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You Need to Watch This Before You Start Using Social Media


what’s more addictive social media or
smoking well I mean it’s an interesting
question
it’s I talk to psychologists about this
it’s a different type of addiction right
so smoking is a substance addiction
so there’s actually chemicals that can
thicken nicotine can get through the
blood-brain barrier and it can mess
around directly with your neurons so
that’s really strong and when you have a
substance addiction you can feel strong
physical withdrawal symptoms for example
if you stop using it phone addiction
psychologists tend to categorize as a
moderate behavioral addiction mmm which
means okay if I take away your phone
like it might be difficult but you’re
not gonna have the same type of
withdrawal you would have if you were
like an alcoholic and you’re being taken
away from alcohol but moderate
behavioral addictions lead you to using
something much more than you know is
healthy if you have access to it so it’s
just like if I put the bowl of potato
chips in front of you every day
you’re gonna eat probably way too many
potato chips right but if I don’t you’re
not gonna sneak out until the night
right they go by it so that’s where we
are with probably with the phones is
that if we have it with us
we’re going to use it more than we think
is healthy right so so if you go back to
the the beginning of the consumer-facing
smartphone era so like the iPhone in
2007 you know I went back and talked to
the original development lead for the
first iPhone and what he confirmed is
there was nothing about this tech that
meant for you to look at it all the time
right
Steve Jobs was a minimalist right his
whole thing was I want to take something
that’s really important to you and they
want to make the experience beautiful
and so for him it was plain music music
was incredibly important big yeah and
everyone was listening to iPods right
and so the the iPhone had a touchscreen
and he was like look I can make the
experience of playing music even more
beautiful and he was offended by the
interfaces on cell phones at that time
like phone calls are important I want to
make that a beautiful experience I want
to put in one device she’d have to have
an iPod and a phone both in your pocket
and that was from like 2007 to 2012 that
was smart phones it was this beautiful
tool that you brought out occasionally
to do specific things like I want to
listen to a song I want to call my mom I
want to look up
directions right around 2011 2012 the
social media companies were now past the
stage of just we’re trying to grow and
seeing we actually have to get a revenue
up because it was the Facebook IPO in
particular right how are we gonna get
people to engage much more on our
services because the Facebook calm is
pretty static right I mean you would go
check your friends relationship status
but if you checked it in the morning
that was probably not going to change
that day it’s not something you would
you spend all day looking at right and
so they completely re-engineered the
experience to be not about posting and
reading other people’s post but instead
about social approval indicators and
then we got the likes and the retweets
and the favorites and the photo Auto tag
so now every time you hit this app you
could see some indications or people
approving of me or people thinking of me
and that’s what changed our relationship
with the phones from this job’s the
envision of this is a beautiful object
that does a few things really well into
I have to look at this when I’m walking
the dog I have to look at this you know
when I’m in the bathroom I have to look
at this when I’m in the line
there was nothing fundamental about the
tack that said we need to be looking at
this all the time wow that was
essentially a business model that was
proved very effective very effective
very addictive so so for young people so
generation Z which is the the first
generation to have sort of ubiquitous
access to smartphone social media as
they entered their young adolescents
this generation that’s where anxiety
anxiety related disorders were literally
off the charts so the demographers that
measure different traits of generations
and see how traits change or generation
generation had never seen something
change really that severely so it was
off their charts looking at anxiety and
anxiety related disorders and
the turning point from this was if you
were born just late enough to have
social media and smartphones like when
you enter junior high when you were like
10 yeah and so this is off the charts I
had been hearing this informally from
mental health experts on college
campuses where they would tell me like
it was crazy it was overnight they used
to have the standard array of mental
health issues sort of a cross-section of
what you would expect like country as a
whole and then it just shifted overnight
it was all anxiety anxiety related
disorders and it was like 5x more
students coming in than they ever used
to got before and they would say it was
the students who started arriving on
campus with smartphones it was like that
year because we’re not wired for it
right so what do we need to flourish as
human beings you take on responsibility
for friends close family close friends
community take on responsibility
convicted them you know I’m gonna
sacrifice for you you’ll sacrifice for
me I’m going to be involved you do
activity that that has intrinsic quality
right so you go out there to I want to
do things with my time that itself is
high quality and there’s value and just
doing that and then and then in your
professional life you look to make
impact you do these things it’s it’s not
a secret formula this is what we’ve
always needed is the nutriments of human
flourishing
and so this is the issue with the phone
is they and again like the the the
social media company has wanted all to
be about utility it’s not useless to be
on Facebook that’s not the issue it’s
that this has become so compulsive that
is taken us away from these things that
we absolutely need to flourish so you
take those all away and you just do this
instead you’re gonna be anxious maybe a
dumber you’re gonna get Dumber and
you’re gonna it’s going to impede
professional progress and and then life
gets really hard and then you need this
more and more to escape I mean when
things become dangerous in our life is
when you start using them to escape part
of things you don’t want to confront and
so then it becomes a cycle so then you
know like I’m not probably not doing
what I should be doing with my life
and you feel guilty you feel guilt on
them and when you escape the guilt
played Wow like going back to this and it’s a cycle
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