Hartford HealthCare Podcast
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Hartford HealthCare Podcast
Bridging the generation gap: Episode 1 Social Media Personas with Dr. Laura Saunders
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Welcome to a special 3-part series of Hartford HealthCare's More Life that will focus on how different generations engage on various healthcare topics.
Hosted by Tina Varona, director of Media Relations on the Hartford HealthCare content strategy team, and administrative graduate intern Levell Williams - a health equity scholar at the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island.
The idea behind the series: identify the “generation gap” in various health-related topics while Tina and Levell share their own, unique experiences representing Generation X and Gen Z.
The goal: to “bridge that gap” through a lively discussion with Hartford HealthCare experts to educate audience members of all age groups.
In episode one, Tina and Levell explore the generational shift in social media with special guest Dr. Laura Saunders, Psychologist at Hartford Hospital’s Institute of Living.
You've been listening to the first episode in a special 3-part series on More Life, focusing on how members of different generational age groups engage various health care topics.
Listen to the other episodes in this series:
Episode 2 with Dr. Godfrey Pearlson
Episode 3 with Keith Grant, APRN
Learn more about the Institute of Living
Watch more from Dr. Laura Saunders:
Taking a Break from Social Media
How Social Media Affects Teens
I feel like people have in my engagement social media, almost to create social media for the zona. So it's not so much happening in the moment of residence or creating a virtual.
SPEAKER_01Welcome to more life and a special three-part series that will focus on how members of different generations are engaging about various health care topics. Hosting the series is Hartford Healthcare Supportina Verona, Director of Media Relations on the Content Strategy Team and administrative graduate intern Lavelle Williams, a health equity scholar at the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island. The idea behind this special podcast series is to help identify the generation gap when it comes to various health-related topics. While Tina and Lavelle share their own unique experience representing Generation X and Gen Z. The goal to bridge that gap through a lively discussion with Hartford Healthcare Experts. In episode one, Tina and Lavelle will explore the generational shift in social media with special guest Dr. Laura Saunders, a psychologist at Hartford Hospital's Institute of Living. Here's Tina, Lavelle, and Dr. Saunders.
SPEAKER_02How do different age groups use social media? Well, according to Target Internet, data ranging from the years 2015 to 2018, 65%, that's 65% of Gen Xers ages 50 to 64 use Facebook, while only 24% use LinkedIn and 21% use Instagram.
SPEAKER_00Yes, now on the Gen Z side of things, most Gen Zers use images and videos in their social media on platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram, as well as Twitter, with 32% watching one hour of video or two hours of video a day, and as many as 21% watching three hours or more on YouTube or Facebook. You know what? I'm gonna be honest, I can actually relate to that.
SPEAKER_02I can't. So I I'm thinking there's no way I'm I'm watching a video for three hours or more. I mean, I'm lucky if I make it through the first 30 to 60 seconds. I want it really quick. So, how do posts from each age group differ between Gen X and Gen Zers? So for me, when we go back to those statistics, Laval on Facebook, 65% of Gen Xersers are utilizing Facebook. I absolutely agree with that because I see it. It's my friends, I see them all on Facebook all of the time. Very little of us are on Instagram. As far as what we're posting, I feel like we're capturing moments that we want to share. More family-oriented photos, kids maybe going off to college, very little selfies. On the flip side of it, though, I see a lot of political statements. I see people voicing their words of politics, and sometimes they lose friends over that. So those are kind of the two biggest things that I observe among my generation on Facebook. What about you, Label?
SPEAKER_00Sort of similarly, but at the same time, sort of differently. I feel like people at in my age range, they they use social media almost to create a social media persona. So it's not so much as capturing moments as it is creating a virtual you. You can be at a social event wearing the you know the best outfit you can put together and you get some good lighting. You gotta snap a pick for the gram because you're you're building a profile that is gonna be respected by those who follow you or who choose not to follow you based on how they feel about that virtual persona. Even when it comes to like the politics side of things, if you lose friends on uh social media in my age range, it's usually not so much your political views so much as something like, how could you show up at that particular social event looking like that uh and then post it because you you're looking kind of goofy. And I think that sometimes those kind of personal jabs are a little bit more at play.
SPEAKER_02And we'll get into that a little bit later, but I want to introduce now our special guest, Dr. Laura Saunders. She's a well-renowned psychologist at the Hartford Hospital Institute of Living. Dr. Saunders, thank you for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. So, why the difference in how we engage and utilize social media? Is it that true generation gap that we are just in different moments of our life?
SPEAKER_03I think it's probably like anything, a combination of things. I do think even for adulthood, there's developmental aspects. So, you know, the developmental aspect of stage of life, right? Stage of life where you have maybe you have some kids and you put want to post memories on Facebook versus Instagram, which is more like just a quicker snapshot. I was just listening to uh Series XM radio as I was driving to another meeting, and the host actually said, you know, I don't I don't have as much time for Facebook because I don't have a family, and Instagram just seems like it's of a different generation, but I do use Twitter because it's quick and easy. I mean, that was little like a little kind of highlight on developmentally where someone is at in terms of having a family or in relationships, also affects your social media use. I think also the the busier you are, the less you tend to use social media because social media often is used to fill empty time or just as a pure distraction. You know, when you're raising a family and you're you've got a lot going on, you've got a full career, there's less sort of time to fill. So that you know may influence some of the differences also.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think for me personally, part of the the Gen X generation, I'm really not on Facebook all that much because I like to be a little, I guess, more private, and you do have to be sort of careful with what you share. But it it seems like in the Gen Z generation, you're sharing Lavelle anything and everything, right?
SPEAKER_00Yes, I you know I I think that one of the interesting parts of being a part of Gen Z is seeing we we saw sort of the dawn of some of the popular social media elements, and I I recall as a kid growing up hearing things about internet safety that you just don't hear anymore. Perhaps Dr. Saunders can speak to this. That difference between the level of social media use that you get between different generations and even uh more particularly between people of different, you know, life positions, having kids, not having kids. Where does internet safety fall in line based on how much you use social media? It almost seems as though those who use social media more are the least safe.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so that you're bringing up a really good point because we we used to talk about internet safety all the time and predators on the internet. I don't know that this that it's any better necessarily, but you're right that we're not talking about it as much. And again, I I look at that from a developmental approach. There is a lot of naivete in younger people. I'm talking like 13 to 18 or 20, that's where you're more susceptible to probably get engaged in something that an older adult would say, that's absolutely ridiculous. That's of course that's a bruise or a or a scam. But younger people don't have as much life experience to judge that. I also think one of the evils of social media is Snapchat, because if you are sending pictures and images that are going away within three seconds, very often you are more likely to be sending something, you know, it could be benign things, but that you're sending things that you don't want there to be a record of. So I think, you know, Snapchat really changed the landscape in a lot of internet safety issues because people were sending things that they knew would essentially go away, even though there's ways to record it or take a screenshot of it. But you know, safety is an issue that we don't talk about enough, especially with our young people.
SPEAKER_02And with that shift that we see with the Gen Zers. You're you're right, good point, Lavelle. Dr. Sanders, I want to talk about the privacy aspect of it. You know, it's difficult to be private nowadays. There's a lot of temptation out there, maybe even competition, if you will, of other people posting or that self-gratification of somebody telling you that you're beautiful. It's difficult to be private. When I was growing up, part of the Gen X generation, you could disappear very easily. You know, we didn't have cell phones. If you went away for a week, you were gone until you got back and maybe came home and checked your answering machine and listened to all the messages of people that you missed while you were away. But nowadays it's so difficult to be private when there's social media. How do you be private coming from a Gen X generation where you once had that privacy?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's that's an interesting perspective because I think that a lot of young people don't even understand that that concept of, well, I would actually call them boundaries, right? That the boundaries of okay, I'm I'm home and this is my life versus now I'm away and this is my life, it all just blends together. There really are no boundaries, and privacy is a complete fallacy because even though young people think, oh, I put it on Snapchat so it went away three seconds later, or I have an online forum where I keep my diary, most and personal secrets. I mean, the reality is there is no privacy, especially when it comes to the internet and social media, because someone can almost always get access to it. So helping our young people understand boundaries, like as in you do not have to record or snap or comment on everything. And you did, you know, kind of touch on some of the issues in social media, which this is for all ages, and which is social comparison, right? That's probably one of the bigger downfalls of social media, is that it causes us to engage in social comparison. We compare the someone else's highlight reel, they're on a they're on a beautiful trip somewhere, or they have a loving partner, or their children are doing these magnificent things, and we compare someone else's highlight reel to our life doldrums, right? The things that aren't, you know, I'm having a bad day, but my friend is in Greece having a great time, right? So that's something that you really have to be careful about when it comes to social media, no matter the generation, is that it it causes people to engage in a lot of social comparison. And as they say, social comparison is the thief of joy.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Some of what you're saying is honestly coming to me at a personal level because just you know, the proximity that I have to some of these social media activities. That being said, what you just said rang true to me as a single word, and that is pressures, you know, social pressures, uh, all kinds of peer pressures around creating this social media experience. Can you talk a little bit, perhaps from uh your perspective as a psychologist, about how young people, as well as anyone who uses social media, can best navigate the pressures that accompany the typical social media environment?
SPEAKER_03It's certainly got its difficulties. And there was uh an article that came out in the New York Times back in in May. It was based on some research that was done in England, right? So it's a group of researchers in England, they part published a large multi-year study looking more closely at the relationship between like social media and adolescents' feelings about life. And and while I rail against social media on the regular, no matter what media platform I have, the research actually identified two distinct periods in adolescence when teens may be the most sensitive to negative influence of social media and may negatively affect overall life satisfaction. So for girls, it's around the time of puberty, which is like 11 to 13. And for boys, it's around the age of 14 to 15, because they often have puberty a little later. And then the second distinct period for both genders where social media negatively affected life satisfaction was around age 19. And that's again when often when young people, young adults, teens and young adults are launching, right? They're launching from home, they're coming to college, and you recognize a lot of the differences between yourself and your peers. So it's really very interesting that there are certain developmental time periods where social media can really, really affect you negatively, and most likely it's due to the social comparison.
SPEAKER_02You know, and this the the social comparison, just to kind of elaborate on that, bringing it back to the Gen Xers, growing up, and you know, nowadays, of course, the Gen Zers, you have social media, and that's often how you communicate, Lavelle, right? I mean, you're actually communicating through social media. Whereas growing up, we didn't have that. We would either stay on the phone and talk to our friends for hours, or we would get together and we would talk in person, but that's not happening today, right, Lavelle? I mean, how often are you physically engaging with your friends? I mean, obviously, I would say more so on social media, right? And then Dr. Saunders, I want you to address that.
SPEAKER_00So, yeah, I I definitely think that there's very much more social media interaction, especially on the front end. You know, many times uh if you're interested in somebody romantically, the first thing that you'll do is search for the social media to see where you can um find a way to get your foot into the door. And even when it comes to getting together in person, you oftentimes launch that from a virtual perspective first. You know, yeah group chats, it's maybe not social media per se in terms of being Instagram, but it's a form of social media where you know that's not how things used to be done per se. So I definitely think that it has a large part to play in how people my age kind of get together.
SPEAKER_02It's an interesting gap, Dr. Saunders.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I'm just thinking of the expression, oh yeah, I slid into his DMs, right? I mean that's that's what that is, right? It's like I slid into his DMs, his direct messages. I instead of just liking something or commenting, I actually wanted a little bit more of a quote-unquote personal connection. And so to do that is still, you know, obviously I'm even of a slightly different generation, but it seems so impersonal, but that is the that is the way a lot of young people make a more personal connection, especially with online dating. You know, I do a segment with Great Day Connecticut on on Wednesdays, and they were talking about the match.com has like, I don't know, 46 million users. And so you realize, like, wow, online forums are really how a lot of people are meeting each other, that they're not taking the time to just, if they're in a coffee shop or bookstore, which do those things even exist anymore, like to sit and talk about it. It's hard to find where whereas I just make a comment to the person next to me and say, Oh, hey, I really like that book that you're reading. I read it a couple weeks ago. You know, so it's that personal connection. And I think what that does for a lot of young people, and this is to some degree an overgeneralization, is it's really stunted their social skills, and we have a lot more social anxiety.
SPEAKER_00And I think that I can somewhat corroborate that, as is with many things, it all depends on who you're speaking to and and uh what circles they reside in. But I do think that there's a a lot of young people who have that challenge of how to even initiate that social interaction in person. Uh, and and it brings to mind some of the etiquette that actually exists on social media. There is actually etiquette around, you know, how many likes you're supposed to give a person if you're interested in them. You know, if you if you go to the page and you like everything on your page, you can basically cancel your plans with them because you've shown yourself to be desperate. That's something that may not be apparent to somebody who's not somewhat aware of the social media etiquette, these unwritten rules, just like we have in person, where you know, things like personal space are important, nobody tells you that, but it's something that you know. So I think that is definitely another situation where the rules of socialization apply, but because we are becoming more adept in virtual socialization, we're sometimes missing out on that physical.
SPEAKER_02When I was growing up, it was what you see is what you get, kind of a thing. And then Lavelle, even going back and and you talking about the persona that you spend so much time building this persona online, how do you even get to know somebody nowadays?
SPEAKER_00Realistically, okay. So the the the way that I enjoy doing it is stepping out and and seeking that physical interaction and Dr. Saunders, um, what you described, you know, the the coffee house experience. It's the kind of thing that I honestly have watched TV shows and been inspired by because during the time that I became actively involved in like the dating scene, it was much more common to, as you were saying, slide into somebody's DMs. And the benefit of doing it that way is that you're operating in the norm. And so if you learn how to do it, you can have some successes there. But there is a certain amount of gratification I've gotten from just doing it the old-fashioned way. Um, there's definitely the impact I I tell people that I have spoken to about grad school, if you or any any other any opportunity, we are so accustomed to emails and things that are virtual now. If you write a handwritten letter, you're gonna make such a great impact that you wouldn't otherwise. If you go over to the person and speak in person, you're gonna make an impact that you wouldn't otherwise. So that's what I strive towards. And then the the norm, I think, is to just to find their social media profile and make your presence known to them, whether through liking or through direct messaging.
SPEAKER_02It's interesting. Dr. Saunders, I'm gonna shift gears a little bit, and and this is a topic that you're well versed in, you talk about it often in the media, but it's bullying and online bullying. And growing up, bullying to me was leaving elementary school with my strawberry shortcake lunchbox and having three boys tackle me and smash my strawberry lunchbox, strawberry shortcake lunchbox. It was devastating to me. I mean, it was I loved that lunchbox. And I remember running home and crying. The difference is that after a few days and a brand new lunchbox, I was sort of okay. And it was really just me and the perpetrators who were bullying me. That was it. Nowadays, with the Gen Zers, you're bullying online, but it's for the world to see almost. Talk a little bit more about the generation gap there.
SPEAKER_03You know, that story that actually made me feel sad. That sad story that you recounted about your strawberry shortcake lunchbox, except for the evidence of the smashed lunchbox, it would be easy for someone to deny, oh, I wasn't there, I wasn't there, I wasn't there. But what we have now it so often is there are messages recorded. There have been, there are things that you can save online, and so there is a lot of bullying. We can actually call it cyberbullying, right? So cyberbullying is any form of interpersonal aggression, threats, harassment, impersonation, or exclusion that occurs through use of electronic communication. It can sometimes be harder to detect and intervene, but sometimes there's actually more of a record of it than there would be if it was something verbal. And sometimes it's inadvertent, like exclusion can feel really, really personal, right? If you say, oh my god, I thought I was in this friend group and they all went out and got ice cream together and you know they excluded me, and then they excluded me from another thing. I mean, that that really can have a negative effect on people. So it's scary because in that example that you shared, Tina, you know, you went home, you got some support from your family, so you know, you got kind of a break from it, you got a new lunchbox, but a lot of times with the online or cyberbullying, there's no break. You go home, you they're still sending you negative messages, you're back at school. I mean, so you don't ever get a break from it, which really can be very daunting.
SPEAKER_02And and not only that, Dr. Saunders, it's it's on there for almost forever. I mean, you know, once it's posted, it's posted. So, so how does each generation, and going back even to Facebook, you know, I do see people bashing each other on Facebook for their political views. So that's a form of bullying I that I see in the Gen X generation nowadays. Regardless of your generation, how do you deal with online bullying? Because at the end of the day, bullying is bullying.
SPEAKER_03First, it's identifying it, right? I mean, a lot of times we think bullying is like this really obvious kind of event, but a lot of times it almost comes in the form of what we call microaggressions, right? They're smaller, they're they they're maybe intentional, but maybe unintentional, and it's you know not as obvious as someone saying, I hate you, I'm gonna kill you, you're and calling someone names. It's more subtle than that, but equally as problematic. So the step one is to identify it, identify the person, and then come up with a way to set a boundary around that person. And that is a good thing about social media is that you can unfriend people or take people, get rid of them from other social media platforms easier than you could if they were your neighbor. Um, so it But the most important step is actually identifying what's going on and how it's having an effect on you.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Dr. Saunders, as we're speaking about the details of bullying, cyberbullying, I'm thinking of some of the very large-scale, very dire consequences that we have seen from you know some of these potential offshoots of social media. One one of the issues about talking about this is that it's not quite so easy to say that social media caused these things. But when I think about the gun violence that we see far too much of now, even when I think about things like uh there is a crime called sexploitation that deals with sending nude images and then blackmailing the person who sent them by saying, You sent me these, now I'll expose you unless you sent me so much money. Very scary. And you know, there have been suicides among teens and result of those things and so on and so forth. Can you speak to perhaps the most important thing for parents, teens, anybody across the spectrum to keep in mind when it comes to trying to stay safe from the dire consequences that may be associated with social media use in a negative way?
SPEAKER_03Well, it's a daunting task. So I'm gonna say something while I even though I realize it's a very hard task. You know, supervision is the most important element when it comes to not just social media, but a lot of things in parenting. So having some idea of the kinds of media platforms that your child's on, and another really good source of information is asking other parents who have kids around your same age, but you know, finding a way to supervise. And that doesn't necessarily mean you know being over your child's shoulder all the time. There's a reason that some of these platforms have guidelines of you know not being on them until you're age 13, where you have a at least a smidge more emotional maturity, not much, but a smidge. Supervising. I had a situation one time not that long ago where a parent was forbidding their, I think it was 14 or 15-year-old, to be on Snapchat. This the 14-year-old desperately wanted to be on Snapchat. And you know, they would take it off the phone, and then the phone would get taken away because they had been on Snapchat again, you know, and then and they'd get the phone back, and then they find a way to get Snapchat back. It was this is an ongoing battle for months. So finally I said, let's look, let's just deal with this directly. Yes, they're gonna be on Snapchat because they're gonna get on anyway, but you're gonna be their quote-unquote friend on Snapchat. So you're gonna be able to see a lot of the things that they do. And and so for parents to like be a part of their child's social media platform is a way to see exactly what they're doing, as opposed to um, you know, saying, I don't do any of that and I don't I don't want to see it, but it really means you have to step into something that might be uncomfortable, but it's the best way to supervise.
SPEAKER_00And then I I think that there's also a um a two-way street there. I think that it would be good for, in this case, parents, uh children, kids, teens to be open to having your parent as as a friend on your account. You know, you can always make a fake account uh where they're not a friend, but if you do that, you're you're removing yourself from the potential help that your parent can provide. I think there's definitely a conversation of trust to be had there between parents and their kids.
SPEAKER_03Honestly, I don't I don't encourage parents to extend a great deal of trust to their teens because trust is something that's earned over time with communication and accountability. But you know, you do things in a stepwise manner. But if you draw a line that's in and say you can be on those social media platforms, unless you live on a desert island somewhere, you're setting your child up for a you know just a difficult situation. Again, I've had another parent say, Well, I don't want my child to have a phone, and they you know give them a phone for short periods of time or take it away, or they take all texting off and they say they just want me to phone. I said, Teams don't call each other. I said, I called my friends in high school. Teams don't call each other, they either snap, they don't even really text that much. So that it's just also taking into consideration because we don't live on islands where there's no social media, but we have to sort of deal with the reality, but find ways to manage it so that it is as safe as possible. We can't say nothing bad will ever happen, but make it as safe as possible.
SPEAKER_02You know, and and all too often, at least nowadays, and Lavelle, you brought this up about gun violence, school shootings. You know, when I was growing up, there might be a fist fight after school. Hey, we're gonna throw it down after school in the uh on the playground, and that would be the extent of it. All too often today, we see more and more school shootings, unfortunately. And you always, after the fact, you know, you sort of peruse the social media of the perpetrator. And I think it goes back to the if you see something, say something, but are kids saying anything? Because you often go back and you look at these social media accounts with the suspect sort of holding up the guns and and smiling, or there's always some horrible clues that you see on their social media. How do we circumvent that? How do we get around that? Do you think there should be regulations on social media to divert potential school shootings or mass violence from happening?
SPEAKER_03I think the hard part is in those very extreme situations, almost always there are clues. However, there are a lot of times people do inappropriate things or have inappropriate posts or inappropriate content on their social media and they never do anything. So we in the behavioral health field do not have a good way to predict violence. You know, the best way to predict future violence is past violence, but if you don't have a violent history, then it's hard for us to predict. But it is making your young people aware, and all people, right? If if you see inappropriate content, you can report things to each of those social media platforms. Many of them have like buttons or tabs where you can report it. And people do get banned. Um, I had a couple friends on Facebook that got, you know, came back after a month saying they were banned because they had made some really negative, perhaps borderline, threatening comments about our previous president. So if you do see content that is in overly inflammatory or certainly in any way violent, report them or let others know that this person is someone to be aware of.
SPEAKER_00Most definitely. Another thing that comes to my mind is, and I'm thinking about my own social media experiences, how do you know when to report, and then how do you know how to report? What is the definitive red flag, so to speak, and then what is the first plan of action to reporting something?
SPEAKER_03We would have to probably look that up, but I do think I do I know that each of those social media platforms absolutely have to have ways that people can report content that is not just questionable, but downright scary or violent or threatening. That's a small majority of it. I think it's more concerning when it's the kind of lower level content that is just either offensive or upsetting or in some way creates distress in the people around.
SPEAKER_02And lastly, Dr. Saunders, I just want to talk about what's next for future generations. You know, as a Gen Xer, I sort of have lived through the transition of a life before social media and a life with social media. And I would prefer going back to the life before social media. Um we have to go over to that desert island. Yeah, I think that's looking better and better every day. So, where do we go from here? You know, the Gen Zers, this is all they know. They've grown up with social media, but how does that further evolve with Generation Alpha coming up? And what do we need to do to prepare that generation?
SPEAKER_03It's actually a whole other I can always, you know, and as you were doing also, Tina, right? Telling, tell stories of what it was like to be in high school, and you know, there was no privacy because the phone was attached to the wall in the kitchen, and so you can only have as much privacy as the as the cord would extend into the dining room or whatever else. Um, and so, but we you know, we're we're raising generations of people who who know nothing but cell phones and social media and instant access to information. From a developmental standpoint, I always wonder how it affects their brains, not just their ability to socialize. So it's interesting. I mean, you know, I think there is a good amount of research going on looking at some of these effects, but a lot of it's longitudinal, and it takes years and years and years to realize what some of the effects are.
SPEAKER_02It will be interesting to see what happens in the future generations to come. Dr. Laura Saunders, as always, we appreciate the time and your incredible, remarkable expertise on this topic, especially social media. I'm sure it's not going to be the last time we talk about it. Dr. Laura Saunders, psychologist at the Hartford Hospital Institute of Living. Thank you so much for joining us.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for having me. Thank you, Tina, Lavelle, and Dr. Saunders. Be sure to check the links in this episode's notes to learn more. Episode two of this series will feature Dr. Godfrey Perlson of the Olin Neuropsychiatry Center at the Institute of Living at Harvard Hospital. He's going to discuss the effects of marijuana use, which generations are using it, and why.