December 10, 2024 • 54 mins
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What if the digital world was costing us more than we realized? In this episode, we sit down with Chris Martin, an insightful author who has navigated the depths of social media’s real costs. Chris shares his journey of writing a thought-provoking book during the pandemic, drawing from his rich experiences in social media roles at Lifeway and Moody Publishers. Together, we explore how his upbringing in a tech-savvy household shaped his perspectives, and what compelled him to question the societal impact of social media so deeply.
Our conversation takes a fascinating turn as we ponder how media critic Neil Postman might critique today's digital landscape, especially from a Christian viewpoint. We chart the evolution of the social internet, reminiscing about AOL trial disks and MySpace days, while unpacking how modern platforms have shifted societal norms toward valuing affirmation over truth. The discussion extends to the ethical implications of social media's addictive designs and their effects on mental health, illustrating a nuanced portrayal of our digital lives.
As we peer into the future, the concept of the metaverse emerges, raising questions about the balance between virtual and authentic human connections. Chris and I discuss the potential for technology to both enhance and hinder intimacy, while considering society's possible rejection of tools that fail to deliver on meaningful interactions. Through reflections on Bo Burnham's creative critiques and personal anecdotes, we encourage listeners to prioritize offline experiences and nurture real-life relationships. Join us on Twitter as we continue this important dialogue and explore the themes of Chris Martin's book, "Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media."
Your Host: Kimberly Beam Holmes, Expert in Self-Improvement and Relationships
Kimberly Beam Holmes has applied her master's degree in psychology for over ten years, acting as the CEO of Marriage Helper & CEO and Creator of PIES University, being a wife and mother herself, and researching how attraction affects relationships. Her videos, podcasts, and following reach over 500,000 people a month who are making changes and becoming the best they can be.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chris, I am very excited to talk to you today
about your new book that youhave, but also about the
experience that you've had.
We were chatting just beforethis, so our listeners know
you've had quite an experiencewith social media, just
professionally, and had a lot ofinteraction with the craziness
of service, and so we're goingto be talking about it today and
(00:23):
I love the tagline the realcost of social media.
This is a topic I have a lot offeels about.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good, good, I do too believe it, or not?
So many that I wrote a 224-pagebook about it.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
How long did it take you?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So let's see, I started writing it in June of 20
.
And we had a newborn at thetime.
But it was also the pandemic,which is kind of a blessing,
because we had no socialobligations and newborns are
much easier than toddlers in alot of when it comes to writing
books, because newborns kind ofchill and toddlers are
(01:03):
everywhere.
So I just finished the draft,the first draft of a next book.
That one was a little bitharder because there's a lot
more going on these days.
Um, but this one took from likejune of 20 and I didn't turn it
in until the due date ofnovember 1st of 20.
But I was done with writing bylike august and just like passed
(01:24):
it.
Yeah, I, I gotta work fast.
Uh, because if if I let it go,I let it, I'm gonna let
something like that go and notreally get back to it.
So I took like two or threemonths to write it and then um
passed it around to a bunch offolks to get their input and
then made some substantive editsbefore I turned it in.
So that was about the same withthis one.
I got this next one, which Iknow we're not talking about,
but I started in August andfinished.
(01:46):
I just finished last week, so,and then I'm going to pass it
around to get some feedbackbefore I turn it in.
So yeah it's, I've learned.
I've learned that it's best ifanyone who likes to ride or
whatever out there I've learnedfor me and everybody's different
it's best to just like crank itout and not edit yourself, not
worry about that, and then justcome back later and fix it all
(02:07):
up and be like what was Ithinking?
That sounds really silly, orwhatever, rather than try to
make it perfect on the firstpass, because you'll never
finish if you try to do that.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
No, yeah, I would be.
I would totally be that way.
Okay, so your terms of servicebook.
What led you to want to evenwrite a book about social media?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So I have worked in social media my whole career.
I'm just 31.
So I only started working inthe real world in 2013.
But I grew up in a home thatwas kind of inundated with
technology.
So my dad worked for IBMvirtually my whole young life.
He started in 1982 or so andworked there until I was a
(02:51):
senior in high school, andwhat's funny is he was working
from home a good bit of thattime.
So I experienced my dad workingfrom home long before it was
cool.
My dad working from home longbefore it was cool, uh and uh.
The, a local newspaper in 1993,did a story.
Like joe martin works from home, he's one of a million
americans who have a secondphone line in their house.
(03:13):
His son, christopher, can siton his lap while he takes phone
calls, um and uh.
So yeah, it was really funny.
But so like, so we had, uh, wehad a windows 95 machine in 1995
.
And I was hanging out on theinternet before most of my
friends at school in first gradehad the internet and so, yeah,
(03:35):
so I've always been justinterested in this stuff and
never super tech.
I was never taking computersapart and putting them back
together or anything like that,but I was always very interested
in the social part of theinternet, which that's really
what makes it kind of magicaland terrible in some ways, and
so I've always loved it.
I wrote a blog when I was inhigh school and was super active
(03:55):
on MySpace and then Facebookwhen it came to high school and
then in college I startedworking for a marketing company,
even though I was getting adegree in Bible, but I had a lot
of experience running socialmedia and writing on the
internet.
So I started working for amarketing company while I was a
college student, running somesocial media accounts for some
obscure companies, and thenstarted at Lifeway right out of
(04:15):
college and basically for sevenyears while I was there worked
in a variety of social mediarelated roles, with my final one
before I left, being kind ofhead of social at Lifeway, and
so that was a lot of work at avery tumultuous time both in the
life of the organization and inthe world.
So I was like you know well, itwas around that time I decided
I want to do something not sosocial media related, which is
(04:37):
why I'm at Moody Publishers nowdoing a little bit more offline
work, I suppose you could say.
But it was around 2017, 2018,toward the end of my time at
Lifeway when I first started toask questions like man, what is
social media doing to us?
I was spending my days 40 hours,50 hours a week trying to
(04:58):
figure out how to best Doingcontent strategy that's the best
way to describe it Figuring outhow do we use social media to
serve people with the good newsand with helpful Christian
resources I work for the largestChristian resource company in
the world, arguably and it waskind of like how do we People
buy our print stuff all the time?
(05:18):
How can we use the internetbest to serve people online?
And that's what my daysrevolved around, which was super
fun, and I still get to do alittle bit of that even today.
But while I was doing all thatstrategy talk, I also started
asking is this all good?
Where is this?
Is it even neutral?
How is this affecting us andhow is this changing more than
(05:40):
even just the media that liveson these platforms?
I started asking what's thetechnology that lives under the
media, the algorithms, and likewhat are these things?
How are they reshaping how wethink?
How are they reshaping how weview the world?
And so it was around that time afriend recommended to me
amusing ourselves to death byNeil Postman, which is a book
that was written in 1985 by NeilPostman, who's a professor of
(06:02):
media ecology, which is just afascinating discipline at NYU,
and it's his most famous book.
He's written a handful of booksbut it really focuses on the
revolution of the television andhow the television was changing
entertainment habits.
And really the title of thebook is apt how he talked about
how we were amusing ourselves todeath back in the 1980s.
(06:25):
He talks a lot about howeverybody was afraid of George
Orwell's 1984 big brother.
The government's going to comeinto your house and put cameras
in your house and make you watchTV and you're going to be
forced into this sort ofsurveillance state.
And he said, frankly, I thinkAldous Huxley's vision of the
(06:51):
future in Brave New World, whichis another dystopian novel
released around the same time as1984.
He said I think Huxley's novelis more apt, that in Brave New
World what people loved, whatpeople consumed and what they
embraced is what was ultimatelytheir demise, whereas in 1984,
it was like this outside forceimpinging upon you and and like
restricting your freedom.
And he was like, honestly, Ithink our, our willing embrace
(07:12):
of new technology is actuallygoing to undermine us more than
this sort of um you know,malicious force coming in from
the outside.
And man, when I was readingamusing, I was like this book
was written in 1985 and it couldnot be more relevant for 2017,
back when I was first reading it.
And so I started thinking, likewhat?
Neil Postman is not aroundtoday.
(07:33):
He died in the early 2000s andhe wasn't a Christian, but he
was sympathetic toward Christianideas and spoke to Christian
groups and really faith groupspretty regularly, despite kind
of being a secular Jewish manhimself.
And so I was like what, if?
Like what would happen?
What would it be like if NeilPostman were around today?
And he was addressing socialmedia and he was doing so from a
(07:56):
Christian perspective?
I was like I'd really love toread somebody who was doing that
kind of thing, and I wasfrankly having a hard time
finding anybody doing.
I've since learned of a handfulof people who are doing that
sort of thing and I was franklyhaving a hard time finding
anybody doing that.
I've since learned of a handfulof people who are doing that
sort of thing, but back in 2017,2018, I didn't know anyone
writing about internet culturefrom a Christian perspective,
(08:16):
and so I was like, well, I'll doit because it's super
interesting to me and I'vereally bathed in this space.
And so I started writing at afew different outlets about kind
of internet culture and thesocial internet, social media,
from a Christian perspective,and then launched my own
newsletter around the end of2019, beginning of 2020 in that
vein and out of that, decided topursue a book project on it,
(08:39):
and that's kind of theroundabout way of how this came
to be the long story, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Fascinating, so fascinating.
So I'm looking at the table ofcontents in your book and I just
love how it's laid out.
So there's three parts how wegot here, the five ways the
social internet shapes us andwhere do we go from here.
So how did the social internetevolve and how do you think it
(09:06):
affects our lives?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh man Um read the book.
Uh, yeah, uh, this is a podcastseries, right, we're here for
about three hours.
Um, so, uh, how did the socialinternet evolve with that?
That's the first chapter of thebook, and it's funny because it
was the hardest chapter towrite, because it required a lot
of research.
So I thought, you know, I waslike, if I'm writing a book
(09:29):
about social media, the socialInternet and, if you want, I use
those terms sort ofinterchangeably, but they're
different and we can talk aboutthat if you want.
But how did the social Internetevolve is an important question
, because I don't want to assumethat all of us know how we got
here, right?
Because anyone picking up thisbook or even listening to this
podcast, maybe 20 or 35 or 55 or65.
(09:52):
And for some of us the internetdidn't really come around until
we were adults and had children.
But for some of us, like me, Iwas logging on to Nickelodeoncom
when I was in first grade tosee what the website of my
favorite TV channel looked like,like, wow, nickelodeon has a
website, what must that be like?
And so I was doing that when Iwas in first grade, and so
everybody has a differentexperience.
(10:12):
So I was like man, if I'm goingto write a book about how all
this stuff is shaping us.
I feel like I should get us onsome shared ground of
understanding the history of howwe got here, and so the first
chapter required a lot ofresearch because I experienced
it.
I was a kid in the 90s and Iremember getting 15 AOL trial
(10:33):
disks to my house that we neverwere allowed to use because IBM
had their own internet serviceand my dad was like we get that
for free, I'm not paying $30 amonth for AOL or whatever it
costs.
So I never got to have AOLmyself.
But I always remember gettingthose trial disks and I remember
logging on to MySpace for thefirst time and what that
(10:53):
experience was like.
I remember what it was like tohave MySpace as a middle
schooler, which was precarious,but also like a lifeline to
friends at the same time, likeafter school.
So anyway, the first school,and so anyway I, the first
chapter is really yeah, how didthe social internet evolve?
How did we get here?
And and I've been told it'sfunny, I I've gotten more good
(11:14):
feedback about that chapter thanany other chat.
I was like is anybody going tothink this is interesting?
Like it's really interesting tome to think about and and read
about how MySpace tried to buyFacebook for billions of dollars
or millions of dollars, andthen Facebook said no, sorry,
we're not going to do that andin fact we're going to 10x the
price for you to buy us.
It's interesting to read up andthink about that kind of stuff,
(11:37):
but I don't know if anybodyelse would like it.
So a lot of people seem to likereading history of the internet
, and that's what that's allabout.
But how does it affect us?
Man?
Much attention we get, I thinkit changes us.
It makes us willing to give upreally, really intimate details
(12:09):
about ourselves that we would.
If you told parents 15 yearsago that it would be totally
normal to post pictures of yourchildren on the internet, they
would have told you you werecrazy.
But today my wife and I havedecided we're not posting
pictures of our daughter on theInternet for a while until she's
older.
And people have kind of feltlike that we're weird for doing
(12:30):
that and it's like man, itreally hasn't been that long
that that swung from.
You're weird if you do this to,you're weird if you don't do
this, and so that kind of thing.
I think it makes us want topursue affirmation instead of
truth, like we want to have ourbacks scratched more than we
want to be told what the truthis, and I think that can be a
(12:51):
problem.
I think we've seen that a lotin sort of misinformation and
how we're so easily led astrayby things that we agree with but
may not be true, and I think itleaves us to try to destroy
people we don't like.
Like people who just actobjectionably, like people who
say things that we think aremean or even inappropriate and
they may be mean andinappropriate I'm not saying
(13:12):
that they're not but I do thinkthat we've kind of taken this
call it cancel culture orwhatever you want People have
different names for it takenthis mantle upon ourselves to
police the conduct of otherpeople, and and that I am very
concerned about how mobmentalities are so prevalent on
the internet and I and I thinkit's such an interesting
phenomenon and, frankly, a scaryone, and I think we just need
(13:34):
to maybe a bit more graciouswith people.
But those are, those are a fewways I think it.
It shapes us and and I get intoa lot of that in the in the
book, but really the thrust ofthe book is some folks, when I
have conversations like this,it's like well, so you hate
social media?
You just think it's all bad.
No, no, no, no, no.
I work in social media.
I have my entire career andit's burned me pretty bad
(13:57):
personally and professionally.
It's really been a source ofstress in my life.
However, I don't think it's allbad and I don't think you fix
the problems of the socialinternet by just logging off or
deleting your accounts.
Now, I do think that can be ahelpful step for folks to take
if they're recognizing reallyhaving an unhealthy relationship
with these platforms.
(14:19):
But I think if we have thisidea that, oh, if we just
boycott Facebook or delete ouraccounts, that it'll all just go
away, I just think that'sfoolish and I think there's good
on there.
I just Kind of the main pointof the book and all of my
writing, whether in the book ornewsletter or otherwise, is not
stop using this stuff.
It's bad so much as hey.
(14:40):
Let's use this stuff morecritically.
Let's use this stuff with ourcritical thinking hats on, not
just passively.
In every free five minutes wehave in our day, we should be
asking a question like whatproblem does Instagram solve in
my life?
What is Facebook doing for memore than what am I doing for
(15:02):
Facebook?
Because I think one of thebiggest problems is these
platforms were ostensiblypitched to us as tools to help
our lives be better, and Ireally think we've come to serve
these platforms more than theseplatforms serve us, and that's
kind of the heart of what I'mnot trying to get everybody to
log off, as healthy as that maybe.
I think there is a good thing,good redemptive stuff there.
(15:25):
I think that the goal would belet's just think more clearly
and ask harder questions ofthese platforms as we use them.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I have so many questions.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
So, just for that one , let's start with what you just
said, and then I need to gobackwards to a couple of things.
But what do you think socialmedia does for us?
What should it be that it givesto our lives?
So the way you just said itremind me of how you worded it.
What is Facebook doing for meinstead of what I'm doing for
(16:01):
Facebook?
Is that how you said?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
it.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, what should Facebook be doing?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
for Facebook Is that how you said it.
Yeah, what should Facebook bedoing for us?
I think, well, I have my ownqualms with Facebook.
I think some of it's, actuallysome of the goals of Facebook,
aren't inherently things that weshould pursue.
I don't know that we should beconnected with everybody across
the world.
I just don't know if that's apositive thing.
I think we've seen a lot ofnegative effects of that um.
But I think what should theseplatforms let's just talk about
(16:27):
social media generally like andI think different platforms have
different purposes um, like Ijust did, I just wrote a
newsletter for next tuesday ondating apps and the dominance of
dating apps.
Like I don't, dating apps aresocial media.
People don't usually think ofthem that way, but they are.
They like, through and through,dating apps or social media um
that are just predicated onconnecting people romantically
(16:47):
rather than platonically or likeprofessionally or whatever else
, and so like, and I don't thinkdating apps are bad.
Like I, the point of the piecethat I wrote is really just how
dominant they are and how a lotof the friends I've talked to
begrudgingly use them, and withvaried levels of success, and so
I think every social mediaplatform kind of has a different
(17:09):
promise or a different goal,and so it varies, but I think
using social media platformswhether it's YouTube, instagram,
facebook as a means ofentertainment is totally within
bounds.
I think that's totally fine.
I think, in inappropriatemeasure, in the same way that we
don't you know, my parentsdidn't want me sitting in front
of my PlayStation or thetelevision for six hours on end,
(17:33):
like we probably.
You know, I don't think it'swrong to use social media to be
entertained.
I think that's totallyappropriate.
I do think that we should be uh, be interested in how long
we're doing that.
I think screen time is animportant thing to track, and
particularly like what.
What apps we're giving ourscreen time is an important
thing to track, and particularlywhat apps we're giving our
screen time to more than justusing a screen, because I think
(17:53):
they're not all.
Screen time is created equally,I guess, is how I would say it,
and so I think using theplatforms to be entertained is
totally cool.
I think using the platforms toconnect with people across the
world is really helpful.
There are friends who Iconsider friends, that 80% of
our relationship is maintainedby some form of social media,
and I only see them a few timesa year, for a few days, and the
(18:18):
rest of our relationship ismediated by varied social media.
I think that's good.
I think that's a common graceof social media platforms.
So I think there is a lot ofgood there and I think that they
can be great modes ofentertainment and modes of
keeping connection with people.
I think it's when we let themoverextend beyond those uses
(18:38):
that we um, that we start toserve them rather than them
serving us.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Hmm, going back to, how did social media or how did
social internet evolve?
Was it just, how do I say it?
Was it always going to happen?
Like, whoever did it, someonewould have done it If it hadn't
have been Mark Zuckerberg or theguy that did MySpace.
(19:04):
Was it Tom?
Was Tom the creator of MySpace?
Tom, tom, oh Tom.
And so what would you say waskind of the predicating factor,
like the biggest shift thathappened between the 1980s to
now.
That changed everything.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
What a great question .
Is it funny?
Yeah, myspace Tom is the onewho did all this right the way
everybody loves to like.
Some people like to dog.
Myspace tom like, oh man does.
Wouldn't myspace tom like to bemark zuckerberg?
Uh no, he's like a wildlifephotographer living in hawaii.
He got out at the right time,before everybody started talking
(19:44):
about how social media wasdismantling society.
Right like he, he made his fewhundred million dollars and was
like I'm out.
So yeah, MySpaceTime is alwaysa fun little example.
But so how did this stuffevolve?
The internet's always beensocial and let me say you talked
about social internet, socialmedia.
I want to clarify this, and Iused social internet more than
(20:05):
social media throughout the book, intentionally for this reason.
Postman talked about thedifference between a technology
and a medium.
A technology is like we allknow what a technology is it's
the ones and zeros, the code,the stuff that undergird, like
the architecture of the internet.
Um, it would be the engine ofyour car.
(20:28):
That's the technology.
The media, or a medium, is theway you use a technology to
create culture.
So the television is thetechnology.
The television program, thenews show, the reality show, the
sports thing those are allmedia that uses the technology
(20:48):
of the television to createculture.
Social internet and socialmedia are different things.
Now I do use theminterchangeably within the book
to help the reader, becausesocial internet is a very rare
term, social media much morecommon.
If I say social media, a fewapps pop into your head and my
head that litter our phonescreens.
But social internet?
(21:09):
Using the term social internet,what I'm interested in is when
we often conversations we haveabout social media are like oh,
like funny cat videos and youprobably shouldn't be looking at
that kind of thing on Instagram.
Or like be careful of how muchtime you spend on TikTok.
Or like we think of individualpieces of media we consume.
And I really want us to thinkas we think about our
(21:31):
relationship with social media.
I want us to be thinking moreas much about the technologies,
the algorithms, the math thatserves us up that media.
How does the actual technologyshape us beyond just the goofy
cat videos or the salaciousInstagram posts or whatever else
(21:51):
?
So, anyway, I want to broadenour understanding and that's why
I use that terminology.
The reason it's social yeah, itwas always going to be social.
So to your question, like itwas always going to be social
because it really has been fromthe beginning.
I mean email really existedbefore our modern social
internet and email is inherentlysocial.
I mean the internet was createdto connect researchers to be
(22:12):
able to share information aroundthe cold war so that, like if
russia was going to nuke us,they could share information
super quickly that's, that's howthe fascinating yeah, that's
how.
That's how the first computernetworks were were connected was
so that government agencies andresearch institutions could be
sharing data really fast for thetime anyway.
And so then, once you got intothe 90s, the walled gardens
(22:39):
cropped up.
Aol was a walled garden.
It was like you weren't openingup a web browser and typing in
wwwwhatever.
That came in the late 90s.
It was in the mid 90s where wegot the walled gardens, where
you'd open up comp, you serve,or you'd open up prodigy or
you'd open up aol, and it waslike you had to type in a
(23:00):
keyword to get to a certain spot, like you weren't just browsing
on the web.
Wherever you wanted, there werelike certain places you could
go.
You could go to AOL's chatrooms.
You couldn't hop onto someother.
If you're using AOL.
You could only use AOL's chatrooms.
You couldn't hop into someother places, chats, um, and so
those were the walled gardens,and the reason social blew up is
(23:20):
because, um, frankly, I thinkwe were just destined to use the
internet to connect with otherpeople.
Like it's just human nature.
And and I think, aol mailing Imean when AOL was at its peak it
was the.
It was producing more compactdiscs than any music industry in
(23:42):
the world, right.
So like AOL had more compactdiscs for its trial, for its
free 14 day trials or 30 daytrials, than any music producer
at the height of CDs.
And so AOL got everybody onlineNot I mean America, but they
got America online truly.
And at the center of AOL'sexperience was its chat and
(24:07):
social experiences and reallyAOL primed us all.
There's a great book called theAttention Merchants by Tim Wu.
It was written a number ofyears ago but it's still very
relevant and that's where a lotof my research for the early
stages of the internet came from, and he talks a lot about how
AOL was integral to what wewould call the modern social
(24:27):
internet, because it just laidso much of the groundwork for
our desire to use the internetto connect to other people.
Some of the other walledgardens, like CompuServe or
Prodigy, were focused on onlineshopping, which at the time it
wasn't successful because peoplewere afraid to put their credit
cards into the internet andthings like that.
Or it was more geared towardlike super smart computer nerds.
(24:50):
Aol was like super easy to useand focused on connecting with
other people and that reallykind of ushered in what came
afterward and, yeah, we havewhat we have.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Did you do any research on the way that our
social media habits affect ourbrains, like dopamine levels or
other different types ofhormones, or mental health or
anything like that?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
There's so much data and science to show that social
media is designed to beaddictive, and the founders and
creators of the modern platformswe use, like Mark Zuckerberg of
facebook and evan spiegel ofinstagram, have said as much
like they've.
They have, uh, explicitly saidthat these programs were
(25:37):
designed to get us addicted.
Let's say, justin timberlake um, uh, I love justin timberlake.
I was gonna make a joke, butI'm not.
Uh, he's awesome.
I love him.
He is his character.
Is Sean Parker, like he playsSean Parker, the first president
of Facebook?
Well, the real life, seanParker is on record saying this
(26:00):
in an interview in 2017.
He said the thought processthat went into building these
applications.
So just imagine JustinTimberlake saying this all right
, no-transcript validation,feedback loop Exactly the kind
(26:35):
of thing that a hacker likemyself would come up with
because you were exploiting avulnerability in human
psychology.
The inventors or creators me,mark Zuckerberg, kevin Systrom
of Instagram, it's all of thesepeople understood this
consciously and we did it anyway.
So that guy, sean Parker orJustin Timberlake also created
(26:58):
Napster.
Ironically, justin Timberlakeplayed him because he created
the platform that robbedmusicians of money, but he said
that the whole point of this wasto hook you, to keep you coming
back.
And that's how these platformsmake money, because they're free
.
The real cost of social mediais that we end up serving them
and and and giving them ourcontent and our lives as a means
(27:19):
of using them to expressourselves.
So, yeah, there's, there's somuch research out there by by
actual great psychologists aboutjust the behavioral psychology
Like it, by actual greatpsychologists about just the
behavioral psychology.
Honestly, one of the saddestthings about social media is
that some of the most brilliantminds in behavioral psychology
have kind of been focused onharvesting it for ad revenue,
(27:40):
you know, like in this way, andit's yeah, so it's a big deal
and it's very much there andpeople should be aware of it.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
What do you think about the metaverse?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
What do I think about the metaverse?
When you say metaverse, what doyou mean?
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Okay, let me just clarify this by saying I am an
extremely late adopter to anytechnology.
So, here's what I know aboutMetaverse that it is well.
I think.
I know two things Facebook hasrenamed their company, metaverse
, and they're taking a focus on,uh like, creating a virtual
(28:28):
life, and I think that that'sparalleled with what I have seen
kind of like this next leveldystopian, like the 2020 us or
the 2022 us.
The 1984 for us, I think, iskind of more of this, like
everyone's going to live theirlife through glasses, and that
(28:48):
terrifies me.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Sure, yeah.
So yeah, facebook renamed theircompany Meta to focus on the
metaverse and they're bettingthe future of the company on the
metaverse created by neilstevenson, a novelist, in his
(29:16):
book snow crash, which I'mactually in the middle of
reading right now.
It's a pretty good novel, verylike near future, dystopian.
Like what's it like to live ina in a like mediated, like
physical and virtual state likepeople live in, like if anyone's
seen ready player one or themovie or read the book?
Neil stevenson's snow crash waskind of like the precursor to
that and less focused on videogames.
Ready player one's much moreabout video games and neil
stevenson's is more just, broad.
(29:37):
Like people live in, like thelike storage centers where you
like, you know people have likethe u-haul storage center and
there's like a bunch of cubes ofstorage sheds.
Like people live in thosethings, like in this near future
, in this book, um.
And so he coined the termmetaverse in that book.
I think it was written in likethe eighties I could be confused
, it might be nineties, um andso he created the term and the
(30:00):
actual definition of a metaverse.
Well, a metaverse requires it tonot be owned by a company,
which Web 3 is like the futureof the internet.
So Web 1 is the pre-socialinternet where, like it was
called the read era, where, likewe would just be consuming
(30:20):
content from the internet, we'renot putting anything on the
internet.
That was like kind of AOL, buteven like pre-AOL AOL.
And then the first social mediaplatforms like Friendster and
MySpace ushered in Web 2.0,which is where we live right now
.
That's the read-write era ofthe internet, where you can both
consume content from theinternet and create content for
(30:42):
the internet.
That's Web 2.0.
It's been since about the late90s, 99, 2000,.
And we're still in it today.
But we're starting to see Web 3.
Web 3 is read web three and webthree is read, write and own.
So where today, like three orfour companies run the internet
right google, facebook, amazon.
(31:03):
Those three companies basicallyrun the internet in some form
or fashion.
Microsoft also to some extent,but really mostly those three
companies dominate everythingand they generate most of the
revenue and profit from all ofour activity.
They get all the money.
There's a future in Web3, wherethere's a social media platform
(31:27):
like Facebook, where I don'tthink it will be Facebook, but
something like Facebook, whereyou go on and you post something
just like you do today, butinstead of it being totally free
.
Well, it may be free, but wherethey're harvesting your data
and you don't get anything inreturn other than you just
express yourself.
Sure, there's very much afuture.
In fact, it's not really fairfor me to say future, because
(31:49):
some of these already exist.
They're just not used superwidely, where, for every like
you get, you get a quarter.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
And every comment you get, you get $0.45.
And then every share, you get$0.75.
And you actually get paid foryour content and you're a
stakeholder, which means thepeople who have created these
platforms are making less money.
They're still making money, butthey're making less money.
They're still making money, butthey're making less money and
you actually have an ownershipstake in.
(32:19):
And that's where, like, youwould be paid in a
cryptocurrency which is what allthis crypto stuff is about and
you would be paid and then youcould translate that to dollars
or whatever, whatever yourcurrency is in your country.
So the metaverse is like onepart of Web3, what I just
described and it's where,properly defined, the metaverse
(32:40):
is not owned by a company,because the whole point is to
not let a big company likeGoogle or Facebook run
everything.
So the perfect metaverse islike you go onto some website
imagine like an eBay of thefuture and you buy you really
like Jordan shoes, but you don'twant to buy them for your real
(33:01):
life feet.
You want to go buy Jordan shoesthat you can put on a digital
avatar.
Because here's the thing Ithink this is very real and I
don't think it's in three years.
I think it's probably more inlike 15 or 20 years.
But I mean today, like I hadthree meetings on Zoom today,
right, and that's just likeFaceTime, right, or like a
(33:21):
webcam experience.
I think it's very possible andlikely that in 10 to 15 years,
every employee who works fromhome or works wherever will be
issued a like VR headset inaddition to their laptop and
they'll participate in meetingsin some form of a metaverse.
But I don't think it's ametaverse purely defined.
(33:43):
I just think it's more of likea virtual conference room rather
than a zoom FaceTime experience.
Does that make sense?
So, like, we're already halfwaythere in a lot of ways?
Um, because we're alreadymeeting virtually so much today,
the, the whole coronavirusthing and remote work really
sped up this conversation.
But to get to the metaverse,kind of, as you were thinking,
(34:04):
um, I don't think facebook willrun the metaverse as much as
they want to a, because thewhole point of a metaverse is to
not have it be owned by asingular company.
So any of these companies?
First of all, the metaverse hasjust become a marketing tool
for these companies to maketheir investors think they're
thinking about the future.
It's just become a buzzwordthat it's not None of them
(34:29):
really.
They just mean that they'recreating a virtual reality
experience that they hope willmake them more money and allow
them to gather more data fromusers.
A true metaverse means you buythose virtual Air Jordans for
your online avatar and you canwear them in the Microsoft
version of the metaverse thatyou're using to go to your work
meetings.
I think genuinely I know thisis sad, kimberly, but roll with
(34:50):
me, sad Kimberly, but roll withme.
I think this is possible wheresomeone like me, a 30-year-old,
goes to work in the Microsoftmetaverse every day, where I'm
going to meetings that arevirtual avatars or whatever, and
then when I log off, I go spendtime with my family, but then
when I want to play a video gameor watch a movie, I go put the
(35:11):
same headset back on.
But instead of logging into theMicrosoft Metaverse to go to
work meetings, I log into somelike the Xbox Metaverse to play
video games with my friends.
In the same way that somebodymay work today and be on Zoom
meetings all day and then, whenthey're done, have dinner with
their family or whatever.
They've got an hour of freetime at night, they hop on
(35:32):
Fortnite with their friends andthey buy digital goods on there
like skins for their charactersor clothing items for their
characters.
But in the future, what thislooks like is those items you
buy in one metaverse for yourvirtual persona.
In your gaming metaverse, youbuy some cool shoes for your
gaming character.
You can equip those to yourpersona in your work environment
(35:57):
.
It translates across platforms.
I know this sounds very weird,but I do think it's.
Here's what I would say.
I'm not exactly excited aboutit, especially if Facebook runs
it, because Facebook has shownto be predatory on their users
throughout their history.
We didn't get into this a wholelot in our conversation, but I
(36:18):
don't have a problem with all ofthese companies, but Facebook
has repeatedly taken advantageof user trust to harvest data in
some pretty predatory ways,lied about it and then not
really apologized when they getcaught.
If anyone listening keeps up onFacebook.
Stuff like the Facebook papersfrom the fall of 2021 came out
(36:41):
and showed just how egregioustheir privacy issues are and all
of that.
So you should never trust whatFacebook says about anything.
They're the least trustworthycompany out of all of these in
my view, and I'm hoping that wedon't adopt the Facebook's
version of the future, but therewill be some version of this,
and I think it's best for us tonot wring our hands and say this
(37:02):
is so terrible because from aChristian perspective, the
church kind of did that withsocial media and now we're
decades behind in a lot of ways.
And so I think it's reallyhelpful for us to look at the
metaverse or whatever thisfuture looks like and say, well,
it's not all great and therecould be a lot of problems, but
how can we learn to be faithfulin this space and minister to
(37:24):
people in this space, whateverthat looks like and whatever
form that takes, rather thanjust say oh, it's so bad, it's
so terrible, and just ignore it,because I think we're going to
end up missing out on realopportunities to serve people
with the good news and servepeople just in general if we
just write it off.
So I would encourage people notto be alarmed or overly
(37:45):
optimistic, but to kind of keeptabs and learn and not let
ourselves be taken off guard ifthis is a real big thing in a
decade or two, and learn and notlet ourselves be taken off
guard if this is a real bigthing in a decade or two.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
So here's what scares me about this whole metaverse
thing.
So much of healthyrelationships involves
face-to-face, like reading aperson's emotions, touch, like
(38:17):
the human touch, and that cannever be replicated in a VR
headset or a Zoom meeting, rightLike that's part of what is
also the struggle of a lot ofpeople right now feeling lonely,
isolated.
You can join 18 Zoom meetingsin a day, but if there's no one
to hug you at the end of it,that's still lonely, and so I
hear what you're saying.
(38:37):
I'm going to be a late adopterI always am anyway but I think
my fear is what stops peoplefrom just becoming so addicted
and living their life throughthis thing.
But then also the other thing Iwanted to ask you about Web 3.0
is did I understand it right?
Not from you, but fromsomething else.
I read that, um, people wouldalso pay, so like if I had a
(39:03):
page, then people would pay tobe able to follow me Totally.
How does that not makeeverything worse?
Like we're already strugglingwith self-esteem and all of that
, and now like would people payto follow me?
I don't even want to have tothink of that question.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely part of it.
In fact, it's already on someplatforms.
Right now you can pay to followsomebody on Twitter, to have
greater access to somebody onTwitter, it's called a super
follow.
You can pay five bucks a monthor whatever they set their rate
at, and then you can like haveaccess to slide into their DMs
or whatever.
Like you can have a greaterlevel access.
So that's already kind of hereand it will definitely come in.
(39:46):
Yes, it exacerbates the problem.
I think.
I don't think distributing thewealth among everybody solves
the problems with social media.
Frankly, I think it'd be goodfor us to all.
Maybe if we have a post thatdoes really well, it'd be great
to make 20 bucks from it, but Idon't think that solves our
deeper problems.
Um, and I agree with you, uh,on the on the intimacy and the
embodied presence part I.
(40:06):
I think it's a huge problemwith the future.
Uh, I do think I.
I do think that in a lot ofconversations I've had about
this, people assume we're goingto go from zero to 100, where
none of us are really using VRor the metaverse right now,
outside of people whooccasionally play some games in
there or whatever.
It's a very small portion ofpeople who are actually using it
, yeah, like regularly.
(40:28):
And I think it's a little bitof a jump to say we're going to
go from not and I'm, I'm anearly adopter in a lot of ways
of a lot of things and uh, likeI don't even have a headset yet
or whatever, and I I'm not goingto go from, like, never using
it to always wanting to live init.
I do think that could happenquite quickly, given how we've
so quickly adopted othertechnologies.
(40:48):
Um, but I I think there's moreof a situation where, like,
somebody will be, instead oflooking at a camera at Zoom
meetings all day.
They'll be on a headset withZoom meetings all day.
They may not want to spend anytime in it afterward, but they
are using it regularly for thathuman embodiment and touch and
(41:12):
interaction.
I agree with you, obviously,100.
My fear, my, my biggest fear,is that we start to lose our
taste for that.
Um, one of the biggest problemsI have with social media, or
bigger problems I see, not withsocial, but more with like, not
(41:32):
with social media, but more withour relationship with social
media one of my biggest concerns, I think part of the reason we
find social media so appealingand you'll appreciate this,
given what you do and the natureof your podcast, and I think
hopefully folks listening willappreciate, will understand this
what social media offers uswhether it does or not is
(41:53):
another question, but what itoffers us is a feeling of being
loved and appreciated withoutthe fear of vulnerability and
intimacy.
So social media offers usunlimited ability to feel padded
on the back, to feel encouraged.
Perhaps we even get DMs frompeople that if we're single
(42:18):
might be flattering but if we'remarried might be.
Like I'm married.
We have the ability to feelothers' affection quite easily
on the internet without everhaving to be truly known by them
, and for a lot of reasons.
I think part of the reasonsocial media is so beyond the
brain psychology and dopaminehacking stuff we talked about, I
(42:41):
think part of the reason socialmedia is so appealing to folks
is it offers the ability toexperience affection without the
fear and vulnerability of trueintimacy.
With true intimacy comesvulnerability, um, and I think a
lot of folks fear.
True, we want to be loved, butwe're afraid to be known.
(43:02):
Keller talks about this a bitin meaning of marriage, that
that, uh, in marriage sometimeswe're, we're, um, we're.
We want to be loved, but we'reafraid to truly show ourselves
and truly be known.
And I think the internet, thesocial internet and our various
social media platforms justoffer such an easy form of
(43:22):
feeling like we're loved withoutfeeling like we ever have to be
truly known.
So my fear, kimberly, is thatif this progresses, because
we're already experiencing thatsort of like disembodiment and
wanting relationship withoutintimacy and without touch,
we're already headed down thatroad in some really troubling
(43:44):
ways.
And what will be interesting tosee?
When this inevitably comesbecause we can't stop it like
it's going to happen and perhapsin our lifetimes maybe not,
maybe things slow down, but itlooks like it's going to happen
within the next 20 years.
If that happens, what will beinteresting to see is do we lean
(44:07):
into this and do people startto forsake any interest in
wanting true intimacy becauseit's just so hard and so messy
and so vulnerable and scary, orthat would be a worst case
scenario.
Or do we get to this VR,metaverse, screen, mediated
future and we realize howterrible it is collectively,
some of us, I hope, would stillbe holdouts even if a lot of
(44:30):
other people adopted it.
But what if, collectively, werealize, oh man, this promised
future of screen-mediated livingthat everybody talked about
being awesome.
It is not.
It it's terrible.
Then we recoil and maybe wereclaim the importance and
vitality of true embodiedintimacy.
(44:51):
That would be a glorious,wonderful revelation and
experience.
But I think it's just going tobe interesting to see what
happens when that inevitablycomes.
Which way will we swing?
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
It's interesting because as much flack as
Facebook has gotten I mean forthe past several years, but even
just this past year peoplestill don't get off of it.
There are some right Like,there's some that do, and all of
that, but overall we still useit with all of its known issues,
all of its predatory behaviorsand everything.
(45:28):
And so that's what I think ofwhen I think of, like would we
actually get to a point at somepoint in some time with some
kind of virtual tech that we sayno, like we're really done?
Can we overcome the addictioncollectively?
Speaker 2 (45:44):
And it's.
You know, I hesitate to eversay like we're all addicted to
social media because it'ssweeping and again, I'm not a
psychologist, I can't diagnosethis.
But the best way to know ifyou're addicted to something, I
think just like practicallyspeaking, is if you keep using
it and keep doing it, despitehating it.
(46:06):
I mean, it's exactly what youjust described.
If we find ourselves I keepgoing back to this, I keep doing
it and I hate it, I hate whatit does to me, I hate the way it
makes me feel, I hate who I amwhen I'm on it, um, I think
that's as sure a sign as anythat maybe do here for ourselves
now, in the space that we're in.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
I don't even know how to finish this sentence.
Yeah, what do we do?
What do we do?
That's the question.
What do we?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
do.
Yeah, I think I'm going toshare another concern I have on
the way to saying what I thinkwe do.
I think I'm going to shareanother concern I have on the
way to saying what I think we do.
I think another kind of deep,like undercurrent concern that I
have is that online life hasbecome primary and offline life
(47:07):
has become secondary.
It used to be that whathappened on the Internet flowed
downstream from what happenedoff of the internet.
The internet reflected whathappened in the real world quote
, unquote real world, as if theinternet wasn't real.
What we need to realize is thatan unfortunate shift has
(47:40):
happened, that we have startedto look at the online life as
primary and the offline life assecondary.
We've started to see ouroffline lives as a means of
harvesting content for who wewant to present ourselves to be
online.
Bo Burnham is a famous comedianand entertainer and director.
(48:02):
He has a special on Netflixcalled Inside that came out in
late 2020 or mid-2021,.
I want to say and it's very,quite vulgar, I need to say up
front, and so I can't likeexplicitly recommend it because
it's there are definitely thingsin there that are objectionable
(48:22):
.
However, it is incrediblyinsightful to where we're at
with a lot of this stuff.
And and he actually directed amovie called Eighth Grade a
number of years ago whichdepicts the eighth grade
experience very accurately, andwhen he was giving an interview
around what it's like to be amodern eighth grader, he did
(48:43):
this movie.
All the eighth graders in themovie are actually eighth
graders and what's funny is themovie's rated R but it depicts
the eighth grade experience andit's a rated R movie but it's
like, yeah, the eighth gradeexperience is pretty rated R
these days and so it's kind offunny that an eighth grader
couldn't actually go see a movieabout their own experience.
But anyway, he says this and Ithink, but also taking inventory
(49:17):
and being a viewer of your ownlife, like living an experience
at the same time, hoveringbehind yourself and watching
yourself live that experience,being nostalgic for moments that
haven't happened yet, planningyour future to look back on it,
these are all really weirddissociative things that I think
are new because of the specificstructure of social media and
how it dissociates ourselvesfrom ourselves, and I think it's
(49:40):
a really kind of pertinentpoint that he says later.
He actually says this in Insidethat comedy special.
I talked about world, thenon-digital world.
So the offline world is merelya theatrical space in which one
stages and records content forthe much more real, much more
(50:01):
vital digital space.
And you just think, like,people go on vacations because
it creates great Instagramcontent, or they design their
wedding specifically with thehashtag in mind, or things like
that.
So where do we go from here?
I think we reverse that trend.
That's where I think we go fromhere.
I don't think logging off anddeleting your accounts fixes the
(50:21):
problem.
Now, that may help you withyour addiction, like if you're
finding you're enslaved, thatcan help.
You're still going to hearabout what happened on Facebook
or what happened on Twitter orwhatever else, because your
friends are going to talk aboutit, the news will talk about it
or whatever.
You can't escape it.
It's the water in which we swim.
We can only try to swim aswisely as we can, I suppose you
could say and put our gas maskson if the water seems a bit
(50:43):
toxic sometimes.
So I think what we do is we rootourselves in the real, in the
offline, and that looks likegoing for walks and maybe not
taking your phone.
Or if, for safety, you want totake your phone, you just don't
take headphones and you keepyour phone in your pocket.
I think it looks like studyinghistory and trying to learn what
was life like before I had mynose in my phone all the time.
(51:06):
I think it looks like havingreal friendships, that you meet
with people real life, in person.
In the same way, you describethe importance of an embodied
presence.
I think it looks like havingaccountability with friendships,
who, people who can ask you howyour, how your faith life is
going and how, uh, how yourrelationship with your spouse is
going, how your relationshipwith your phone is going.
(51:30):
I think it's.
It's about like letting peopleinto your life and not fearing
intimacy and the vulnerabilitythat comes with that Um and and
so I think it's.
I think it's a handful ofthings.
Really, what it comes down to,in my view, is letting who you
are on the internet and what youdo on the internet take a
backseat to what you do offline.
And that might sound simple andit might sound ridiculous that
anybody would let their onlinelives govern who they are
(51:54):
offline, but I think enough ofus probably realize how easily
that can happen and maybe werealize how it's happened in
some ways in our own life.
So, yeah, I think we just tryto reclaim our offline lives and
make them primary, rather thanour online lives primary.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
I love it.
Chris Martin, his book is Termsof Service the Real Cost of
Social Media.
Fantastic conversation, oh mygoodness.
I loved every minute.
Could ask you 1800 morequestions if you're listening.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
look, it's not like a fun butterflies and rainbows
conversation.
I understand.
If you want to be encouraged,call me up, hit me up on Twitter
.
I give you an encouraging word.
But I think it's important forus to just be honest about this
stuff, and I think a lot of usare pretty well acquainted with
(52:47):
how social media can be fun.
I think we get that.
We've all had some fun there.
Look, tiktok is my favoriteplatform right now and I'm kind
of ashamed of it, but there areso many talented people that are
hilarious and very good atsinging or whatever.
But I think we would all bebetter off if we started to take
a more sobering look.
So I hope it's not been toodiscouraging for any of you guys
(53:07):
.
But yeah, that's what I hope todo here.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
That's good.
Now where can people find youFind the book?
I know it's on Amazon.
Is that where you prefer peoplebuy it?
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah, I really care what folks buy, when people buy
wherever they like to buy books.
Honestly, buy wherever you canget the best price.
Like I don't care.
I'm not not trying to buy aboat or anything like that.
I just want anybody to.
I just I just want anybody tobe helped by the book that can
that can be helped by it, helpedby the book that can be helped
by it.
So, yeah, find it.
It's on Amazon, I think.
Anywhere you want to buy a bookyou should be able to find it.
(53:39):
Barnes and Noble, all thosedifferent sites,
christianbookcom, I think I sawthey had the best deal the other
day, so you can find one there.
And on social media, twitter isthe primary place I engage with
folks that I don't knowpersonally.
So I tend to reserve Facebookand Instagram for folks I
actually know in real life, gofigure.
(53:59):
But then Twitter is kind of myoutpost, my perch to the wider
world.
So I'm on Twitter atChrisMartin17.
And you can find me there.
I love chatting about thisstuff with folks and DMing about
it or emailing or whatever.
So don't hesitate to reach outand happy to talk about whatever
.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Awesome.
Thank you so much for beingwith us today.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Of course, thanks for having me.
Chris, I am very excited to talk to you today
about your new book that youhave, but also about the
experience that you've had.
We were chatting just beforethis, so our listeners know
you've had quite an experiencewith social media, just
professionally, and had a lot ofinteraction with the craziness
of service, and so we're goingto be talking about it today and
(00:23):
I love the tagline the realcost of social media.
This is a topic I have a lot offeels about.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Good, good, I do too believe it, or not?
So many that I wrote a 224-pagebook about it.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
How long did it take you?
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So let's see, I started writing it in June of 20
.
And we had a newborn at thetime.
But it was also the pandemic,which is kind of a blessing,
because we had no socialobligations and newborns are
much easier than toddlers in alot of when it comes to writing
books, because newborns kind ofchill and toddlers are
(01:03):
everywhere.
So I just finished the draft,the first draft of a next book.
That one was a little bitharder because there's a lot
more going on these days.
Um, but this one took from likejune of 20 and I didn't turn it
in until the due date ofnovember 1st of 20.
But I was done with writing bylike august and just like passed
(01:24):
it.
Yeah, I, I gotta work fast.
Uh, because if if I let it go,I let it, I'm gonna let
something like that go and notreally get back to it.
So I took like two or threemonths to write it and then um
passed it around to a bunch offolks to get their input and
then made some substantive editsbefore I turned it in.
So that was about the same withthis one.
I got this next one, which Iknow we're not talking about,
but I started in August andfinished.
(01:46):
I just finished last week, so,and then I'm going to pass it
around to get some feedbackbefore I turn it in.
So yeah it's, I've learned.
I've learned that it's best ifanyone who likes to ride or
whatever out there I've learnedfor me and everybody's different
it's best to just like crank itout and not edit yourself, not
worry about that, and then justcome back later and fix it all
(02:07):
up and be like what was Ithinking?
That sounds really silly, orwhatever, rather than try to
make it perfect on the firstpass, because you'll never
finish if you try to do that.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
No, yeah, I would be.
I would totally be that way.
Okay, so your terms of servicebook.
What led you to want to evenwrite a book about social media?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
So I have worked in social media my whole career.
I'm just 31.
So I only started working inthe real world in 2013.
But I grew up in a home thatwas kind of inundated with
technology.
So my dad worked for IBMvirtually my whole young life.
He started in 1982 or so andworked there until I was a
(02:51):
senior in high school, andwhat's funny is he was working
from home a good bit of thattime.
So I experienced my dad workingfrom home long before it was
cool.
My dad working from home longbefore it was cool, uh and uh.
The, a local newspaper in 1993,did a story.
Like joe martin works from home, he's one of a million
americans who have a secondphone line in their house.
(03:13):
His son, christopher, can siton his lap while he takes phone
calls, um and uh.
So yeah, it was really funny.
But so like, so we had, uh, wehad a windows 95 machine in 1995
.
And I was hanging out on theinternet before most of my
friends at school in first gradehad the internet and so, yeah,
(03:35):
so I've always been justinterested in this stuff and
never super tech.
I was never taking computersapart and putting them back
together or anything like that,but I was always very interested
in the social part of theinternet, which that's really
what makes it kind of magicaland terrible in some ways, and
so I've always loved it.
I wrote a blog when I was inhigh school and was super active
(03:55):
on MySpace and then Facebookwhen it came to high school and
then in college I startedworking for a marketing company,
even though I was getting adegree in Bible, but I had a lot
of experience running socialmedia and writing on the
internet.
So I started working for amarketing company while I was a
college student, running somesocial media accounts for some
obscure companies, and thenstarted at Lifeway right out of
(04:15):
college and basically for sevenyears while I was there worked
in a variety of social mediarelated roles, with my final one
before I left, being kind ofhead of social at Lifeway, and
so that was a lot of work at avery tumultuous time both in the
life of the organization and inthe world.
So I was like you know well, itwas around that time I decided
I want to do something not sosocial media related, which is
(04:37):
why I'm at Moody Publishers nowdoing a little bit more offline
work, I suppose you could say.
But it was around 2017, 2018,toward the end of my time at
Lifeway when I first started toask questions like man, what is
social media doing to us?
I was spending my days 40 hours,50 hours a week trying to
(04:58):
figure out how to best Doingcontent strategy that's the best
way to describe it Figuring outhow do we use social media to
serve people with the good newsand with helpful Christian
resources I work for the largestChristian resource company in
the world, arguably and it waskind of like how do we People
buy our print stuff all the time?
(05:18):
How can we use the internetbest to serve people online?
And that's what my daysrevolved around, which was super
fun, and I still get to do alittle bit of that even today.
But while I was doing all thatstrategy talk, I also started
asking is this all good?
Where is this?
Is it even neutral?
How is this affecting us andhow is this changing more than
(05:40):
even just the media that liveson these platforms?
I started asking what's thetechnology that lives under the
media, the algorithms, and likewhat are these things?
How are they reshaping how wethink?
How are they reshaping how weview the world?
And so it was around that time afriend recommended to me
amusing ourselves to death byNeil Postman, which is a book
that was written in 1985 by NeilPostman, who's a professor of
(06:02):
media ecology, which is just afascinating discipline at NYU,
and it's his most famous book.
He's written a handful of booksbut it really focuses on the
revolution of the television andhow the television was changing
entertainment habits.
And really the title of thebook is apt how he talked about
how we were amusing ourselves todeath back in the 1980s.
(06:25):
He talks a lot about howeverybody was afraid of George
Orwell's 1984 big brother.
The government's going to comeinto your house and put cameras
in your house and make you watchTV and you're going to be
forced into this sort ofsurveillance state.
And he said, frankly, I thinkAldous Huxley's vision of the
(06:51):
future in Brave New World, whichis another dystopian novel
released around the same time as1984.
He said I think Huxley's novelis more apt, that in Brave New
World what people loved, whatpeople consumed and what they
embraced is what was ultimatelytheir demise, whereas in 1984,
it was like this outside forceimpinging upon you and and like
restricting your freedom.
And he was like, honestly, Ithink our, our willing embrace
(07:12):
of new technology is actuallygoing to undermine us more than
this sort of um you know,malicious force coming in from
the outside.
And man, when I was readingamusing, I was like this book
was written in 1985 and it couldnot be more relevant for 2017,
back when I was first reading it.
And so I started thinking, likewhat?
Neil Postman is not aroundtoday.
(07:33):
He died in the early 2000s andhe wasn't a Christian, but he
was sympathetic toward Christianideas and spoke to Christian
groups and really faith groupspretty regularly, despite kind
of being a secular Jewish manhimself.
And so I was like what, if?
Like what would happen?
What would it be like if NeilPostman were around today?
And he was addressing socialmedia and he was doing so from a
(07:56):
Christian perspective?
I was like I'd really love toread somebody who was doing that
kind of thing, and I wasfrankly having a hard time
finding anybody doing.
I've since learned of a handfulof people who are doing that
sort of thing and I was franklyhaving a hard time finding
anybody doing that.
I've since learned of a handfulof people who are doing that
sort of thing, but back in 2017,2018, I didn't know anyone
writing about internet culturefrom a Christian perspective,
(08:16):
and so I was like, well, I'll doit because it's super
interesting to me and I'vereally bathed in this space.
And so I started writing at afew different outlets about kind
of internet culture and thesocial internet, social media,
from a Christian perspective,and then launched my own
newsletter around the end of2019, beginning of 2020 in that
vein and out of that, decided topursue a book project on it,
(08:39):
and that's kind of theroundabout way of how this came
to be the long story, I suppose.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Fascinating, so fascinating.
So I'm looking at the table ofcontents in your book and I just
love how it's laid out.
So there's three parts how wegot here, the five ways the
social internet shapes us andwhere do we go from here.
So how did the social internetevolve and how do you think it
(09:06):
affects our lives?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Oh man Um read the book.
Uh, yeah, uh, this is a podcastseries, right, we're here for
about three hours.
Um, so, uh, how did the socialinternet evolve with that?
That's the first chapter of thebook, and it's funny because it
was the hardest chapter towrite, because it required a lot
of research.
So I thought, you know, I waslike, if I'm writing a book
(09:29):
about social media, the socialInternet and, if you want, I use
those terms sort ofinterchangeably, but they're
different and we can talk aboutthat if you want.
But how did the social Internetevolve is an important question
, because I don't want to assumethat all of us know how we got
here, right?
Because anyone picking up thisbook or even listening to this
podcast, maybe 20 or 35 or 55 or65.
(09:52):
And for some of us the internetdidn't really come around until
we were adults and had children.
But for some of us, like me, Iwas logging on to Nickelodeoncom
when I was in first grade tosee what the website of my
favorite TV channel looked like,like, wow, nickelodeon has a
website, what must that be like?
And so I was doing that when Iwas in first grade, and so
everybody has a differentexperience.
(10:12):
So I was like man, if I'm goingto write a book about how all
this stuff is shaping us.
I feel like I should get us onsome shared ground of
understanding the history of howwe got here, and so the first
chapter required a lot ofresearch because I experienced
it.
I was a kid in the 90s and Iremember getting 15 AOL trial
(10:33):
disks to my house that we neverwere allowed to use because IBM
had their own internet serviceand my dad was like we get that
for free, I'm not paying $30 amonth for AOL or whatever it
costs.
So I never got to have AOLmyself.
But I always remember gettingthose trial disks and I remember
logging on to MySpace for thefirst time and what that
(10:53):
experience was like.
I remember what it was like tohave MySpace as a middle
schooler, which was precarious,but also like a lifeline to
friends at the same time, likeafter school.
So anyway, the first school,and so anyway I, the first
chapter is really yeah, how didthe social internet evolve?
How did we get here?
And and I've been told it'sfunny, I I've gotten more good
(11:14):
feedback about that chapter thanany other chat.
I was like is anybody going tothink this is interesting?
Like it's really interesting tome to think about and and read
about how MySpace tried to buyFacebook for billions of dollars
or millions of dollars, andthen Facebook said no, sorry,
we're not going to do that andin fact we're going to 10x the
price for you to buy us.
It's interesting to read up andthink about that kind of stuff,
(11:37):
but I don't know if anybodyelse would like it.
So a lot of people seem to likereading history of the internet
, and that's what that's allabout.
But how does it affect us?
Man?
Much attention we get, I thinkit changes us.
It makes us willing to give upreally, really intimate details
(12:09):
about ourselves that we would.
If you told parents 15 yearsago that it would be totally
normal to post pictures of yourchildren on the internet, they
would have told you you werecrazy.
But today my wife and I havedecided we're not posting
pictures of our daughter on theInternet for a while until she's
older.
And people have kind of feltlike that we're weird for doing
(12:30):
that and it's like man, itreally hasn't been that long
that that swung from.
You're weird if you do this to,you're weird if you don't do
this, and so that kind of thing.
I think it makes us want topursue affirmation instead of
truth, like we want to have ourbacks scratched more than we
want to be told what the truthis, and I think that can be a
(12:51):
problem.
I think we've seen that a lotin sort of misinformation and
how we're so easily led astrayby things that we agree with but
may not be true, and I think itleaves us to try to destroy
people we don't like.
Like people who just actobjectionably, like people who
say things that we think aremean or even inappropriate and
they may be mean andinappropriate I'm not saying
(13:12):
that they're not but I do thinkthat we've kind of taken this
call it cancel culture orwhatever you want People have
different names for it takenthis mantle upon ourselves to
police the conduct of otherpeople, and and that I am very
concerned about how mobmentalities are so prevalent on
the internet and I and I thinkit's such an interesting
phenomenon and, frankly, a scaryone, and I think we just need
(13:34):
to maybe a bit more graciouswith people.
But those are, those are a fewways I think it.
It shapes us and and I get intoa lot of that in the in the
book, but really the thrust ofthe book is some folks, when I
have conversations like this,it's like well, so you hate
social media?
You just think it's all bad.
No, no, no, no, no.
I work in social media.
I have my entire career andit's burned me pretty bad
(13:57):
personally and professionally.
It's really been a source ofstress in my life.
However, I don't think it's allbad and I don't think you fix
the problems of the socialinternet by just logging off or
deleting your accounts.
Now, I do think that can be ahelpful step for folks to take
if they're recognizing reallyhaving an unhealthy relationship
with these platforms.
(14:19):
But I think if we have thisidea that, oh, if we just
boycott Facebook or delete ouraccounts, that it'll all just go
away, I just think that'sfoolish and I think there's good
on there.
I just Kind of the main pointof the book and all of my
writing, whether in the book ornewsletter or otherwise, is not
stop using this stuff.
It's bad so much as hey.
(14:40):
Let's use this stuff morecritically.
Let's use this stuff with ourcritical thinking hats on, not
just passively.
In every free five minutes wehave in our day, we should be
asking a question like whatproblem does Instagram solve in
my life?
What is Facebook doing for memore than what am I doing for
(15:02):
Facebook?
Because I think one of thebiggest problems is these
platforms were ostensiblypitched to us as tools to help
our lives be better, and Ireally think we've come to serve
these platforms more than theseplatforms serve us, and that's
kind of the heart of what I'mnot trying to get everybody to
log off, as healthy as that maybe.
I think there is a good thing,good redemptive stuff there.
(15:25):
I think that the goal would belet's just think more clearly
and ask harder questions ofthese platforms as we use them.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
I have so many questions.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Let's go, let's go.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
So, just for that one , let's start with what you just
said, and then I need to gobackwards to a couple of things.
But what do you think socialmedia does for us?
What should it be that it givesto our lives?
So the way you just said itremind me of how you worded it.
What is Facebook doing for meinstead of what I'm doing for
(16:01):
Facebook?
Is that how you said?
Speaker 2 (16:02):
it.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, what should Facebook be doing?
Speaker 2 (16:05):
for Facebook Is that how you said it.
Yeah, what should Facebook bedoing for us?
I think, well, I have my ownqualms with Facebook.
I think some of it's, actuallysome of the goals of Facebook,
aren't inherently things that weshould pursue.
I don't know that we should beconnected with everybody across
the world.
I just don't know if that's apositive thing.
I think we've seen a lot ofnegative effects of that um.
But I think what should theseplatforms let's just talk about
(16:27):
social media generally like andI think different platforms have
different purposes um, like Ijust did, I just wrote a
newsletter for next tuesday ondating apps and the dominance of
dating apps.
Like I don't, dating apps aresocial media.
People don't usually think ofthem that way, but they are.
They like, through and through,dating apps or social media um
that are just predicated onconnecting people romantically
(16:47):
rather than platonically or likeprofessionally or whatever else
, and so like, and I don't thinkdating apps are bad.
Like I, the point of the piecethat I wrote is really just how
dominant they are and how a lotof the friends I've talked to
begrudgingly use them, and withvaried levels of success, and so
I think every social mediaplatform kind of has a different
(17:09):
promise or a different goal,and so it varies, but I think
using social media platformswhether it's YouTube, instagram,
facebook as a means ofentertainment is totally within
bounds.
I think that's totally fine.
I think, in inappropriatemeasure, in the same way that we
don't you know, my parentsdidn't want me sitting in front
of my PlayStation or thetelevision for six hours on end,
(17:33):
like we probably.
You know, I don't think it'swrong to use social media to be
entertained.
I think that's totallyappropriate.
I do think that we should be uh, be interested in how long
we're doing that.
I think screen time is animportant thing to track, and
particularly like what.
What apps we're giving ourscreen time is an important
thing to track, and particularlywhat apps we're giving our
screen time to more than justusing a screen, because I think
(17:53):
they're not all.
Screen time is created equally,I guess, is how I would say it,
and so I think using theplatforms to be entertained is
totally cool.
I think using the platforms toconnect with people across the
world is really helpful.
There are friends who Iconsider friends, that 80% of
our relationship is maintainedby some form of social media,
and I only see them a few timesa year, for a few days, and the
(18:18):
rest of our relationship ismediated by varied social media.
I think that's good.
I think that's a common graceof social media platforms.
So I think there is a lot ofgood there and I think that they
can be great modes ofentertainment and modes of
keeping connection with people.
I think it's when we let themoverextend beyond those uses
(18:38):
that we um, that we start toserve them rather than them
serving us.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Hmm, going back to, how did social media or how did
social internet evolve?
Was it just, how do I say it?
Was it always going to happen?
Like, whoever did it, someonewould have done it If it hadn't
have been Mark Zuckerberg or theguy that did MySpace.
(19:04):
Was it Tom?
Was Tom the creator of MySpace?
Tom, tom, oh Tom.
And so what would you say waskind of the predicating factor,
like the biggest shift thathappened between the 1980s to
now.
That changed everything.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
What a great question .
Is it funny?
Yeah, myspace Tom is the onewho did all this right the way
everybody loves to like.
Some people like to dog.
Myspace tom like, oh man does.
Wouldn't myspace tom like to bemark zuckerberg?
Uh no, he's like a wildlifephotographer living in hawaii.
He got out at the right time,before everybody started talking
(19:44):
about how social media wasdismantling society.
Right like he, he made his fewhundred million dollars and was
like I'm out.
So yeah, MySpaceTime is alwaysa fun little example.
But so how did this stuffevolve?
The internet's always beensocial and let me say you talked
about social internet, socialmedia.
I want to clarify this, and Iused social internet more than
(20:05):
social media throughout the book, intentionally for this reason.
Postman talked about thedifference between a technology
and a medium.
A technology is like we allknow what a technology is it's
the ones and zeros, the code,the stuff that undergird, like
the architecture of the internet.
Um, it would be the engine ofyour car.
(20:28):
That's the technology.
The media, or a medium, is theway you use a technology to
create culture.
So the television is thetechnology.
The television program, thenews show, the reality show, the
sports thing those are allmedia that uses the technology
(20:48):
of the television to createculture.
Social internet and socialmedia are different things.
Now I do use theminterchangeably within the book
to help the reader, becausesocial internet is a very rare
term, social media much morecommon.
If I say social media, a fewapps pop into your head and my
head that litter our phonescreens.
But social internet?
(21:09):
Using the term social internet,what I'm interested in is when
we often conversations we haveabout social media are like oh,
like funny cat videos and youprobably shouldn't be looking at
that kind of thing on Instagram.
Or like be careful of how muchtime you spend on TikTok.
Or like we think of individualpieces of media we consume.
And I really want us to thinkas we think about our
(21:31):
relationship with social media.
I want us to be thinking moreas much about the technologies,
the algorithms, the math thatserves us up that media.
How does the actual technologyshape us beyond just the goofy
cat videos or the salaciousInstagram posts or whatever else
(21:51):
?
So, anyway, I want to broadenour understanding and that's why
I use that terminology.
The reason it's social yeah, itwas always going to be social.
So to your question, like itwas always going to be social
because it really has been fromthe beginning.
I mean email really existedbefore our modern social
internet and email is inherentlysocial.
I mean the internet was createdto connect researchers to be
(22:12):
able to share information aroundthe cold war so that, like if
russia was going to nuke us,they could share information
super quickly that's, that's howthe fascinating yeah, that's
how.
That's how the first computernetworks were were connected was
so that government agencies andresearch institutions could be
sharing data really fast for thetime anyway.
And so then, once you got intothe 90s, the walled gardens
(22:39):
cropped up.
Aol was a walled garden.
It was like you weren't openingup a web browser and typing in
wwwwhatever.
That came in the late 90s.
It was in the mid 90s where wegot the walled gardens, where
you'd open up comp, you serve,or you'd open up prodigy or
you'd open up aol, and it waslike you had to type in a
(23:00):
keyword to get to a certain spot, like you weren't just browsing
on the web.
Wherever you wanted, there werelike certain places you could
go.
You could go to AOL's chatrooms.
You couldn't hop onto someother.
If you're using AOL.
You could only use AOL's chatrooms.
You couldn't hop into someother places, chats, um, and so
those were the walled gardens,and the reason social blew up is
(23:20):
because, um, frankly, I thinkwe were just destined to use the
internet to connect with otherpeople.
Like it's just human nature.
And and I think, aol mailing Imean when AOL was at its peak it
was the.
It was producing more compactdiscs than any music industry in
(23:42):
the world, right.
So like AOL had more compactdiscs for its trial, for its
free 14 day trials or 30 daytrials, than any music producer
at the height of CDs.
And so AOL got everybody onlineNot I mean America, but they
got America online truly.
And at the center of AOL'sexperience was its chat and
(24:07):
social experiences and reallyAOL primed us all.
There's a great book called theAttention Merchants by Tim Wu.
It was written a number ofyears ago but it's still very
relevant and that's where a lotof my research for the early
stages of the internet came from, and he talks a lot about how
AOL was integral to what wewould call the modern social
(24:27):
internet, because it just laidso much of the groundwork for
our desire to use the internetto connect to other people.
Some of the other walledgardens, like CompuServe or
Prodigy, were focused on onlineshopping, which at the time it
wasn't successful because peoplewere afraid to put their credit
cards into the internet andthings like that.
Or it was more geared towardlike super smart computer nerds.
(24:50):
Aol was like super easy to useand focused on connecting with
other people and that reallykind of ushered in what came
afterward and, yeah, we havewhat we have.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Did you do any research on the way that our
social media habits affect ourbrains, like dopamine levels or
other different types ofhormones, or mental health or
anything like that?
Speaker 2 (25:17):
There's so much data and science to show that social
media is designed to beaddictive, and the founders and
creators of the modern platformswe use, like Mark Zuckerberg of
facebook and evan spiegel ofinstagram, have said as much
like they've.
They have, uh, explicitly saidthat these programs were
(25:37):
designed to get us addicted.
Let's say, justin timberlake um, uh, I love justin timberlake.
I was gonna make a joke, butI'm not.
Uh, he's awesome.
I love him.
He is his character.
Is Sean Parker, like he playsSean Parker, the first president
of Facebook?
Well, the real life, seanParker is on record saying this
(26:00):
in an interview in 2017.
He said the thought processthat went into building these
applications.
So just imagine JustinTimberlake saying this all right
, no-transcript validation,feedback loop Exactly the kind
(26:35):
of thing that a hacker likemyself would come up with
because you were exploiting avulnerability in human
psychology.
The inventors or creators me,mark Zuckerberg, kevin Systrom
of Instagram, it's all of thesepeople understood this
consciously and we did it anyway.
So that guy, sean Parker orJustin Timberlake also created
(26:58):
Napster.
Ironically, justin Timberlakeplayed him because he created
the platform that robbedmusicians of money, but he said
that the whole point of this wasto hook you, to keep you coming
back.
And that's how these platformsmake money, because they're free
.
The real cost of social mediais that we end up serving them
and and and giving them ourcontent and our lives as a means
(27:19):
of using them to expressourselves.
So, yeah, there's, there's somuch research out there by by
actual great psychologists aboutjust the behavioral psychology
Like it, by actual greatpsychologists about just the
behavioral psychology.
Honestly, one of the saddestthings about social media is
that some of the most brilliantminds in behavioral psychology
have kind of been focused onharvesting it for ad revenue,
(27:40):
you know, like in this way, andit's yeah, so it's a big deal
and it's very much there andpeople should be aware of it.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
What do you think about the metaverse?
Speaker 2 (27:56):
What do I think about the metaverse?
When you say metaverse, what doyou mean?
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Okay, let me just clarify this by saying I am an
extremely late adopter to anytechnology.
So, here's what I know aboutMetaverse that it is well.
I think.
I know two things Facebook hasrenamed their company, metaverse
, and they're taking a focus on,uh like, creating a virtual
(28:28):
life, and I think that that'sparalleled with what I have seen
kind of like this next leveldystopian, like the 2020 us or
the 2022 us.
The 1984 for us, I think, iskind of more of this, like
everyone's going to live theirlife through glasses, and that
(28:48):
terrifies me.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Sure, yeah.
So yeah, facebook renamed theircompany Meta to focus on the
metaverse and they're bettingthe future of the company on the
metaverse created by neilstevenson, a novelist, in his
(29:16):
book snow crash, which I'mactually in the middle of
reading right now.
It's a pretty good novel, verylike near future, dystopian.
Like what's it like to live ina in a like mediated, like
physical and virtual state likepeople live in, like if anyone's
seen ready player one or themovie or read the book?
Neil stevenson's snow crash waskind of like the precursor to
that and less focused on videogames.
Ready player one's much moreabout video games and neil
stevenson's is more just, broad.
(29:37):
Like people live in, like thelike storage centers where you
like, you know people have likethe u-haul storage center and
there's like a bunch of cubes ofstorage sheds.
Like people live in thosethings, like in this near future
, in this book, um.
And so he coined the termmetaverse in that book.
I think it was written in likethe eighties I could be confused
, it might be nineties, um andso he created the term and the
(30:00):
actual definition of a metaverse.
Well, a metaverse requires it tonot be owned by a company,
which Web 3 is like the futureof the internet.
So Web 1 is the pre-socialinternet where, like it was
called the read era, where, likewe would just be consuming
(30:20):
content from the internet, we'renot putting anything on the
internet.
That was like kind of AOL, buteven like pre-AOL AOL.
And then the first social mediaplatforms like Friendster and
MySpace ushered in Web 2.0,which is where we live right now
.
That's the read-write era ofthe internet, where you can both
consume content from theinternet and create content for
(30:42):
the internet.
That's Web 2.0.
It's been since about the late90s, 99, 2000,.
And we're still in it today.
But we're starting to see Web 3.
Web 3 is read web three and webthree is read, write and own.
So where today, like three orfour companies run the internet
right google, facebook, amazon.
(31:03):
Those three companies basicallyrun the internet in some form
or fashion.
Microsoft also to some extent,but really mostly those three
companies dominate everythingand they generate most of the
revenue and profit from all ofour activity.
They get all the money.
There's a future in Web3, wherethere's a social media platform
(31:27):
like Facebook, where I don'tthink it will be Facebook, but
something like Facebook, whereyou go on and you post something
just like you do today, butinstead of it being totally free
.
Well, it may be free, but wherethey're harvesting your data
and you don't get anything inreturn other than you just
express yourself.
Sure, there's very much afuture.
In fact, it's not really fairfor me to say future, because
(31:49):
some of these already exist.
They're just not used superwidely, where, for every like
you get, you get a quarter.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
And every comment you get, you get $0.45.
And then every share, you get$0.75.
And you actually get paid foryour content and you're a
stakeholder, which means thepeople who have created these
platforms are making less money.
They're still making money, butthey're making less money.
They're still making money, butthey're making less money and
you actually have an ownershipstake in.
(32:19):
And that's where, like, youwould be paid in a
cryptocurrency which is what allthis crypto stuff is about and
you would be paid and then youcould translate that to dollars
or whatever, whatever yourcurrency is in your country.
So the metaverse is like onepart of Web3, what I just
described and it's where,properly defined, the metaverse
(32:40):
is not owned by a company,because the whole point is to
not let a big company likeGoogle or Facebook run
everything.
So the perfect metaverse islike you go onto some website
imagine like an eBay of thefuture and you buy you really
like Jordan shoes, but you don'twant to buy them for your real
(33:01):
life feet.
You want to go buy Jordan shoesthat you can put on a digital
avatar.
Because here's the thing Ithink this is very real and I
don't think it's in three years.
I think it's probably more inlike 15 or 20 years.
But I mean today, like I hadthree meetings on Zoom today,
right, and that's just likeFaceTime, right, or like a
(33:21):
webcam experience.
I think it's very possible andlikely that in 10 to 15 years,
every employee who works fromhome or works wherever will be
issued a like VR headset inaddition to their laptop and
they'll participate in meetingsin some form of a metaverse.
But I don't think it's ametaverse purely defined.
(33:43):
I just think it's more of likea virtual conference room rather
than a zoom FaceTime experience.
Does that make sense?
So, like, we're already halfwaythere in a lot of ways?
Um, because we're alreadymeeting virtually so much today,
the, the whole coronavirusthing and remote work really
sped up this conversation.
But to get to the metaverse,kind of, as you were thinking,
(34:04):
um, I don't think facebook willrun the metaverse as much as
they want to a, because thewhole point of a metaverse is to
not have it be owned by asingular company.
So any of these companies?
First of all, the metaverse hasjust become a marketing tool
for these companies to maketheir investors think they're
thinking about the future.
It's just become a buzzwordthat it's not None of them
(34:29):
really.
They just mean that they'recreating a virtual reality
experience that they hope willmake them more money and allow
them to gather more data fromusers.
A true metaverse means you buythose virtual Air Jordans for
your online avatar and you canwear them in the Microsoft
version of the metaverse thatyou're using to go to your work
meetings.
I think genuinely I know thisis sad, kimberly, but roll with
(34:50):
me, sad Kimberly, but roll withme.
I think this is possible wheresomeone like me, a 30-year-old,
goes to work in the Microsoftmetaverse every day, where I'm
going to meetings that arevirtual avatars or whatever, and
then when I log off, I go spendtime with my family, but then
when I want to play a video gameor watch a movie, I go put the
(35:11):
same headset back on.
But instead of logging into theMicrosoft Metaverse to go to
work meetings, I log into somelike the Xbox Metaverse to play
video games with my friends.
In the same way that somebodymay work today and be on Zoom
meetings all day and then, whenthey're done, have dinner with
their family or whatever.
They've got an hour of freetime at night, they hop on
(35:32):
Fortnite with their friends andthey buy digital goods on there
like skins for their charactersor clothing items for their
characters.
But in the future, what thislooks like is those items you
buy in one metaverse for yourvirtual persona.
In your gaming metaverse, youbuy some cool shoes for your
gaming character.
You can equip those to yourpersona in your work environment
(35:57):
.
It translates across platforms.
I know this sounds very weird,but I do think it's.
Here's what I would say.
I'm not exactly excited aboutit, especially if Facebook runs
it, because Facebook has shownto be predatory on their users
throughout their history.
We didn't get into this a wholelot in our conversation, but I
(36:18):
don't have a problem with all ofthese companies, but Facebook
has repeatedly taken advantageof user trust to harvest data in
some pretty predatory ways,lied about it and then not
really apologized when they getcaught.
If anyone listening keeps up onFacebook.
Stuff like the Facebook papersfrom the fall of 2021 came out
(36:41):
and showed just how egregioustheir privacy issues are and all
of that.
So you should never trust whatFacebook says about anything.
They're the least trustworthycompany out of all of these in
my view, and I'm hoping that wedon't adopt the Facebook's
version of the future, but therewill be some version of this,
and I think it's best for us tonot wring our hands and say this
(37:02):
is so terrible because from aChristian perspective, the
church kind of did that withsocial media and now we're
decades behind in a lot of ways.
And so I think it's reallyhelpful for us to look at the
metaverse or whatever thisfuture looks like and say, well,
it's not all great and therecould be a lot of problems, but
how can we learn to be faithfulin this space and minister to
(37:24):
people in this space, whateverthat looks like and whatever
form that takes, rather thanjust say oh, it's so bad, it's
so terrible, and just ignore it,because I think we're going to
end up missing out on realopportunities to serve people
with the good news and servepeople just in general if we
just write it off.
So I would encourage people notto be alarmed or overly
(37:45):
optimistic, but to kind of keeptabs and learn and not let
ourselves be taken off guard ifthis is a real big thing in a
decade or two, and learn and notlet ourselves be taken off
guard if this is a real bigthing in a decade or two.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
So here's what scares me about this whole metaverse
thing.
So much of healthyrelationships involves
face-to-face, like reading aperson's emotions, touch, like
(38:17):
the human touch, and that cannever be replicated in a VR
headset or a Zoom meeting, rightLike that's part of what is
also the struggle of a lot ofpeople right now feeling lonely,
isolated.
You can join 18 Zoom meetingsin a day, but if there's no one
to hug you at the end of it,that's still lonely, and so I
hear what you're saying.
(38:37):
I'm going to be a late adopterI always am anyway but I think
my fear is what stops peoplefrom just becoming so addicted
and living their life throughthis thing.
But then also the other thing Iwanted to ask you about Web 3.0
is did I understand it right?
Not from you, but fromsomething else.
I read that, um, people wouldalso pay, so like if I had a
(39:03):
page, then people would pay tobe able to follow me Totally.
How does that not makeeverything worse?
Like we're already strugglingwith self-esteem and all of that
, and now like would people payto follow me?
I don't even want to have tothink of that question.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely part of it.
In fact, it's already on someplatforms.
Right now you can pay to followsomebody on Twitter, to have
greater access to somebody onTwitter, it's called a super
follow.
You can pay five bucks a monthor whatever they set their rate
at, and then you can like haveaccess to slide into their DMs
or whatever.
Like you can have a greaterlevel access.
So that's already kind of hereand it will definitely come in.
(39:46):
Yes, it exacerbates the problem.
I think.
I don't think distributing thewealth among everybody solves
the problems with social media.
Frankly, I think it'd be goodfor us to all.
Maybe if we have a post thatdoes really well, it'd be great
to make 20 bucks from it, but Idon't think that solves our
deeper problems.
Um, and I agree with you, uh,on the on the intimacy and the
embodied presence part I.
(40:06):
I think it's a huge problemwith the future.
Uh, I do think I.
I do think that in a lot ofconversations I've had about
this, people assume we're goingto go from zero to 100, where
none of us are really using VRor the metaverse right now,
outside of people whooccasionally play some games in
there or whatever.
It's a very small portion ofpeople who are actually using it
, yeah, like regularly.
(40:28):
And I think it's a little bitof a jump to say we're going to
go from not and I'm, I'm anearly adopter in a lot of ways
of a lot of things and uh, likeI don't even have a headset yet
or whatever, and I I'm not goingto go from, like, never using
it to always wanting to live init.
I do think that could happenquite quickly, given how we've
so quickly adopted othertechnologies.
(40:48):
Um, but I I think there's moreof a situation where, like,
somebody will be, instead oflooking at a camera at Zoom
meetings all day.
They'll be on a headset withZoom meetings all day.
They may not want to spend anytime in it afterward, but they
are using it regularly for thathuman embodiment and touch and
(41:12):
interaction.
I agree with you, obviously,100.
My fear, my, my biggest fear,is that we start to lose our
taste for that.
Um, one of the biggest problemsI have with social media, or
bigger problems I see, not withsocial, but more with like, not
(41:32):
with social media, but more withour relationship with social
media one of my biggest concerns, I think part of the reason we
find social media so appealingand you'll appreciate this,
given what you do and the natureof your podcast, and I think
hopefully folks listening willappreciate, will understand this
what social media offers uswhether it does or not is
(41:53):
another question, but what itoffers us is a feeling of being
loved and appreciated withoutthe fear of vulnerability and
intimacy.
So social media offers usunlimited ability to feel padded
on the back, to feel encouraged.
Perhaps we even get DMs frompeople that if we're single
(42:18):
might be flattering but if we'remarried might be.
Like I'm married.
We have the ability to feelothers' affection quite easily
on the internet without everhaving to be truly known by them
, and for a lot of reasons.
I think part of the reasonsocial media is so beyond the
brain psychology and dopaminehacking stuff we talked about, I
(42:41):
think part of the reason socialmedia is so appealing to folks
is it offers the ability toexperience affection without the
fear and vulnerability of trueintimacy.
With true intimacy comesvulnerability, um, and I think a
lot of folks fear.
True, we want to be loved, butwe're afraid to be known.
(43:02):
Keller talks about this a bitin meaning of marriage, that
that, uh, in marriage sometimeswe're, we're, um, we're.
We want to be loved, but we'reafraid to truly show ourselves
and truly be known.
And I think the internet, thesocial internet and our various
social media platforms justoffer such an easy form of
(43:22):
feeling like we're loved withoutfeeling like we ever have to be
truly known.
So my fear, kimberly, is thatif this progresses, because
we're already experiencing thatsort of like disembodiment and
wanting relationship withoutintimacy and without touch,
we're already headed down thatroad in some really troubling
(43:44):
ways.
And what will be interesting tosee?
When this inevitably comesbecause we can't stop it like
it's going to happen and perhapsin our lifetimes maybe not,
maybe things slow down, but itlooks like it's going to happen
within the next 20 years.
If that happens, what will beinteresting to see is do we lean
(44:07):
into this and do people startto forsake any interest in
wanting true intimacy becauseit's just so hard and so messy
and so vulnerable and scary, orthat would be a worst case
scenario.
Or do we get to this VR,metaverse, screen, mediated
future and we realize howterrible it is collectively,
some of us, I hope, would stillbe holdouts even if a lot of
(44:30):
other people adopted it.
But what if, collectively, werealize, oh man, this promised
future of screen-mediated livingthat everybody talked about
being awesome.
It is not.
It it's terrible.
Then we recoil and maybe wereclaim the importance and
vitality of true embodiedintimacy.
(44:51):
That would be a glorious,wonderful revelation and
experience.
But I think it's just going tobe interesting to see what
happens when that inevitablycomes.
Which way will we swing?
And I don't know.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
It's interesting because as much flack as
Facebook has gotten I mean forthe past several years, but even
just this past year peoplestill don't get off of it.
There are some right Like,there's some that do, and all of
that, but overall we still useit with all of its known issues,
all of its predatory behaviorsand everything.
(45:28):
And so that's what I think ofwhen I think of, like would we
actually get to a point at somepoint in some time with some
kind of virtual tech that we sayno, like we're really done?
Can we overcome the addictioncollectively?
Speaker 2 (45:44):
And it's.
You know, I hesitate to eversay like we're all addicted to
social media because it'ssweeping and again, I'm not a
psychologist, I can't diagnosethis.
But the best way to know ifyou're addicted to something, I
think just like practicallyspeaking, is if you keep using
it and keep doing it, despitehating it.
(46:06):
I mean, it's exactly what youjust described.
If we find ourselves I keepgoing back to this, I keep doing
it and I hate it, I hate whatit does to me, I hate the way it
makes me feel, I hate who I amwhen I'm on it, um, I think
that's as sure a sign as anythat maybe do here for ourselves
now, in the space that we're in.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
I don't even know how to finish this sentence.
Yeah, what do we do?
What do we do?
That's the question.
What do we?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
do.
Yeah, I think I'm going toshare another concern I have on
the way to saying what I thinkwe do.
I think I'm going to shareanother concern I have on the
way to saying what I think we do.
I think another kind of deep,like undercurrent concern that I
have is that online life hasbecome primary and offline life
(47:07):
has become secondary.
It used to be that whathappened on the Internet flowed
downstream from what happenedoff of the internet.
The internet reflected whathappened in the real world quote
, unquote real world, as if theinternet wasn't real.
What we need to realize is thatan unfortunate shift has
(47:40):
happened, that we have startedto look at the online life as
primary and the offline life assecondary.
We've started to see ouroffline lives as a means of
harvesting content for who wewant to present ourselves to be
online.
Bo Burnham is a famous comedianand entertainer and director.
(48:02):
He has a special on Netflixcalled Inside that came out in
late 2020 or mid-2021,.
I want to say and it's very,quite vulgar, I need to say up
front, and so I can't likeexplicitly recommend it because
it's there are definitely thingsin there that are objectionable
(48:22):
.
However, it is incrediblyinsightful to where we're at
with a lot of this stuff.
And and he actually directed amovie called Eighth Grade a
number of years ago whichdepicts the eighth grade
experience very accurately, andwhen he was giving an interview
around what it's like to be amodern eighth grader, he did
(48:43):
this movie.
All the eighth graders in themovie are actually eighth
graders and what's funny is themovie's rated R but it depicts
the eighth grade experience andit's a rated R movie but it's
like, yeah, the eighth gradeexperience is pretty rated R
these days and so it's kind offunny that an eighth grader
couldn't actually go see a movieabout their own experience.
But anyway, he says this and Ithink, but also taking inventory
(49:17):
and being a viewer of your ownlife, like living an experience
at the same time, hoveringbehind yourself and watching
yourself live that experience,being nostalgic for moments that
haven't happened yet, planningyour future to look back on it,
these are all really weirddissociative things that I think
are new because of the specificstructure of social media and
how it dissociates ourselvesfrom ourselves, and I think it's
(49:40):
a really kind of pertinentpoint that he says later.
He actually says this in Insidethat comedy special.
I talked about world, thenon-digital world.
So the offline world is merelya theatrical space in which one
stages and records content forthe much more real, much more
(50:01):
vital digital space.
And you just think, like,people go on vacations because
it creates great Instagramcontent, or they design their
wedding specifically with thehashtag in mind, or things like
that.
So where do we go from here?
I think we reverse that trend.
That's where I think we go fromhere.
I don't think logging off anddeleting your accounts fixes the
(50:21):
problem.
Now, that may help you withyour addiction, like if you're
finding you're enslaved, thatcan help.
You're still going to hearabout what happened on Facebook
or what happened on Twitter orwhatever else, because your
friends are going to talk aboutit, the news will talk about it
or whatever.
You can't escape it.
It's the water in which we swim.
We can only try to swim aswisely as we can, I suppose you
could say and put our gas maskson if the water seems a bit
(50:43):
toxic sometimes.
So I think what we do is we rootourselves in the real, in the
offline, and that looks likegoing for walks and maybe not
taking your phone.
Or if, for safety, you want totake your phone, you just don't
take headphones and you keepyour phone in your pocket.
I think it looks like studyinghistory and trying to learn what
was life like before I had mynose in my phone all the time.
(51:06):
I think it looks like havingreal friendships, that you meet
with people real life, in person.
In the same way, you describethe importance of an embodied
presence.
I think it looks like havingaccountability with friendships,
who, people who can ask you howyour, how your faith life is
going and how, uh, how yourrelationship with your spouse is
going, how your relationshipwith your phone is going.
(51:30):
I think it's.
It's about like letting peopleinto your life and not fearing
intimacy and the vulnerabilitythat comes with that Um and and
so I think it's.
I think it's a handful ofthings.
Really, what it comes down to,in my view, is letting who you
are on the internet and what youdo on the internet take a
backseat to what you do offline.
And that might sound simple andit might sound ridiculous that
anybody would let their onlinelives govern who they are
(51:54):
offline, but I think enough ofus probably realize how easily
that can happen and maybe werealize how it's happened in
some ways in our own life.
So, yeah, I think we just tryto reclaim our offline lives and
make them primary, rather thanour online lives primary.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
I love it.
Chris Martin, his book is Termsof Service the Real Cost of
Social Media.
Fantastic conversation, oh mygoodness.
I loved every minute.
Could ask you 1800 morequestions if you're listening.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
look, it's not like a fun butterflies and rainbows
conversation.
I understand.
If you want to be encouraged,call me up, hit me up on Twitter
.
I give you an encouraging word.
But I think it's important forus to just be honest about this
stuff, and I think a lot of usare pretty well acquainted with
(52:47):
how social media can be fun.
I think we get that.
We've all had some fun there.
Look, tiktok is my favoriteplatform right now and I'm kind
of ashamed of it, but there areso many talented people that are
hilarious and very good atsinging or whatever.
But I think we would all bebetter off if we started to take
a more sobering look.
So I hope it's not been toodiscouraging for any of you guys
(53:07):
.
But yeah, that's what I hope todo here.
Speaker 1 (53:09):
That's good.
Now where can people find youFind the book?
I know it's on Amazon.
Is that where you prefer peoplebuy it?
Speaker 2 (53:17):
Yeah, I really care what folks buy, when people buy
wherever they like to buy books.
Honestly, buy wherever you canget the best price.
Like I don't care.
I'm not not trying to buy aboat or anything like that.
I just want anybody to.
I just I just want anybody tobe helped by the book that can
that can be helped by it, helpedby the book that can be helped
by it.
So, yeah, find it.
It's on Amazon, I think.
Anywhere you want to buy a bookyou should be able to find it.
(53:39):
Barnes and Noble, all thosedifferent sites,
christianbookcom, I think I sawthey had the best deal the other
day, so you can find one there.
And on social media, twitter isthe primary place I engage with
folks that I don't knowpersonally.
So I tend to reserve Facebookand Instagram for folks I
actually know in real life, gofigure.
(53:59):
But then Twitter is kind of myoutpost, my perch to the wider
world.
So I'm on Twitter atChrisMartin17.
And you can find me there.
I love chatting about thisstuff with folks and DMing about
it or emailing or whatever.
So don't hesitate to reach outand happy to talk about whatever
.
Speaker 1 (54:17):
Awesome.
Thank you so much for beingwith us today.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
Of course, thanks for having me.
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