The Social Dilemma reviewed by a therapist (the truth that'll save an entire generation - Part 1)

The very phone that you are watching me on this application to do this video for you may be the source of your depression anxiety and may for your kids mean that they're experiencing more feelings of isolation depression and have a higher chance of suicide. Let's talk about it. And let's review the newest movie, the Social Dilemma. Here we go. Just a quick reminder not to miss part two of this video. So I literally just finished watching the Social Dilemma, like literally seconds ago. Just finished it on Netflix. And here is the irony is that I actually had to borrow a friend's Netflix account because I don't actually have Netflix. Now, most of you know me as a business therapist. Some of you know that I actually am a licensed professional counselor. I went to school, got a master's degree. After getting my degree, I saw how influential a child's mind can be. Now this was in the early 2000s and so this is before a lot of the social media that we have right now. But I can only imagine, and honestly, as a parent, I'm scared about how social media is going to impact my child's self esteem. Before you get too scared, stick with me through this video because we're going to talk about not just the good and the bad, but I'm also going to give you from the therapist's perspective what stood out for me. And I'm going to confess to you what I did right after watching the film. So stay tuned and we're going to review the video. So there's a couple things that I took away from the video, a couple quotes that I'm going to share with you. So Tristan had referenced our relationship with social media as a digital pacifier. And if you think about it, when you're not feeling great or when you are bored. And that's what we do with babies, right? To calm them down, to settle them down, to distract them. That's really, I thought one of was one of the best observations or best quotes then best parallels that could be made is that social media is a digital pacifier for adults. I am going to say that I am not practicing psychology or counseling through this video. I'm just giving you subject matter expertise that I have now. I have no shame in telling you that I was born in the late 80s, 1987 to be exact. And so while I did grow up with cell phones, Facebook wasn't until I think I was in college. I remember that you had to have some kind of college account in order to have it. I'm not going to give you too many Spoiler alerts. And it's also not going to be a cliff notes of the film. So I do encourage you highly to go watch the entire film, the Social dilemm. But they had people there that they interviewed from the Stanford Persuasive Technology, the school of Persuasive Technology. And now I went to school for counseling and psychology. And when I went to school, there was a ton of different specializations or paths that you could focus on in areas of psychology and human behavior that you could focus in on. But the thought that they now have an entire school dedicated to persuasive technology just. It kind of struck me as odd for somebody who went to school for human behavior in psychology to know that I could have gone to school for essentially when I heard those words, it was basically creating manipulative technology. And I'm not saying that all technology is manipulative. I think that they're are things such as user experience and user interface that make our experiences, whether it's with banking or with ordering a car or any of that, easier and more enjoyable. And that's great. But persuasive, persuasive technology essentially is there to take your opinion from one place to another. And that's a little scary to me. They did have a psychologist in the movie that went over teen rates of depression. And it's pretty stable as far as the rise until 2011. And then from 2011 to 2013 just skyrocketed for teens and for preteens, I think for teens, I think it was in the 70%. And for the preteens it was over 150% increase just between 2011 and 2013. And the thing that breaks my heart knowing that I have this child age group in my future with my own children is that the suicide rates match that of the depression rates. And then they drew a line right down the screen and they said the one thing that all of these kids had in common was access to mobile social media apps. So I can tell you right after the film, here's exactly what I did. I'm going to share with you the screenshots. I went to my apps, I clicked on my Facebook app, I highlighted it, pushed uninstall. And then my phone said, are you sure you want to uninstall Facebook? And I said, yes. And then it reminded me, as if it thought I made some kind of mistake, that Facebook was successfully uninstalled. Now I know from having a cell phone now for I guess, 15 years, that I don't need Facebook on my Phone. If I need Facebook, I can access it through my computer. I don't need Facebook, period though. I've run and grown multiple companies and sold multiple companies and yes, those companies had and have Facebook accounts, but there's people that specialize in that and I don't need to necessarily get on there and go down that rabbit hole. No pun intended. This is where the symbols go in the background. And I'm not saying that the film changed my perspective. The film gave me an opportunity to take an action towards breaking a habit that wasn't serving me. And that's really when we're looking at work life alignment. We want to have more habits that serve us and less habits that don't. One of the guys in the film said this is why I don't carry cookies in my pocket, is because essentially it's a bad habit of eating cookies non stop. And it may or may not be a bad habit for you. Look on your phone and see how many times you've unlocked your phone. I set limits and I talked about this in another video on how many times I was going to unlock my phone in a day, how many minutes I was going to spend on a particular app and limit those and use my digital well being that I have in order to just monitor it. At first it was just to monitor it and now anytime past 10pm my phone goes to grayscale. I don't sleep with my phone in the bedroom. And so these are all things that actually in the film they were talking about too. So first I want to give myself a pat on the back and second, I want you to know that you can do it too. I had this conversation with one of my family members and he's like, well, my phone's my alarm clock. Any excuse can be made for why not to break that relationship with your phone. But for the record, they do make alarm clocks. And on another note is that that's very short term thinking. It's justification. In another quote from the film, they said that there's only two industries that refer to their customers as user illegal drugs and software. And here's why. Listen to this.

How much time can we get you to spend? How much of your life can we get you to give to us?

Think about that for a second. It's kind of scary when you put it together. And just the response of thinking about charging your phone in the kitchen versus charging it in your bedroom, how does that make you feel? And I'm not criticizing you, I'm just asking where is your relationship with Your technology. Currently. The last video that I posted about this, there was an individual who commented and said, yes, but what about those of us who are experiencing social isolation because of the pandemic? Well, authentic connection with another individual is great. Just be aware that behind the scenes there's inauthentic things happening that are trying to persuade your attention that may or may not be creating a more diversified and polarized world every single day. That's not me being a conspiracy theorist. That's me being a student in human psychology and behavior and as somewhat of a crunchy granola human in the aspect that I am a vegetarian or a pescatarian and I try to use recyclable goods and all of these kind of things. One of the things that Justin had brought up in the film that really shocked me is that today we're living in a world where a tree is worth more dead than it is alive, where a whale is worth more dead than it is alive, and where a human being's attention span is worth more to a corporation watching an app, seeing ads, than it is actually living their life. The end of his quote, I'm gonna change a little bit to a human being is worth more spending time staring at an ad than they are fulfilling their purpose. And it's almost like that's what these corporations want us to do, is not fully fulfill our purpose. They want to distract us from our true value. And I think that's how entrepreneurs and individuals that are starting side hustles are fighting back. We're fighting back with digital well being. We're fighting back with being able to, you know, have these unplugged destination vacations. That's how we're going to win this, is to really know what our decisions are, what our passions are, what our values are, and to stick to those. Darren, who had wrote 10 reasons to delete your social media accounts, had this quote at the end of the film that said that the people who are really going to make this difference are going to be the people that said, this is stupid, we can do better, and the critics become the optimists is what he said. And so those people that are creating these unplugged getaways and those people who are saying that there should be more laws and rules and regulations around advertising on social media and all of that, those are the people that if we can combine forces to say, we don't necessarily want any of these social media platforms to go away, we just want to be able to have a combined human truth and be working towards making the world a better place. So I'm going to end this video with one of the ways that the film ended with Tristan saying, what if we change the intention of all social media? Instead of how can we have people watch longer, watch more videos? What if we flip that intention and said, how can we make the world better? What if after every video that we watched, the next video was how to help that person discover their value or their purpose, or to improve their lives or improve their happiness? Which I hope is what every single video on this channel does for you. But that's what I want to leave you with. I encourage you to watch the film. Thank you for watching this video. Please subscribe. Please leave your comments and tell me how I can help you and support you and make your world a better place.