 07, 2023 Sam and Tayla Season 2 Episode 14
Babe, What Do You Know About?
Social Media
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Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Sam and Tayla discuss the evolution of social media, the positives and negatives we've noticed about it, and how to capitalize on the best parts of social media and reject the worst. 

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Tayla (00:11):

Welcome to the Babe. What do you know about podcast?

Sam (00:14):

Where your hosts husband and duo, Sam and

Tayla (00:17):

Tayla

Sam (00:17):

Air their grievances publicly for your entertainment

Tayla (00:22):

So I found it really ironic that literally the first day that I'm actually training a group of people, I'm sick, like my throat is sore. So I literally spent today eight hours talking to people and training them and just wanting to die a little bit.

Sam (00:40):

Wow. <laugh> an extreme feeling.

Tayla (00:43):

Oh, my throat is so sore. And I even told my boss, I mean, obviously, well, not obviously, but the training was all remote. So no one has to worry about me having spread any germs to this whole group of people. But

Sam (00:57):

It was my number one concern.

Tayla (00:59):

It's my number one concern. But that's the problem, is I couldn't get out of doing it because there wasn't really an excuse because I couldn't get anyone sick. So

Sam (01:09):

How long does this go on for?

Tayla (01:11):

Two weeks. So today was day one of 10 days of full-time training, which is intense, but good group of people. So that's nice. But apologies in advance if my voice is just not good

Sam (01:28):

And we will, we'll just let there be dead air space.

Tayla (01:32):

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Is that sick? Cough

Sam (01:40):

Dry. It's just so dry.

Tayla (01:41):

Say you're going to be, if you're training someone tomorrow, that's your body telling you that you don't really want to do it. But are you ready for my little spiel?

Sam (01:53):

Always.

Tayla (01:54):

Okay. Epic. The statistics around today's topic are really interesting. I'm always interested in that. So there are around 8 billion people on the globe and 4.9 billion of them are using social media as of 2023. So more than half of the population of the world is using it, which is cool. On average, the typical social media user interacts with 6.6 social media platforms in the world. The average person uses social media for two hours and 35 minutes every day. <laugh>, millennials and Gen Z are the most frequent users of social media platforms. 76% of all females and 72% of all males in the US have a social media account. In 2023, advertisement spending in the social media advertising market is expected to reach 226 billion.

(02:54):

Approximately 37% of shoppers ages 15 to 22 use the buy button on social media. And 30% of purchased, or sorry, and 30% have purchased something from a shopable social media story specifically. So more than six out of 10 men and five out of 10 women have a social media addiction. So a survey found that nine in 10 teens, which is 90% of them believe online harassment is a problem for people their age. And 24% of teens reported believing social media has a generally negative effect. A recent study from Facebook found Instagram to have harmful effects among a portion of its millions of young users, particularly teenage girls. Findings indicated that Instagram makes body image issues worse for one in three teenage girls and among teenagers who reported suicidal thoughts, 6% of them traced it back to Instagram specifically. Essentially, social media is a hodgepodge of positives and negatives, depending on the lens you view it through, which complicates the dialogue. But babe, what do you know about social media?

Sam (04:04):

A little bit.

Tayla (04:05):

So what was your first exposure to social media?

Sam (04:09):

Poof.

Tayla (04:09):

Yeah, I'm curious.

Sam (04:14):

Social media in it in its form too. I mean, there was MySpace. MySpace was before. If

Tayla (04:19):

That's your first exposure, then

Sam (04:22):

It was MySpace. I, that's probably what I would classify as my first exposure to it.

Tayla (04:28):

So I never used MySpace. Why don't you explain it to me? Because I've seen jokes about it, but I actually don't know anything

Sam (04:33):

About it. MySpace is pretty much like Facebook except it didn't focus on a feed. It focused on everyone having kind of individual pages. So

Tayla (04:44):

You had to go to each person's actual page

Sam (04:46):

Typically? Yeah. You did a navigation to their page.

Tayla (04:49):

And you think if they had just switched to feeds, I'm just wondering why we had Facebook or why it didn't blow up like

Sam (04:55):

Facebook. I mean, it did blow up and I didn't

Tayla (05:01):

Have longevity.

Sam (05:02):

I didn't have longevity. I, I'm trying to remember who bought it. Was it Yahoo? Someone bought it and then failed with it? Pretty much but then I jumped on Facebook.

Tayla (05:11):

Wait, wait. Did you have a MySpace account?

Sam (05:13):

Not personally. No. You didn't. I did it with music was the first one. Yeah.

Tayla (05:19):

So you had a business account?

Sam (05:20):

Well, no, it was a personal one. But you made it for you making music for your

Tayla (05:25):

Music persona. Yeah. So what do you post on there? I just put just random stuff

Sam (05:31):

About you and the music. That was it. I mean it pretty much

Tayla (05:37):

Facebook. A

Sam (05:37):

Facebook profile? Yeah.

Tayla (05:38):

Okay. Because I'm thinking back to first bit of Facebook where people didn't just type whatever they wanted. It was Tayla is feeling and then you input the emotion, and that's what I remember people posting about is feeling depressed or feeling so excited for the dance tonight or whatever.

Sam (06:00):

Hold on. I'm going to see if I still, if I log onto Facebook right now, maybe it'll tell me when I joined. Hold on a second, because I was one of the early people on Facebook. It was back when it was in my early, it was just colleges. It was just universities on Facebook, and I think it was my friend JJ Covert that invited me onto Facebook.

Tayla (06:23):

Wow. What a man. Yeah, I can tell you exactly when I joined Facebook, it was something my mom allowed us to do when we turned 13. So on my 13th birthday, actually, it was my grandma Giggy Heather, who helped me set it up because she used it obviously to communicate with, because she had immigrated out of South Africa. So yeah, that was when I first joined. It was pretty much on my 13th birthday.

Sam (06:47):

I, wow. Honestly, I'm trying to remember. How would I even know when I first joined? I have no idea. Say.

Tayla (06:57):

I think you'd have to, no, I feel like it has a thing. You can quickly go and find it. But do you remember being an A adult

Sam (07:09):

Or No, I was in university. Yeah.

Tayla (07:11):

Okay. Wow.

Sam (07:15):

For a while.

Tayla (07:16):

That's pretty long. So what were the initial interactions that when you first got onto Facebook? Like,

Sam (07:24):

Oh, so the feeling thing. So little and so array and you would have 50 people connected to you and that was cool. And then people would get over a hundred, and then it was like, wait, what year was it? It was like 2008. Then you're like, wow, I've got 400 friends. There's so many.

Tayla (07:42):

And pictures. I mean, people would post full albums, but people didn't really post a picture with a caption or whatever.

Sam (07:50):

No, yeah, it wasn't as feed based. That was actually fairly, when I say recent, that was fairly in the recent history where they changed it to a much more, you're just scrolling. Scrolling, and the algorithm is basically telling you what you should see.

Tayla (08:06):

Okay. Do you remember this update that Facebook made at some point? And it was where they would be in the top right corner. You could just stalk pretty much anyone that you were friends with. It would tell you exactly what they were doing. It was a feed of people's activity. Oh, yeah. So it'd be like this person liked and it just didn't matter who you were. Yeah, it was this girl. It was literally a live feeder of this person, this picture, or this person visited this profile. I don't remember that. Poked this thing. And it was kind of creepy, to be honest. I was like, why? But people, I think a lot of people were a little bit weirded out by that.

Sam (08:42):

But yeah my first interactions were chatting about it would be a, there's discussion about something and it would be with people you really know. So it wasn't like a man. I haven't been on, interacted on Facebook in years now too, so it's kind of like, I don't even know what it is now. That's why I was like, I tried to log into Facebook now. I was like, I have Facebook login because there's a bunch of stuff that now connects to Facebook. Yeah. I don't know.

Tayla (09:15):

I wasn't, us becoming friends on Facebook was a big thing to your dad

Sam (09:21):

Yeah, it was. Yeah.

Tayla (09:23):

Tell us about it.

Sam (09:25):

Me and Tayla became friends on Facebook

Tayla (09:28):

Just randomly. We weren't even friends in real life.

Sam (09:31):

No, I met you at a dinner or whatever and you were like, Hey, let's get everyone together for Star Wars or whatever. And I was like,

Tayla (09:41):

So this is actually, we became friends be a year before that, randomly, I think when you first moved back to Utah.

Sam (09:47):

Exactly.

Tayla (09:48):

And then your dad saw it

Sam (09:52):

And he was like, mm, they're going to get married.

Tayla (09:54):

That's like, that's what he says. He had this premonition, in fact, on our waiting day, he put it in his speech where he's one day late at night. I was scrolling through Facebook and saw that two people that I knew had become friends. Such a cute speech actually. So Facebook's the inception of our relationship, essentially.

Sam (10:17):

Yes. We could thank Facebook for our relationship

Tayla (10:20):

<laugh> So how did social media affect your view on and interactions with the world globally? Because that's one big thing that social media did, and that was actually why my mom allowed us to get on Facebook is because we did recently immigrated. And it was a way to stay connected with friends and family that were abroad besides just email or Skype. Paid Skype.

Sam (10:46):

Yeah. So I just remember mean Facebook became the thing. And when it was the thing, I used it at first, I just to make, reach out and make friends with all my childhood friends from South Africa. They were all around the world. And then you'd make, you'd add business friends and people you worked with. And then what happened was music started doing really well. And I ended up just completely just cleaning out all my social media of people that I wasn't close friends with. So I just,

Tayla (11:21):

Because you

Sam (11:22):

Purged it. Yeah.

Tayla (11:23):

You were getting too well known that. What was the motivation?

Sam (11:28):

No, I think I had a couple weird interactions with people from my past, and I just was like, well, that's weird, but why are they out and talking to me now? And now

Tayla (11:38):

That I, yeah,

Sam (11:39):

I'm, so, I just, I was like, yeah, I don't need this in my life. And I just purged my social media.

Tayla (11:45):

So I have always had a lot of friends on, I've just kind of, if I know someone and they send a friend request, I usually accepted it. And then when I was a missionary, they attempted to use it as a missionary tool. And so if I literally met some on the street, the practice was to go find them in Adam. And so it actually, I should have done this way sooner than I did. But even just one year ago, I went through and was like, I don't even know where. I'm like, we probably met and talked one time about Jesus <laugh>. Like I should probably go through just so I did my first real friends perch a few months ago, actually. It was weird.

Sam (12:29):

Yeah. Wow. How many people, okay, so how many people do you have on Facebook? And

Tayla (12:33):

After The Purge? Yeah, after the purge. It's still going to be a lot. You're going to, you're judge me a little bit. Well, how many do you have?

Sam (12:42):

Where do I see that?

Tayla (12:43):

You'll go to your friends.

Sam (12:44):

There we go. Okay. So on Facebook I have 300 and 380. And then on Instagram have, and these are my two social media things. I guess Reddit would be considered social, well, I don't know if it's social media. I'm following. How do you see this?

Tayla (13:05):

Just go to your Instagram profile page.

Sam (13:08):

This is hard. I'm following. No, do I count? Yeah, I'm following 96 people.

Tayla (13:16):

Okay. And you have how many followers?

Sam (13:19):

139.

Tayla (13:20):

Okay. So how many friends do you think I have on Facebook after purging?

Sam (13:26):

1,240?

Tayla (13:28):

Close. 1,453. Nice. Yeah. And I probably have 800 followers slash people I interact with on Instagram. But yeah. So how did it affect how you viewed world events or interactions with people across the world that you could now suddenly have?

Sam (13:49):

Oh, back then, yeah. I loved it. It was amazing. Back then me and Conrad bff, we reminisced about what we would say the glory days, the fun days of the internet. It felt a little bit less serious, more carefree, just

Tayla (14:06):

Memes and

Sam (14:08):

Jokes and memes and jokes. And it was all of a sudden you would find out information that you couldn't before, that kind of stuff, that it was a new frontier of like, oh wow, this forum popped up and this forum has this sort of awesome content and you can learn this about this thing or get

Tayla (14:24):

This gaming hack

Sam (14:26):

Or something. Something like that. It was really cool. And then obviously interacting with everyone. And then I don't know what year it was for me. Okay, so this is when things started turning for me. And I remember it was 2011 in Miami, and I'm in this really cool private pool place, it's called. It was like, it's an old quarry that's been filled up with natural spring water or something. It's really beautiful. Okay. Loved it. It's really cool. And at one point I noticed this girl was there by herself and she's got her phone, this is 2011, this is 12 years ago. And I started taking a selfie of herself. And remember, this is not very common at this point, taking selfies. I mean, people took selfies, but it wasn't like you tried

Tayla (15:17):

To hide that it was a

Sam (15:19):

Selfie. So she took a selfie and a few, and then I noticed that, and then I think because I noticed it, cause she kept doing this, and then she'd look at her phone to selfie phone and then kept taking some more selfies. And she did this literally the whole time we were there. And I was probably there for a few hours and she was just literally taking photos of herself,

Tayla (15:39):

Checking

Sam (15:40):

Them, checking them, and then kept doing it. And it was all just selfies. I was like, well, that was bizarre. That was so bizarre. And I just realized, I was like, wow, this is starting to be so this is all they're carrying on. She doesn't care that she's there. She's just so focused on taking photos of herself, looking at them and probably posting them. And I was like, man, this is a mental illness. That's what it looked like to me.

Tayla (16:03):

Yeah, I, I think that's so interesting because we did kind of go through this cycle. And again, I was a teenager kind of experiencing a lot of what you experienced as a young adult. And I remember what was lame, and taking pictures of yourself was lame for a while. So people would try and find ways to look like they hadn't taken pictures of themselves, but they had <laugh>. And I did the same thing in my room. I would set a timer with a camera because I would actually upload it with an SD camera and have a phone that could take good pictures and I would just set the timer so that way it didn't look like I could run. And it looked like someone had taken the picture. And I remember there were a bunch of people that just got wrecked because there was a reflection in their own sunglasses of their camera that has it's evidence that they've taken their own picture. And at some point, you're right, it changed to where it was, people just had no shame anymore. They just really didn't care. I'm going to take nice pictures of myself, felt cute, might delete later kind of thing. And it just was like, fine. Yeah, I just wonder.

Sam (17:14):

And now everyone is just, it's praised for doing it. It's just everyone is just, it's bizarre to me because for me, blah, I, it's the opposite to me. I'm still in that mindset. I'm still in that, maybe it's my age or something, but I still look at it and be like, you conceited

Tayla (17:32):

<laugh>

Sam (17:33):

Personally. That's what, when I send you photos of when I went to Portugal, I think I sent you two selfies because I think you were like, Hey, I'd love to see a picture of you or something. See

Tayla (17:44):

Your face, hopefully being happy. Yeah.

Sam (17:47):

And then half the time I wasn't even taking photos. Cause I'm just trying to enjoy the moment because how often do you go back and look at your photos and be like, oh, wow, that's so amazing.

Tayla (17:55):

Unless you're showing it to someone. Yeah. Yeah. So I agree. And I think that's even something you said when we were dating. You're like, well, I've been dating so many people that care a little too much about their social media, and I feel like I'm pretty medium pretty

Sam (18:13):

Much, especially back then.

Tayla (18:14):

Especially back then. Yeah. My content now is my children so I get real, it's a balance. I understand that there's nothing wrong with wanting to document things and taking really cool artistic pictures, maybe even of yourself. And a lot of people monetize this, and this is a way that they make money and grow an influence or whatever. There's a level where I'm fine with that, but it's exactly what you said where I get so frustrated when I go, we're in Costa Rica, I wanted to just be there at the beach, but in the corner of my eye, I just had to watch these three girls. Yeah. Constantly taking hugely over sexualized pictures of themselves and then scrolling through to check it and then continuing to do it. And it takes, it's such a long process and the micro changes that they're making, and I was just like, this is frustrating.

(19:08):

I wish I could just ignore this, but it's like a train smash. I couldn't look away because I was like, they just don't care. And I don't know. So I think there's a healthy balance because my friend Claudia, she's a mom and she's, she's been following this other mom, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, this idea of get in the frame hashtag, get in the frame where it's like moms are so rarely in pictures or videos with their kids because no one else thinks to do that. Only moms hugely think to take pictures and videos of other people with their kids. So they're not in any, which sucks. And so this idea is well just set up your phone and film a little interaction with your kids so that you can have that memory and you can show them those memories. Because if you don't just do it, it's not going to happen. And so in my mind, I feel like there's a balance to be struck because yeah, I think it's great to not avoid documenting those things because you feel stupid. Who cares? Just go ahead and do it because you'll be grateful you had it later. But not to just constantly, you're doing things so you can take pictures as opposed to like, oh, we're here. Let's snap a pick and get back to it.

Sam (20:18):

Yeah. I think for me, I feel like at this point, social media is one of the worst things for society,

Tayla (20:26):

And that's so unfortunate. I

Sam (20:28):

Think it's going to be the downfall of civilization. I really do so bad because people care more about their stats and their likes, their rando people that are liking their photos or commenting or whatever they feel they get their self-esteem and their self worth from that. And so that's why those girls were just taking pictures and posting because man, they're going to get people that are going to like it. They can get people that pay attention to them and that's all they care about. And I think that's bad for society. I think it's going to blow up in our faces. It's terrible.

Tayla (21:04):

Well, I think you're right, because that's why those statistics at the beginning of the episode, that's why girls and boys are struggling with self-image issues and fear of missing out or comparison issues because it's just constant. And it's so common now. It's not just a bunch of macro influences everyone. Everyone's a micro influencer to a point, and they can be. So it's hard to know what is actually normal.

Sam (21:31):

Yeah. Well, normal and healthy are two different things now. True. So healthy, I think it's normal that everyone's doing this. It's not healthy. Think there's just such a big disconnect between people and relationships and how they should feel about themselves and mean most of the stuff. So first you've got the layer, which is people only posting the good photos. True. When there are traveling or good lighting or good clothing, one, two, they're edited, three people are getting plastic surgery at the wazoo. So I so

Tayla (22:11):

Out of their wazoo

Sam (22:11):

so bizarre to me that it's pretty much, it's all fake. So you might as well just be posting some AI image that's not even you or an avatar it because it's

Tayla (22:24):

The same representation, it's

Sam (22:26):

The same garbage. And honestly, because it's so the same sort of fake thing as all the time, in my opinion, it's not even attractive. It's just like, well, that's just another computer generated fake edited photo.

Tayla (22:38):

And that's so interesting because I don't see that much anymore because I'm following moms and more educational things. And again, it's hard to know what's authentic because it's working, but a lot of them are rejecting that. And when they have their ratty mamba or whatever, they're just continuing to just go about their day. But it's just hard to know if they're just, how much of that is curated? The messy mom? Is that really messy? You know what I mean?

Sam (23:15):

Yeah. So when you talked about that mom photo thing, get in the frame, in the frame thing, I was like, yeah, that's awesome. That's great. I'm glad that it's probably a demographic of moms sets are not, maybe they're feeling overweight or not put together so they're not getting in the frame and you're trying to encourage that group, but there's another whole group of mommy bloggers or whatever,

Tayla (23:39):

But could really get out the frame

Sam (23:40):

And just Yeah, because all they're doing is exploiting their kids for likes and stories stuff, and you're like, true. You do not get, need more photos of yourself and your kid.

Tayla (23:51):

Absolutely. That's absolutely true. And I think that, again, it just so speaks to how specifically you can curate your experience on social media. And I think that's both a bad thing because you can just surround yourself with only stuff that you like, which doesn't push you to grow, but it can be a good thing because you have a lot more control over your social media experience and whether it's healthy or not than we give ourselves credit for.

Sam (24:17):

You definitely can. I know we've spoken about this before, but there's the whole thing about algorithms, basically you've got got essentially AI or code that is basically paying attention to how much time you're spending, looking at certain things, then connecting it to certain other things, connecting it to your demographic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Keeps feeding you stuff that knows that you're going to look on or click. And they're doing that because they know that they're going to get more money based on your behavior. So now, not even authentic content that you're looking at, it's just basically it's

Tayla (25:03):

Curated,

Sam (25:04):

Curated for you, and they could be pushing you certain directions and you're just not even aware that you went from golfing to now, wait, why did I buy this hat? You know what I mean? That that's what it's kind of. Yeah. And I think it's all garbage.

Tayla (25:18):

Yeah, you do kind of sound like an old

Sam (25:20):

Man. I do sound like an old man. So in this particular case, I feel like it's actually really important because I don't think this is a good thing for people.

Tayla (25:28):

Well, it does kind of lead into what I wanted to ask you about, which is, have you seen social media affect? How have you seen it affect the business world and your consumer habits?

Sam (25:40):

So I mean, social media influencers are now all pushing this, not all, but so many of them are pushing this idea that basically how everyone, there was a gold rush and everyone, the rich people were the ones that got into commodities. They were able to get the oil, they got the coal, they got the gold, et cetera. They're now talking about how the next thing is going to be attention. If you can get people's attention and you can control that attention, you have the new energy source. So yeah, it's a race to just grab your attention at 24 7. So we've had the news cycles do that, had the different social media platforms try to grab your attention, whether it's YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, whatever. And now you've got influencers doing those on all those different platforms, and they're just going to continue to try to grab your attention. Mean

Tayla (26:36):

So good at it too.

Sam (26:37):

Yeah. I mean, look, we're also trying to grab people's attention it, but

Tayla (26:40):

Literally, yeah.

Sam (26:41):

So it's hard to, like you said, make that balance. How do you know you're being told what to listen to? Or are you actually choosing to listen to something and it's good for your life?

Tayla (26:59):

Yeah, it is hard to know. How much control do you really have? Again, we do, and I think we don't give it ourselves enough credit or responsibility to do that. But at the same time, there's so much that goes on the underpinnings of what makes social media work there. People are just not aware about or they can easily forget.

Sam (27:22):

One of the things I like about it has been that there's been at least up until this point, a lot more opportunity for people to make money on their own. So that's probably why there are so many influencers and micro influencers is that people are able to grab a certain level of attention and then that turns into ad dollars and sponsorships.

Tayla (27:45):

So this kind of leads me into a listener question. So a listener named Brandon, he asked, what should the main goal of social media be? And does its current form fit that goal? Obviously this is a very subjective question, but I think it's a good question.

Sam (28:01):

Yeah. What do you think

Tayla (28:02):

The main goal of social media? Well, I can tell you what it felt like it was when I first was doing, which was just figuring out how to connect with people that you didn't usually have access to. So maybe that's just because I was an immigrant and had left a lot of friends behind and didn't have a way to connect and then all of a sudden did, that's how it felt. And I think that was, as you said, the prime social media time is just finding ways to connect with other people. That's the social media that when I do have it connecting with other moms, actual friends of mine that I follow if they post about a hard day or something they're struggling with. And then we literally commune, make a community together and be like, Hey, here's something that you can try. Or even just, Hey, dude, solidarity. You're not the only mom to, I think that's social media at its best. And I think that should be the point of it. That is not, I don't think it's current form is not meeting that goal at least because I think that the current form is monetary. It is where can we exchange money as much as possible?

Sam (29:12):

Yeah, exactly. So I'm kind of on the same boat. I feel like on the one hand, it's really good that you can connect with like-minded people. We can connect with the people that matter to you, but I feel like it's also created a lot of tribalism, especially in the US where it's like, Hey, we all think the earth is flat, so we're going to go all have an echo chamber over here, and hey, we all believe that vaccines are bad or echo chamber, or hey, we believe biden's this echo chamber, or hey, we believe Trump is this echo chamber. So

Tayla (29:48):

Yeah, it can be like a, yeah. So the community element can be some, there's some people you don't want them to bind their community is what you're saying?

Sam (29:57):

Well, yeah. Well, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that to me. Oh, cool. Someone else thinks it's the same way as me, but because it's just like you get that confirmation bias, you know, get this feedback loop of, of course, that's the way to think. Of course, nothing else makes sense. And you could be missing out on factual information.

Tayla (30:17):

Well, I do think it is kind of dangerous how you can connect. I mean, the amount of sexual assault or sexual violence because of people meeting up with people they think they know, but they don't. Or even just that story from just a couple months ago, these six teenage girls went and stabbed a homeless guy. Oh geez. Two death. And that was their first time meeting in person. They were social media friends and they connected somehow and together did this horrible, crazy thing. So it's hard because I feel like there is so much good, at least for me, because I focus so much on education and try to vet who I'm getting my education from with actual credentials. But most people don't do that, I don't think.

Sam (31:06):

Yeah.

Tayla (31:10):

Yeah.

Sam (31:12):

The problem is that there, that there's so much money involved that I don't think you can walk it back to its goals. And I feel like how to move forward, at least for me is you obviously just getting off as much of it as possible, interacting with it in essential ways. And then I'm still trying to figure out that game plan on how to introduce kids to social media because it's not something like you can just, Hey, here it is. Good luck.

Tayla (31:43):

Yeah. So how do you see social media affecting kids both positively and negatively?

Sam (31:49):

I feel like they'll be able to get a whole lot of information at their fingertips. So if they're inquisitive and they love learning and they're have passions and hobbies, they'll be able to really excel very quickly

Tayla (32:03):

Learning how to bake this thing they didn't know how or do this craft

Sam (32:07):

Or, yeah. It's amazing to have literally all of the world's information at your fingertips. That's incredible. What, but how do you filter out them interacting with people, one they shouldn't and dangerous people. And then two, also looking at the unrealistic lifestyles and edited photos of other people and feel like that's normal and that's okay, and that's actually your goal. I just think that's awful. That's terrible.

Tayla (32:39):

I know. And I was just going to say, I think the hypersexualization of children and teenagers who are children is so horrible. And I was just about to say for these girls, but I was like, the boys are facing this too. They do not so overt, I don't think. But boys and girls are both facing this just hypersexualization of their bodies or their behaviors and feeling the need to exhibit older looks or behaviors. Then they're actually mature enough to do.

Sam (33:13):

Yeah, sure. And also, they're both taught, if you don't have this sort of a partner, your trash, your value is lower, and you need to have this sort of partner that has this sort of money or looks this certain way. I mean, it's del, it's delusional. And honestly, so I got to know some level of people that were really successful on social media and YouTube, and when you get to meet them in person, they don't look anything like their photos. They are not awesome. And I just feel like it's a whole fake lifestyle that they're putting out there just to get the likes and attention from people that they'll never meet.

Tayla (34:03):

Well, I think there's so, so many things that go along with that fake lifestyle, so to speak, that is dangerous about social media, grooming and disinformation. That's what we talked about with communities. And then even just that, an anonymity side of it that you can just be anonymous and say and do and post whatever you like. And I say this, there's a few anonymous things, but you can be anonymous without being anonymous. You can just go comment on whatever celebrity or micro influencer, even in your normal profile. And it's so normal. You don't even have to be anonymous, if that makes sense. But I think it just leads to such dangerous behavior where you dehumanize other people,

Sam (34:46):

You act way more and say, you act and say way more extreme things than you would in reality.

Tayla (34:53):

Yeah, you would never say this stuff to someone's face.

Sam (34:56):

No. But then at the same time though, it makes it seem like it's normal behavior so that in person, all of a sudden you've got some people that will then take things super extreme in person.

Tayla (35:09):

Okay. So let's go to the usage on social media. So how much time do you think you spend on social media?

Sam (35:18):

How much time do I spend on social media? So Instagram

Tayla (35:24):

It's the

Sam (35:25):

Reels. Yeah, it's reels. Yes. So Facebook pretty much, I would say less than an hour a week. Less than an hour and a month probably.

Tayla (35:32):

No, that's probably on the

Sam (35:34):

Reels. Reels. Every time I look

Tayla (35:38):

Know, every time, every time you're like, I'm going to go to the bathroom, leave your phone,

Sam (35:45):

And then you start getting reels that I sent into you while I'm in there.

Tayla (35:49):

Yep. I'm like that it's not his stomach that's making him take so off.

Sam (35:55):

So I would say that's probably about an hour a day. I would say that's an hour a day. And then the thing that I spend the most time on though, but it's not really an interaction, it's on Reddit and I'm just basically browsing.

Tayla (36:08):

It's like a form of a feed.

Sam (36:10):

It's a form of a feed and I'm basically just looking for content. That's interesting. So right now, interesting content to me, it's not really politics, world news. I kind of stay clear of that. It's more like golfing content golf or, or nba. NBA news, because that affects my fantasy Fantasy league that's got

Tayla (36:29):

Part-time job,

Sam (36:31):

Four more weeks, something like that, gosh, until playoffs.

Tayla (36:36):

Okay. So how much time on social media do you think is healthy?

Sam (36:43):

Man, I could,

Tayla (36:44):

Because the average again is two and a half hours a day.

Sam (36:46):

A day. Yeah. I would say somewhere between 30 minutes to an hour a day would be fairly normal, especially if you need to interact and so send messages back or whatever.

Tayla (36:58):

Yeah, I would say I think the same. And if

Sam (37:01):

It's purposeful, if there's a reason to, honestly, just the scrolling. Just the scrolling. Maybe I could cut back on that.

Tayla (37:10):

But I would agree, because again, it's just working within the reality of how the world is right now. And I think city to 60 Minutes is if you can keep it to that in a day, I think that's on the healthier side, because you can still get the positive interactions or connections that you might make, but you're living your life outside of

Sam (37:31):

Venti. Yeah, exactly.

Tayla (37:33):

Okay. So what do you think the difference is between frequent, so social media use and social media addiction?

Sam (37:43):

So, man that's a good question. So I think I remember reading the definition of addiction a while back, so I'm thinking decades back. So, geez, it's basically, it's if it starts to interfere with your normal behavior or it interferes your interactions with other people and your relationships when it becomes an addiction. So if you don't get your homework done, it's an addiction. If you are unable to eat dinner with your family, it's an addiction if,

Tayla (38:16):

Well, if you can't be with your kids without

Sam (38:18):

Oh, yeah. Or that way around. Yeah, I was thinking about, I'm looking it through the odds of a teenager right now, but yeah, so if you're watching your kids and you literally can put your phone down for 15 minutes to interact with your kid and play with them, it's an addiction.

Tayla (38:34):

What else? If you're changing your behavior on a trip or something for social media as opposed to

Sam (38:39):

Yeah, exactly.

Tayla (38:39):

I think that can be signs of it. Okay. So it does make sense then why so many people would be classified as actually being addicted more than, because I think there's some things that people can over classify as an addiction, and it's just maybe overuse, but I do think that probably a lot of people, almost into the majority of people have an addiction of some kind.

Sam (39:08):

Well, yeah, because you are getting a chemical response when you're able to scroll through things that are entertaining so quick, you know, just get that endorphine kick.

Tayla (39:18):

Yeah. So we have another listener named Cody who wanted us to talk about that in the dating world, the practice to look people up instead of trying to genuinely connect with them and discover them. And I think that comes back to the idea of that can make dating complicated because you're looking at ac, what do people want you to see about them as opposed to actually getting to know them?

Sam (39:43):

That's interesting. Yeah. So what do you think? I didn't really deal with this, so really? No

Tayla (39:51):

You were on dating apps or I, it's not like social media, but I feel like it's similar to social media.

Sam (39:56):

So I was on dating, dating apps but I didn't then go look at what their social media looks like. Oh, really? Yeah, it wasn't really, I mean, no, I didn't do that, but it makes sense. You want to do some research on someone or try to figure out what's the story? I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, I never did that. What did I think about it?

(40:25):

It depends. Does it become, oh man, I'm so glad I'm not dating in this environment. It just all seems so fake. That's literally why it was one of the top three things I liked about you when we first started dating. And I told you, I was like, I'm just so glad that you're not on social media really, and you don't really spend any time on it. Because it was one of the things that really bugged me in the dating world was people would spend so much time posting stuff and they cared so much about how many followers they had, and then what sort of interaction they would get out of it.

Tayla (41:03):

Yeah,

Sam (41:03):

True. It was a big part of people's lives.

Tayla (41:07):

And that can't be fun either, just depending on what's going on in your dating life to feel like someone might decide to either be with you or not be with you based on how you make them look instead of how you make them feel.

Sam (41:20):

Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, does this person actually photo world, does this person attractive in photos?

Tayla (41:26):

Do they match my aesthetic? <laugh>

Sam (41:29):

Match my aesthetic? Yeah, that's mind boggling me. That's just so stupid.

Tayla (41:35):

Yeah, I, I'm of the same opinion where I'm like, I can see the benefit to looking people up. I mean, especially as a woman where you're just, you have safety concerns about meeting people that you don't know. But yeah, I do think that can put in your mind a judgment of someone that would probably be more accurately made in an actual interaction with him. So I'm glad I'm not dating either. Okay. So to start wrapping things up I'm trying to decide which direction exactly I want to go. Well, I want to hear a story or two of positive interactions you've had via social media, things that you find value in an interaction or two.

Sam (42:32):

Well, okay how about bigger? Something bigger than myself? One of the things that I think about with the benefits of social media, I think about the Arab Spring. So you think about the people in Egypt basically, or getting on Twitter and they're able to use Twitter. And I think WhatsApp also started being used when it started getting blacked out, basically using social media to be able to get together and coordinate protesting and other stuff to fight for individual freedom and for better laws and for fighting against dictatorships. I think that's great. I think getting the collective together that way against a corrupt government, amazing. I mean, you couldn't do that before. Trying to get everyone together to be able to actually work together and do something that would actually create so much pressure for those governments to be afraid and realize that they don't control the people. I think that's super important.

Tayla (43:39):

Yeah, I think this is something that people in the eighties and nineties actually got really well, was trying their best to band together for a human rights issues. But it took so long. I even remember the international support for abolishing the A apartheid in South Africa. It was there, but how long did it take to get the communities to just be clear on their narrative of what's going on, and then agree on let's then do these embargoes and all this stuff. You can just do that so much quicker now and have a lot more impact as opposed to waiting years and years and sometimes decades to get that international support. I think that's true. Any other valuable

Sam (44:24):

Experiences? I loved, I did love reconnecting with people back in the day that I loved that. That was great. You know, feel like a lot more world's, a lot smaller place and realize you have a lot more in common with these people that could be living in a different country, living in a different lifestyle. But you realize that most people are just want to work a job, make enough money to pay the bills and spend time with their family that I love that. Yeah.

Tayla (44:51):

For me, just connecting with mothers that I know, especially newer mothers, has been really invaluable for me because I've been able to, they're people I know, but people I never would've thought to connect on with parenting or whatever, that just so many things that they do or say resonate and at least help me feel. I think, especially during Covid when I became a parent. You just feel so isolated and you're just not sure what is normal to experience or whatever. It's just super validating. I have found such a great community in that way and I really value it still. So that's something I really

Sam (45:28):

Loved.

Tayla (45:29):

Awesome. So all right, to finish up for real. So what would you suggest to people are the most productive ways to use social media? Whether it's education, support, systems, connecting families and friends. If you were to recommend, okay, here is the way that you use social media productively, how would it be? What's your prescription?

Sam (45:52):

Yeah, I think trying to keep your things that have feeds. Instagram, Facebook, those sorts of platforms strike you just to your family and close friends. That'd be the one. So you're not getting who knows what from who knows where. And then, so that way your interactions are with people you actually care about and vice versa. And the things you are updating each other on are on life events and, oh, look at my cute little baby. Or you can come together when there's a crisis or something horrible in someone else's life that's within your community. Community. And then the second thing is I, I love it for learning YouTube. YouTube's amazing for being able to do anything that ever existed. And you can find it on YouTube basically. And then, yeah, that's about it. And then, I mean, it really does take a lot of curating your own content at this point. Whilst it could just be an absolute disaster in terms of rapid holes, you can go down.

Tayla (46:56):

So if I'm hearing that last part, especially you're saying that try to be a little more intentional about what you're actually spending your time on. Make sure that if you're lingering, that you actually want to be lingering. It's not just a reaction. So that way you're training the algorithms to actually provide you with more of what you want to be seeing.

Sam (47:16):

Yeah, sure. And I think also when it comes to your kids and with your partners and your family, I think it would be one of the things that I, I just had of that thought pop in my head is that I wonder if there's people in relation, people and their relationships just could be on two different pages because of just how their interactions with social media are. You could be living a whole alternative lifestyle through social media and not really paying attention to the other people around you. So I think it'd be really good to be on the same page with your kids and with your partners in terms of what sort of content you should be consuming on those platforms. Do you know what I mean? It's not, yeah, that'd be, so you need to know what other people are looking at, but rather what are they using social media for?

Tayla (48:12):

Yeah. It's almost, you almost have to set, not your boundaries, maybe that's the right word, but I guess your deal breakers and stuff with someone pretty upfront on, Hey, this is okay with me and this isn't okay. Rather than just assuming that you have the same idea naturally on what's okay and what's not. Okay.

Sam (48:38):

Yeah, because I think wasn't just not something I had even I've thought to even talk about when I was dating, but now I'm thinking about it. I'm like, ones, if this person really likes spending four hours a day, and this is the how they interact on social media and like if you found out exactly what they were doing, you'd be like, well, that's why I have no idea who this person is and I wouldn't even want to interact with them. This is bizarre, but this is what you like on social media versus in person. Yeah.

Tayla (49:05):

Yeah. I think that's good, especially as you're building a relationship, because I don't think it's fair to have that awareness and then expect someone to change for you. But I think if you have that awareness and you can have those discussions as you're deciding on your relationships, I think that is fair and really helpful to help you both know. Yeah. What will realistically our interactions with each other and social media look like, because it will affect your life together.

Sam (49:35):

Yeah, it will,

Tayla (49:37):

Huh. Okay. Really good advice. Let's post about it. Thank you for the discussion tonight.

Sam (49:53):

Thank you for listening to

Tayla (49:55):

Babe. What do you know about,

Sam (49:58):

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