February 7, 2025 • 65 mins
What's the longest amount of time you've spent away from social media? For many of us, the answer is "not long." Across the planet, billions of people are caught in an endless cycle of posting, reposting, commenting, liking, and reacting to a constant stream of ephemera -- a never-ending barrage of news, updates, hot takes, memes and viral videos inundating our brains with one shiny thing after another. Most people consider these pursuits harmless... but, as Ben, Matt and Noel discover in tonight's episode, a growing number of experts are concerned that this continual short-form theatre may have serious consequences for the human brain. Tune in to learn more about how the age of social media may be affecting your brain in dangerous, often-unacknowledged, and lasting ways.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Shout out to whatever
social media app you're on right now, if you're in
a chat, tell them you're listening to our show.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Why don't weaponize it?
Speaker 5 (00:48):
Oh man, you might as well s already weaponized against us.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Yeah as well. Turn the tables, flip the script.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yes, yes, just so we we were talking about this
just a little bit off air. A question I've been
asking a lot of people recently. What is the longest
you have gone without checking your phone?
Speaker 4 (01:11):
No more than a day? I mean a day is
nearly impossible.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
I fully copped offline to being an absolute phone junkie,
and I've had to initiate some kind of self imposed
phone restrictions, like keeping it charging in a different room
while I do things around the house or work on projects.
But I'm absolutely addicted to the damn thing.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, we're going to talk about an author, Johann Harry,
who did a little experiment with that whole thing. But
when I think about vacations I've taken with my son
or my family's, those are the times I've put it
away the most. But I am still constantly checking for
work stuff, checking for conversations and a text thread, checking
(01:54):
social media, performance of a video, all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And shout out to Hari Graceland doesn't make it easier either.
I remember, I think we're talking about the same article
there too, for a lot of us, or I should
answer this as well. I've been trying, like you guys,
to be more intentional about this, I think for a
lot of us in the audience tonight. Technically, the longest
(02:20):
you've been without your phone was the first few years
of childhood and adolescence before you got your own phone.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Right Well, yeah, I mean, and now it's like you
can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Kids expect
to get a phone at a certain age. If they
don't have one, they feel excluded. It's not impossible to
deprive them of that. You almost would be looked at
as some sort of monster by society. How dare you
not give your kid a phone at age thirteen or whatever?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
You'd be in an out group and that's not good
for social networking. Quick question, just curious here. What is
the like, what's the going wisdom now for parents on
the appropriate age for a kid to have some kind
of phone, even if it's restricted access like a learner phone.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah, Matt, wouldn't you say that? There's always the argument
of the safety.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
That does seem to be a thing that comes up,
and then of course all the other stuff that follows
along because you can't really, you know, pick and choose.
Once they have the thing, they kind of have the thing.
But what's your philosophy on that?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Well, we are all connected, and you do want to
know where your child is right and we have these
institutional programs like school and daycare that you send your
child to and you just trust that the adults in
those places are doing their jobs and doing them well.
But in the times between it is it is weird
(03:42):
to think about the transit between school and wherever they're
going to or you know that as they get a
little older, going to a friend's house, you want to
be able to connect to them, and if they don't
have a personalized device. We don't have landlines and houses anymore.
You can't call Chris's house anymore and say, hey, Chris,
(04:03):
is my son doing okay? But I guess you could
call the parent, which is nice. But yeah, so sorry,
long witted answer, just to say, I think as soon
as a child can kind of go out and do
things on their own, you were going to want as
a parent to have some sort of direct connection to them.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's a solid rubric.
You know, in most countries it's absolutely normal to constantly
refer to your phone. And I love the point you made.
Know that there are safety concerns too. We're talking about
people growing up moving into the wide world. For some
of us adults, you might constantly need to do it
for your job, emails, text right. Like you were saying, Matt,
(04:43):
A ton of people are constantly clicking on social media
apps your TikTok, Instagram, Facebook x, Snapchat, we chat, all
the apps. Reddit is social media as well, and it's
weird how quickly it became normalized. We have to remember
being normal doesn't necessarily mean a thing is good. So
as we're looking into in tonight's episode, there are serious
(05:06):
concerns that social media has become a kind of accidental
conspiracy against your brain, particularly your attention span.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I'm sorry what.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
We'll be back after a word from our sponsors. Here
are the facts. I guess first, we have to explain
the term social media. It seems like it came out
of the blue, you know, and no one really questioned
what it was because we all understood what it was.
(05:45):
But I think it's worth us digging into it just
a little.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
For sure. Social media is something we've covered a lot
on this show, and it is weird to think that
the text app on your phone is kind of social media,
A little bit to email, Gmail, that's kind of social media.
But they but a lot of companies, individuals figured out
ways to connect human beings even closer to basically, it's
(06:11):
all a conspiracy to make you overshare on the internet
and then get some attention for oversharing.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
I mean, the currency is your time, and these apps
are designed and psychologically designed to make you spend as
much time as humanly possible and you know, this is
capitalizing on a very common human need, the idea to
have a peer group, the idea to be connected with others,
making clubs, for example. We've been doing that since you know,
(06:37):
time immemorial. For most of human history, people have gathered
in groups of shared interests, like minded individuals, you know,
chopping it up, sharing ideas.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, I love that point. No, social media and social
networking are ven diagrams. They're two related, overlapping yet distinct
concepts because, as you said, people have been so social
networking since the days of tribes, right, what we have
in common, and the first thing was the thing we
have in common is we're related and we want to survive.
(07:10):
The only thing that has changed about social networking as
a group of tactics over time was what a giving
group prioritizes, your tribe, your religion, the state, a career interest,
who you want to date, et cetera. And then when
we see the advent of the age of information mass
(07:30):
communication technology, now social networking just has new vectors in
group the outgroup. That's not going to change for the
foreseeable future. Social networking is a way to build communities.
Social media is a way to build an audience, or
that's why a lot of people are there. The platforms
(07:51):
need the user generated content for now until the AI
slops through, and those users are often hoping to garner
the large audience possible, which can then be monetized.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Oh it's interesting.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
I mean it's we're almost entering an era where social
media celebrities are more powerful or just as powerful than
traditional celebrities, movie stars, pop stars.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
I mean, a certain generation.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Cares way more about YouTubers and Instagram influencers than they
do about you know, film actors for example.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, you don't have to look forward to see the
sudden sea change here. I think about this whenever I'm
doing a career day. Children of past generations, you know,
wanted to be president or a famous athlete, right. I
want to be the next Lebroad or the next Michael Jordan.
I want to be a rock star. More and more
(08:46):
kids now dream of being a social media celebrity or
an influencer. And it was really interesting series of studies
won by a group called Morning Consult that found social
media star is the four most popular career aspiration for
kids these days.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, it makes sense. My kid saw our George Washington videos,
and after that we had a couple more talks about
what he really likes, what he's into, and he said,
I want to make videos like you, Dad, And I went,
oh crap.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
And I think it's.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Sort of easy to be dismissive of influencers and social
media stars and all of that, but you know, we
can tell you firsthand that there's a lot of work
that goes into it. It does require a constant vigilance
of posting and creating content and kind of never sleeping
on it because you can lose that audience as quickly
as you can gain it. But there is a certain
(09:41):
sense of frivolousness around this type of celebrity. I would argue,
it's like you're famous for being famous, you know, yeah,
Art Dashian level, Right, it's the argument there.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
In the end, it depends on what ideas you're putting
forth into the world, right, what ideas do you generate
right in the people that look at your sixty second video?
And often it is as you know, we kind of
slid that in there, that is about monetization. Social media
influencers get used as a way to have ads get
(10:14):
thrown in people's faces, even if they don't realize it.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
There was a great South Park episode about that, a
real brutal one. I don't know if you guys remember so.
And I also love the point that, yeah, it can
seem frivolous to some generations or some demographics, but it
makes sense to aspire to these digital heights. You know,
for a lot of younger folks. Most of the success
(10:39):
stories you see, most of the media you encounter, it's
on a platform you enjoy. It's you know, a twitch
streamer you really like, or if you're into aviation, you
can go to a certain agglomeration of hashtags and you
can meet tons of people who will give you short form, dense,
accurate scientific information about aviation. So we're not trying to
(11:01):
throw the digital baby out with the bathwater. But it's
so weird. This is a funny story. Did you guys
know nobody knows who made up the phrase social media?
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Hmm.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
I guess I would have thought that it would have
been associated with somebody, like a coined kind of moment, but.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Some kind of influencer maybe, Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I mean, it's it's pretty cut and dry though, right,
I mean, media, it is a medium. It is the
conduit for digital socialization. So certain terms like that just
kind of almost invent themselves, like with a form of
parallel thinking.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah, I think that's an accurate way to put it.
If we go to if we go to some great
conversations Forbes journalist Jeff BERKOVICI had he talked to a
lot of tech executives from the nineties, right the days
when AOL was still sending you a CD so you
didn't run out of Internet. And one of the most
(11:59):
prominent contenders claiming to create the phrase social media is
Tina Sharky, who is a former executive at I Village
and AOL and BabyCenter dot com. And she described it
kind of the way you said. No. When she's talking
this journalist back in twenty ten, she says, it's not
service media, it's not quite informational media. It's social media.
(12:22):
It wasn't media we were creating, it was media we
were facilitating. And I think that's a big point, right,
because you are, if you were using these products, you
are making the stuff that they want to cycle through
in between the ads.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So that's like in the nineties, ninety fourish times.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, that's when she said we know the origin. I
feel like at OED, we know the origin starts popping
up in the early nineties. No one's quite sure when,
and probably one of the I know you guys love this.
One of the favorite contenders for the crown of coining
social media is another AOL guy, or a couple of them.
(13:06):
Ted leons I'm not sure how to pronounce that, and
Steve Case. They said they were throwing it around, and
Ted has the best line where he says, uh, yeah,
if it really mattered, I'm sure we can find a
deck somewhere that talked about social networking and social media
from that time. But what does it matter?
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Okay, weird flex.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Steve, Yeah, well, Ted, just everybody who doesn't know a
deck is like a PowerPoint presentation.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Yeah yeah, techy kind of business type presentations. He's basically saying,
we did it, but I'm not gonna lie. It's not
worth my time to show the receipts, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
There's another guy named Darryl Berry that has kind of
a similar thing that he's like, yeah, we were throwing
around the term back in the day, in around ninety four.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I think everybody was yeah, yeah, yeah, and these folks
are right, by the way, there is no official award
for coining that phrase. It'subiquitous. Nobody owns it. What you
get are bragging rights. But still, a rose is a
rose is a rose. Right. Social media, whatever you call it,
is one of the most successful communication phenomena in all
(14:16):
of human history, and you don't have to look far
to see it. The statistics are crazy, and we're also
all of us in full disclosure recording this. Now we
are part of those statistics, folks.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Hell Man, the app we used to record could in
some way be considered like a facilitator of social media
at the very least.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, let's count. Let's count that app riverside in this conversation.
As of October.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Twelve, guys, was Dungeons and Dragons the first social media media?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
It could be Yeah, that's yeah, I guess. Yet we
don't have to. We should then carve out the definition.
We're talking about current electronics social media, social media that
uses the Internet. If you're looking at that, then I
don't think this statistic surprises anybody. As of October twenty
(15:19):
twenty four, kind of the best time we have recent
numbers for there were five point five two billion people
somehow using the Internet across the globe. That's more than
a two thirds of the global population overall.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Well it's interesting too because in the really early days,
AOL type days they were talking about I remember having
a friend whose mom was super online, early adopter, and
she was into all of these kind of chat rooms,
and there was this whole thing. There's a thing called
the Palace that I remember, where you could have a
little avatar that you could create with like a rudimentary
photo editing you know, Photoshop type graphic editing app. And
(15:56):
they were all just like these little avatars on these backgrounds.
They were like kind of like you know, think of
like wallpaper, like old school like desktop wallpaper. But it
was like, you know, some sort of weird clue style
mansion and theme, different rooms, a tiki party, whatever the heck,
and you would be these little JPEGs and there would
be speech bubbles coming out of your you know, little
jpeg And that was a form of social media, but
(16:18):
it was a lot more niche and you had to
kind of be in the know to find those groups.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I remember Ultima Online in nineteen ninety seven when I
could chat and hang out with my friends in an
online environment that was in game, right, yes, and we
could hunt monsters together fun.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yet I remember earlier things like the BBS stuff, the
bulletin boards right where you would post for specific forums.
A lot of those got weird, you know what I mean.
This is all presidential right, This is a sets a
precedent for the more than five point two zero bill
(17:00):
users of social media networks across the globe. So the
vast majority of people who are on the Internet in
the first place are on a social media network. That's
sixty to sixty four percent of the entire human population.
And no matter what people might say about, hey, I'm
quitting meta or whatever, those numbers keep on rising year
(17:21):
after year after year.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Do you think that accounts for individual users or people
who have you know, different social media accounts or you know,
like somebody who has two or three Facebook accounts, or
somebody who has you know, multiple Instagrams or multiple stuff.
I mean, I just I wonder if you could designate it.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Out depend on the nature of the metric, like who's
doing the measuring, Like if it's an industry thing, then
it would probably benefit the industry to count each of
those as separate, like the way downloads are counted kind
of unusually in pot casting.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, cough cough, I didn't. I didn't pull the specific
numbers from like a marketing place because to your point, no,
I think they would be more incentivized or a private
company would be more incentivized to as Homer Simpsons said
him big in their numbers. So I believe this statistic
(18:22):
is just counting individual people, no matter how many accounts
they have. So one tick mark is a person with
five different Instagram accounts or five different Reddit accounts where
they argue with each other, and it's counting them the
same as one person who just has their one Snapchat
or what have you.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
Still a pretty staggering number, however, it's counting. I think
people should try to be more like Christopher Walkin. Have
you seen the news making the rounds lately. He's never
owned a cell phone, he doesn't have any streaming. He
has to watch episodes of Succession on like DVDs that
they send him in the mail. I just don't know
there's something charming now about that kind of unplugged off
(19:05):
the grid attitude, because it is increasingly more and more
difficult to accomplish and to just not be kind of
like ostracized by society.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Yeah, it also gives him, uh, you know, it gives
us a chance to shout out, Christopher Walken, you know,
good on you for getting up getting on board with
DVDs man for.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Sure keeping keeping keeping physical media alive.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Well, for him, it might be new. He might have said, look,
a VHS was good enough for me.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
This is this guy is the only new piece of
technology that I will touch.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
And great, d answer that guy.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
And look for some of us, this massive proliferation of
social media and online existence is great. Podcasters are part
of that. It guarantees folks like us can have increasing
potential avenues for sharing our work. The nutso thing is
that all of the big social media apps or platforms
(20:03):
kind of have their own shiny statistics and specialities. Right.
We know that Facebook, even though here in the US
a lot of us might say Facebook, that's for old people,
it has the lie and share of active social media users.
If you're just you know, again going one person counts
for whatever they're doing. It has three point zero seven
(20:25):
billion active users across the globe in twenty twenty four. Matt, again,
you know, we'd have to get under the hood of
the metrics. That's pretty impressive, but the methodology could be suspect.
And that's not for Instagram. That's just for Facebook. And
we have to remember, especially in developing countries, Facebook is
the Internet. A lot of people are only interacting on
(20:48):
their I have of course right by me. A lot
of people are only interacting on their phone, and they're
only really going to stuff through Facebook. Well.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, Facebook is the first one that popped up and
so popular, and it became a place for families to connect.
I know my family used that way. A lot of
my friends they still keep up with their families via Facebook.
I know that using that like if I jump on
and check it, and I don't do it very often.
There are people that I went to high school with
(21:19):
that are still on Facebook active doing that thing. And
it is so strange for me, just because I kind
I gave up that ship a long time ago because
I kind of felt like I had to. And it's
exactly what we're talking about today, the addictive nature of
this stuff and where your attention goes. But it does
feel like you will be missing out if you do
(21:41):
not have a Facebook account to keep up with the
folks that you knew around the time when Facebook came about.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
I keep the Messenger app on my phone just in
case somebody who's more of a Facebook person hits me
up that way, but I don't ever look at it,
and I've exclusively kind of migrated to Instagram. This is
more of like a visual form, I guess of social media,
which I enjoy. I follow a lot of like graphic
artists and designers and things like that, but there's also
(22:08):
a lot of good reposts from other social media platforms
end up on there. But of course it's also owned
and operated by Madass, so you.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Know, and it just feels like one of those things
that has been around for so long. That's why their
numbers are so crazy. It's not because it's superior or
something like that. It has just been around. It kind
of reminds me of bud shows.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
And yeah, just to add to like the personal experiences
that we're sharing here, I don't trust Messenger enough to
have it on any phone that I would use, so
I keep one computer with desktop access to Facebook and Messenger.
And I'm a little sour on it too.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Man.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
It's it's a first of the post thing, But also
you kind of have to thread that needle of you
want to meet people where they're at. Right, if there
is a loved one that is more active on this
thing and you worry about them or you want to
check in with them, then you naturally are going to
go the easiest route, right, the best way to find
(23:11):
them and interact with them. So there's a give and
take to all of these things. For example, TikTok has
only nine hundred million users in twenty twenty four, but
those users spend an average of fifty eight minutes and
twenty four seconds on it every twenty four hours. That
works out that twenty three hours thirty minutes or so
(23:31):
each month. Again, it's why ballpark average, but that's almost
a full day out of each month when you add
it up.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Yeah, and I'm you know, I am no exception.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
I don't use TikTok, but I definitely scroll some Instagram
reels and stories, you know, pretty chronically. And when you
do see that screen time adding up, if you dare
to check the stats on your device, it can be
pretty staggering.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Pretty arrowing, especially if you're twenty two percent of US
teens who spend two to three hours per day on
average on TikTok. Look, on the surface, is a huge
success story right now. Imagine we're social media execs. Our
platform has replaced so much older media for other people, TV, radio,
(24:22):
long form film, reading newspapers. But the problem is for
the critics the way that they teach you to encounter
and interrogate and digest information. So the big question, could
regular social media use like we all do, could it
actually make you less intelligent?
Speaker 5 (24:43):
We'll find out after a quick word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Here's where it gets crazy. Collect sigh of relief at
our cliffhanger. There. No, it's not going to automatically knock
your IQ down twenty points.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Or whatever, not like the long term effects of leed
exposure to the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
But it can make you less effective at using your intelligence.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
It can knock down your performance on tests including IQ
test for sure. It's because it appears to have over time,
clear and damaging effects on things like comprehension, memory, retention,
and most troublingly and most well researched at this point,
attention span.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Well, the thing about social media in that respect is,
at least as far as I'm concerned, is it sort
of promotes this idea that you can do all the
things at one time right equally well, and that's just
not true. It's this like myth, this kind of lie
that we've been sold that you can like multitask by
you know, looking having fifty tabs open, looking at different
(26:02):
articles and also scrolling your social media and watching a
movie in the background. And the reality is we only
have a finite amount of attention to give, and when
we start cutting it and cutting it and cutting it,
it's almost like we're not giving anything to any one thing.
It's all so far flung that we're kind of not
really doing anything. It's like a jack of all trades,
(26:24):
master of none kind of mentality.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, well said, do you want to We'll get into
that further in depth in a little bit, nol, Do
you want to introduce us to Tessa Nussenbaum.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
Absolutely writing for The Standard in December of twenty twenty three,
like so many other folks over the past few decades,
she anecdotally noticed something kind of disturbing that she was
having a hard time reading, researching, and writing. Just every
couple of minutes, it would seem she had almost unconsciously
this urge to stop what she was working on, actively
(26:56):
working on, pickup her phone for a quick break, and
then boom, before you know it, you're just locked down
to that doom scroll.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, and let's talk about why this is so important
coming from Tessa specifically, she is writing for The Standard,
which is a school paper for the American School in London,
which means that she is a student giving you direct
access to a basically a teenager's mind as they are
going through this. And it's a teenager that's intelligent enough
(27:25):
to write this kind of paper and have the self
awareness right as she's actively going through it. It's not
no offense, guys. It's not us looking back on our
teenage years and thinking about it. This is somebody in
that moment knowing what it feels like.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
In situ immedia arrests. Yeah. And no matter what Nussin
Bouten does, no matter how many times she attempts to
scope in and focus she finds, she continually returns back
to the apps before any significant amount of time is passed.
So this leads her on a disturbing journey of discovery,
and it's one that we see echoed by momultiple other students,
(28:01):
multiple other journalists, as well as a small army of researchers, marketers,
and academics and of course social media giants. This is
what you find from all these reports, anecdotal and quantitative.
Social media is purposely designed to be addictive. You didn't
get a dopamine rush from that last post or real
(28:23):
or interaction that you know, that singing raven didn't quite
do it for you, No worries, don't bother thinking too deeply.
There's a shiny other video about a raven. It's also short.
Just scroll down.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
So much good COVID content.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
I mean, you know what it reminds me of, guys,
is the time that we all went to Vegas together
and sort of, you know, strolled the casino floors and
honestly I got sucked in to some of those bright
and shiny and noisy video you know, gambling machines. It's
a very similar thing. You're chasing that. When you're chasing
(28:59):
that as the effects and the the graphics that explode
across the screen, it's very similar to chasing that piece
of content that scratches just that right psychological edge.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
You could call it over simulation.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, oh for sure, it's rapid fire novelty. I think
there's something to that, and.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
It's not how the human brain evolved to digest information,
not necessarily, not at this level and not at this
cadence when you don't have access to frenetic, fast moving cavalcades.
This endless ephemera, that's what a lot of it is, right,
mixed in with things of note. Then you're forced to
really think about information you encounter. You analyze it, you
(29:46):
synthesize it, you digest, you connect it with other pieces
of information you have encountered and assimilated before. That's why
you're able to think more critically. It also allows you
the superpower of sniffing out false claims and bs uh.
It's pretty big and it's a muscle, rights, That's only
a cliche because it's true. Your brain is a collection
(30:10):
of different cognitive muscles. What happens when this set of
muscles the ability to analyze and exercise critical thought. What
happens when it gets atrophied or muted? You get a
processing issue?
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Right, Well, you're not actually doing anything.
Speaker 5 (30:23):
I mean, you mentioned the terms of the word simulation, Ben,
It's like it's stimulation simulation, you know, you're actually just
getting all of this. You're living this whole kind of
internal you know, life without leaving your couch or without
looking up from your phone. So it's almost like you're
you're living but not really living. It's it's a very
matrix y kind of you know, proposition.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It also codifies the ways of which you can participate
in information, right, the ways you can respond to a thing.
And you have you know, like comment, et cetera. You
don't have the same ability to imagine or interrogate a
response as you would if you were, say, reading a book.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Well, yeah, think about how exciting that activity is, right,
having something new hit your face, your mind, your ears, everything,
your you know, your eyes that quickly something new, something
different every time you do it. Take one little action
with your finger, and something new happens.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
You don't have to work for it. You don't have
to like really put in that much effort. It's just
kind of right there, presented to you on a silver platter,
and it learns what you like to Sorry, no.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, no, you're right. But that versus as you're saying,
bent reading a book, sitting there and going through words
and synthesizing those words into ideas and thoughts and images
in your own head that those two things compared. One
is so easy and exciting. The other is could be
exciting if you really thought about it, but it it
(31:54):
is less exciting on the surface, and the immediacy of
the excitement that you get isn't there when you're thinking
about a book or doing chores or you know, just
doing anything else.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah, let's talk about let's talk about this as we
hone in on that. There's a somewhat controversial study where
people will tell you what's controversial in twenty fifteen by
the eggheads of Microsoft, and they found the following. You
can clock an overall trend as we step through this
in two thousand in the year two thousand. Excuse me,
(32:27):
it's the awkward as that that's what I always think about.
I feel like you need to add someone on there anyway,
the straight up two thousand, Microsoft found the average human
attention span and their estimation was twelve seconds. That does
not sound impressive, honestly, So try it at home. Turn
on a timer, don't look at anything, don't listen to anything,
(32:48):
maybe just close your eyes and breathe, wait and see
how long twelve seconds really is, which is why we're
not going to do it on the show, because we
hate dead air. Twelve seconds so long for us. That's
the idea I had originally.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, I think you should use your original idea.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Let's meditate, guys, let's take it. Come on as the
least we can do. We owe it to David Lynch okay,
in his memory. Let's meditate for twelve seconds.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
We should put some sound in there, right, all right,
ocean waves.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Perhaps I'll count down to from three and then I
get to one. Give us a beep. I'll start a
timer here for twelve seconds.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
If you're driving, obviously, you know, maintain your eyes, your
eyes open.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yeah, all right, do this when you're not operating machinery.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
All right?
Speaker 6 (33:36):
Three to one?
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Interminable?
Speaker 5 (33:52):
God, what a waste of time. No, I'm getting it's important.
Still in this is important. Mindfulness is important. We have
to claw that back in lives.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
How long did that twelve seconds feel for you, folks,
assuming you weren't, you know, hopping on your phone, how
did your thoughts fly in that short length of time.
It's interesting, especially we consider again the Microsoft study, which
people say is imperfect. In twenty thirteen, the same study
found the average attention span had dropped down to eight seconds,
(34:26):
as Nisenbou pointed out, and as a lot of other
people clocked as well. According to Microsoft, that attention span
was shorter than that of the average goldfish. These little
lunatics can stay focused on something for about nine seconds
if it interests them that if it's food.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Could last, that thing be a goldfish. The idea of like, you.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
Know, that is as a superpower, not a bug, you know,
being able to clear your mind and not remember the past.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Which is maybe a maybe good advice. It depends, you know.
There are other studies that find different specific nuts and
bolts numbers, but they all kind of map out that
same trend. Like doctor Gloria Mark you can listen to
you could read her work, and you can also listen
to a couple of podcasts she's done. She found that
(35:19):
in two thousand and four, the average attention to just
any kind of screen was about two minutes and thirty seconds,
and then years after that it declined to like seventy
five seconds, and then by about twenty twenty three to
twenty twenty four the number drop to forty five seconds,
so much less weird right, but also still the same trend.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Well, let's talk about just reading an article that is
on a phone or on a screen of any kind,
like when we're doing our research. Think back ten years ago, guys,
Think about the ads that would show up if you
were reading an article on a place like CNN or
Fox News, any of that stuff. Think about the ad
(36:05):
space that would be taken up on the screen and
how it functioned on that screen. Sure, then think back
to early you know, if you were on AOL news
or something like, when you're getting it a full article
that you're reading. The experience, at least in my mind,
was that of reading a book with every once in
a while and ad showing up on the sides, on
the rails, or an ad showing up in the center
(36:27):
between paragraphs, but every once in a while.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Not inundated all around, not where you had to actually
search for the thing you were trying to read on
the page.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Yes, not only that, though, I mean it just feels
like the content has just overall been tailored to that
experience and just gotten shorter, like each piece of content
is an ad in and of itself, and rather than
having like long form writing journalism obviously there's still folks
out there that do that. It's about having tons of
little nuggety bits to serve these ads.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Well, okay, so just but just I had that experience
reading a Guardian article today where this article was written
by Johan Harry that we mentioned at the top of
the show. It is written in actual paragraphs, and then
(37:19):
I realized, why does this feel so strange to me?
Because I then looked at some of the other articles
that I had opened my other tabs, and they are
literally sentences, then a break, then sentence, then a break,
then a break, then a break after sentence after sentence.
And these companies, a lot of them, are putting ads
between every third sentence or something, and in the paragraphs
(37:41):
you get at least three or four paragraphs before you
get an ad break. And just the way content is
being tailored to not it's not to make you understand
the concepts that are written in the article or anything
like that. It is to get those ads hitting your
face as rapidly as they can, and you only if
you can break it up by sentence. You only need,
(38:03):
you know, three or four paragraphs worth of thought in
order to sell the same number of ads that this
huge Johan Harri article had.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah, and that's why some people will go toward ad blockers,
which becomes its own argument, right, because then are you
making it ultimately impossible for those journalists to do that
same level of work you.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Know exactly well.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
And it also creates an environment where there are fewer
And maybe this is just conjecture on my part, but
it would seem that it creates an environment where the
demand for that real, hard hitting long form stuff, at
least online is significantly diminished because it does not fit
that new or rubric to maximize sales dollars.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Do you mean demand from an audience or readers or
do you mean demand from corporation?
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Corporation the people that are paying the journalists, the people
that are filling the pipes.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, well, the and the ads just one last thing here.
The ads are not your standard two thousand and eight.
You know a picture right that has some information on
it that is trying to.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Product sound videos.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
It is it's like scrolling through social media as those
ads load, and you're going through and try again. CNN.
I'm sorry, but I cannot read stuff on your page
unless I alter your page so that I can read
it it sucks.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
Sorry, and so yeah, it's perfect and it's honest. And
going back to what we're saying about, you know, Harry's work,
which we'll get into later, and then also Mark's work.
Harry is a journalist, right, but heavily researched into this
and as well as you know, even the controversial Microsoft study.
(39:51):
We see that this overall trend has come about. Now,
why do the numbers seem to differentiate and why do
we say their commonalities are more powerful than their differences?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsors and
(40:13):
we've returned. All right, First, it's important to note not
all of the numbers agree. That's I would argue you, guys,
that's probably likely to the nature of the sample size,
the demographics of the people in a sample size, where
they are life, the types of media they are consuming,
their education level, and so on. You know, if you
(40:33):
went and you asked a group of a group of
people who are academics and all they do is study
the Old Testament, their attention span ratings are going to be,
you know, a little bit higher than average.
Speaker 5 (40:48):
Wouldn't you also say that for generations that like grew
up completely online, like there's really nothing to measure that
change with. It's just brains have been wired from the start.
And then the quest and then becomes like, is it
just a new way of dividing attention?
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, and you're measuring the effectiveness of the platforms as
well with those folks, right, how effective has Instagram become?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, and you would you would be able to compare
gen Z. You would just need to take a group
of people of the same age who were not from
a part of the world where this where cellphal technology
was ubiquitous, right, So you could maybe see it that way.
But then it becomes who's going to fund the study?
Speaker 5 (41:33):
I guess what I'm saying though, is like, you know,
my kid is gen Z, and my kid's best friends
got to twin brothers who are the most gen alpha
of kids I've ever seen brain rod digit exactly. But
it's like they are also intensely creative and weird with
their creativity. So there's something to be said about that too,
(41:57):
Like I don't want to just completely demonize this stuff
and say the kids there's no hope because of this
toxic internet culture. Like there's something about the way the
brain is wired and these folks that are like online
from birth. That is different and is interesting. I don't
know what it means, but I've witnessed it, and there
is something going on with these kids.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah, that's a similar argument to the older one about
Indigo children, which is a whole different bag of badgers.
And also it's a great tip. It reminds me of
the second aspect that we have to talk about with
these studies, which is attention is also not necessarily across
(42:39):
the brain and across the world hardwired to the media
you're encountering so much as it is hardwired to the
task at hand. If you like reading in general, you're
going to stick with the text longer than someone who
doesn't really like reading. If you are playing your favorite
video game, you might experience a similar level of focus.
If you're studying for a test on a subject that
(43:01):
you really dig, then you're probably not gonna have as
tough a time focusing as in like, let's say you
hate what's a subject? People hate? H math?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Okay, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
Some people love it and are great at it, and
some people are inherently great at it and has an
aptitude and a type of attention that is very well
suited for that kind of analysis, you know. I mean,
I know, I'm stating the obvious. Some people are better
at some things than others. But for me, I'm so
bad at math. But when I work on music and
I'm engaging with like sound design or synthesis, it's a
(43:37):
way of interacting with math, which is a subject that
I hate. I just had to find a different path
to it.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I just experienced this with my son. We were studying
for a test on Indigenous Americans and all, like all
the aspects like a social studies test that he was
working on, and he wanted to sit with me and
study and just go over stuff, and he wanted to
learn it at all. But then we sat down to
learn about pollution, and he did not like that subject
(44:05):
because it made him feel a little scared and uncomfortable
and all of that. So that that anxiety that he
felt is what caused him to lose focus when we
were attempting to study that one. And I wonder if
overall generalized anxiety has anything to do with the desire
to move to these social media things versus you know,
(44:26):
actually studying what's happening in the news or something.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Like that, right, the brain wants to uh, well yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
So here's the brain and the heart want what they want.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
A task accomplishment is really what it is. And the
immediate gratification of learning something easy that is not hard
to your brain, You're still accomplishing a task, right. And
I think anxiety to that point does play a role
in it. I'm not going to get into an anecdote,
but I've definitely encountered what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Well, in this in case, it was a subject that
was hard, that had a ton of dense information, but
he was into it. And the other thing was a
ton of generalized information but it made him nervous.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
And the idea here regarding anxiety, it kind of speaks
to the level of there are certain things people may
be more comfortable learning, right, and the brain hates tackling
something and then having to get it wrong and go
back and redo it. That's another big part of it.
So the brain is naturally incentivized to look for easily
(45:34):
accomplishable task and seeing a video and reacting to it
and hitting that like button is an easily accomplishable task,
and the brain response and says boom, we just did something.
Here's a little shout at dopamine. Now it's on to
another task. We are killing it today.
Speaker 5 (45:51):
Yeah, stimulation, simulation. It's weird, man, and we're all totally
subject to it. You know, there's really very hard to escape,
you know, sort of completely unplugging, and that's just not
very practical anymore.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Right, And I wonder too, if there's some attention span alarmism.
Right to which degree is this really affecting people? I mean,
is it hyperbolic? A we are we overdoing it? With concern?
Speaker 5 (46:19):
Well, I mean, I'm with you, Matt, and I will
say that I do have a hard time sitting and
focusing and reading a book, reading a novel. We do
a ton of short form reading and papers and things
like that for the podcast. But I have really struggled
with maybe it's that multitask culture that we've sort of
become a part of, you know, against our will maybe
(46:41):
at times, but that's not great. I'd love to be
able to enjoy a book and enjoy a moment of
stillness and meditate. But I'm also very high functioning, and
I enjoy my job, and I spend good time with
my family, and I don't feel like I'm living some
sort of existential nightmare.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
So I don't know. I think results may vary.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I think I think my own I don't know. I
think I've read a little too much to Yoan Hari.
He wrote a book called Stolen Focus, Why you Can't
pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. And I
am on board the guys arguing basically, we need to
start a revolution against this stuff, because how do you
solve hard problems if you can't focus on a hard
(47:20):
problem for years? You know? And I don't know.
Speaker 5 (47:25):
Would you guys argue that in some small ways social
media could be considered an existential threat, Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Not to maybe an individual, but to an individual's abilities,
and perhaps to a civilization's capacities or capabilities.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
And and secondly, are we not, especially in this country,
especially with some of the oligarch type situations that are
creeping into politics and government, you know, living in a
society where the knock on effects of this stuff are
more or less ignored, and the research into how this
will affect people down the road is absolutely not part
(48:05):
of the conversation when it comes to figuring out how
to get the most eyeballs on a product or Yah.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
It's not part of maybe the more the wider public
mainstream conversation, but I do believe the downward trend and
intention span does have what we could call knock on consequences.
You know, cognitively, look, and I think this is so
important because I hate when people are condescending about this
kind of stuff. Cognitively, you're not less intelligent for using
(48:35):
social media. It is more difficult for you to do
certain things to become engaged in long term focused to
what we call deep thought. We've mentioned it before. But
the theory I always like to I've made this up,
so I okay, you know what my opinion then not.
A theory unpublished is if you think of learning on
(48:57):
an X and Y axis, learning anything right, and the
Y axis above and below that X that is the
depth of knowledge, right, So the deeper you go on
the why, the more you know about a single thing.
The X axis is how many different kinds of things
you know? And to the jack of all trades master
of none concept proposed earlier people used to have very
(49:21):
deep knowledge about very specific things, and now we kind
of all know the first paragraph of Wikipedia on a
thing but how.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Does the person who knows the first paragraph on Wikipedia
build a rocket? You know, yeah, I guess what I
mean is like I do. I mean, I don't mean
to be condescending to anybody, but I do feel like
the use of this stuff does cause our intelligence to flatten,
maybe like that the way you're saying, rather than get
(49:53):
those spikes that I think humanity needs.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
They do. But it's recoverable. And that's why I'm saying,
like your base and intelligence has not changed the ability
of engaging, but the information can be lost and regained,
kind of like getting out of shape and then doing
your push ups again.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
Absolutely such, it does make complete sense.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
And again I would just say, you know, when I
was trying to fumble out earlier is like, you know,
I definitely think this is something that I need to
curtail in my life, and it's something that I am
making some steps towards. But I also spent the last
like two and a half days really locked in and
focused on working on this remix of a song for
my friend's band, and I feel like it's one of
the best things I've ever done. And I've like absolutely
(50:32):
focused in on every single detail, and I was completely
able to stay locked in.
Speaker 4 (50:36):
So I'm just saying, like, I'd love to hear it. No,
I I'd love to share it.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
And it's and it's task specific. Again, that's something that
you care about that already kind of scratches behind your
ears cognitively. So you can lose, you can get lost
in the sauce of that beautiful moment.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
That's that helps you.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
Get But that's the thing. Social media simulates a flow
state without you actually having to accomplish anything.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Oh, it's a synthesized flow state, and.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
The brain is reacting the same way, kind of like
how your brain doesn't really on some levels, doesn't really
know the difference between a fake laugh and a real laugh.
It encourages some of the same physiological mechanics to occur.
That's those feel good chemicals that you get. We have
to tell you your brain is not the villain here.
(51:27):
If anything, your brain is just again trying to accomplish
checklist and rewarding itself when you when it feels like
a task has been accomplished. So the short term stuff
is immediate. It's the immediate rush of feel good chemicals
as you build a tolerance. But finishing a book, attending
(51:47):
to lecture, working on an album. That's a lot more
time for that shot of feel.
Speaker 5 (51:52):
Good watching a movie at home without multitasking, without looking
at your phone. Executives that now Flicks and other streamers
have openly talked about, or at least maybe it's more
of an open secret kind of thing that they make
movies the green light movies that have a second screen appeal,
meaning that you don't have to be locked in because
(52:14):
they know ninety percent or whatever high percentage of viewers
are gonna be half paying attention and looking at their phone.
And I would argue that a lot of that stuff
really set in deeply during COVID.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Sure, yeah, well it's also time. Do you have an
hour and forty five minutes to dedicate to one thing,
to sit in one place and focus on one thing.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Especially when you're fighting a fomo war on multiple fronts.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Oh yeah, for sure. It took me three sittings to
watch Saturday Night recently, three sittings. I had to start it,
and then I had know I had to stop and
go away and do some other stuff because my brain said, oh,
we got to go do these other things. I can't
just sit here and watch a movie.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Yeah, God, help us try to get through the brutalist
y'all right.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
The last time I watched I was thinking about that too.
So when the last time I watched the film without
a second screen was in a theater, because I didn't
want to be rude. For another biological comparison, think of
it this way. Tell me what you think, guys, I
really like this one. I don't know how accurate it is,
but lifting from you know, the old analogy test in
(53:19):
l SAT or SAT or whatever, social media is to
attention span as smoking is to lung capacity. The more
you use the one thing, the more you lose of
the other. But you can regain it with you know,
a little bit of moderation, a little bit of self care.
So let's talk about these knock on consequences as your
(53:41):
detention span lowers. First, you begin grabbing multiple inputs. And
I remember in the Brain Stuff Days did a video
that pressed a lot of people off. It was about multitasking.
You're mistaken about it. Nobody can actually multitask. No human
being can multitask on these conscious focus like pay attention
(54:02):
to kind of pursuits because your brain is already multitasking
and keeping your blood flowing, keeping your heart pumping, all
this others, making sure you don't automatically crap yourself. Your
brain has so much to do and we don't acknowledge it.
When you are trying to focus on conscious things multiple
at once, you're switching your focus, and every time you
(54:23):
do this, your brain has a little reset and it says, oh,
what was that thing that was just doing? How did
I feel about it? Where did I leave off? What
do I want to go to next. That happens every
time you're like, let me pick up my phone for
a second, Oh, let me get back to this email.
Speaker 4 (54:38):
Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (54:39):
This technology.
Speaker 5 (54:40):
I mean, look at like you know, Apple Vision pro whatever,
like the idea of having fifty virtual screens surrounding you,
you know, Minority Report style. It's this technology and these
technology companies that have us believe that this kind of multitasking.
Speaker 4 (54:56):
Is possible through technology extensions of our meat bodies.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
But it's just not true, right, Yeah, the average human
being absolutely cannot multitask. Your brain is just so good
at switching between discrete tasks that from far enough away
in your conscious mind, it looks like you're doing it
at the same time, and that's how the grift works.
Speaker 5 (55:18):
Well, it's like having too many tabs open in your browser.
All of a sudden, your whole computer crashes.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
Well in every time you switch that task, your brain
has to reboot that task it is not and that
means you have to remember what you were thinking about
when you were doing that task, right.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
Remember what you just did, how you felt about it,
and where you left off.
Speaker 5 (55:41):
It's almost like existing in this fugue state where you're
sort of between things all the time.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
I know that feeling, specifically when doing the voicemails for
this show, where I will get into a minor flow
state doing that, and then all of a sudden I
have the need to check Instagram and I do. It
throws me off completely, and then I will leave and
go do something else because I got out of flow
state before having to find my way back there somehow.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
Yeah, I think we've all encountered some versions that all
of us in the audience tonight as well. So I
want to go back to this Netflix thing, you guys,
because this is really If you notice this, you're not crazy,
NOL you had mentioned it earlier. I think we all
clocked it up. This is part of why you see
more and more characters putting in exit exposition of what's
(56:30):
happening at that moment. And it reminds me a little
bit of weird improv, but it's in a very serious way.
Someone's going ethan you've just walked in. Yes, and I
know about Bolivia, which you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 5 (56:44):
Indeed, it's like the way soap operas operate is not
conducive to good quality writing and art.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
It's super pandery and like not very interesting, not very creative.
Speaker 3 (56:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
No, I don't want to que people of lazy writing,
but it is a way to get stuff across without
having to show anybody anything. You just tell them real quick.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yeah. It also helps, you know, for the people who
maybe have a favorite character in an ensemble cast of
some sort. Like let's say there's a modern version of
Lost and you only like trying to remember Lost characters Flock,
the Man in Black or Lock. Yeah, no spoilers, but
(57:29):
but then you uh, you're you're on your phone, right
and you're kind of listing, kind of not listening, and
then you hear them say the name of the character
you like. Phone down for a second, I'm tuned in.
Speaker 5 (57:39):
Er that time I accidentally spoiled Lost by telling a
bad joke, like about what it wasn't supposed to be,
and then people got mad because of anything.
Speaker 4 (57:47):
I don't It was a long time ago. It was
on this show, but people wrote in and were angry
that I even at that point the finale had been.
Speaker 3 (57:54):
Because I said Lost. The writers of Lost spoils I.
Speaker 5 (57:58):
Think I just said something to the effective it was all,
which is not a spoiler, because that's not true, and
it's something the writers said would they would never ever.
Speaker 3 (58:05):
They would never do that.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
Guys, I just want to say one last thing that
comes directly from you and Harry. I'm sorry I've become
a Haryeite. And this. You can read this in the
Guardian title is your Attention didn't collapse, It was stolen.
It was written January second, twenty twenty two. This is
just a quote from the end of the article. Read
it though, and get to this quote.
Speaker 4 (58:27):
He says.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
At the moment, it's as though we're all having itching
powder poured over us all day, and the people pouring
the powder are saying, quote, you might want to learn
to meditate. Then you wouldn't scratch so much. Meditation is
a useful tool, but we actually need to stop the
people who are pouring itching powder on us. We need
to band together and take on the forces stealing our
(58:51):
attention and take it back.
Speaker 4 (58:53):
I really like that.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Yeah, I agree, because we oh, we've got to tease this,
We've got to deliver on this tease. That same article
as one of my favorite beginnings that are read in
the way these things are introduced as concepts. It's all
about talking to his godson and taking him on a
trip to Graceland. And it's amazing. Please do check it out.
(59:19):
It's it's a banger stem disturn. But that's what we're
talking about when you said grace Land at the very
top of tonight's show, And can I just.
Speaker 5 (59:26):
Really quickly just give a shout out to I think
someone that we all admire who recently passed away, David Lynch,
who is an incredible painter, artist, polymath, filmmaker and thinker,
and you know he is a huge was a huge
proponent of transcendental meditation and the idea of needing that
stillness in order to be able to kind of pluck
(59:47):
these ideas out of sort of the cosmic ether, and
I think we can learn a lot from him, And
if anybody out there isn't super familiar, I do recommend
you know, looking up some of his interviews on the subject,
because you know, people like him and like at Heart Polly,
for example, are our folks that I think are really
important when it comes to thinking about mindfulness and being
(01:00:07):
able to kind of like shut off that part of
our brain that craves that dopamine hit that we've been
talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Dude, dude, Johann ends it with. The more our attention degrades,
the harder it will be to summon the personal and
political energy to take on the forces stealing our focus.
Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
And that's why they're stealing it, isn't it. That's that's
the whole point. I mean, it is a conspiracy in
many ways. I don't maybe I don't know if it
started that way, but the way the technocrats are now
like in league with the government, it just seems like
that's just they're going to push it even further and
the idea of taking over TikTok using it as a
propaganda So I don't know, it's it's I was not
(01:00:45):
I would.
Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Say that's a I would call it again an accidental conspiracy.
The first conclusion social media is not going away for
many people. It is the internet from many people, it
is they're also their prime method of interacting. And then
second the science continues, how relatively new is this stuff.
(01:01:06):
We have to remember widespread online social media comms are
a little young to have true longitudinal studies. It's going
to be difficult to account for all the differing variables involved.
But as everybody is wrestling with this, we can say
for sure, no matter how the science works out, it's
great to put your phone down once in a while
(01:01:26):
a long time if you can manage it. Slow day,
weekend off, go outside, do something fun. Your brain will
consider this exercise and with each iteration, just like lifting
some dumbbells, your attention SPAN's going to get stronger. And
I really don't think social media tycoons care if you
know about this, not yet, because they say people are
(01:01:48):
already addicted. From their perspective, you're never going to get
so fed up that a large number of people actually
leave for good. And this is where we once again
want to sho shout out the various authors and scholars
and journalists that we've mentioned here. We also want to
ask you, since you're the most important part of this show,
(01:02:10):
what's your take on this? What's your experience? We raised
a lot of questions that don't quite have answers yet
outside of people's personal experience, so please share it with us.
After we talked about how dangerous social media is, guess what,
you can find us online?
Speaker 5 (01:02:26):
Right and Ben, you had also mentioned being interested in
folks writing in about their experiences with flow state, you know,
like tell us about a positive way or that you've
counteracted some of the damaging effects of social media. You
can find us all over the internet. We are conspiracy
Stuff on YouTube or we have video content Calora for
your enjoyment. We also exist at that handle on x FKA,
(01:02:49):
Twitter and on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
it gets crazy on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are
conspiracy Stuff show and we're also people. You can find
me on Instagram at how Now Know Brown?
Speaker 4 (01:03:00):
How about you? Ben?
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Is it an individual or a group effort? There's one
way to find out. Go to app ed all wherever
people use apps, or go to the website Ben and bullet. Hey,
if you don't like to sip the social beads. There
are other ways to find us, but Matt, the masses
are dying to know an any update on social media.
Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
My name is Matt Frederick and we have a phone number.
It is one eight three three std WYTK. Why don't
you call in and tell us what you think about
a social media tycoon gaining full access to the federal
payment system like you did yesterday. As we record this,
that makes me nervous. What do you think when you call?
(01:03:45):
Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
You've got three minutes. Say whatever you want, just you know,
do make it fun and exciting. If you've got something
else to say, if you want to write it out,
if you want to send us a link or maybe
a picture, why not send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
We are Oh, let me hold off there for a second. Folks,
Please please please write in as well with your opinion
on what kind of qualifications someone needs to create or
destroy a federal department, and especially if you work on
the frontline. We want to thank everybody who wrote in
(01:04:22):
to us with some of their experience with the recent
let's say changes here in the US. To the degree
that you are comfortable, let us know if anonymity is key.
We are the entities that read every email we receive.
Be well aware, yet I'm afraid. Sometimes the void writes back,
join us out here in the dark conspiracy. At iHeartRadio
(01:04:44):
dot com, everyone have a great day.
Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Nolan.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
super producer Andrew the try Force Howard. Most importantly, you
are you. You are here. That makes this the stuff
they don't want you to know. Shout out to whatever
social media app you're on right now, if you're in
a chat, tell them you're listening to our show.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
You know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Why don't weaponize it?
Speaker 5 (00:48):
Oh man, you might as well s already weaponized against us.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Yeah as well. Turn the tables, flip the script.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yes, yes, just so we we were talking about this
just a little bit off air. A question I've been
asking a lot of people recently. What is the longest
you have gone without checking your phone?
Speaker 4 (01:11):
No more than a day? I mean a day is
nearly impossible.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
I fully copped offline to being an absolute phone junkie,
and I've had to initiate some kind of self imposed
phone restrictions, like keeping it charging in a different room
while I do things around the house or work on projects.
But I'm absolutely addicted to the damn thing.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, we're going to talk about an author, Johann Harry,
who did a little experiment with that whole thing. But
when I think about vacations I've taken with my son
or my family's, those are the times I've put it
away the most. But I am still constantly checking for
work stuff, checking for conversations and a text thread, checking
(01:54):
social media, performance of a video, all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
And shout out to Hari Graceland doesn't make it easier either.
I remember, I think we're talking about the same article
there too, for a lot of us, or I should
answer this as well. I've been trying, like you guys,
to be more intentional about this, I think for a
lot of us in the audience tonight. Technically, the longest
(02:20):
you've been without your phone was the first few years
of childhood and adolescence before you got your own phone.
Speaker 5 (02:28):
Right Well, yeah, I mean, and now it's like you
can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Kids expect
to get a phone at a certain age. If they
don't have one, they feel excluded. It's not impossible to
deprive them of that. You almost would be looked at
as some sort of monster by society. How dare you
not give your kid a phone at age thirteen or whatever?
Speaker 3 (02:49):
You'd be in an out group and that's not good
for social networking. Quick question, just curious here. What is
the like, what's the going wisdom now for parents on
the appropriate age for a kid to have some kind
of phone, even if it's restricted access like a learner phone.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Yeah, Matt, wouldn't you say that? There's always the argument
of the safety.
Speaker 5 (03:09):
That does seem to be a thing that comes up,
and then of course all the other stuff that follows
along because you can't really, you know, pick and choose.
Once they have the thing, they kind of have the thing.
But what's your philosophy on that?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Well, we are all connected, and you do want to
know where your child is right and we have these
institutional programs like school and daycare that you send your
child to and you just trust that the adults in
those places are doing their jobs and doing them well.
But in the times between it is it is weird
(03:42):
to think about the transit between school and wherever they're
going to or you know that as they get a
little older, going to a friend's house, you want to
be able to connect to them, and if they don't
have a personalized device. We don't have landlines and houses anymore.
You can't call Chris's house anymore and say, hey, Chris,
(04:03):
is my son doing okay? But I guess you could
call the parent, which is nice. But yeah, so sorry,
long witted answer, just to say, I think as soon
as a child can kind of go out and do
things on their own, you were going to want as
a parent to have some sort of direct connection to them.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's a solid rubric.
You know, in most countries it's absolutely normal to constantly
refer to your phone. And I love the point you made.
Know that there are safety concerns too. We're talking about
people growing up moving into the wide world. For some
of us adults, you might constantly need to do it
for your job, emails, text right. Like you were saying, Matt,
(04:43):
A ton of people are constantly clicking on social media
apps your TikTok, Instagram, Facebook x, Snapchat, we chat, all
the apps. Reddit is social media as well, and it's
weird how quickly it became normalized. We have to remember
being normal doesn't necessarily mean a thing is good. So
as we're looking into in tonight's episode, there are serious
(05:06):
concerns that social media has become a kind of accidental
conspiracy against your brain, particularly your attention span.
Speaker 4 (05:16):
I'm sorry what.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
We'll be back after a word from our sponsors. Here
are the facts. I guess first, we have to explain
the term social media. It seems like it came out
of the blue, you know, and no one really questioned
what it was because we all understood what it was.
(05:45):
But I think it's worth us digging into it just
a little.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
For sure. Social media is something we've covered a lot
on this show, and it is weird to think that
the text app on your phone is kind of social media,
A little bit to email, Gmail, that's kind of social media.
But they but a lot of companies, individuals figured out
ways to connect human beings even closer to basically, it's
(06:11):
all a conspiracy to make you overshare on the internet
and then get some attention for oversharing.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
I mean, the currency is your time, and these apps
are designed and psychologically designed to make you spend as
much time as humanly possible and you know, this is
capitalizing on a very common human need, the idea to
have a peer group, the idea to be connected with others,
making clubs, for example. We've been doing that since you know,
(06:37):
time immemorial. For most of human history, people have gathered
in groups of shared interests, like minded individuals, you know,
chopping it up, sharing ideas.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah, I love that point. No, social media and social
networking are ven diagrams. They're two related, overlapping yet distinct
concepts because, as you said, people have been so social
networking since the days of tribes, right, what we have
in common, and the first thing was the thing we
have in common is we're related and we want to survive.
(07:10):
The only thing that has changed about social networking as
a group of tactics over time was what a giving
group prioritizes, your tribe, your religion, the state, a career interest,
who you want to date, et cetera. And then when
we see the advent of the age of information mass
(07:30):
communication technology, now social networking just has new vectors in
group the outgroup. That's not going to change for the
foreseeable future. Social networking is a way to build communities.
Social media is a way to build an audience, or
that's why a lot of people are there. The platforms
(07:51):
need the user generated content for now until the AI
slops through, and those users are often hoping to garner
the large audience possible, which can then be monetized.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Oh it's interesting.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
I mean it's we're almost entering an era where social
media celebrities are more powerful or just as powerful than
traditional celebrities, movie stars, pop stars.
Speaker 4 (08:15):
I mean, a certain generation.
Speaker 5 (08:18):
Cares way more about YouTubers and Instagram influencers than they
do about you know, film actors for example.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, you don't have to look forward to see the
sudden sea change here. I think about this whenever I'm
doing a career day. Children of past generations, you know,
wanted to be president or a famous athlete, right. I
want to be the next Lebroad or the next Michael Jordan.
I want to be a rock star. More and more
(08:46):
kids now dream of being a social media celebrity or
an influencer. And it was really interesting series of studies
won by a group called Morning Consult that found social
media star is the four most popular career aspiration for
kids these days.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, it makes sense. My kid saw our George Washington videos,
and after that we had a couple more talks about
what he really likes, what he's into, and he said,
I want to make videos like you, Dad, And I went,
oh crap.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
And I think it's.
Speaker 5 (09:19):
Sort of easy to be dismissive of influencers and social
media stars and all of that, but you know, we
can tell you firsthand that there's a lot of work
that goes into it. It does require a constant vigilance
of posting and creating content and kind of never sleeping
on it because you can lose that audience as quickly
as you can gain it. But there is a certain
(09:41):
sense of frivolousness around this type of celebrity. I would argue,
it's like you're famous for being famous, you know, yeah,
Art Dashian level, Right, it's the argument there.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
In the end, it depends on what ideas you're putting
forth into the world, right, what ideas do you generate
right in the people that look at your sixty second video?
And often it is as you know, we kind of
slid that in there, that is about monetization. Social media
influencers get used as a way to have ads get
(10:14):
thrown in people's faces, even if they don't realize it.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
There was a great South Park episode about that, a
real brutal one. I don't know if you guys remember so.
And I also love the point that, yeah, it can
seem frivolous to some generations or some demographics, but it
makes sense to aspire to these digital heights. You know,
for a lot of younger folks. Most of the success
(10:39):
stories you see, most of the media you encounter, it's
on a platform you enjoy. It's you know, a twitch
streamer you really like, or if you're into aviation, you
can go to a certain agglomeration of hashtags and you
can meet tons of people who will give you short form, dense,
accurate scientific information about aviation. So we're not trying to
(11:01):
throw the digital baby out with the bathwater. But it's
so weird. This is a funny story. Did you guys
know nobody knows who made up the phrase social media?
Speaker 4 (11:12):
Hmm.
Speaker 5 (11:13):
I guess I would have thought that it would have
been associated with somebody, like a coined kind of moment, but.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
Some kind of influencer maybe, Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 5 (11:20):
I mean, it's it's pretty cut and dry though, right,
I mean, media, it is a medium. It is the
conduit for digital socialization. So certain terms like that just
kind of almost invent themselves, like with a form of
parallel thinking.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
Yeah, I think that's an accurate way to put it.
If we go to if we go to some great
conversations Forbes journalist Jeff BERKOVICI had he talked to a
lot of tech executives from the nineties, right the days
when AOL was still sending you a CD so you
didn't run out of Internet. And one of the most
(11:59):
prominent contenders claiming to create the phrase social media is
Tina Sharky, who is a former executive at I Village
and AOL and BabyCenter dot com. And she described it
kind of the way you said. No. When she's talking
this journalist back in twenty ten, she says, it's not
service media, it's not quite informational media. It's social media.
(12:22):
It wasn't media we were creating, it was media we
were facilitating. And I think that's a big point, right,
because you are, if you were using these products, you
are making the stuff that they want to cycle through
in between the ads.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
So that's like in the nineties, ninety fourish times.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, that's when she said we know the origin. I
feel like at OED, we know the origin starts popping
up in the early nineties. No one's quite sure when,
and probably one of the I know you guys love this.
One of the favorite contenders for the crown of coining
social media is another AOL guy, or a couple of them.
(13:06):
Ted leons I'm not sure how to pronounce that, and
Steve Case. They said they were throwing it around, and
Ted has the best line where he says, uh, yeah,
if it really mattered, I'm sure we can find a
deck somewhere that talked about social networking and social media
from that time. But what does it matter?
Speaker 4 (13:25):
Okay, weird flex.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Steve, Yeah, well, Ted, just everybody who doesn't know a
deck is like a PowerPoint presentation.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
Yeah yeah, techy kind of business type presentations. He's basically saying,
we did it, but I'm not gonna lie. It's not
worth my time to show the receipts, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
There's another guy named Darryl Berry that has kind of
a similar thing that he's like, yeah, we were throwing
around the term back in the day, in around ninety four.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
I think everybody was yeah, yeah, yeah, and these folks
are right, by the way, there is no official award
for coining that phrase. It'subiquitous. Nobody owns it. What you
get are bragging rights. But still, a rose is a
rose is a rose. Right. Social media, whatever you call it,
is one of the most successful communication phenomena in all
(14:16):
of human history, and you don't have to look far
to see it. The statistics are crazy, and we're also
all of us in full disclosure recording this. Now we
are part of those statistics, folks.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
Hell Man, the app we used to record could in
some way be considered like a facilitator of social media
at the very least.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, let's count. Let's count that app riverside in this conversation.
As of October.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Twelve, guys, was Dungeons and Dragons the first social media media?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
It could be Yeah, that's yeah, I guess. Yet we
don't have to. We should then carve out the definition.
We're talking about current electronics social media, social media that
uses the Internet. If you're looking at that, then I
don't think this statistic surprises anybody. As of October twenty
(15:19):
twenty four, kind of the best time we have recent
numbers for there were five point five two billion people
somehow using the Internet across the globe. That's more than
a two thirds of the global population overall.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Well it's interesting too because in the really early days,
AOL type days they were talking about I remember having
a friend whose mom was super online, early adopter, and
she was into all of these kind of chat rooms,
and there was this whole thing. There's a thing called
the Palace that I remember, where you could have a
little avatar that you could create with like a rudimentary
photo editing you know, Photoshop type graphic editing app. And
(15:56):
they were all just like these little avatars on these backgrounds.
They were like kind of like you know, think of
like wallpaper, like old school like desktop wallpaper. But it
was like, you know, some sort of weird clue style
mansion and theme, different rooms, a tiki party, whatever the heck,
and you would be these little JPEGs and there would
be speech bubbles coming out of your you know, little
jpeg And that was a form of social media, but
(16:18):
it was a lot more niche and you had to
kind of be in the know to find those groups.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
I remember Ultima Online in nineteen ninety seven when I
could chat and hang out with my friends in an
online environment that was in game, right, yes, and we
could hunt monsters together fun.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Yet I remember earlier things like the BBS stuff, the
bulletin boards right where you would post for specific forums.
A lot of those got weird, you know what I mean.
This is all presidential right, This is a sets a
precedent for the more than five point two zero bill
(17:00):
users of social media networks across the globe. So the
vast majority of people who are on the Internet in
the first place are on a social media network. That's
sixty to sixty four percent of the entire human population.
And no matter what people might say about, hey, I'm
quitting meta or whatever, those numbers keep on rising year
(17:21):
after year after year.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
Do you think that accounts for individual users or people
who have you know, different social media accounts or you know,
like somebody who has two or three Facebook accounts, or
somebody who has you know, multiple Instagrams or multiple stuff.
I mean, I just I wonder if you could designate it.
Speaker 5 (17:44):
Out depend on the nature of the metric, like who's
doing the measuring, Like if it's an industry thing, then
it would probably benefit the industry to count each of
those as separate, like the way downloads are counted kind
of unusually in pot casting.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Yeah, cough cough, I didn't. I didn't pull the specific
numbers from like a marketing place because to your point, no,
I think they would be more incentivized or a private
company would be more incentivized to as Homer Simpsons said
him big in their numbers. So I believe this statistic
(18:22):
is just counting individual people, no matter how many accounts
they have. So one tick mark is a person with
five different Instagram accounts or five different Reddit accounts where
they argue with each other, and it's counting them the
same as one person who just has their one Snapchat
or what have you.
Speaker 5 (18:41):
Still a pretty staggering number, however, it's counting. I think
people should try to be more like Christopher Walkin. Have
you seen the news making the rounds lately. He's never
owned a cell phone, he doesn't have any streaming. He
has to watch episodes of Succession on like DVDs that
they send him in the mail. I just don't know
there's something charming now about that kind of unplugged off
(19:05):
the grid attitude, because it is increasingly more and more
difficult to accomplish and to just not be kind of
like ostracized by society.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Yeah, it also gives him, uh, you know, it gives
us a chance to shout out, Christopher Walken, you know,
good on you for getting up getting on board with
DVDs man for.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
Sure keeping keeping keeping physical media alive.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Well, for him, it might be new. He might have said, look,
a VHS was good enough for me.
Speaker 5 (19:33):
This is this guy is the only new piece of
technology that I will touch.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
And great, d answer that guy.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
And look for some of us, this massive proliferation of
social media and online existence is great. Podcasters are part
of that. It guarantees folks like us can have increasing
potential avenues for sharing our work. The nutso thing is
that all of the big social media apps or platforms
(20:03):
kind of have their own shiny statistics and specialities. Right.
We know that Facebook, even though here in the US
a lot of us might say Facebook, that's for old people,
it has the lie and share of active social media users.
If you're just you know, again going one person counts
for whatever they're doing. It has three point zero seven
(20:25):
billion active users across the globe in twenty twenty four. Matt, again,
you know, we'd have to get under the hood of
the metrics. That's pretty impressive, but the methodology could be suspect.
And that's not for Instagram. That's just for Facebook. And
we have to remember, especially in developing countries, Facebook is
the Internet. A lot of people are only interacting on
(20:48):
their I have of course right by me. A lot
of people are only interacting on their phone, and they're
only really going to stuff through Facebook. Well.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Yeah, Facebook is the first one that popped up and
so popular, and it became a place for families to connect.
I know my family used that way. A lot of
my friends they still keep up with their families via Facebook.
I know that using that like if I jump on
and check it, and I don't do it very often.
There are people that I went to high school with
(21:19):
that are still on Facebook active doing that thing. And
it is so strange for me, just because I kind
I gave up that ship a long time ago because
I kind of felt like I had to. And it's
exactly what we're talking about today, the addictive nature of
this stuff and where your attention goes. But it does
feel like you will be missing out if you do
(21:41):
not have a Facebook account to keep up with the
folks that you knew around the time when Facebook came about.
Speaker 5 (21:48):
I keep the Messenger app on my phone just in
case somebody who's more of a Facebook person hits me
up that way, but I don't ever look at it,
and I've exclusively kind of migrated to Instagram. This is
more of like a visual form, I guess of social media,
which I enjoy. I follow a lot of like graphic
artists and designers and things like that, but there's also
(22:08):
a lot of good reposts from other social media platforms
end up on there. But of course it's also owned
and operated by Madass, so you.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Know, and it just feels like one of those things
that has been around for so long. That's why their
numbers are so crazy. It's not because it's superior or
something like that. It has just been around. It kind
of reminds me of bud shows.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
And yeah, just to add to like the personal experiences
that we're sharing here, I don't trust Messenger enough to
have it on any phone that I would use, so
I keep one computer with desktop access to Facebook and Messenger.
And I'm a little sour on it too.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Man.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
It's it's a first of the post thing, But also
you kind of have to thread that needle of you
want to meet people where they're at. Right, if there
is a loved one that is more active on this
thing and you worry about them or you want to
check in with them, then you naturally are going to
go the easiest route, right, the best way to find
(23:11):
them and interact with them. So there's a give and
take to all of these things. For example, TikTok has
only nine hundred million users in twenty twenty four, but
those users spend an average of fifty eight minutes and
twenty four seconds on it every twenty four hours. That
works out that twenty three hours thirty minutes or so
(23:31):
each month. Again, it's why ballpark average, but that's almost
a full day out of each month when you add
it up.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Yeah, and I'm you know, I am no exception.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
I don't use TikTok, but I definitely scroll some Instagram
reels and stories, you know, pretty chronically. And when you
do see that screen time adding up, if you dare
to check the stats on your device, it can be
pretty staggering.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
Pretty arrowing, especially if you're twenty two percent of US
teens who spend two to three hours per day on
average on TikTok. Look, on the surface, is a huge
success story right now. Imagine we're social media execs. Our
platform has replaced so much older media for other people, TV, radio,
(24:22):
long form film, reading newspapers. But the problem is for
the critics the way that they teach you to encounter
and interrogate and digest information. So the big question, could
regular social media use like we all do, could it
actually make you less intelligent?
Speaker 5 (24:43):
We'll find out after a quick word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Here's where it gets crazy. Collect sigh of relief at
our cliffhanger. There. No, it's not going to automatically knock
your IQ down twenty points.
Speaker 5 (25:08):
Or whatever, not like the long term effects of leed
exposure to the Roman Empire.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
But it can make you less effective at using your intelligence.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
It can knock down your performance on tests including IQ
test for sure. It's because it appears to have over time,
clear and damaging effects on things like comprehension, memory, retention,
and most troublingly and most well researched at this point,
attention span.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
Well, the thing about social media in that respect is,
at least as far as I'm concerned, is it sort
of promotes this idea that you can do all the
things at one time right equally well, and that's just
not true. It's this like myth, this kind of lie
that we've been sold that you can like multitask by
you know, looking having fifty tabs open, looking at different
(26:02):
articles and also scrolling your social media and watching a
movie in the background. And the reality is we only
have a finite amount of attention to give, and when
we start cutting it and cutting it and cutting it,
it's almost like we're not giving anything to any one thing.
It's all so far flung that we're kind of not
really doing anything. It's like a jack of all trades,
(26:24):
master of none kind of mentality.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, well said, do you want to We'll get into
that further in depth in a little bit, nol, Do
you want to introduce us to Tessa Nussenbaum.
Speaker 5 (26:34):
Absolutely writing for The Standard in December of twenty twenty three,
like so many other folks over the past few decades,
she anecdotally noticed something kind of disturbing that she was
having a hard time reading, researching, and writing. Just every
couple of minutes, it would seem she had almost unconsciously
this urge to stop what she was working on, actively
(26:56):
working on, pickup her phone for a quick break, and
then boom, before you know it, you're just locked down
to that doom scroll.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Yeah, and let's talk about why this is so important
coming from Tessa specifically, she is writing for The Standard,
which is a school paper for the American School in London,
which means that she is a student giving you direct
access to a basically a teenager's mind as they are
going through this. And it's a teenager that's intelligent enough
(27:25):
to write this kind of paper and have the self
awareness right as she's actively going through it. It's not
no offense, guys. It's not us looking back on our
teenage years and thinking about it. This is somebody in
that moment knowing what it feels like.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
In situ immedia arrests. Yeah. And no matter what Nussin
Bouten does, no matter how many times she attempts to
scope in and focus she finds, she continually returns back
to the apps before any significant amount of time is passed.
So this leads her on a disturbing journey of discovery,
and it's one that we see echoed by momultiple other students,
(28:01):
multiple other journalists, as well as a small army of researchers, marketers,
and academics and of course social media giants. This is
what you find from all these reports, anecdotal and quantitative.
Social media is purposely designed to be addictive. You didn't
get a dopamine rush from that last post or real
(28:23):
or interaction that you know, that singing raven didn't quite
do it for you, No worries, don't bother thinking too deeply.
There's a shiny other video about a raven. It's also short.
Just scroll down.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
So much good COVID content.
Speaker 5 (28:38):
I mean, you know what it reminds me of, guys,
is the time that we all went to Vegas together
and sort of, you know, strolled the casino floors and
honestly I got sucked in to some of those bright
and shiny and noisy video you know, gambling machines. It's
a very similar thing. You're chasing that. When you're chasing
(28:59):
that as the effects and the the graphics that explode
across the screen, it's very similar to chasing that piece
of content that scratches just that right psychological edge.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
You could call it over simulation.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, oh for sure, it's rapid fire novelty. I think
there's something to that, and.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
It's not how the human brain evolved to digest information,
not necessarily, not at this level and not at this
cadence when you don't have access to frenetic, fast moving cavalcades.
This endless ephemera, that's what a lot of it is, right,
mixed in with things of note. Then you're forced to
really think about information you encounter. You analyze it, you
(29:46):
synthesize it, you digest, you connect it with other pieces
of information you have encountered and assimilated before. That's why
you're able to think more critically. It also allows you
the superpower of sniffing out false claims and bs uh.
It's pretty big and it's a muscle, rights, That's only
a cliche because it's true. Your brain is a collection
(30:10):
of different cognitive muscles. What happens when this set of
muscles the ability to analyze and exercise critical thought. What
happens when it gets atrophied or muted? You get a
processing issue?
Speaker 4 (30:21):
Right, Well, you're not actually doing anything.
Speaker 5 (30:23):
I mean, you mentioned the terms of the word simulation, Ben,
It's like it's stimulation simulation, you know, you're actually just
getting all of this. You're living this whole kind of
internal you know, life without leaving your couch or without
looking up from your phone. So it's almost like you're
you're living but not really living. It's it's a very
matrix y kind of you know, proposition.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
It also codifies the ways of which you can participate
in information, right, the ways you can respond to a thing.
And you have you know, like comment, et cetera. You
don't have the same ability to imagine or interrogate a
response as you would if you were, say, reading a book.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
Well, yeah, think about how exciting that activity is, right,
having something new hit your face, your mind, your ears, everything,
your you know, your eyes that quickly something new, something
different every time you do it. Take one little action
with your finger, and something new happens.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
You don't have to work for it. You don't have
to like really put in that much effort. It's just
kind of right there, presented to you on a silver platter,
and it learns what you like to Sorry, no.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, no, you're right. But that versus as you're saying,
bent reading a book, sitting there and going through words
and synthesizing those words into ideas and thoughts and images
in your own head that those two things compared. One
is so easy and exciting. The other is could be
exciting if you really thought about it, but it it
(31:54):
is less exciting on the surface, and the immediacy of
the excitement that you get isn't there when you're thinking
about a book or doing chores or you know, just
doing anything else.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Yeah, let's talk about let's talk about this as we
hone in on that. There's a somewhat controversial study where
people will tell you what's controversial in twenty fifteen by
the eggheads of Microsoft, and they found the following. You
can clock an overall trend as we step through this
in two thousand in the year two thousand. Excuse me,
(32:27):
it's the awkward as that that's what I always think about.
I feel like you need to add someone on there anyway,
the straight up two thousand, Microsoft found the average human
attention span and their estimation was twelve seconds. That does
not sound impressive, honestly, So try it at home. Turn
on a timer, don't look at anything, don't listen to anything,
(32:48):
maybe just close your eyes and breathe, wait and see
how long twelve seconds really is, which is why we're
not going to do it on the show, because we
hate dead air. Twelve seconds so long for us. That's
the idea I had originally.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Yeah, I think you should use your original idea.
Speaker 5 (33:05):
Let's meditate, guys, let's take it. Come on as the
least we can do. We owe it to David Lynch okay,
in his memory. Let's meditate for twelve seconds.
Speaker 2 (33:12):
We should put some sound in there, right, all right,
ocean waves.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
Perhaps I'll count down to from three and then I
get to one. Give us a beep. I'll start a
timer here for twelve seconds.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
If you're driving, obviously, you know, maintain your eyes, your
eyes open.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Yeah, all right, do this when you're not operating machinery.
Speaker 4 (33:35):
All right?
Speaker 6 (33:36):
Three to one?
Speaker 4 (33:50):
Interminable?
Speaker 5 (33:52):
God, what a waste of time. No, I'm getting it's important.
Still in this is important. Mindfulness is important. We have
to claw that back in lives.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
How long did that twelve seconds feel for you, folks,
assuming you weren't, you know, hopping on your phone, how
did your thoughts fly in that short length of time.
It's interesting, especially we consider again the Microsoft study, which
people say is imperfect. In twenty thirteen, the same study
found the average attention span had dropped down to eight seconds,
(34:26):
as Nisenbou pointed out, and as a lot of other
people clocked as well. According to Microsoft, that attention span
was shorter than that of the average goldfish. These little
lunatics can stay focused on something for about nine seconds
if it interests them that if it's food.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Could last, that thing be a goldfish. The idea of like, you.
Speaker 5 (34:51):
Know, that is as a superpower, not a bug, you know,
being able to clear your mind and not remember the past.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Which is maybe a maybe good advice. It depends, you know.
There are other studies that find different specific nuts and
bolts numbers, but they all kind of map out that
same trend. Like doctor Gloria Mark you can listen to
you could read her work, and you can also listen
to a couple of podcasts she's done. She found that
(35:19):
in two thousand and four, the average attention to just
any kind of screen was about two minutes and thirty seconds,
and then years after that it declined to like seventy
five seconds, and then by about twenty twenty three to
twenty twenty four the number drop to forty five seconds,
so much less weird right, but also still the same trend.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Well, let's talk about just reading an article that is
on a phone or on a screen of any kind,
like when we're doing our research. Think back ten years ago, guys,
Think about the ads that would show up if you
were reading an article on a place like CNN or
Fox News, any of that stuff. Think about the ad
(36:05):
space that would be taken up on the screen and
how it functioned on that screen. Sure, then think back
to early you know, if you were on AOL news
or something like, when you're getting it a full article
that you're reading. The experience, at least in my mind,
was that of reading a book with every once in
a while and ad showing up on the sides, on
the rails, or an ad showing up in the center
(36:27):
between paragraphs, but every once in a while.
Speaker 3 (36:30):
Not inundated all around, not where you had to actually
search for the thing you were trying to read on
the page.
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Yes, not only that, though, I mean it just feels
like the content has just overall been tailored to that
experience and just gotten shorter, like each piece of content
is an ad in and of itself, and rather than
having like long form writing journalism obviously there's still folks
out there that do that. It's about having tons of
little nuggety bits to serve these ads.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
Well, okay, so just but just I had that experience
reading a Guardian article today where this article was written
by Johan Harry that we mentioned at the top of
the show. It is written in actual paragraphs, and then
(37:19):
I realized, why does this feel so strange to me?
Because I then looked at some of the other articles
that I had opened my other tabs, and they are
literally sentences, then a break, then sentence, then a break,
then a break, then a break after sentence after sentence.
And these companies, a lot of them, are putting ads
between every third sentence or something, and in the paragraphs
(37:41):
you get at least three or four paragraphs before you
get an ad break. And just the way content is
being tailored to not it's not to make you understand
the concepts that are written in the article or anything
like that. It is to get those ads hitting your
face as rapidly as they can, and you only if
you can break it up by sentence. You only need,
(38:03):
you know, three or four paragraphs worth of thought in
order to sell the same number of ads that this
huge Johan Harri article had.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah, and that's why some people will go toward ad blockers,
which becomes its own argument, right, because then are you
making it ultimately impossible for those journalists to do that
same level of work you.
Speaker 4 (38:26):
Know exactly well.
Speaker 5 (38:28):
And it also creates an environment where there are fewer
And maybe this is just conjecture on my part, but
it would seem that it creates an environment where the
demand for that real, hard hitting long form stuff, at
least online is significantly diminished because it does not fit
that new or rubric to maximize sales dollars.
Speaker 3 (38:52):
Do you mean demand from an audience or readers or
do you mean demand from corporation?
Speaker 5 (38:57):
Corporation the people that are paying the journalists, the people
that are filling the pipes.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Yeah, well, the and the ads just one last thing here.
The ads are not your standard two thousand and eight.
You know a picture right that has some information on
it that is trying to.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Product sound videos.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
It is it's like scrolling through social media as those
ads load, and you're going through and try again. CNN.
I'm sorry, but I cannot read stuff on your page
unless I alter your page so that I can read
it it sucks.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
Sorry, and so yeah, it's perfect and it's honest. And
going back to what we're saying about, you know, Harry's work,
which we'll get into later, and then also Mark's work.
Harry is a journalist, right, but heavily researched into this
and as well as you know, even the controversial Microsoft study.
(39:51):
We see that this overall trend has come about. Now,
why do the numbers seem to differentiate and why do
we say their commonalities are more powerful than their differences?
Will tell you after a word from our sponsors and
(40:13):
we've returned. All right, First, it's important to note not
all of the numbers agree. That's I would argue you, guys,
that's probably likely to the nature of the sample size,
the demographics of the people in a sample size, where
they are life, the types of media they are consuming,
their education level, and so on. You know, if you
(40:33):
went and you asked a group of a group of
people who are academics and all they do is study
the Old Testament, their attention span ratings are going to be,
you know, a little bit higher than average.
Speaker 5 (40:48):
Wouldn't you also say that for generations that like grew
up completely online, like there's really nothing to measure that
change with. It's just brains have been wired from the start.
And then the quest and then becomes like, is it
just a new way of dividing attention?
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yeah, and you're measuring the effectiveness of the platforms as
well with those folks, right, how effective has Instagram become?
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, and you would you would be able to compare
gen Z. You would just need to take a group
of people of the same age who were not from
a part of the world where this where cellphal technology
was ubiquitous, right, So you could maybe see it that way.
But then it becomes who's going to fund the study?
Speaker 5 (41:33):
I guess what I'm saying though, is like, you know,
my kid is gen Z, and my kid's best friends
got to twin brothers who are the most gen alpha
of kids I've ever seen brain rod digit exactly. But
it's like they are also intensely creative and weird with
their creativity. So there's something to be said about that too,
(41:57):
Like I don't want to just completely demonize this stuff
and say the kids there's no hope because of this
toxic internet culture. Like there's something about the way the
brain is wired and these folks that are like online
from birth. That is different and is interesting. I don't
know what it means, but I've witnessed it, and there
is something going on with these kids.
Speaker 3 (42:18):
Yeah, that's a similar argument to the older one about
Indigo children, which is a whole different bag of badgers.
And also it's a great tip. It reminds me of
the second aspect that we have to talk about with
these studies, which is attention is also not necessarily across
(42:39):
the brain and across the world hardwired to the media
you're encountering so much as it is hardwired to the
task at hand. If you like reading in general, you're
going to stick with the text longer than someone who
doesn't really like reading. If you are playing your favorite
video game, you might experience a similar level of focus.
If you're studying for a test on a subject that
(43:01):
you really dig, then you're probably not gonna have as
tough a time focusing as in like, let's say you
hate what's a subject? People hate? H math?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Okay, you know.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
I love it.
Speaker 5 (43:15):
Some people love it and are great at it, and
some people are inherently great at it and has an
aptitude and a type of attention that is very well
suited for that kind of analysis, you know. I mean,
I know, I'm stating the obvious. Some people are better
at some things than others. But for me, I'm so
bad at math. But when I work on music and
I'm engaging with like sound design or synthesis, it's a
(43:37):
way of interacting with math, which is a subject that
I hate. I just had to find a different path
to it.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
I just experienced this with my son. We were studying
for a test on Indigenous Americans and all, like all
the aspects like a social studies test that he was
working on, and he wanted to sit with me and
study and just go over stuff, and he wanted to
learn it at all. But then we sat down to
learn about pollution, and he did not like that subject
(44:05):
because it made him feel a little scared and uncomfortable
and all of that. So that that anxiety that he
felt is what caused him to lose focus when we
were attempting to study that one. And I wonder if
overall generalized anxiety has anything to do with the desire
to move to these social media things versus you know,
(44:26):
actually studying what's happening in the news or something.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Like that, right, the brain wants to uh, well yes, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4 (44:35):
So here's the brain and the heart want what they want.
Speaker 3 (44:39):
A task accomplishment is really what it is. And the
immediate gratification of learning something easy that is not hard
to your brain, You're still accomplishing a task, right. And
I think anxiety to that point does play a role
in it. I'm not going to get into an anecdote,
but I've definitely encountered what you're talking about.
Speaker 2 (44:59):
Well, in this in case, it was a subject that
was hard, that had a ton of dense information, but
he was into it. And the other thing was a
ton of generalized information but it made him nervous.
Speaker 4 (45:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
And the idea here regarding anxiety, it kind of speaks
to the level of there are certain things people may
be more comfortable learning, right, and the brain hates tackling
something and then having to get it wrong and go
back and redo it. That's another big part of it.
So the brain is naturally incentivized to look for easily
(45:34):
accomplishable task and seeing a video and reacting to it
and hitting that like button is an easily accomplishable task,
and the brain response and says boom, we just did something.
Here's a little shout at dopamine. Now it's on to
another task. We are killing it today.
Speaker 5 (45:51):
Yeah, stimulation, simulation. It's weird, man, and we're all totally
subject to it. You know, there's really very hard to escape,
you know, sort of completely unplugging, and that's just not
very practical anymore.
Speaker 3 (46:06):
Right, And I wonder too, if there's some attention span alarmism.
Right to which degree is this really affecting people? I mean,
is it hyperbolic? A we are we overdoing it? With concern?
Speaker 5 (46:19):
Well, I mean, I'm with you, Matt, and I will
say that I do have a hard time sitting and
focusing and reading a book, reading a novel. We do
a ton of short form reading and papers and things
like that for the podcast. But I have really struggled
with maybe it's that multitask culture that we've sort of
become a part of, you know, against our will maybe
(46:41):
at times, but that's not great. I'd love to be
able to enjoy a book and enjoy a moment of
stillness and meditate. But I'm also very high functioning, and
I enjoy my job, and I spend good time with
my family, and I don't feel like I'm living some
sort of existential nightmare.
Speaker 4 (46:56):
So I don't know. I think results may vary.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
I think I think my own I don't know. I
think I've read a little too much to Yoan Hari.
He wrote a book called Stolen Focus, Why you Can't
pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again. And I
am on board the guys arguing basically, we need to
start a revolution against this stuff, because how do you
solve hard problems if you can't focus on a hard
(47:20):
problem for years? You know? And I don't know.
Speaker 5 (47:25):
Would you guys argue that in some small ways social
media could be considered an existential threat, Yeah, I would say.
Speaker 3 (47:35):
Not to maybe an individual, but to an individual's abilities,
and perhaps to a civilization's capacities or capabilities.
Speaker 4 (47:43):
Yes.
Speaker 5 (47:43):
And and secondly, are we not, especially in this country,
especially with some of the oligarch type situations that are
creeping into politics and government, you know, living in a
society where the knock on effects of this stuff are
more or less ignored, and the research into how this
will affect people down the road is absolutely not part
(48:05):
of the conversation when it comes to figuring out how
to get the most eyeballs on a product or Yah.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
It's not part of maybe the more the wider public
mainstream conversation, but I do believe the downward trend and
intention span does have what we could call knock on consequences.
You know, cognitively, look, and I think this is so
important because I hate when people are condescending about this
kind of stuff. Cognitively, you're not less intelligent for using
(48:35):
social media. It is more difficult for you to do
certain things to become engaged in long term focused to
what we call deep thought. We've mentioned it before. But
the theory I always like to I've made this up,
so I okay, you know what my opinion then not.
A theory unpublished is if you think of learning on
(48:57):
an X and Y axis, learning anything right, and the
Y axis above and below that X that is the
depth of knowledge, right, So the deeper you go on
the why, the more you know about a single thing.
The X axis is how many different kinds of things
you know? And to the jack of all trades master
of none concept proposed earlier people used to have very
(49:21):
deep knowledge about very specific things, and now we kind
of all know the first paragraph of Wikipedia on a
thing but how.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
Does the person who knows the first paragraph on Wikipedia
build a rocket? You know, yeah, I guess what I
mean is like I do. I mean, I don't mean
to be condescending to anybody, but I do feel like
the use of this stuff does cause our intelligence to flatten,
maybe like that the way you're saying, rather than get
(49:53):
those spikes that I think humanity needs.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
They do. But it's recoverable. And that's why I'm saying,
like your base and intelligence has not changed the ability
of engaging, but the information can be lost and regained,
kind of like getting out of shape and then doing
your push ups again.
Speaker 4 (50:07):
Absolutely such, it does make complete sense.
Speaker 5 (50:10):
And again I would just say, you know, when I
was trying to fumble out earlier is like, you know,
I definitely think this is something that I need to
curtail in my life, and it's something that I am
making some steps towards. But I also spent the last
like two and a half days really locked in and
focused on working on this remix of a song for
my friend's band, and I feel like it's one of
the best things I've ever done. And I've like absolutely
(50:32):
focused in on every single detail, and I was completely
able to stay locked in.
Speaker 4 (50:36):
So I'm just saying, like, I'd love to hear it. No,
I I'd love to share it.
Speaker 3 (50:40):
And it's and it's task specific. Again, that's something that
you care about that already kind of scratches behind your
ears cognitively. So you can lose, you can get lost
in the sauce of that beautiful moment.
Speaker 1 (50:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (50:52):
That's that helps you.
Speaker 4 (50:53):
Get But that's the thing. Social media simulates a flow
state without you actually having to accomplish anything.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Oh, it's a synthesized flow state, and.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
The brain is reacting the same way, kind of like
how your brain doesn't really on some levels, doesn't really
know the difference between a fake laugh and a real laugh.
It encourages some of the same physiological mechanics to occur.
That's those feel good chemicals that you get. We have
to tell you your brain is not the villain here.
(51:27):
If anything, your brain is just again trying to accomplish
checklist and rewarding itself when you when it feels like
a task has been accomplished. So the short term stuff
is immediate. It's the immediate rush of feel good chemicals
as you build a tolerance. But finishing a book, attending
(51:47):
to lecture, working on an album. That's a lot more
time for that shot of feel.
Speaker 5 (51:52):
Good watching a movie at home without multitasking, without looking
at your phone. Executives that now Flicks and other streamers
have openly talked about, or at least maybe it's more
of an open secret kind of thing that they make
movies the green light movies that have a second screen appeal,
meaning that you don't have to be locked in because
(52:14):
they know ninety percent or whatever high percentage of viewers
are gonna be half paying attention and looking at their phone.
And I would argue that a lot of that stuff
really set in deeply during COVID.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
Sure, yeah, well it's also time. Do you have an
hour and forty five minutes to dedicate to one thing,
to sit in one place and focus on one thing.
Speaker 3 (52:35):
Especially when you're fighting a fomo war on multiple fronts.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Oh yeah, for sure. It took me three sittings to
watch Saturday Night recently, three sittings. I had to start it,
and then I had know I had to stop and
go away and do some other stuff because my brain said, oh,
we got to go do these other things. I can't
just sit here and watch a movie.
Speaker 4 (52:53):
Yeah, God, help us try to get through the brutalist
y'all right.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
The last time I watched I was thinking about that too.
So when the last time I watched the film without
a second screen was in a theater, because I didn't
want to be rude. For another biological comparison, think of
it this way. Tell me what you think, guys, I
really like this one. I don't know how accurate it is,
but lifting from you know, the old analogy test in
(53:19):
l SAT or SAT or whatever, social media is to
attention span as smoking is to lung capacity. The more
you use the one thing, the more you lose of
the other. But you can regain it with you know,
a little bit of moderation, a little bit of self care.
So let's talk about these knock on consequences as your
(53:41):
detention span lowers. First, you begin grabbing multiple inputs. And
I remember in the Brain Stuff Days did a video
that pressed a lot of people off. It was about multitasking.
You're mistaken about it. Nobody can actually multitask. No human
being can multitask on these conscious focus like pay attention
(54:02):
to kind of pursuits because your brain is already multitasking
and keeping your blood flowing, keeping your heart pumping, all
this others, making sure you don't automatically crap yourself. Your
brain has so much to do and we don't acknowledge it.
When you are trying to focus on conscious things multiple
at once, you're switching your focus, and every time you
(54:23):
do this, your brain has a little reset and it says, oh,
what was that thing that was just doing? How did
I feel about it? Where did I leave off? What
do I want to go to next. That happens every
time you're like, let me pick up my phone for
a second, Oh, let me get back to this email.
Speaker 4 (54:38):
Well, that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (54:39):
This technology.
Speaker 5 (54:40):
I mean, look at like you know, Apple Vision pro whatever,
like the idea of having fifty virtual screens surrounding you,
you know, Minority Report style. It's this technology and these
technology companies that have us believe that this kind of multitasking.
Speaker 4 (54:56):
Is possible through technology extensions of our meat bodies.
Speaker 3 (55:00):
But it's just not true, right, Yeah, the average human
being absolutely cannot multitask. Your brain is just so good
at switching between discrete tasks that from far enough away
in your conscious mind, it looks like you're doing it
at the same time, and that's how the grift works.
Speaker 5 (55:18):
Well, it's like having too many tabs open in your browser.
All of a sudden, your whole computer crashes.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
Well in every time you switch that task, your brain
has to reboot that task it is not and that
means you have to remember what you were thinking about
when you were doing that task, right.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
Remember what you just did, how you felt about it,
and where you left off.
Speaker 5 (55:41):
It's almost like existing in this fugue state where you're
sort of between things all the time.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
I know that feeling, specifically when doing the voicemails for
this show, where I will get into a minor flow
state doing that, and then all of a sudden I
have the need to check Instagram and I do. It
throws me off completely, and then I will leave and
go do something else because I got out of flow
state before having to find my way back there somehow.
Speaker 3 (56:10):
Yeah, I think we've all encountered some versions that all
of us in the audience tonight as well. So I
want to go back to this Netflix thing, you guys,
because this is really If you notice this, you're not crazy,
NOL you had mentioned it earlier. I think we all
clocked it up. This is part of why you see
more and more characters putting in exit exposition of what's
(56:30):
happening at that moment. And it reminds me a little
bit of weird improv, but it's in a very serious way.
Someone's going ethan you've just walked in. Yes, and I
know about Bolivia, which you mentioned earlier.
Speaker 5 (56:44):
Indeed, it's like the way soap operas operate is not
conducive to good quality writing and art.
Speaker 4 (56:51):
It's super pandery and like not very interesting, not very creative.
Speaker 3 (56:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
No, I don't want to que people of lazy writing,
but it is a way to get stuff across without
having to show anybody anything. You just tell them real quick.
Speaker 3 (57:08):
Yeah. It also helps, you know, for the people who
maybe have a favorite character in an ensemble cast of
some sort. Like let's say there's a modern version of
Lost and you only like trying to remember Lost characters Flock,
the Man in Black or Lock. Yeah, no spoilers, but
(57:29):
but then you uh, you're you're on your phone, right
and you're kind of listing, kind of not listening, and
then you hear them say the name of the character
you like. Phone down for a second, I'm tuned in.
Speaker 5 (57:39):
Er that time I accidentally spoiled Lost by telling a
bad joke, like about what it wasn't supposed to be,
and then people got mad because of anything.
Speaker 4 (57:47):
I don't It was a long time ago. It was
on this show, but people wrote in and were angry
that I even at that point the finale had been.
Speaker 3 (57:54):
Because I said Lost. The writers of Lost spoils I.
Speaker 5 (57:58):
Think I just said something to the effective it was all,
which is not a spoiler, because that's not true, and
it's something the writers said would they would never ever.
Speaker 3 (58:05):
They would never do that.
Speaker 2 (58:07):
Guys, I just want to say one last thing that
comes directly from you and Harry. I'm sorry I've become
a Haryeite. And this. You can read this in the
Guardian title is your Attention didn't collapse, It was stolen.
It was written January second, twenty twenty two. This is
just a quote from the end of the article. Read
it though, and get to this quote.
Speaker 4 (58:27):
He says.
Speaker 2 (58:28):
At the moment, it's as though we're all having itching
powder poured over us all day, and the people pouring
the powder are saying, quote, you might want to learn
to meditate. Then you wouldn't scratch so much. Meditation is
a useful tool, but we actually need to stop the
people who are pouring itching powder on us. We need
to band together and take on the forces stealing our
(58:51):
attention and take it back.
Speaker 4 (58:53):
I really like that.
Speaker 3 (58:55):
Yeah, I agree, because we oh, we've got to tease this,
We've got to deliver on this tease. That same article
as one of my favorite beginnings that are read in
the way these things are introduced as concepts. It's all
about talking to his godson and taking him on a
trip to Graceland. And it's amazing. Please do check it out.
(59:19):
It's it's a banger stem disturn. But that's what we're
talking about when you said grace Land at the very
top of tonight's show, And can I just.
Speaker 5 (59:26):
Really quickly just give a shout out to I think
someone that we all admire who recently passed away, David Lynch,
who is an incredible painter, artist, polymath, filmmaker and thinker,
and you know he is a huge was a huge
proponent of transcendental meditation and the idea of needing that
stillness in order to be able to kind of pluck
(59:47):
these ideas out of sort of the cosmic ether, and
I think we can learn a lot from him, And
if anybody out there isn't super familiar, I do recommend
you know, looking up some of his interviews on the subject,
because you know, people like him and like at Heart Polly,
for example, are our folks that I think are really
important when it comes to thinking about mindfulness and being
(01:00:07):
able to kind of like shut off that part of
our brain that craves that dopamine hit that we've been
talking about.
Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Dude, dude, Johann ends it with. The more our attention degrades,
the harder it will be to summon the personal and
political energy to take on the forces stealing our focus.
Speaker 5 (01:00:25):
And that's why they're stealing it, isn't it. That's that's
the whole point. I mean, it is a conspiracy in
many ways. I don't maybe I don't know if it
started that way, but the way the technocrats are now
like in league with the government, it just seems like
that's just they're going to push it even further and
the idea of taking over TikTok using it as a
propaganda So I don't know, it's it's I was not
(01:00:45):
I would.
Speaker 3 (01:00:45):
Say that's a I would call it again an accidental conspiracy.
The first conclusion social media is not going away for
many people. It is the internet from many people, it
is they're also their prime method of interacting. And then
second the science continues, how relatively new is this stuff.
(01:01:06):
We have to remember widespread online social media comms are
a little young to have true longitudinal studies. It's going
to be difficult to account for all the differing variables involved.
But as everybody is wrestling with this, we can say
for sure, no matter how the science works out, it's
great to put your phone down once in a while
(01:01:26):
a long time if you can manage it. Slow day,
weekend off, go outside, do something fun. Your brain will
consider this exercise and with each iteration, just like lifting
some dumbbells, your attention SPAN's going to get stronger. And
I really don't think social media tycoons care if you
know about this, not yet, because they say people are
(01:01:48):
already addicted. From their perspective, you're never going to get
so fed up that a large number of people actually
leave for good. And this is where we once again
want to sho shout out the various authors and scholars
and journalists that we've mentioned here. We also want to
ask you, since you're the most important part of this show,
(01:02:10):
what's your take on this? What's your experience? We raised
a lot of questions that don't quite have answers yet
outside of people's personal experience, so please share it with us.
After we talked about how dangerous social media is, guess what,
you can find us online?
Speaker 5 (01:02:26):
Right and Ben, you had also mentioned being interested in
folks writing in about their experiences with flow state, you know,
like tell us about a positive way or that you've
counteracted some of the damaging effects of social media. You
can find us all over the internet. We are conspiracy
Stuff on YouTube or we have video content Calora for
your enjoyment. We also exist at that handle on x FKA,
(01:02:49):
Twitter and on Facebook with our Facebook group Here's where
it gets crazy on Instagram and TikTok. However, we are
conspiracy Stuff show and we're also people. You can find
me on Instagram at how Now Know Brown?
Speaker 4 (01:03:00):
How about you? Ben?
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
Is it an individual or a group effort? There's one
way to find out. Go to app ed all wherever
people use apps, or go to the website Ben and bullet. Hey,
if you don't like to sip the social beads. There
are other ways to find us, but Matt, the masses
are dying to know an any update on social media.
Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
My name is Matt Frederick and we have a phone number.
It is one eight three three std WYTK. Why don't
you call in and tell us what you think about
a social media tycoon gaining full access to the federal
payment system like you did yesterday. As we record this,
that makes me nervous. What do you think when you call?
(01:03:45):
Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
You've got three minutes. Say whatever you want, just you know,
do make it fun and exciting. If you've got something
else to say, if you want to write it out,
if you want to send us a link or maybe
a picture, why not send us a good old fashioned email.
Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
We are Oh, let me hold off there for a second. Folks,
Please please please write in as well with your opinion
on what kind of qualifications someone needs to create or
destroy a federal department, and especially if you work on
the frontline. We want to thank everybody who wrote in
(01:04:22):
to us with some of their experience with the recent
let's say changes here in the US. To the degree
that you are comfortable, let us know if anonymity is key.
We are the entities that read every email we receive.
Be well aware, yet I'm afraid. Sometimes the void writes back,
join us out here in the dark conspiracy. At iHeartRadio
(01:04:44):
dot com, everyone have a great day.
Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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