How Smart People Can Make Dumb Choices & The Serious Dangers of Social Media

Speaker 1 I'm Alex Honnell, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnell Foundation.

Speaker 1 I wanted to let you know about a brand new season of the Planet Visionaries podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative.

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Speaker 1 Join me in conversation with the likes of climate champion Mark Ruffalo, biologist and photographer Christina Mittermeyer, and one of the most successful conservationists of our time, Chris Tompkins.

Speaker 1 Join us on Planet Visionaries, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 Today, on something you should know, some things you really need to throw out right now, and I promise you'll never miss them.

Speaker 2 Then, we'll explore the reasons why really smart people can make amazingly stupid choices.

Speaker 3 Generally speaking, when we're in a period of experiencing heightened emotion, we tend to make worse decisions.

Speaker 3 The more frightened we are, the more angry we are, even with positive emotions sometimes, the more excited, the more happy we are, we tend to make worse decisions.

Speaker 2 Also, what could happen to your pets if you die? I don't think you really know. And too much social media can mess with your brain, and it's not just a kid problem.

Speaker 4 The sobering statistic is that about 21% of adults admit to being addicted to social media. So it's definitely more pervasive than people think, especially in adults.

Speaker 2 All this today on something you should know.

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Speaker 2 Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, something you should know.

Speaker 2 With Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 2 I know you have some things in your house. I know what they are.
And I'm about to tell you to get rid of them. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers.
Welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 So look, we all accumulate stuff. We all accumulate the same stuff, and we all have the same tough time throwing it out, even though we don't need it or want it.

Speaker 2 And here are a bunch of those things that you almost certainly have that you can toss out right now and free up some space in your home.

Speaker 2 First of all, that extra pack of buttons that came with that shirt that you don't even have anymore. You can throw that out.
Old holiday cards, old Christmas cards, birthday cards, graduation cards.

Speaker 2 There's a pretty good chance in your freezer or your refrigerator, you have things wrapped in foil and you have no idea what's underneath that foil. Get rid of that.
Old calendars.

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Speaker 2 All of those half-scrawled lists, notes, and post-its reminding you of things that you don't even remember what they are. Old invitations.

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DVDs that you'll never watch again.

Speaker 2 And there's probably some old VHS videotapes laying around and you don't even have a player anymore. Printed recipes that you've tried, didn't like, but you saved the recipe anyway.

Speaker 2 Pens that no longer work.

Speaker 2 And then all of those chopsticks, duck sauce, ketchup, hot mustard, soy sauce packets, and pizza refrigerator magnets that

Speaker 2 you just don't need. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 2 You've probably noticed in your life that when there's an emergency or a catastrophe or when something in your life goes extremely wrong, you have trouble thinking, you panic.

Speaker 2 And as a result of panicking, you can make some pretty bad decisions in that moment. Sometimes those decisions make the problem even worse.
So why is it we do that?

Speaker 2 Well, here to discuss this is Christopher Ferguson.

Speaker 2 He is a professor of psychology at Stetson University in Florida and he's author of the book Catastrophe, How Psychology Explains Why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse.

Speaker 2 Hey Christopher, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me on today. It's a real pleasure.

Speaker 2 So to get people on board here with what you're talking about,

Speaker 2 give me an example of how good people

Speaker 2 make bad decisions even worse.

Speaker 3 Actually, one of the instances that really caught my attention I thought was really fascinating was the case of Air France 447, which is a flight

Speaker 3 that crashed in the Atlantic about 10 or so years ago. And a lot of things went wrong on the flight.

Speaker 3 There were some mechanical issues, but the basic issue that resulted in the crash is that the pilot misperceived what was going wrong with the plane. The plane was losing altitude.

Speaker 3 And he believed that the right thing to do was to pull back on the stick, which is kind of normal, you know, sort of response in flying a plane to increase altitude.

Speaker 3 And what in fact was happening is he was putting the plane into a stall.

Speaker 3 And what's interesting about that is he kept trying the same thing over and over and over and over again

Speaker 3 rather than trying something different. And that's kind of the example of the sort of error that interests me.
It's not that he was a bad person. It's not that he was a bad pilot.

Speaker 3 It's just in a moment of panic, really, you know, when things were going wrong, he kind of got stuck in the situation of thinking that a particular behavior really, really should work.

Speaker 3 And as a consequence, wasn't able to think his way through and try something different that might actually have possibly saved that plane and the passengers that were on it.

Speaker 2 Well, I'm sure everybody's felt that panicky feeling. And you know, you can remember how difficult it was to make a decision when you're in panic mode.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. I mean, one of the things we find is that generally speaking, when we're in a period of experiencing heightened emotion, we tend to make worse decisions.

Speaker 3 Now, there are a lot of things that happen that result in us making bad decisions, but the more frightened we are, the more angry we are, even with positive emotions sometimes, the more excited, the more happy we are.

Speaker 3 If we feel like we're in love, for instance,

Speaker 3 we tend to make worse decisions. It makes it more tempting for us to look for evidence that supports the way we view the world already and ignore that which does not.

Speaker 3 And that can result in us making horrible decisions, even though our intentions are good.

Speaker 2 Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.: And it makes you wonder why human beings have this.

Speaker 2 It seems like it's fairly common, almost universal, that when panic sets in, people tend to do what appear to be, in retrospect, pretty dumb things, but at the time seemed like a good idea.

Speaker 2 You would think that evolutionarily that we would work that out of us.

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 I mean, what happens is with a lot of these situations, if you're feeling fear, if you're feeling anger or something negative in particular, you may be, at least evolutionarily speaking, in the situation of needing to make a very, a very fast decision.

Speaker 3 So if you think of the example of, you know, 20,000 years ago, you're an early human, you're in the savannah or some other place. and you come across another human being.

Speaker 3 You need to make decisions about that person very, very rapidly.

Speaker 3 And whether that person is going to kill you or not, basically. So you need to come to that decision very, very quickly.
And so what happened is that we evolved a lot of

Speaker 3 cognitive tendencies to try to evaluate situations rapidly with limited data.

Speaker 3 Now, that might serve us well for being chased by a tiger, for instance, but those same adaptations don't always serve us well in a modern, complicated, multiracial, multi-ethnic society.

Speaker 3 So again, what we tended to do in the past is we tend to look for superficial differences to try to evaluate, is this person

Speaker 3 different from my group? And knowing that was useful in terms of estimating how likely that person was to be aggressive.

Speaker 3 But it's not very useful to us, again, in the modern United States, where you now see the same types of cognitive biases result in ethnocentrism, racism, and other kinds of problems that we're dealing with today.

Speaker 2 So give me some more examples examples of how this plays into our thinking and our lives and the decisions we make.

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 So, I mean, some of the kind of typical cognitive biases that we see include things like the, one is what we call the availability heuristic, which means that if you it's easy for you to remember an event, you tend to overestimate how frequent that is and how big of a problem it is.

Speaker 3 So once again, I mean, the example of plane crashes were kind of a classic example of that. Plane crashes tend to be

Speaker 3 very memorable. They get a lot of news attention.
They're actually quite rare for the most part, and they've been increasingly rare over time.

Speaker 3 But what happens is people see these, they see them on the news, and they tend to worry more about traveling by air. So, we see a lot more people who have phobias of air travel and things like that.

Speaker 3 People tend to overestimate how frequent air crashes actually are

Speaker 3 compared to automobile accidents.

Speaker 3 And what happened is a lot of scholars, and of course, course the you know the air travel industry spent decades telling people over and over and over again that you're actually more at risk traveling by car than by air.

Speaker 3 And it's eventually kind of worked. So I think people kind of know that now.

Speaker 3 But it did take a lot of effort to present the data over and over and over and over again to get past some of those cognitive biases involving the availability heuristic.

Speaker 3 We see the same kind of phenomena with things like people overestimate how frequent crime is, people overestimate how frequent a lot of bad things are.

Speaker 3 We really have this kind of focus in on bad things. And if we can remember specific bad things, like mass homicides are another good example, we tend to think they're a lot more common than they are.

Speaker 3 That's just one example of a very common

Speaker 3 cognitive bias. I mean, there are others, but basically, we tend to adopt particular beliefs about the world.

Speaker 3 And it can be very challenging, not impossible, but it can be very challenging to get people to challenge those beliefs by looking at data and actual evidence.

Speaker 2 But that's just how people are. I mean, we all do it, and that's the way human beings are.
So what's the harm?

Speaker 2 What's the problem?

Speaker 3 Well, oftentimes what happens is that we end up trying to fix a problem, either fix a problem that doesn't actually exist,

Speaker 3 or we end up fixing the problem in the wrong way, or we fix the wrong problem.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 there may be an example of a real issue. So let's take, for instance, climate change.
So climate change,

Speaker 3 most of the data suggests is a real problem that at least in part, humans are contributing to this problem. And there are lots of different solutions that we may have to deal with that.

Speaker 3 One of these is this issue of nuclear energy, right?

Speaker 3 You know, so the evidence we have right now, and you know, I'm a psychologist, I'm not an energy researcher by any means, but I looked through this evidence, you know, and considering this, but the evidence suggests that for the most part, nuclear energy is pretty safe,

Speaker 3 that the number of deaths attributable to nuclear energy is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction compared to coal-fired plants and even natural gas and things like that. But there's a lot of resistance

Speaker 3 from particularly the left in regards to nuclear energy. People are worried about the radiation.
They're worried about kind of contamination.

Speaker 3 They're worried about accidents like Three Mile Island, which continues to be brought up, even though that happened decades ago.

Speaker 3 And as a consequence, you can end up in situations like what Germany is facing right now.

Speaker 3 They are struggling to meet their energy needs because of the war in Ukraine, and they've been shutting down their nuclear reactors.

Speaker 3 And what we're seeing in Germany is because of that sort of suspiciousness of nuclear energy, what they're doing is they're going back and firing back up their old coal plants to try to meet the needs that they need to get.

Speaker 3 for energy over the winter. So there you see a situation where people are overestimating the risk.
There's not zero risk, but people are overestimating the risk of nuclear energy.

Speaker 3 And that's actually causing people, at least in Germany, to move back into using a lot of fossil fuels, which is going to worsen the problem of climate change rather than fix it.

Speaker 3 So again, you have a movement from the left that is worried about climate change. That's a good faith effort.
It's a real problem.

Speaker 3 But their fears about nuclear energy are actually making the situation worse rather than better.

Speaker 2 We're discussing how very smart people can make make very bad decisions and get things wrong. My guest is Christopher Ferguson.

Speaker 2 He's a professor of psychology and author of the book Catastrophe, How Psychology Explains Why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse.

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Speaker 2 So, Christopher, what you were saying, what you were talking about, about nuclear energy, that's an example of something I've always found interesting, And that is nuclear energy has a reputation.

Speaker 2 It has an image that, you know, as you say, the left thinks it's horrible. And therefore, if you're on the left, you kind of have to adopt that stance.

Speaker 2 And a lot of people, if you ask them about nuclear energy, wouldn't even know very much about it. They just adopt the stance because that's what their tribe does.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of attitudes in our ways of thinking things do come come from the sense of social conformity.
So if you look at things like climate change,

Speaker 3 you'll see that

Speaker 3 neither Republicans or Democrats or the right or the left are necessarily any more educated on this issue.

Speaker 3 So Republicans tend to be more skeptical of climate change because that's what Republicans do.

Speaker 3 And, you know, Democrats make fun of that a lot. But the reality is that

Speaker 3 Democrats believe in climate change because that's what Democrats do?

Speaker 3 It's not really that they know more about climate change than Republicans. We tend to oftentimes adopt our attitudes about the world by looking around and

Speaker 3 seeing

Speaker 3 who also believes in something. And if they're people that are quote unquote on our side or part of our tribe, as you said, we tend to be more likely to adopt that.

Speaker 3 It's actually fairly rare to find people who are, it does happen, but it is fairly rare to find people who are willing to kind of buck the social trend, trend to stand up to their own group and say that their own group may be wrong.

Speaker 3 And of course, when they do, they're usually immediately punished for

Speaker 3 doing so. So certainly, you know, social conformity is a big part of the problem we have in making good decisions.

Speaker 3 I mean, I see a lot of the people that have these signs on their yard of, you know, we believe in science.

Speaker 3 And I actually tend to, speaking as a scientist, worry about that because science really isn't a group of thoughts that are handed down from on high that are absolutely true.

Speaker 3 It's a process, you know, and that process is messy and complicated and nuanced. And very rarely does science on most issues tell either the left or the right what they want to hear.

Speaker 3 So I think that those statements tend to be a little bit of a distortion of how science works.

Speaker 3 But there again, you can see that there's this kind of like moral element to it, that what they're hoping for is that science is going to support their moral worldview of how the world should work.

Speaker 3 And it's very difficult.

Speaker 3 Once people start to wrap their beliefs in a sense of moral goodness, it becomes even more difficult to help people understand that things may be more nuanced or different, or that they might even be, again, in good faith, simply wrong.

Speaker 2 Talk about toilet paper.

Speaker 3 Toilet paper is a great example of how everybody kind of knows something is is wrong and there's nothing you can do about it because of the way that, like, you know,

Speaker 3 social processes inform people's decisions. So, of course, this is referring to the early days of COVID-19 when suddenly we were all without toilet paper and nobody could figure out why.

Speaker 3 So, this is a kind of a behavioral phenomenon that's called an availability cascade.

Speaker 3 You know, so basically, once the ball kind of gets rolling on something, even if you know that it's misinformed, it's really difficult to do anything about it.

Speaker 3 So at the beginning of COVID-19, if people don't remember, all of a sudden there were these toilet paper shortages because people were hoarding toilet paper.

Speaker 3 Toilet paper had nothing to do with COVID-19, but essentially a few people started to hoard toilet paper. And we could kind of look at them.

Speaker 3 I think initially people did saying, well, they're irrational.

Speaker 3 What they're doing doesn't make sense.

Speaker 3 But once they begin to do it, then even if you recognize that hoarding toilet paper is kind of silly, well, you begin to think, well, if they're hoarding toilet paper, then I should begin to hoard toilet paper too, because the less informed people are going to have all the toilet paper if I don't, you know?

Speaker 3 So basically,

Speaker 3 even if a process is started by people who perhaps are less rational, they're less informed, they're responding emotionally to that.

Speaker 3 It sort of traps us all in the same pattern. We really can't resist it.

Speaker 3 Or else, you know, you can be the smart person saying, like, look, it's actually very easy to make toilet paper, even during COVID-19. So I'm not going to hoard anything.

Speaker 3 And you're going to end up without toilet paper because everybody else is engaging in hoarding.

Speaker 3 And so it points out how these social processes can make it very difficult for people to make good informed decisions when everybody else around them is not.

Speaker 2 So other than looking at this and finding it really interesting, is there any advice from all of this?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. There is.
So what you can do is,

Speaker 3 you know, start presenting the data. So people do actually kind of listen to data.
You know, I kind of use the example. I actually have done a lot of research on violence in video games.

Speaker 3 I've been involved in that for 20 years. And when I first started in this field, everybody thought that violent video games caused mass shootings.

Speaker 3 And now very few people do. You know, some people still do.
You know, it still comes up, absolutely.

Speaker 3 But there's been, I think, a real change in public attitudes around video games over the last two decades.

Speaker 3 And a lot of that has been, you know, scholars, myself being one, but certainly other people as well, presenting the evidence over and over and over.

Speaker 3 There really just is not data to link violent video games to mass homicide.

Speaker 3 And, you know, what I kind of tell people, and this sounds a little depressing, is it really was a 15-year process, you know, that if you kind of start with people having a really

Speaker 3 wrong idea, let's say nuclear energy is dangerous, or whatever it might be,

Speaker 3 and you have good data and you present it over and over again, calmly and rationally, you can expect within 15 years to have sort of changed public attitudes in a more data-based direction.

Speaker 3 So it does take a while.

Speaker 2 You mentioned that in Germany, the problem with coal and nuclear.

Speaker 2 Has it changed minds now that these coal plants are coming back online? Have people gone, oops, we made a mistake? Or are they going or not?

Speaker 3 Yeah, so you have really two different groups of people that, you know, when presented with the oops moment, you know, tend to react very differently.

Speaker 3 So with any kind of issue like that, you're going to get a certain group of people who are highly invested in the mistake.

Speaker 3 You know, they've staked their reputations.

Speaker 3 They've made big promises about that issue. And generally what we see is that those people almost never back down.

Speaker 3 Sometimes they do. And I have been impressed occasionally by some, you know, there have been a few people that will say, you know, I dedicated my life to X and it turns out X is wrong.

Speaker 3 You know, so there are some brave souls out there.

Speaker 3 But generally speaking, like the people who are most invested, they're the loudest activists, they're the loudest politicians very rarely back down off of. you know, a big claim like that.

Speaker 3 But then you have the general public, you know, who's much less invested, you know, in this issue and aim the data at them and try to bring them around.

Speaker 3 So, I mean, I've seen a little bit of movement on nuclear energy just in the last year or two, as I think people have started to understand that maybe nuclear isn't so bad.

Speaker 3 And I think that part of that is the situations where

Speaker 3 we're seeing that solar and wind and geothermal are really not succeeding in meeting the immediate needs that people have with energy.

Speaker 3 You know, there's just no way that solar and geothermal and wind and water are going to meet the needs of the European continent.

Speaker 3 So we're seeing a lot of Europe shifting back to coal, which is not the direction we wanted to go.

Speaker 3 And so I think people are starting to understand that some of the promises that were made about renewables, maybe 20, 50 years from now, maybe that really, really, really will work.

Speaker 3 But right now, they're not.

Speaker 2 Well, this whole idea of how our emotions and our beliefs affect our thinking and our decisions is something that people don't think about.

Speaker 2 We like to think that we make decisions based on the facts, that we know we can look at a situation and understand it.

Speaker 2 And it's really interesting to hear how what you believe is probably influenced by a lot more than the facts. I've been talking with Christopher Ferguson.

Speaker 2 He is a professor of psychology at Stetson University in Florida. And the name of his book is Catastrophe, How Psychology Explains Why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse.

Speaker 2 And there is a link to that book in the show notes for this episode. Hey, thanks, Christopher.
Appreciate you being here.

Speaker 3 Awesome. Well, this has been a lot of fun.
Thanks for having me on. And hopefully this was useful.

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Speaker 2 It's pretty clear that our preoccupation with social media and its influencers is having a strong impact on how we think, feel, and perceive everything around us.

Speaker 2 In some ways, social media becomes a lens through which we see the world. And what's a bit scary is that you might not even be aware of its effect.

Speaker 2 You may think you're immune to it, but you're probably not. You are about to hear a story about a doctor who is also one of the leading authorities on human perception.

Speaker 2 He was sucked into the world of social media and his life completely changed. And it can happen to you too.

Speaker 2 Whether you're an influencer on social media or you follow other influencers, this is an important discussion I think you'll want to hear. Dr.

Speaker 2 Brian Boxer Wachler is an MD and popular influencer on TikTok with over 3 million followers, And he is the author of a book called Influenced, The Impact of Social Media on Our Perception. Hi, Brian.

Speaker 4 It's a pleasure to be here, Mike.

Speaker 2 So tell the story of how you got pulled into the world of being an influencer and how it affected you

Speaker 2 and not for the better.

Speaker 4 Basically, it really started. My story is that when we started with the pandemic, I had a lot of unaccustomed time on my hands.

Speaker 4 And at the time, my daughters were 14 and they said, Dad, there's some really good doctors on TikTok. And if you're interested, we can help get you started.

Speaker 4 And so I found my niche pretty quickly as a doctor, calling out health-related videos that had gone viral with hundreds of thousands or even millions of views.

Speaker 4 But the information in them was not accurate. So people were relying on faulty information.
And I was calling out those videos. And that's where my following really started to explode.

Speaker 4 And eventually getting me into the several million follower range and becoming known as one of the people to go to for the community in social media in general for these health videos.

Speaker 4 But where things took a deep turn was when I got so involved and essentially addicted to social media because of that rush of dopamine when you have videos going viral one after the other and you know people are wanting you they're commenting for you to comment and it's just this huge rush of being a sort of virtual celebrity it's dopamine that's getting stimulated stimulated in our brain and so even though i'm a doctor this problem affected me and ultimately i was able to get through it with the help of my family but i i learned and realized that if it could affect me it could affect you too or affect anybody So what is this effect?

Speaker 2 What is it? And it's not just people who have a following, but I assume this relates to people who are just the ones who follow.

Speaker 4 Absolutely. Yeah, that's most people who are followers and users.
And every time you scroll up on a video, what's happening is you're getting a little bit of that dopamine and you get more.

Speaker 4 for some videos and less for others. But it's like you're pulling a slot machine lever

Speaker 4 and you just don't know the next one. Is it going to be a really good one that makes you feel good and entertains you or you learn something? And that's stimulating dopamine.

Speaker 4 And so it's the unpredictable nature of the scrolling of the videos, which is why they are so addictive. And also why gambling is so addictive too, because of this same unpredictable component.

Speaker 4 So yes, this is a bigger issue. than people realize.
And it's not just a teen or child issue with becoming addicted.

Speaker 2 And addicted means what? Because addiction to gambling has a price.

Speaker 2 It's a monetary price. Addiction to watching TikTok videos.
I mean, I watch TikTok videos and I'm a sucker for,

Speaker 2 you know, because they can be so satisfying at some level. But it's not costing me much and I can stop

Speaker 2 typically stop pretty easily. So

Speaker 2 there's a difference between watching social media and losing money at the the gambling table.

Speaker 4 And Mike, the hallmark of addiction is that it's interfering with some aspect of your life.

Speaker 4 So for social media, in my case, what was happening is I would come home and my daughters would be telling me about their day.

Speaker 4 And as teenagers, wanting to do that with parents is already a rarity, right?

Speaker 4 So, but I'm on my device. I'm so engrossed with refreshing my screen, for example, seeing how many more views I got on the video I just posted,

Speaker 4 responding to people's comments, looking at videos that I'm getting tagged to look at to see if, you know, that's a video that is going to be one that I'm going to react to or comment on.

Speaker 4 So it becomes so engrossing that I was actually ignoring essentially my kids. And that was damaging the relationship I had with them.

Speaker 4 And that also spilled over to my wife as well in our relationship because I became so engrossed. I was missing out on a lot of family experiences because of my involvement in social media.

Speaker 4 To the point, one time at their volleyball game, I snuck out to go do a TikTok live in the car and brought my scrubs. I have a certain look I have on social media.

Speaker 4 I've got my scrub top, my hat, my mask around my neck. And I planned to do this.

Speaker 4 I popped out missing their volleyball game and actually got caught because during lunch, their friends said, you know, your dad's doing a TikTok live right now.

Speaker 4 And they're like, oh, that's why he's not at the game. So I was missing out on a lot of family experiences.
So it wasn't a monetary cost, but it was a relationship cost.

Speaker 4 And so that's one of the hallmarks of social media addiction is people forget. and lose sight of the real relationships, which are ultimately the most important in people's lives.

Speaker 2 But that's you. I mean, that's, that's

Speaker 2 a struggle that you deal with, but that's a pretty broad brush to paint everybody else with.

Speaker 4 Well, that's when people get addicted, right? So lots of people, like you just said yourself, that you can just turn it off when you want. So that's not an addiction.

Speaker 4 An addiction is when it starts to interfere. with other aspects of someone's life.
That's part of the definition. And so

Speaker 4 for a lot of adults and teenagers, you know, this is an issue. And social media is just going to continue to grow.
So it's not going away.

Speaker 2 It's not just videos, though. I mean,

Speaker 2 if I post something on Facebook or whatever,

Speaker 2 I do like to look and see, you know, how many views did it get, how many likes did it get. But I don't post that much.
And, you know, after a day or so, I don't check it anymore.

Speaker 2 I kind of forget about it. So,

Speaker 2 and that doesn't seem to me to be a problem. But I understand what you're saying, that

Speaker 2 people who post all the time are always checking, you know, how many likes and all that.

Speaker 2 And other than sucking up half your day, what's the harm? I mean, if that's how you want to spend your day, what's the harm?

Speaker 4 Well, the harm potentially, like in my case, was I was not paying attention to the real most important people in my life, which is my family. And I wasn't present, right?

Speaker 4 Like I'm present, but I'm not really present a lot of times.

Speaker 4 And so that caused a lot of stress. And to the point that they actually one time,

Speaker 4 the three of them basically had a TikTok intervention with me to explain like I've been out of control and not paying attention and not being present as a father and a husband.

Speaker 4 And initially, I was not open to this. I actually resented it because I thought, well, you know, you, my daughters, were the ones that got me started.
And here I have millions of followers.

Speaker 4 I have all this success. And now you're not being supportive.
So, again, when somebody's addicted to anything, a hallmark typically is they don't have insight that they are having a problem.

Speaker 4 And so I was in denial and I thought, well, I'm just going to double down my efforts and have even more success to show you.

Speaker 4 And then what happened once was one of my videos got taken down for a community guideline violation.

Speaker 4 And at that point on the platform, none of my videos could go viral for about two weeks. And so that really forced me into a classic withdrawal situation, which also is a hallmark of addiction.

Speaker 4 When you don't get what you're addicted to, you go through withdrawals. So I had a lot of stress and anxiety and some mental health challenges during that period.

Speaker 4 But that was necessary because that allowed me to have the insight to, oh my gosh, like what have I been doing with my family? Like I've been putting my virtual children ahead of my real children.

Speaker 4 And it gave me that realization of what I'd been doing. And actually I felt really very guilty and remorseful and actually

Speaker 4 went to the bedroom and just cried. And they forgave me after I apologized.
But now I have a very healthy relationship with social media and I'm still active.

Speaker 4 I'm still very active as an influencer, but I am existing with it in a much more healthy way now.

Speaker 2 And so, do we have a sense?

Speaker 2 Is there any sense of like how many people fall into that category of having trouble with it versus people who are users of it but can shut it off when they need to and live their lives the way they need to?

Speaker 4 Well, I think the sobering statistic is that about 21% of adults admit to being addicted to social media. So this is not really a teen situation.

Speaker 4 And there's not at this point any official diagnosis yet, but it does, it's a real phenomenon. And it's definitely more pervasive than people think, especially in adults.

Speaker 2 And what about kids?

Speaker 4 In kids also.

Speaker 4 I was just visiting with a friend of mine who's from out of town with his teenage daughter. And, you know, she and he both admit, like, she's addicted to TikTok, for example.

Speaker 4 So we were talking about some of these things that she can do.

Speaker 4 And he as a parent can do, because a lot of parents also don't have the tools to even understand like, where do you even start with your children to help modulate their behavior on social media?

Speaker 4 And the thing about children and teenagers is that their brains are still developing.

Speaker 4 So the prefrontal cortex, which is our higher level of functioning in our brain, that's not going to really fully settle and cure, if you think of concrete curing, until about age 22 or 25.

Speaker 4 So they're really susceptible. And the research that I did, we really discusses what those brain changes are, and they're real.

Speaker 4 And the unsettling thing is in 10 years from now, 20 years from now as adults, nobody knows what the impact is going to be in the future until we get that timeframe down the road and we can look back and see.

Speaker 4 So there's almost like a very large social media experiment happening right now with teens and children for that reason.

Speaker 2 Well, it's hard to imagine preventing a kid from interacting with social media because all of their friends are.

Speaker 2 They would be so out of the loop if they were forbidden from participating.

Speaker 4 Well, there is a lot of pressure because friends are talking about the the videos that they're watching and influencers that they're following.

Speaker 4 So there is a pressure and it makes it a lot of times challenging because remember, teens and children don't have the

Speaker 4 discipline, the critical thinking skills developed to be able to modulate as successfully as adults. And even adults, as we discussed, aren't great at it either for a certain percentage of them.

Speaker 2 When you look back at your own experience, though,

Speaker 2 can you see it for what it was? And why couldn't you see it at the time? I mean, did you really, what would you be thinking when you're in the car doing TikTok videos at your daughter's sports event?

Speaker 2 How do you justify that to yourself? I mean, what's the thought process?

Speaker 4 Well, at the time, I want to be of service. That's the whole reason I actually...

Speaker 4 started on the platforms is because I wanted to be of service to help people understand in a public service way which videos they can rely on and which ones they can't from a health point of view.

Speaker 4 So, and I'm also at the same point consumed by feeling the rush of that experience and being of service. Essentially, it's like being a celebrity in the virtual world.
So

Speaker 4 that clearly overrides a lot of good decision making, which and certainly take responsibility for.

Speaker 4 But, you know, there's people who get addicted to all types of things. And you look at them and you're like, well, how could that have happened?

Speaker 4 But again, because of that feedback loop in the brain for wanting more and more and more of that dopamine and what comes with it, that's the underlying cause that drives what's happening in terms of, you know, my behavior and other people's behaviors.

Speaker 4 And, you know, fortunately, my family forgave me and now I've, and that's what I developed too, certain systems that people can employ as users, because most people are users, not influencers, so that they can keep it under control and not have it affect their job and not have it affect their relationships and not have it affect their school.

Speaker 2 If you go back a couple of generations, you would have heard parents. talking about how their kids are addicted to television.
They're always watching television. How is this different from that?

Speaker 4 That's an interesting thought, except the one difference is you don't carry a TV around with you all day long.

Speaker 4 So once you leave the room, you're not watching TV anymore.

Speaker 4 Whereas you go out, you go out to dinner, you go out for some event, you're just hanging with friends or you're with family, your phone is with you all the time.

Speaker 4 So it's like, in that analogy that you discussed, it's like, imagine if you could carry your TV with you. That's kind of the equivalent of what we have now.

Speaker 4 So it's a bit different than the TV situation, which is why it's much more of a concern right now.

Speaker 2 And so when people, I mean, when you go out to dinner, people are always checking their phones. I don't know what they're checking.

Speaker 2 Maybe they're checking voicemails or texts or social media or whatever.

Speaker 2 I mean, I sometimes will check to see if I've gotten an email or whatever, but I don't go, if I'm with other people, I don't go on social media to see what's going on there because I'm in a room where stuff is going on here.

Speaker 2 So when people do that,

Speaker 2 what is it that compels them to do that?

Speaker 4 Largely, it's FOMO, which is an acronym for fear of missing out.

Speaker 4 And that's a very big driver for why people go to their phone or they hear notifications go off.

Speaker 4 the dinging or a vibration or the screen lights up even if it's on on lock screen, that there's a notification. And it's like being like Pavlov's dog, right?

Speaker 4 You get that notification, you want to see what's happening, and you go to the phone and you start checking.

Speaker 4 So, you know, you have a good handle on it, as you've described, but unfortunately, more and more people don't have that handle anymore. And it's really difficult to self-regulate.
which

Speaker 4 is part of the research that I did in

Speaker 4 putting this together.

Speaker 2 And so what's the advice here? What's the prescription

Speaker 2 to help

Speaker 2 resolve this, find a solution?

Speaker 4 To recognize that social media is like fire. It can be used for illumination, but you can also badly burn yourself.

Speaker 4 And you need to be aware of what the pitfalls are and then also understand what are some safeguards that you can even build in for yourself or for those around you.

Speaker 2 So, give me some strategies here because, as you said, I mean, people wouldn't even know how to begin to get a handle on this problem.

Speaker 2 So, help me specifically take some baby steps to get a handle on this problem.

Speaker 4 Like, one tip is turn off the notifications on your phone

Speaker 4 because that's what's a big draw. So, if you have everything on silent, then at least you've eliminated the susceptibility to wanting to go pick up your phone.

Speaker 4 And then there's other things too that can stimulate dopamine in a more healthy way, like laughter, exercise, certain types of foods, certain types of aromatherapies and other activities that are dopamine releasing and make you feel good, but it's in a more healthy way.

Speaker 4 And you can also do that with other people and share in the experience.

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, it does. And listening to you, it just reinforces this idea that

Speaker 2 people have a sense that there's a problem here, I think, that they know they spend a lot of time on social media and they probably shouldn't and they probably feel a little guilty about it,

Speaker 2 but they don't stop. They don't, and they've got all the triggers, like the notifications and everything else on

Speaker 2 that's going to make it even harder to stop.

Speaker 2 It's like, I know there's a problem, but maybe it's maybe nobody will notice, or maybe it won't matter, maybe every, oh, everybody else is doing it, so it's okay for me.

Speaker 4 Particularly, parents are just like, they're out in the ocean without an oar and without anything to try to help get back to shore with kids because

Speaker 4 parents aren't savvy like their kids are. So they don't really understand what they're doing.
And because of that, they are at a real disadvantage, even though they want to help them.

Speaker 4 You know, they want them to not spend so much time that it interferes with school potentially and other things.

Speaker 4 But there's no tool set that's being provided to them.

Speaker 2 So open up that tool set. I mean, turning off notifications is fine, but that's a pretty mild strategy.
What else can people do to particularly parents do

Speaker 2 to tackle this?

Speaker 4 Well, one of them is, which is going to initially cause a lot of anxiety, is get on TikTok. If you're a parent, join it.
Join the apps your kids are on.

Speaker 4 Because what research found is that when you are actually on the app and then discussing with your children some regulation techniques, if you have the experience, you have credibility and you're talking to them from a position of credibility versus a parent who's just like, oh, we're just going to close it down and stop cold turkey.

Speaker 4 That's going to breed a lot of resentment. So

Speaker 4 not not to say that parents, you need to start creating content on the platforms, but you should join them. You should see who the influencers your children are following.

Speaker 4 And therefore, you can evaluate if that content is appropriate, if those are good influencers, because not all influencers are good.

Speaker 2 Well, your story is a cautionary tale because if social media can affect you the way it did, it can likely affect anybody.

Speaker 2 And this is really important for parents and really for anybody who uses social media to understand what can happen. I've been talking to Dr.
Brian Boxer Wachler.

Speaker 2 He's a medical doctor and author of the book Influenced, the Impact of Social Media on our Perception. I'll put a link to that book in the show notes.
And

Speaker 2 I'm reluctant, but I'll put a link into

Speaker 2 his TikTok account so you can see his videos if you would like to. Thanks, Brian.
Thanks for telling your story.

Speaker 4 Well, thank you, you, Mike. I appreciate being here with you.

Speaker 2 Have you ever thought what would happen to your pet if you died? Most people assume a friend or family member would step in and care for the pet, but don't count on it.

Speaker 2 In the eyes of the court, your pet is considered property.

Speaker 2 According to attorney Rachel Hirschfeld, author of the book Petriarch, there is a real chance that your beloved pet would be euthanized after your death without proper planning.

Speaker 2 And she says designating a home for your pet in your will may not be enough because it can take months or years to settle your estate.

Speaker 2 A better option for your pet is to construct a freestanding pet trust, but those can get pricey. There is a less expensive option out there called a PPA or pet protection agreement.

Speaker 2 You don't need an attorney, but you will need to designate pet guardians and have the document signed and notarized. You can find pet protection agreements online.

Speaker 2 One place I saw them, it was a website called pet trustlawyer.com.

Speaker 2 And that is something you should know.

Speaker 2 We don't ask for much, but one way you could show your support for something you should know is to tell a friend, ask them to listen, and see what they think. It helps us grow our audience.

Speaker 2 I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently. I am Robin Ince, and I'm sat next to Brian Cox, who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series.

Speaker 4 Primarily eels.

Speaker 3 And what else?

Speaker 2 It was fascinating, the eels. But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit.

Speaker 2 Brain-computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud signs of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels? Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagasso C?

Speaker 2 Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 5 Oh, the Regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or the time when Jane Austen wrote her books.

Speaker 5 But the Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history.

Speaker 5 And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal of the Regency era.

Speaker 5 Vulgar History is a women's history podcast, and our Regency Era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time.

Speaker 5 That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought.

Speaker 5 We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era.

Speaker 5 Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.