October 13, 2022 • 40 mins
Real talk: Did it really happen if it’s not on social media? Do you even exist if you’re not on the feed? These days, it seems like everyone and their dog has an IG or a TikTok account. But this ability to constantly socialize online is still relatively new for society. This week, Titi and Zakiya ask how social media may impact our well-being, attention spans, and the ways in which we communicate with one another. Guest: Dr. Jeff Hancock. You can find more Dope Labs, show notes, and cheat sheets at dopelabspodcast.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Zekia.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
You know me, okay, and you know that my social
media platform of choice currently is TikTok. Yes, but I
feel like you're a strong Instagram user too. I have
a good time on social media. I really like it.
I feel like you learn so much about different parts
of the world, and TikTok is a really great place
(00:22):
for that. Before I was like, yeah, Instagram is great,
Like I'd search hashtags what are folks doing? Yeah, in
Budapest right now, hashtag Budapest, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You know?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
And TikTok because of how they set up there for
you page. I mean, it's all just coming to me
in a flood and I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You're a big Twitter.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yes, I'm lurking on Twitter. Just recently, I was following
the fishing scandal. There was this big competition that had
won like three hundred thousand dollars. These people were cheating.
They were stuffing filats of fish, no wrapping it around.
They had weights to skew the results, so it seemed
like they had caught these heads. Now I saw that
a couple of days ago, just I guess. Last night
(01:03):
I saw it on the New York Times and I
was like, late I already saw it on Twitter. Okay,
I already saw it on Twitter days ago.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It feels like social media is what everybody's using to
get their news, to get their entertainment, and to stay connected.
So it made us very curious about how social media
might be impacting how we interact with each other and
how we interact with ourselves. One percent, if you didn't
have dial up and listen to that little screeching noise
(01:33):
or the a room men on the disc we're not
living the same life. I'm t T and I'm Zachiah
and from Spotify.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
This is Dope Labs.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science,
pop culture, and a healthy dos of friendship. This week,
we're talking all about social media specifically. We really wanted
to know more about the impacts of social media on
our well being, mental health, attention span, and how we
communicate with one another. Let's get into the recitation. What
(02:41):
do we know? Well, what I feel like I know
is that social media is everywhere. It's a part of
our everyday lives. Professors are using it as a part
of their course curriculum, it's a.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Part of our work.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Social media is permitting everything, and so it also feels
like a primary way that we communicate with one another
all of the world. It feels like social media has
gone through some rapid changes too. So it feels like
it's gone from just being a place where you share
pictures of yourself to a way to interact with brands,
service providers. I mean, are you alive if you're not
(03:14):
on social media? Sometimes it feels like that's what society
is saying. It's so true. I mean, if somebody were
to tell me that they don't have a lick of
social media, I'm like.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Are you on the run?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Like? Are the Feds after you? What is going on?
How do you know? How do you know anything without
social media?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And you and I we come from a generation that
did not have social media and then had social media.
And I remember making my first Facebook account when I
was about to start college because remember at that point,
Facebook was only for folks who had a college email address. Yes,
and it was still so new at the time. And
(03:54):
so now when you think of today, where our grandmas
and grandpa's and our little cousins all have social media,
dogs have social media. Yes, we're living in a different time.
So we're moving around this world very differently because of it. Yes,
that's so true. And so we have quite a few
questions right about this. If we're moving differently, how different?
(04:15):
What do we want to know? Tt I want to
know more about how social media is impacting us.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I see a lot of stuff in the news about how.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Social media is impacting us, But I want to know, like,
for real, for real, how are we changing? Like is
it actually affecting our attention span and our relationships with
people and how we communicate in our mental health and
do different platforms affect us differently? Is it you know,
six and one hand, half a dozen in the other?
Is TikTok giving me the same bad vibes as Facebook?
(04:49):
I don't want to believe that. I want to believe
that TikTok will save the world. I'm just kidding. All right,
let's jump into the dissection. Our guest for today's lab
is doctor Jeff Hancock.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
My name is Jeff Hancock.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
I'm the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab
and a professor here in the Communication Department.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
The Stanford Social Media Lab studies three main areas. One
is misinformation, the other is the effects of social media
on psychological well being. And the final area they study
is AI and communication, so that's like those smart replies
on Gmail, where it's basically artificial intelligence posing as a human.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
We talk about.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Social media all the time on this show, and there's
a lot to unpack. According to doctor Hancock, social media
is a broader category that goes beyond platforms like Facebook
and Twitter. It's really any media we used to be social,
so that includes things like zoom, texting, and even email.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
The first video conference was nineteen sixty seven in France Microtel,
and yet it took a pandemic to get us all
to really be using it on the regular. Every time
there's a new technology.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
People are really worried about it.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Go back to the radio, right, that was going to
cause us all to just be hermits in our house
and never talk to people again. And it was going
to kill the newspaper. And then there were comic books.
Comic books, we're going to kill kids' brains and get
them addicted. And then there is TV. Same thing, and
we hear the same kinds of things with social media,
and social media is a lot different than.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Those right think about television and radio and newspapers. All
of those platforms have professionals who create and produce content. Now,
a lot of social media content is created by professionals,
but a lot of social media is more DIY. There
aren't the same barriers when it comes to posting and sharing. Yeah,
(06:51):
anyone can publish anything to anywhere. We're all content creators
and editors. This is a good thing and it can
sometimes be a bad And even though social media can
sometimes feel really bad or really good, doctor Hancock says,
it's not so black and white. One of his graduate students,
Angela Lee, is studying the importance of mindsets when it
(07:14):
comes to using social media.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
It's about how you view the way something works for you.
The most famous example of education, you can think of
like your intelligence as like a muscle, and you can
grow it, and you can think of it as like
something that you're given and you have a fixed amount
of intelligence, and that's called a fixed mindset. So Angela
(07:36):
took that idea and applied to social media, and it
turns out that people have really strong mindsets. She's identified
two kind of components to social media mindsets. One is agency.
Do you feel like you're in charge of your social
media and you use it to do things for you
and your world, or is it in charge of you
(07:57):
and you're kind of out of control.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I'm on social media whenever I have free time.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I'm scrolling before I go to sleep, when I wake up,
before I get out of the bed, the first thing
I do is open up.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
My phone and starts scrolling.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So I'm not a mindless scroller, but I am a
person who automatically opens my phone and checks if I
have these alerts. You know, those little red notification bubbles
on the icons. I'm going to clear those. I'm automatically
opening and checking those, even if I don't really care.
My mind is just like clear those bubbles. And so
(08:28):
one of the things I've had to do to combat
that is to turn notifications off. And it reminds me
of that video we did. Do you remember the just
look up video with Thrive.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And Both Yes, Oh my gosh, yes, that's such a
good point.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And in that video we learned that the average person
checks their phone fifty two times a day. Now, that
was twenty nineteen, so I don't even know what it is.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Now, right, pandemic looking at your phone?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I don't know. I feel like I'm on my phone
a lot more now. At first, when I heard that number,
I was very very surprised, But then I started to
really think about how much time I spend on my
phone and I was like, wow, that's definitely me.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And if I have agency.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
On the other hand, I'm telling my social media what
I wanted to do. So I'm saying, Okay, I'm only
going to be on Instagram for thirty minutes and after
that I'm moving on, or I'm coming to Twitter to
find this very specific thing and don't show me anything
else that you think I might want to see. If
you have agency, you say, I don't want to see
(09:32):
those suggestive posts.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I just want to see what I want to see.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
That is a very healthy approach, right. It means that
you're using it to do what you want to do
in the world, and it's sort of forwarding your goals
and trusting your needs. People that feel like it's out
of their control, they are suffering. They tend to report hiring, anxiety,
higher depression, more lonely, and it kind of sucks, right,
(09:56):
They're locked into this thing where I don't feel like
I'm in control.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I feel like this.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
Thing social media is bad. Yet I have to use it.
Most people have to use it just to live their lives.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
So when they use it, it makes them feel bad
about themselves.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And that leads us to the second component of Angela
Lee's mindset study, which is whether you perceive social media
as positive or negative.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
It helps you, it helps with communication and connection, being informed,
or is it overall bad? Is it negative for you
like undermines your health, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Doctor Hancock says this mindset approach is powerful and that
we should encourage people, especially young folks, to embrace this
more in control perspective on social media.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
That does two things.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
One, it pushes back against this idea of like, there's
these social media companies and they are doing stuff to you,
and there's nothing you can do about it. You're just
a passive consumer and they're like pointing the social media advertising.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Gun at you. I really hate that.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
It really takes away my power, It takes away my agency,
and also it takes away my responsibility. So if I'm
a jerk and I say cyberbully or I do mean
stuff online, that's not my fault. That's like this social
media fault. It's Marcus Zuckerberg's fault. So I think it
does bring back that sense of like, well, no, I'm
(11:21):
in charge you for the way I'm going.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
To behave with this.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yes, I think some people are like, oh, they're on
social media. They can't help it. Yes, they can. They
still have to press posts.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I understand the pressures of social media can be high,
but I feel like, all right, let's have some accountability
in this equation. Yeah, the Internet is still a part
of our culture, and what we're posting is absolutely adding
to the conversation. And so we can't just say, oh,
you know, it's just social media. It doesn't matter. It matters.
And I think one of the things that continuously blows
(11:53):
my mind is just how huge the social media community is.
Usually it's when I find a profile and it has
like one point five million followers or some huge number
like that, and I don't have a single shared contact
with that account. Does that ever happen to you?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yes? And it's always so shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yes, it's like this is a whole, separate, undisturbed part
of the Internet that I don't even know about. The
six degrees of separation. It's a lie.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
The other day, I was on Twitter and there was
this thread and this lady was like, I want to
show y'all this new yarn and there were so many
comments and people were just excited, full of excitement, and
I was like, this is what I would expect for
like an exclusive sneaker drop or a new game, you know,
NBA game for the PlayStation or Xbox or something like
this is this vibrant community, and I think we forget
(12:46):
that there are so many users on these different platforms. Yes,
it always blows my mind. Because we talked about social
bubbles in our Science Now episode, where you can have
that confirmation bias because everybody you know is usually interested
in a lot of similar things, and what you just
explained highlights that where as soon as you get outside
(13:08):
of that bubble, there are people who have way different
interests than you. Even when we're talking about things like
memes and things that are going viral, it's everywhere. And
I remember just recently this happened to me where you know,
over the last few weeks, I was talking to somebody
and I said, it's corn, a.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Big lump of knobs.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It has a juice, It has a juice, and that Yes,
it's the most beautiful thing. And they were like, what
are you talking about? No, And I was like, you
don't know to Reek aka the corn Kid.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Nah, you're on the dark Web.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Because I can't believe there is a single person on
this planet who doesn't know to Reek, not as they're
using the Internet. I feel like he was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
If he was everywhere everywhere, But.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
That just goes to show another undisturbed side of the
web for someone else.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Right, we love you TOIQ, more blessings, more life for you.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And so just to help us wrap our arms around
the big world wide Web, right, let's think about how
many users are on these platforms. Okay, a big stepper is.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
YouTube starting with a big.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
YouTube has two point two billion monthly active users. That's
every thirty days, two point two billion. With a bee,
the B stands for billions. Yes, Facebook is at two
point nine billion users. What's app WhatsApp if you have
foreign parents, WhatsApp has been the thing for the last
(14:51):
few years and it has two billion as well. WhatsApp
is huge outside the country. Yes, everybody's using what's app.
Instagram has two billion. The smaller ones are like Pinterest, Reddit,
even Skype do you remember when everybody has Skype really
fumbled a bag and Zoom took over. But you have
(15:11):
to think about like social media is everywhere, and it's
important to remember that social media is not a monolith.
Doctor Hancock says that the type of platform matters. Not
all platforms are created equal.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
There's be Real, which is getting a lot of attention,
emphasizing authenticity and reducing the load of having to present
an awesome self all the time, and.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Then you can get outside of that.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
You go into things like Zoom are much more about
like interacting with another person in depth.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yes, every app is given something different. Okay, you can't
show up.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
On Instagram like you show up on Zoom. Okay, we
would be fired.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Doctor Hancock told us about a study from the Social
Media Lab about people's experience with TikTok's algorithm.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
In their sense, the algorithm was that they were like
these different sides of TikTok, and when they looked through
the algorithm was like looking through a crystal. They could
kind of see themselves reflected back, and they could see
through it these other communities.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
That they weren't going to talk to the people.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
TikTok is not very social it's very much about like
following people, but not about talking to people and the
way that the Facebook news feed was designed, or even Instagram.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
And so she kind of came.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Up with this idea that you know, the people think
of the TikTok algorithm as like a crystal that can
reflect back and show us different dimensions of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
What doctor Hancock just said speaks to me because I'm
a big TikTok user. You know that, Zakiyah, And that's
exactly how I feel about TikTok.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
My for you page is for me.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It's folks dancing, baby's cussing, saying silly things, dogs being ridiculous,
and food concoctions. And when I look at someone else's TikTok,
it looks very very different, Like why are is there
so many carpet cleaning videos on your for you page?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
That felt like shape?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
But I want you to know that I am watching
those people putting those rugs and detailing cards and vacuuming
and putting those little lines before. I like that It's relaxing.
And I think, like maybe what you see on your
for you page for TikTok because of you know, the
type of video content there might be different than what's
on your for you page for Instagram.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Absolutely, when we ask people about Instagram, they have a
very different view of that, right that Instagram is a
little bit more of a broadcast model that you then
interact with people that you know or want to know
and getting you know, those metrics are important, and that's
very different from the news speed which frankly, anybody here,
(17:56):
a young person here at Stanford is like, I don't
do it except to communicate with family.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Facebook is a no for me. I'm going to tell
you that right now. And it's been a no for
me since, Like, I don't know off and on. I
feel like when I left college. I used it a
little bit when I was in grad school, but then
I was like, all right, I.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Gotta get out here.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
It's getting wild.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I feel like I'm kind of the same way as
you are. As a kid.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I used to use Facebook like back in the day,
but I don't really use it anymore. It just feels
like Facebook is a really dark place where a lot
of really unproductive conversations are happening, and I'm just not
about that life. You know, something I do use a lot.
I used to talk more on it, but now I'm
mostly lurking Twitter.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Twitter is a very different platform.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
I love it myself, but it turns out like although
so much research is done on Twitter, so much and
a lot of it makes a lot of big headlines,
but like no one uses Twitter like we just analyze
some data and it's like a tiny percentage of the
US mostly like journalists, political folks.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I find out everything on Twitter. I can remember the
first time I realized Twitter was super powerful as a
primary news source, and that was with Ferguson. When Ferguson
was happening, I first saw that on Twitter. It was
not on the news at the time. It was live
streams from Deray McKesson and Janetta Elze. I think those
are the two people that I was following figuring out
(19:21):
what was happening on the ground in Ferguson. And most recently,
when Eli Musk was talking about Okay, yes he wants
to buy Twitter again, I saw it on Twitter before
I got the alert from the New York Times. It's wow,
it happens so fast, it really does, and Twitter's keeping up.
That little thing is refreshing. Those tweets are scrolling. Twitter
(19:41):
is keeping up and It's not like Instagram where it's like, oh,
we're going to show you what we think you want
to see. It's like, no, you can actually look chronologically,
so when stuff happens and it refreshes.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It is at the top of your timeline. I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
You send me a lot of Twitter threads that I
feel like are always so helpful. But then every time
I get on Twitter, I feel like I am not
following the right people because I don't see what you're seeing.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
You know, t T.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I wonder if platforms are like horoscopes, you know, like
maybe the platform you like says something about what you
want to get from the Internet. I feel like that's
a fair point. What does it mean about people on
discord or Reddit?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Ooh Reddit, I'm scared of Reddit. People be very scared.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
That feels one step away from the dark Web.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I don't know if people are trying to get.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
But Reddit feels very close. Yeah, And there's a lot
of other social media platforms out there that we don't
know about. I mean, there's so many. I know Amanda
Seals she made her own kind of like social media
platform for the people who are fans of her to
go on there to consume more of her content.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Loveyajai did the same thing.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
But all this talk about social media makes me curious
about what's y'all's favorite platform. So if you look in
the app right now, you should see a pole and
we're asking what your favorite social media platform is. My
favorite platform is Twitter tt. You already spilled the beans
on that, but sometimes you can find me.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
On Instagram too.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
TT.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
What's yours mine is TikTok.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
We know that I've already snitched on myself a few
times during this lap. I always say TikTok is the
happiest place on Earth, and That's where I'm going to be.
And what I like about TikTok is that I don't
feel pressure to post content. I just scroll and I'm
there for a good time, for some laughs, for some
oh my goodness, I had no idea, mind blown and
(21:33):
things like that.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
I think people undervalue that, right, Like, oh, people are just.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Wasting their time on social media.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
They're looking at like dogs dancing cat videos, which I agree,
I totally love, and I say, like, screw you, Like
nobody says, hey, you just wasted hours watching a football game,
but like, that's just entertainment. That's just having fun. It's
being with people, it's enjoying yourself. And I think we
sort of like all people should be doing stuff. Social
(22:01):
media is distracting, it's useless, and it's like, well, what
is watching a hockey game or going to the movies.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
It's about entertainment.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
And if you can use a technology like TikTok to
actually entertain yourself and that's working for you, then what's
the problem.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, I think it's a really great point.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I think that folks, you know, assign dignity to the
things that they enjoy doing. So some people might say
something like, oh, I can't believe so and so plays
video games.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
They're too old for that.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And I say, just because you don't like video games
doesn't mean that somebody else shouldn't like video games, you
know what I mean. Yeah, And the same thing goes
with social media. Some people are like, oh, TikTok is ridiculous,
it's so stupid and all this stuff like that, and
I'm like, yeah, sure, to you, it's like that a
lot of people are having a good time. And at
one point, Instagram was the new social media platform on
(22:51):
the scene, and everybody thought that was ridiculous because we
were so used to Facebook and Twitter where it was
just text. They're like, oh, just a picture, that's ridiculous,
And so I just feel like everybody should just leave
everybody alone. Whatever you like, I love you like it,
I love it. But assigning dignity to certain things and
saying other things are ridiculous. I don't think that's fair,
(23:12):
because who are we to say what folks should be
entertained by? Like sports, I'm not really into sports, but
if you like it, go do you. I'm gonna be
over here scrolling on TikTok, watching this dog roll its
eyes and its owner. Let's take a break. When we
come back, we'll talk about how social media is affecting
(23:33):
our attention span, the truth about misinformation, and what's next
on the social media horizon.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
We're back and we only have two more labs left
in this semester. Can you believe it? I know I can't.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Next week we begin our lab finale, So don't forget.
If you haven't done it yet, give us a call.
Let us know what your favorite lab was, and let
us know what's happening right now that you might want
to hear about. Call us at two zero two five
six seven seven zero two eight. Okay, let's get back
to the lab. We talked about just how ubiquitous social
(24:28):
media use is. It's everywhere, and we know a lot
of people are getting their news on social media too,
so we wanted to know more about misinformation and how
big of a problem it really is.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
Misinformation is a really small amount of our diet for
most people most of the time. If I got the
two of you to do an exercise that we did
in class, get people to spend ten minutes going through
whatever their favorite social feed is and I asked them
to identify any misinformation that they can, and pretty much
the answer is nobody sees any. And now we've done
(25:03):
these large empirical studies with two other students of mine,
Ross Dalkey and Ryan Moore, and they find that for
most people, they never get exposed to misinformation.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
It's very rare.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
But unfortunately, there's a few people that get exposed a ton,
and those dudes are the ones that are showing up
on January sixth. Those are the people that believe that
like the election was fraudulent.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Doctor Hancock says that misinformation isn't a huge concern for
most social media users, but it does exist, and it's
targeted at specific users.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Unfortunate right now, it's a lot of older adults, it's
a lot of people that are concerned about health. It's
a lot of lonely people that are doing online dating misinformation.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Folks are not just doing it willy nilly.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
They're trying to either make money or persuade people. And
the money one is much more common.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I mean, I hear that. I understand the money and
targeted people, but I feel like some people are doing
it for free. Maybe they don't mean to do misinformation,
but some people might might be doing it for free.
And maybe it's also coming from people just reading like
headlines about stuff and not reading the full article. And
that feels like it's because, you know, maybe we don't
have the attention span we used to have, or maybe
(26:13):
we just are not up for seeing things through to
the end anymore. Right, Everybody just posting headlines and not
doing their due diligence. And we saw in the pandemic
that that definitely led to a lot of misinformation spread.
And you know how, like I always say, if somebody
puts a quote next to Denzel Washington, people are gonna
(26:34):
retweet reshare that quote, and it's like he didn't even
say that. So is attention span an issue?
Speaker 4 (26:41):
It's a really important question.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
There are studies that show those kinds of things, but
the problem is is there are also studies that show
the opposite right, and then there are other studies that
show there's no relationship.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Doctor Hancock says that we need more research that takes
place over decades in order for us to track attention
span over time. So that's probably why we see so
many conflicting perspectives and studies about whether attention span is
good or bad or whatever, like, we don't know enough.
These platforms haven't been around long enough to definitively say. However,
(27:14):
doctor Hancock says it is likely that our attention spans
are changing, but that's not necessarily a good or a
bad thing, just different.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
It's pretty clear that our attention is likely to change,
and it's pretty clear that our memory is likely to change,
just from a theoretical point of view. So the idea
there is, as we can use new tools to do things,
our brain adapts to those, and so I no longer
memorize multi hundred line poems like the ancient Greeks did,
(27:45):
and that's okay in my life.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
And there is research that show that people, when they.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
Knew they would be able to find it online, they
ended up remembering a little bit less, but they were
really thoughtful about like knowing how to go out and
get it, and so same thing with a right now,
if you try to read in the same way that say,
monks in the sixteenth century would read, we would find
it really difficult. I have this image from the sixteenth
(28:11):
century of a wheel in which a monk would books
onto this wheel and you could kind of rotate it around,
and it was a way that these monks could deal
with the absolute insane information overload that was happening in
the Renaissance, where there was like a book being produced
every like week or month or so. It was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Imagine that same monk having access to Google it what
blow his mind. I wonder how people felt about talk
radio when it first showed up on the scene. I
remember as a kid thinking c spam was the wildest
thing ever. I was like, who can watch people just
talking NonStop like this? According to doctor Hancock, ideas about
(28:52):
misinformation overload are really common anytime there are advancements in
technology and our brains and media environment adapt to one another.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
What young people here now is like this thing could
be bad for you sometimes, therefore.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
You shouldn't do it because it's wrecking you.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
We don't say that people like don't drive because there
are people texting out there. And so I think if
we take more of that adaptive mindset that we can
learn how to do this, that we can change, I think.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
That'd be really valuable.
Speaker 5 (29:21):
I have a feeling that my attention span is different
than when I was, say it was in grad school.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Maybe that's a terrible thing.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Maybe that's allowing me to deal with like this really
new media environment.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I do think my attention span has changed now. I
know those are just my internal vibes and feelings. I
don't have a study, but this is not the same
asakia that used to sit down and read paper after paper.
It's not the same one. It's not If your book
is not juicy, I'm closing it.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
I don't know if my attention span has changed.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
I think that I am just entertained by a lot
more now. The way that we consume social media media
has changed, and so the things that are entertaining have changed.
So Twitter, then Instagram, you know, we had just photos,
and that became something that was really exciting because it
was like, okay, yeah, you could see some text and
(30:13):
some photos, so now I want to see photos. And
then it became you can post videos, so it was like, okay,
well now I want to see a caption and I
want to see a video.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
So I don't think my attention span has changed.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I think that what entertains me has evolved as social
media has evolved, depending on the medium. If it can
grab my attention and it's something that I'm interested in,
I'll sit there for ten minutes and read an article,
or I'll sit there for half an hour to watch
you know, something that I feel like is interesting. But
some things I don't feel like need to be a
(30:43):
half hour. Some things I think can be said in
thirty seconds. Even though our attention spans may be evolving,
that doesn't mean social media is bad or addictive.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
I would say that the number one question I get
asked is like, is social media addictive?
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Is it destroying young people's ability to talk face to face?
Speaker 5 (31:03):
I am Canadian, so I'm naturally kind of optimistic, So
I don't believe that social media is necessarily addictive. I
think that for some people, some of the time, they
use social media way that is not healthy for them.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
On the other extreme, there are people that find it
to be incredibly invaluable.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
I think for most people, most of the time, social
media doesn't have that big of an effect on their
well being. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's boring. Sometimes we
have interesting things happen, but it's relatively fine.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Well, that's interesting to hear because I would think that
social media, for most people, most of the time, is
having a big effect on their well being. Yeah, different news, Right,
This feels like something we've talked about before, where it
can feel like this is something that everybody is involved in,
but maybe for the majority of people who are not
(32:00):
primarily online, it's not that big of a deal. Like
the effect is only as great as the frequency of use,
and if you're online, you're only seeing other people that
are online, and maybe it's that same online bubble.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Again.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
I feel like doctor Hancock's take on this is very positive, absolutely,
and that feels good.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
And we've also said this in other episodes too. Where
you can have too much of anything, you can have
too much water, you can have too much air and
those things can kill you. And so everything in moderation.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
And if we're.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Considering everything in moderation, but also considering what we know
to be this big boom of platforms that are available
for people to partake in, what's the next platform? Where
are we headed? Now? You know what's coming down the pipeline.
As it relates to social media, All.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
The trends suggest video short form video is going to
be really big.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
TikTok is just dominated.
Speaker 5 (33:01):
It's shocking, but in twenty twenty one it was the
most accessed website including Google. Right, if you're a young
person you want to learn something about COVID, you ain't
going to Google anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
You're going to TikTok. Now that's worrisome and crazy.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
And you look at the other platform's meta Snapchat, they're
following TikTok, So that's a big trend. People talk about
the metaverse and they usually think, you know, mostly about VR,
But I think the metaverse is going to be very social.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
You know, we talked about the metaverse a little bit,
and I really think it's going to start to pick
up steam because what folks are able to do in
the metaverse is really really interesting, and I think it's
going to really change how we communicate with one another,
especially in this semi post I know Joe Biden said
that the pandemic was over. I don't know if the
CDC agrees, but we're in this kind of post pandemic
(33:57):
space and a lot of things are virtual. Imagine being
able to go into the metaverse and have a conference
call and you can see everyone's avatar instead of being
on a zoom call. Or you can see a three
D mockup of a building if you're an architect and
be able to walk somebody through it. I think the
possibilities with the metaverse are just endless, and there's so
(34:21):
much to think about in this new media environment. I
have some friends who aren't on social media at all,
and some who are basically at the nicotine patch levels
they're working on quitting. But then I have others who
are posting several times a day to stories. So my
question is will social media remain optional?
Speaker 5 (34:40):
I believe, at least in twenty twenty two that you
can still be an engaged citizen without having to use
a lot of social media as we kind of define
it around like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
So on the one hand, you can go to social
media for entertainment and have a good time and when
you want, and then on the other hand, you can
also use it for information gathering or to stay informed,
and doctor Hancock says that social media is also becoming
more crucial for work and navigating life.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
I do think we have to use text team and
zoom and phones a lot, and if you don't have
a cell phone, that's a real problem.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
One of my former.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Students, amigan Zalez, is done in U See Santa Barbara,
and she studies people where it's like do I get.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Another simcard for this month? Or do I get groceries?
And there, I think is exactly at that question that
you're getting at, where like.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Yeah, for them, that's a real problem, like they can't
get information. How do you get to this new job
interview if you can't access Google Maps?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Tez.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
This reminds me of something you brought up in our
episode about the digital divide, where people make it about like, oh,
do you have the newest iPhone right, when really it's
like do you have access to technology?
Speaker 5 (35:59):
Right?
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Do you have internet? Right to be able to even
get the information.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yes, and the privilege of the option to not participate
in some of these social platforms, Like some people don't participate,
but it's like you have the privilege to not participate
because these things are available to you. Absolutely, that's not
your only resources, that's not your only lifeline. Right, So
you don't have to be on Instagram or you don't
(36:25):
have to be on WhatsApp because you can talk to people.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
All these other ways.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I wonder what the future looks like if we
continue down the same path without strong interventions to provide
access or more equitable access for everyone. I think everything
that doctor and Hancock had to say was really interesting
because I think going into this episode, I thought we're
about to hear a bunch of bad news.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Honey.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
He can say, get off Instagram, get off TikTok, get
off Twitter, it's too much.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
You're ruining your brain. Your brain's turning mush.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
But what he's saying is is that for the vast
majority of us, social media ain't so bad, and it's
also providing us with information and connections that we wouldn't
have without it, And so it makes me feel good
because then it's just something that I need to check
in with myself. How am I feeling? Do I feel
like scrolling on Instagram today made me feel good?
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Or did it make me feel bad?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Do I need to take a little break rather than
any amount of social media consumption is bad for me?
Speaker 1 (37:33):
All right, it's time for one thing. What's your one thing? Zee?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
My one thing is another social media platform. Now listen
if you feel like you're not getting your feel with
the main players that we talked about today, I mentioned
this one a little bit. It's Discord and I first
got introduced to Discord by an Helen Peterson. She writes
this newsletter and she's been on Dope Labs when she
(37:58):
was sharing her book even, which is basically about burnout.
So I was like, oh, what's this community?
Speaker 1 (38:04):
How does this work?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And two other groups I follow on social media are
kind of on Discord for a more engaged kind of
community and sharing links. You know, I love to share links, girl.
That's Ato Friends and Moonless, and so I've been kind
of dipping my toe into Discord. So that's my one
thing for the week. Tt I'm gonna try to get
you on Discord to join in these communities too.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
That's it. For Lab eighty two.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Tell us what are you getting from your social media?
Is it giving everything you need? Do you need to
find a new app? Call us at two zero two
five six seven seven zero two eight and tell us
what you thought.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
We really like hearing from you.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
So that's two zero two five six seven zero two eight,
And don't forget there's so much more for you to
dig into on our website. There'll be a cheat sheet
for today's lab and additional links and resources in the
show notes. Plus you can sign up for our newsletter
check it out at Dope Labs podcast dot com. Special
thanks to today's guest expert, doctor Jeff Hancock. You can
(39:09):
find him on Twitter at Jeff Hancock, and you can
find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs Podcast.
Tt Is on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho,
and you can find Zakia at z said So. Dope
Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Owme Media Group.
Our producers are Jenny Radlett Mast and Lydia Smith of
(39:32):
wave Runner Studios. Our associate producer is Caro Rolando. Editing
and sound design by Rob Smerziek, with additional mixing and
sound design by Hannes Brown. Original music composed and produced
by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura from Spotify Creative producer
Miguel Contreras. Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Bison, Till
(39:54):
krat Key and Brian Marquis, executive producers from Mega owned
media group rus T T Show, Dia and Zakiah Wattley
Zekia.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
You know me, okay, and you know that my social
media platform of choice currently is TikTok. Yes, but I
feel like you're a strong Instagram user too. I have
a good time on social media. I really like it.
I feel like you learn so much about different parts
of the world, and TikTok is a really great place
(00:22):
for that. Before I was like, yeah, Instagram is great,
Like I'd search hashtags what are folks doing? Yeah, in
Budapest right now, hashtag Budapest, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You know?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
And TikTok because of how they set up there for
you page. I mean, it's all just coming to me
in a flood and I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
You're a big Twitter.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yes, I'm lurking on Twitter. Just recently, I was following
the fishing scandal. There was this big competition that had
won like three hundred thousand dollars. These people were cheating.
They were stuffing filats of fish, no wrapping it around.
They had weights to skew the results, so it seemed
like they had caught these heads. Now I saw that
a couple of days ago, just I guess. Last night
(01:03):
I saw it on the New York Times and I
was like, late I already saw it on Twitter. Okay,
I already saw it on Twitter days ago.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It feels like social media is what everybody's using to
get their news, to get their entertainment, and to stay connected.
So it made us very curious about how social media
might be impacting how we interact with each other and
how we interact with ourselves. One percent, if you didn't
have dial up and listen to that little screeching noise
(01:33):
or the a room men on the disc we're not
living the same life. I'm t T and I'm Zachiah
and from Spotify.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
This is Dope Labs.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that mixes hardcore science,
pop culture, and a healthy dos of friendship. This week,
we're talking all about social media specifically. We really wanted
to know more about the impacts of social media on
our well being, mental health, attention span, and how we
communicate with one another. Let's get into the recitation. What
(02:41):
do we know? Well, what I feel like I know
is that social media is everywhere. It's a part of
our everyday lives. Professors are using it as a part
of their course curriculum, it's a.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Part of our work.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Social media is permitting everything, and so it also feels
like a primary way that we communicate with one another
all of the world. It feels like social media has
gone through some rapid changes too. So it feels like
it's gone from just being a place where you share
pictures of yourself to a way to interact with brands,
service providers. I mean, are you alive if you're not
(03:14):
on social media? Sometimes it feels like that's what society
is saying. It's so true. I mean, if somebody were
to tell me that they don't have a lick of
social media, I'm like.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Are you on the run?
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Like? Are the Feds after you? What is going on?
How do you know? How do you know anything without
social media?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
And you and I we come from a generation that
did not have social media and then had social media.
And I remember making my first Facebook account when I
was about to start college because remember at that point,
Facebook was only for folks who had a college email address. Yes,
and it was still so new at the time. And
(03:54):
so now when you think of today, where our grandmas
and grandpa's and our little cousins all have social media,
dogs have social media. Yes, we're living in a different time.
So we're moving around this world very differently because of it. Yes,
that's so true. And so we have quite a few
questions right about this. If we're moving differently, how different?
(04:15):
What do we want to know? Tt I want to
know more about how social media is impacting us.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
I see a lot of stuff in the news about how.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
Social media is impacting us, But I want to know, like,
for real, for real, how are we changing? Like is
it actually affecting our attention span and our relationships with
people and how we communicate in our mental health and
do different platforms affect us differently? Is it you know,
six and one hand, half a dozen in the other?
Is TikTok giving me the same bad vibes as Facebook?
(04:49):
I don't want to believe that. I want to believe
that TikTok will save the world. I'm just kidding. All right,
let's jump into the dissection. Our guest for today's lab
is doctor Jeff Hancock.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
My name is Jeff Hancock.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
I'm the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab
and a professor here in the Communication Department.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
The Stanford Social Media Lab studies three main areas. One
is misinformation, the other is the effects of social media
on psychological well being. And the final area they study
is AI and communication, so that's like those smart replies
on Gmail, where it's basically artificial intelligence posing as a human.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
We talk about.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Social media all the time on this show, and there's
a lot to unpack. According to doctor Hancock, social media
is a broader category that goes beyond platforms like Facebook
and Twitter. It's really any media we used to be social,
so that includes things like zoom, texting, and even email.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
The first video conference was nineteen sixty seven in France Microtel,
and yet it took a pandemic to get us all
to really be using it on the regular. Every time
there's a new technology.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
People are really worried about it.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
Go back to the radio, right, that was going to
cause us all to just be hermits in our house
and never talk to people again. And it was going
to kill the newspaper. And then there were comic books.
Comic books, we're going to kill kids' brains and get
them addicted. And then there is TV. Same thing, and
we hear the same kinds of things with social media,
and social media is a lot different than.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Those right think about television and radio and newspapers. All
of those platforms have professionals who create and produce content. Now,
a lot of social media content is created by professionals,
but a lot of social media is more DIY. There
aren't the same barriers when it comes to posting and sharing. Yeah,
(06:51):
anyone can publish anything to anywhere. We're all content creators
and editors. This is a good thing and it can
sometimes be a bad And even though social media can
sometimes feel really bad or really good, doctor Hancock says,
it's not so black and white. One of his graduate students,
Angela Lee, is studying the importance of mindsets when it
(07:14):
comes to using social media.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
It's about how you view the way something works for you.
The most famous example of education, you can think of
like your intelligence as like a muscle, and you can
grow it, and you can think of it as like
something that you're given and you have a fixed amount
of intelligence, and that's called a fixed mindset. So Angela
(07:36):
took that idea and applied to social media, and it
turns out that people have really strong mindsets. She's identified
two kind of components to social media mindsets. One is agency.
Do you feel like you're in charge of your social
media and you use it to do things for you
and your world, or is it in charge of you
(07:57):
and you're kind of out of control.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I'm on social media whenever I have free time.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
I'm scrolling before I go to sleep, when I wake up,
before I get out of the bed, the first thing
I do is open up.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
My phone and starts scrolling.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
So I'm not a mindless scroller, but I am a
person who automatically opens my phone and checks if I
have these alerts. You know, those little red notification bubbles
on the icons. I'm going to clear those. I'm automatically
opening and checking those, even if I don't really care.
My mind is just like clear those bubbles. And so
(08:28):
one of the things I've had to do to combat
that is to turn notifications off. And it reminds me
of that video we did. Do you remember the just
look up video with Thrive.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And Both Yes, Oh my gosh, yes, that's such a
good point.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And in that video we learned that the average person
checks their phone fifty two times a day. Now, that
was twenty nineteen, so I don't even know what it is.
Speaker 1 (08:51):
Now, right, pandemic looking at your phone?
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I don't know. I feel like I'm on my phone
a lot more now. At first, when I heard that number,
I was very very surprised, But then I started to
really think about how much time I spend on my
phone and I was like, wow, that's definitely me.
Speaker 1 (09:10):
And if I have agency.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
On the other hand, I'm telling my social media what
I wanted to do. So I'm saying, Okay, I'm only
going to be on Instagram for thirty minutes and after
that I'm moving on, or I'm coming to Twitter to
find this very specific thing and don't show me anything
else that you think I might want to see. If
you have agency, you say, I don't want to see
(09:32):
those suggestive posts.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
I just want to see what I want to see.
Speaker 5 (09:35):
That is a very healthy approach, right. It means that
you're using it to do what you want to do
in the world, and it's sort of forwarding your goals
and trusting your needs. People that feel like it's out
of their control, they are suffering. They tend to report hiring, anxiety,
higher depression, more lonely, and it kind of sucks, right,
(09:56):
They're locked into this thing where I don't feel like
I'm in control.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I feel like this.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
Thing social media is bad. Yet I have to use it.
Most people have to use it just to live their lives.
Speaker 4 (10:07):
So when they use it, it makes them feel bad
about themselves.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
And that leads us to the second component of Angela
Lee's mindset study, which is whether you perceive social media
as positive or negative.
Speaker 5 (10:20):
It helps you, it helps with communication and connection, being informed,
or is it overall bad? Is it negative for you
like undermines your health, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Doctor Hancock says this mindset approach is powerful and that
we should encourage people, especially young folks, to embrace this
more in control perspective on social media.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
That does two things.
Speaker 5 (10:42):
One, it pushes back against this idea of like, there's
these social media companies and they are doing stuff to you,
and there's nothing you can do about it. You're just
a passive consumer and they're like pointing the social media advertising.
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Gun at you. I really hate that.
Speaker 5 (11:01):
It really takes away my power, It takes away my agency,
and also it takes away my responsibility. So if I'm
a jerk and I say cyberbully or I do mean
stuff online, that's not my fault. That's like this social
media fault. It's Marcus Zuckerberg's fault. So I think it
does bring back that sense of like, well, no, I'm
(11:21):
in charge you for the way I'm going.
Speaker 4 (11:22):
To behave with this.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yes, I think some people are like, oh, they're on
social media. They can't help it. Yes, they can. They
still have to press posts.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Now.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
I understand the pressures of social media can be high,
but I feel like, all right, let's have some accountability
in this equation. Yeah, the Internet is still a part
of our culture, and what we're posting is absolutely adding
to the conversation. And so we can't just say, oh,
you know, it's just social media. It doesn't matter. It matters.
And I think one of the things that continuously blows
(11:53):
my mind is just how huge the social media community is.
Usually it's when I find a profile and it has
like one point five million followers or some huge number
like that, and I don't have a single shared contact
with that account. Does that ever happen to you?
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Yes? And it's always so shocking to me.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yes, it's like this is a whole, separate, undisturbed part
of the Internet that I don't even know about. The
six degrees of separation. It's a lie.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
The other day, I was on Twitter and there was
this thread and this lady was like, I want to
show y'all this new yarn and there were so many
comments and people were just excited, full of excitement, and
I was like, this is what I would expect for
like an exclusive sneaker drop or a new game, you know,
NBA game for the PlayStation or Xbox or something like
this is this vibrant community, and I think we forget
(12:46):
that there are so many users on these different platforms. Yes,
it always blows my mind. Because we talked about social
bubbles in our Science Now episode, where you can have
that confirmation bias because everybody you know is usually interested
in a lot of similar things, and what you just
explained highlights that where as soon as you get outside
(13:08):
of that bubble, there are people who have way different
interests than you. Even when we're talking about things like
memes and things that are going viral, it's everywhere. And
I remember just recently this happened to me where you know,
over the last few weeks, I was talking to somebody
and I said, it's corn, a.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
Big lump of knobs.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
It has a juice, It has a juice, and that Yes,
it's the most beautiful thing. And they were like, what
are you talking about? No, And I was like, you
don't know to Reek aka the corn Kid.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Nah, you're on the dark Web.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Because I can't believe there is a single person on
this planet who doesn't know to Reek, not as they're
using the Internet. I feel like he was everywhere.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
If he was everywhere everywhere, But.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
That just goes to show another undisturbed side of the
web for someone else.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Right, we love you TOIQ, more blessings, more life for you.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
And so just to help us wrap our arms around
the big world wide Web, right, let's think about how
many users are on these platforms. Okay, a big stepper is.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
YouTube starting with a big.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
YouTube has two point two billion monthly active users. That's
every thirty days, two point two billion. With a bee,
the B stands for billions. Yes, Facebook is at two
point nine billion users. What's app WhatsApp if you have
foreign parents, WhatsApp has been the thing for the last
(14:51):
few years and it has two billion as well. WhatsApp
is huge outside the country. Yes, everybody's using what's app.
Instagram has two billion. The smaller ones are like Pinterest, Reddit,
even Skype do you remember when everybody has Skype really
fumbled a bag and Zoom took over. But you have
(15:11):
to think about like social media is everywhere, and it's
important to remember that social media is not a monolith.
Doctor Hancock says that the type of platform matters. Not
all platforms are created equal.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
There's be Real, which is getting a lot of attention,
emphasizing authenticity and reducing the load of having to present
an awesome self all the time, and.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Then you can get outside of that.
Speaker 5 (15:36):
You go into things like Zoom are much more about
like interacting with another person in depth.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Yes, every app is given something different. Okay, you can't
show up.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
On Instagram like you show up on Zoom. Okay, we
would be fired.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Doctor Hancock told us about a study from the Social
Media Lab about people's experience with TikTok's algorithm.
Speaker 5 (16:08):
In their sense, the algorithm was that they were like
these different sides of TikTok, and when they looked through
the algorithm was like looking through a crystal. They could
kind of see themselves reflected back, and they could see
through it these other communities.
Speaker 4 (16:22):
That they weren't going to talk to the people.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
TikTok is not very social it's very much about like
following people, but not about talking to people and the
way that the Facebook news feed was designed, or even Instagram.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
And so she kind of came.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
Up with this idea that you know, the people think
of the TikTok algorithm as like a crystal that can
reflect back and show us different dimensions of ourselves.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
What doctor Hancock just said speaks to me because I'm
a big TikTok user. You know that, Zakiyah, And that's
exactly how I feel about TikTok.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
My for you page is for me.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
It's folks dancing, baby's cussing, saying silly things, dogs being ridiculous,
and food concoctions. And when I look at someone else's TikTok,
it looks very very different, Like why are is there
so many carpet cleaning videos on your for you page?
Speaker 1 (17:15):
That felt like shape?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
But I want you to know that I am watching
those people putting those rugs and detailing cards and vacuuming
and putting those little lines before. I like that It's relaxing.
And I think, like maybe what you see on your
for you page for TikTok because of you know, the
type of video content there might be different than what's
on your for you page for Instagram.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Absolutely, when we ask people about Instagram, they have a
very different view of that, right that Instagram is a
little bit more of a broadcast model that you then
interact with people that you know or want to know
and getting you know, those metrics are important, and that's
very different from the news speed which frankly, anybody here,
(17:56):
a young person here at Stanford is like, I don't
do it except to communicate with family.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Facebook is a no for me. I'm going to tell
you that right now. And it's been a no for
me since, Like, I don't know off and on. I
feel like when I left college. I used it a
little bit when I was in grad school, but then
I was like, all right, I.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Gotta get out here.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
It's getting wild.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I feel like I'm kind of the same way as
you are. As a kid.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
I used to use Facebook like back in the day,
but I don't really use it anymore. It just feels
like Facebook is a really dark place where a lot
of really unproductive conversations are happening, and I'm just not
about that life. You know, something I do use a lot.
I used to talk more on it, but now I'm
mostly lurking Twitter.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Twitter is a very different platform.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
I love it myself, but it turns out like although
so much research is done on Twitter, so much and
a lot of it makes a lot of big headlines,
but like no one uses Twitter like we just analyze
some data and it's like a tiny percentage of the
US mostly like journalists, political folks.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
I find out everything on Twitter. I can remember the
first time I realized Twitter was super powerful as a
primary news source, and that was with Ferguson. When Ferguson
was happening, I first saw that on Twitter. It was
not on the news at the time. It was live
streams from Deray McKesson and Janetta Elze. I think those
are the two people that I was following figuring out
(19:21):
what was happening on the ground in Ferguson. And most recently,
when Eli Musk was talking about Okay, yes he wants
to buy Twitter again, I saw it on Twitter before
I got the alert from the New York Times. It's wow,
it happens so fast, it really does, and Twitter's keeping up.
That little thing is refreshing. Those tweets are scrolling. Twitter
(19:41):
is keeping up and It's not like Instagram where it's like, oh,
we're going to show you what we think you want
to see. It's like, no, you can actually look chronologically,
so when stuff happens and it refreshes.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
It is at the top of your timeline. I love it.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
You send me a lot of Twitter threads that I
feel like are always so helpful. But then every time
I get on Twitter, I feel like I am not
following the right people because I don't see what you're seeing.
Speaker 1 (20:03):
You know, t T.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
I wonder if platforms are like horoscopes, you know, like
maybe the platform you like says something about what you
want to get from the Internet. I feel like that's
a fair point. What does it mean about people on
discord or Reddit?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Ooh Reddit, I'm scared of Reddit. People be very scared.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
That feels one step away from the dark Web.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
I don't know if people are trying to get.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
But Reddit feels very close. Yeah, And there's a lot
of other social media platforms out there that we don't
know about. I mean, there's so many. I know Amanda
Seals she made her own kind of like social media
platform for the people who are fans of her to
go on there to consume more of her content.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
Loveyajai did the same thing.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
But all this talk about social media makes me curious
about what's y'all's favorite platform. So if you look in
the app right now, you should see a pole and
we're asking what your favorite social media platform is. My
favorite platform is Twitter tt. You already spilled the beans
on that, but sometimes you can find me.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
On Instagram too.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
TT.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
What's yours mine is TikTok.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
We know that I've already snitched on myself a few
times during this lap. I always say TikTok is the
happiest place on Earth, and That's where I'm going to be.
And what I like about TikTok is that I don't
feel pressure to post content. I just scroll and I'm
there for a good time, for some laughs, for some
oh my goodness, I had no idea, mind blown and
(21:33):
things like that.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
I think people undervalue that, right, Like, oh, people are just.
Speaker 4 (21:38):
Wasting their time on social media.
Speaker 5 (21:39):
They're looking at like dogs dancing cat videos, which I agree,
I totally love, and I say, like, screw you, Like
nobody says, hey, you just wasted hours watching a football game,
but like, that's just entertainment. That's just having fun. It's
being with people, it's enjoying yourself. And I think we
sort of like all people should be doing stuff. Social
(22:01):
media is distracting, it's useless, and it's like, well, what
is watching a hockey game or going to the movies.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
It's about entertainment.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
And if you can use a technology like TikTok to
actually entertain yourself and that's working for you, then what's
the problem.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Yeah, I think it's a really great point.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
I think that folks, you know, assign dignity to the
things that they enjoy doing. So some people might say
something like, oh, I can't believe so and so plays
video games.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
They're too old for that.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And I say, just because you don't like video games
doesn't mean that somebody else shouldn't like video games, you
know what I mean. Yeah, And the same thing goes
with social media. Some people are like, oh, TikTok is ridiculous,
it's so stupid and all this stuff like that, and
I'm like, yeah, sure, to you, it's like that a
lot of people are having a good time. And at
one point, Instagram was the new social media platform on
(22:51):
the scene, and everybody thought that was ridiculous because we
were so used to Facebook and Twitter where it was
just text. They're like, oh, just a picture, that's ridiculous,
And so I just feel like everybody should just leave
everybody alone. Whatever you like, I love you like it,
I love it. But assigning dignity to certain things and
saying other things are ridiculous. I don't think that's fair,
(23:12):
because who are we to say what folks should be
entertained by? Like sports, I'm not really into sports, but
if you like it, go do you. I'm gonna be
over here scrolling on TikTok, watching this dog roll its
eyes and its owner. Let's take a break. When we
come back, we'll talk about how social media is affecting
(23:33):
our attention span, the truth about misinformation, and what's next
on the social media horizon.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
We're back and we only have two more labs left
in this semester. Can you believe it? I know I can't.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Next week we begin our lab finale, So don't forget.
If you haven't done it yet, give us a call.
Let us know what your favorite lab was, and let
us know what's happening right now that you might want
to hear about. Call us at two zero two five
six seven seven zero two eight. Okay, let's get back
to the lab. We talked about just how ubiquitous social
(24:28):
media use is. It's everywhere, and we know a lot
of people are getting their news on social media too,
so we wanted to know more about misinformation and how
big of a problem it really is.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
Misinformation is a really small amount of our diet for
most people most of the time. If I got the
two of you to do an exercise that we did
in class, get people to spend ten minutes going through
whatever their favorite social feed is and I asked them
to identify any misinformation that they can, and pretty much
the answer is nobody sees any. And now we've done
(25:03):
these large empirical studies with two other students of mine,
Ross Dalkey and Ryan Moore, and they find that for
most people, they never get exposed to misinformation.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
It's very rare.
Speaker 5 (25:14):
But unfortunately, there's a few people that get exposed a ton,
and those dudes are the ones that are showing up
on January sixth. Those are the people that believe that
like the election was fraudulent.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
Doctor Hancock says that misinformation isn't a huge concern for
most social media users, but it does exist, and it's
targeted at specific users.
Speaker 5 (25:34):
Unfortunate right now, it's a lot of older adults, it's
a lot of people that are concerned about health. It's
a lot of lonely people that are doing online dating misinformation.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Folks are not just doing it willy nilly.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
They're trying to either make money or persuade people. And
the money one is much more common.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
I mean, I hear that. I understand the money and
targeted people, but I feel like some people are doing
it for free. Maybe they don't mean to do misinformation,
but some people might might be doing it for free.
And maybe it's also coming from people just reading like
headlines about stuff and not reading the full article. And
that feels like it's because, you know, maybe we don't
have the attention span we used to have, or maybe
(26:13):
we just are not up for seeing things through to
the end anymore. Right, Everybody just posting headlines and not
doing their due diligence. And we saw in the pandemic
that that definitely led to a lot of misinformation spread.
And you know how, like I always say, if somebody
puts a quote next to Denzel Washington, people are gonna
(26:34):
retweet reshare that quote, and it's like he didn't even
say that. So is attention span an issue?
Speaker 4 (26:41):
It's a really important question.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
There are studies that show those kinds of things, but
the problem is is there are also studies that show
the opposite right, and then there are other studies that
show there's no relationship.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Doctor Hancock says that we need more research that takes
place over decades in order for us to track attention
span over time. So that's probably why we see so
many conflicting perspectives and studies about whether attention span is
good or bad or whatever, like, we don't know enough.
These platforms haven't been around long enough to definitively say. However,
(27:14):
doctor Hancock says it is likely that our attention spans
are changing, but that's not necessarily a good or a
bad thing, just different.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
It's pretty clear that our attention is likely to change,
and it's pretty clear that our memory is likely to change,
just from a theoretical point of view. So the idea
there is, as we can use new tools to do things,
our brain adapts to those, and so I no longer
memorize multi hundred line poems like the ancient Greeks did,
(27:45):
and that's okay in my life.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
And there is research that show that people, when they.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
Knew they would be able to find it online, they
ended up remembering a little bit less, but they were
really thoughtful about like knowing how to go out and
get it, and so same thing with a right now,
if you try to read in the same way that say,
monks in the sixteenth century would read, we would find
it really difficult. I have this image from the sixteenth
(28:11):
century of a wheel in which a monk would books
onto this wheel and you could kind of rotate it around,
and it was a way that these monks could deal
with the absolute insane information overload that was happening in
the Renaissance, where there was like a book being produced
every like week or month or so. It was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Imagine that same monk having access to Google it what
blow his mind. I wonder how people felt about talk
radio when it first showed up on the scene. I
remember as a kid thinking c spam was the wildest
thing ever. I was like, who can watch people just
talking NonStop like this? According to doctor Hancock, ideas about
(28:52):
misinformation overload are really common anytime there are advancements in
technology and our brains and media environment adapt to one another.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
What young people here now is like this thing could
be bad for you sometimes, therefore.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
You shouldn't do it because it's wrecking you.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
We don't say that people like don't drive because there
are people texting out there. And so I think if
we take more of that adaptive mindset that we can
learn how to do this, that we can change, I think.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
That'd be really valuable.
Speaker 5 (29:21):
I have a feeling that my attention span is different
than when I was, say it was in grad school.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
Maybe that's a terrible thing.
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Maybe that's allowing me to deal with like this really
new media environment.
Speaker 2 (29:33):
I do think my attention span has changed now. I
know those are just my internal vibes and feelings. I
don't have a study, but this is not the same
asakia that used to sit down and read paper after paper.
It's not the same one. It's not If your book
is not juicy, I'm closing it.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
I don't know if my attention span has changed.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
I think that I am just entertained by a lot
more now. The way that we consume social media media
has changed, and so the things that are entertaining have changed.
So Twitter, then Instagram, you know, we had just photos,
and that became something that was really exciting because it
was like, okay, yeah, you could see some text and
(30:13):
some photos, so now I want to see photos. And
then it became you can post videos, so it was like, okay,
well now I want to see a caption and I
want to see a video.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
So I don't think my attention span has changed.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
I think that what entertains me has evolved as social
media has evolved, depending on the medium. If it can
grab my attention and it's something that I'm interested in,
I'll sit there for ten minutes and read an article,
or I'll sit there for half an hour to watch
you know, something that I feel like is interesting. But
some things I don't feel like need to be a
(30:43):
half hour. Some things I think can be said in
thirty seconds. Even though our attention spans may be evolving,
that doesn't mean social media is bad or addictive.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
I would say that the number one question I get
asked is like, is social media addictive?
Speaker 4 (30:58):
Is it destroying young people's ability to talk face to face?
Speaker 5 (31:03):
I am Canadian, so I'm naturally kind of optimistic, So
I don't believe that social media is necessarily addictive. I
think that for some people, some of the time, they
use social media way that is not healthy for them.
Speaker 4 (31:20):
On the other extreme, there are people that find it
to be incredibly invaluable.
Speaker 5 (31:24):
I think for most people, most of the time, social
media doesn't have that big of an effect on their
well being. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's boring. Sometimes we
have interesting things happen, but it's relatively fine.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Well, that's interesting to hear because I would think that
social media, for most people, most of the time, is
having a big effect on their well being. Yeah, different news, Right,
This feels like something we've talked about before, where it
can feel like this is something that everybody is involved in,
but maybe for the majority of people who are not
(32:00):
primarily online, it's not that big of a deal. Like
the effect is only as great as the frequency of use,
and if you're online, you're only seeing other people that
are online, and maybe it's that same online bubble.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
Again.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
I feel like doctor Hancock's take on this is very positive, absolutely,
and that feels good.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
And we've also said this in other episodes too. Where
you can have too much of anything, you can have
too much water, you can have too much air and
those things can kill you. And so everything in moderation.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
And if we're.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Considering everything in moderation, but also considering what we know
to be this big boom of platforms that are available
for people to partake in, what's the next platform? Where
are we headed? Now? You know what's coming down the pipeline.
As it relates to social media, All.
Speaker 5 (32:54):
The trends suggest video short form video is going to
be really big.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
TikTok is just dominated.
Speaker 5 (33:01):
It's shocking, but in twenty twenty one it was the
most accessed website including Google. Right, if you're a young
person you want to learn something about COVID, you ain't
going to Google anymore.
Speaker 4 (33:11):
You're going to TikTok. Now that's worrisome and crazy.
Speaker 5 (33:17):
And you look at the other platform's meta Snapchat, they're
following TikTok, So that's a big trend. People talk about
the metaverse and they usually think, you know, mostly about VR,
But I think the metaverse is going to be very social.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
You know, we talked about the metaverse a little bit,
and I really think it's going to start to pick
up steam because what folks are able to do in
the metaverse is really really interesting, and I think it's
going to really change how we communicate with one another,
especially in this semi post I know Joe Biden said
that the pandemic was over. I don't know if the
CDC agrees, but we're in this kind of post pandemic
(33:57):
space and a lot of things are virtual. Imagine being
able to go into the metaverse and have a conference
call and you can see everyone's avatar instead of being
on a zoom call. Or you can see a three
D mockup of a building if you're an architect and
be able to walk somebody through it. I think the
possibilities with the metaverse are just endless, and there's so
(34:21):
much to think about in this new media environment. I
have some friends who aren't on social media at all,
and some who are basically at the nicotine patch levels
they're working on quitting. But then I have others who
are posting several times a day to stories. So my
question is will social media remain optional?
Speaker 5 (34:40):
I believe, at least in twenty twenty two that you
can still be an engaged citizen without having to use
a lot of social media as we kind of define
it around like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
So on the one hand, you can go to social
media for entertainment and have a good time and when
you want, and then on the other hand, you can
also use it for information gathering or to stay informed,
and doctor Hancock says that social media is also becoming
more crucial for work and navigating life.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
I do think we have to use text team and
zoom and phones a lot, and if you don't have
a cell phone, that's a real problem.
Speaker 4 (35:23):
One of my former.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
Students, amigan Zalez, is done in U See Santa Barbara,
and she studies people where it's like do I get.
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Another simcard for this month? Or do I get groceries?
And there, I think is exactly at that question that
you're getting at, where like.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
Yeah, for them, that's a real problem, like they can't
get information. How do you get to this new job
interview if you can't access Google Maps?
Speaker 4 (35:46):
Tez.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
This reminds me of something you brought up in our
episode about the digital divide, where people make it about like, oh,
do you have the newest iPhone right, when really it's
like do you have access to technology?
Speaker 5 (35:59):
Right?
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Do you have internet? Right to be able to even
get the information.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Yes, and the privilege of the option to not participate
in some of these social platforms, Like some people don't participate,
but it's like you have the privilege to not participate
because these things are available to you. Absolutely, that's not
your only resources, that's not your only lifeline. Right, So
you don't have to be on Instagram or you don't
(36:25):
have to be on WhatsApp because you can talk to people.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
All these other ways.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I wonder what the future looks like if we
continue down the same path without strong interventions to provide
access or more equitable access for everyone. I think everything
that doctor and Hancock had to say was really interesting
because I think going into this episode, I thought we're
about to hear a bunch of bad news.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Honey.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
He can say, get off Instagram, get off TikTok, get
off Twitter, it's too much.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
You're ruining your brain. Your brain's turning mush.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
But what he's saying is is that for the vast
majority of us, social media ain't so bad, and it's
also providing us with information and connections that we wouldn't
have without it, And so it makes me feel good
because then it's just something that I need to check
in with myself. How am I feeling? Do I feel
like scrolling on Instagram today made me feel good?
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Or did it make me feel bad?
Speaker 2 (37:19):
Do I need to take a little break rather than
any amount of social media consumption is bad for me?
Speaker 1 (37:33):
All right, it's time for one thing. What's your one thing? Zee?
Speaker 2 (37:36):
My one thing is another social media platform. Now listen
if you feel like you're not getting your feel with
the main players that we talked about today, I mentioned
this one a little bit. It's Discord and I first
got introduced to Discord by an Helen Peterson. She writes
this newsletter and she's been on Dope Labs when she
(37:58):
was sharing her book even, which is basically about burnout.
So I was like, oh, what's this community?
Speaker 1 (38:04):
How does this work?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And two other groups I follow on social media are
kind of on Discord for a more engaged kind of
community and sharing links. You know, I love to share links, girl.
That's Ato Friends and Moonless, and so I've been kind
of dipping my toe into Discord. So that's my one
thing for the week. Tt I'm gonna try to get
you on Discord to join in these communities too.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
That's it. For Lab eighty two.
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Tell us what are you getting from your social media?
Is it giving everything you need? Do you need to
find a new app? Call us at two zero two
five six seven seven zero two eight and tell us
what you thought.
Speaker 1 (38:47):
We really like hearing from you.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
So that's two zero two five six seven zero two eight,
And don't forget there's so much more for you to
dig into on our website. There'll be a cheat sheet
for today's lab and additional links and resources in the
show notes. Plus you can sign up for our newsletter
check it out at Dope Labs podcast dot com. Special
thanks to today's guest expert, doctor Jeff Hancock. You can
(39:09):
find him on Twitter at Jeff Hancock, and you can
find us on Twitter and Instagram at Dope Labs Podcast.
Tt Is on Twitter and Instagram at dr Underscore t Sho,
and you can find Zakia at z said So. Dope
Labs is a Spotify original production from Mega Owme Media Group.
Our producers are Jenny Radlett Mast and Lydia Smith of
(39:32):
wave Runner Studios. Our associate producer is Caro Rolando. Editing
and sound design by Rob Smerziek, with additional mixing and
sound design by Hannes Brown. Original music composed and produced
by Taka Yasuzawa and Alex Sugiura from Spotify Creative producer
Miguel Contreras. Special thanks to Shirley Ramos, Jess Bison, Till
(39:54):
krat Key and Brian Marquis, executive producers from Mega owned
media group rus T T Show, Dia and Zakiah Wattley
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