Shocking Studies On Loneliness, Suicide, AI, & Communication With Dr. Anthony Silard

Today, I sit down with Dr. Anthony Silard, a professor of leadership and organizational psychology, to talk about the loneliness epidemic and what it is doing to love, friendship, self-worth, and mental health in the digital age. We break down how AI, social media, dating apps, online education, and screen-based living are changing the way people build relationships, resolve conflict, and interact with one another in real life.

In this conversation, Dr. Silard explains why modern technology often gives us the illusion of connection while leaving people more isolated, emotionally reactive, and disposable in the eyes of others. We discuss the rise of hookup culture, the decline of empathy, the way text messages and social media distort communication, and how validation through likes, comments, and curated online images can weaken self-worth and intensify loneliness. I also challenge the role that family dinners, game nights, real-world social development, and phone habits play in shaping how young people relate to others.

Dr. Silard also shares powerful ideas from his work on relationships, including the difference between social connection and social information, why richer communication matters, and how sustainable relationships are built through compassion, meaning, and consistency. We talk about how memes, filler messages, and low-effort digital habits can keep people technically connected while still emotionally distant, and why acceptance, forgiveness, and intentional effort are necessary if we want healthier relationships.

This episode is for anyone trying to understand why people feel more alone than ever, why online life can leave deeper emotional wounds, and what practical changes can help reverse the trend. If you care about mental health, modern dating, emotional intelligence, suicide prevention, Gen Z struggles, and rebuilding authentic human connection in a world full of screens, this conversation gives you a strong place to start.

https://theartoflivingfree.org/

Website: https://coupleonukes.com

Exodus, Honor Your Heart, & Nulu Knives: https://www.coupleonukes.com/affiliates/

Want to be a guest on Couple O' Nukes? Send me a message on PodMatch:  https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1726279485588093e83e0e007

Sign Up For A PodMatch Account: https://www.joinpodmatch.com/coupleonukes

*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and I've just gotten back from my international travels. I'm not in my normal studio, so I apologize in advance for any, you know, lighting or audio quality, not being at his top performance, but still excited to be here and have this conversation that we're gonna be having today.

An important topic. We're gonna be talking about love and loneliness. Now, as someone who has attended online college and is. Back at that again. You know, I think it has really changed the way we interact, especially as young adults, even, you know, middle schools and high schools doing hybrid programs, doing a lot of online learning.

And with AI of course, as well in the conversation, we are seeing less social interaction in the real, I call it the real world, you know, in person between people. How does that affect us when it comes to psychology, when it comes to. Our ability to react to things, our emotional control, our relationships, and then of course, you know, those relationships being affected.

How is this shaping love and how is social media playing a role into all of this? Not to mention everything we're talking about is also existing before the time of AI and technology, but how has that. Pushed forward it in a negative momentum Here to discuss this topic with us, we have Dr. Anthony Ard. So great to have you here to talk about all these important conversations.

We hear all the time that there's a loneliness epidemic that people are divorcing, you know, more than ever before. We hear it a lot. What is the truth behind it? And can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Uh, sure. Okay. Well, and thanks for having me on your show. Um, appreciate you. So, okay, so while I'm Anthony Solar, I'm originally from Washington DC uh, we live in Italy about half an hour from Rome, a region called Castelli Roman.

I'm a professor of leadership and organizational psychology at Luis Business School in Rome. And, uh, let's see. Perhaps we jump into loneliness, the lonely, the loneliness epidemic. So in January, 2018, there was a Cigna study that found that 43% of adult Americans were lonely. Based on surveying over 20,000 adults.

Uh, two years later in January, 2020, before the pandemic began, that percentage had leaped from 43% to 61%. So over three in five Americans lonely based on the UCLA longness scale. Well, you just came back from Japan and there's also a tremendous amount of loneliness there. In fact, it's a global epidemic. Uh, in Japan, for example, I'm, I'm sure when you were, while you were there, uh, you probably were not walking around, uh, kind of, kind of putting your hand over your wallet, uh, out of concern that a, an 80-year-old Japanese man might rob you.

I'm guessing that was not, uh, first on your mind. Not at all. No, not at all. And I wouldn't be on mine. On mine either, because when I, when we think about who in our global society. There's a, you know, relatively safe people. I think we think we would, we might think about Japanese elderly people. Well, a lot of people don't know this, know this, but in the last 15 years, the rate of incarceration for elderly Japanese people 75 years and over has quadrupled.

Wow. And a lot of people be like, what? Like how, how did that happen? Right. So, so it turns out that, um, a number of these folks are. Walking down to the corner store and shoplifting a small bag of rice or something so they can go to prison. Why? Because at least in prison, there are people to talk to. At least in prison.

There's, there's a community and there was a, there was a sign that an 87-year-old Japanese man put on a, on uh, a bus stop and it, and it read like I'm 87. I don't have anyone, can some family take me? No one responded and he passed away two months later. Um, in, in the UK the former Prime Minister, Theresa May, hired a minister for loneliness.

This was right after a study came out that found that over 8 million British people were lonely, and, and I'm not making this up. British children spend less time outside than prison inmates. That's insane. So this is what's happening in, in France, Australia, uh, most countries now loneliness is, is is north of 50% of the population.

So yeah, it's, it's, it's an epidemic and I'm glad we're here talking about it 'cause it's afflicting a lot of people. For sure, and one of the things I think about too is that it is difficult to navigate our, you know, the apps that we have designed for connection and come out with a good result. To be honest, you know, we look at the success and failure rate.

Of dating apps or friending apps and it's pretty low, right? I mean, there's plenty of great matches that have been made and you know, I think there is a time and a place for those apps, but we've seen a lot of people who try to use them for friendship have to navigate, you know, unwanted, you know, romantic approaches, scamming, fake profiles, AI bots.

You know what we're seeing, what something I talk about pretty often on the show is people befriending AI chat bots. Rather than regular humans. One thing we've discussed on this show about psychology is the fact that AI conforms to your will essentially within a degree. If you don't like it the way it talks to you, you shape the way it talks to you.

Mm-hmm. The difference is if I'm part of a group project in a school. And now everything's online. But let's say we were in, you know, actually in person sitting in a group and we have a disagreeance of opinion or don't like the people we're working with, we still have to complete that task. And we have to learn the emotional skills and the self-awareness and the other skills required to get along with said individual, at least to the degree of task completion with ai.

You shape everything to your, to your will. And so what do we have? We see the development of people losing their people skills, not being able to handle stuff. We see like sore looseness going up, for lack of better words, right? Because if you can always control the outcome, well when you can't, you're gonna be a sore loser.

And we see part of that is related to, I did a whole episode on family game nights and with the move away from family game nights and family dinners. You are not having that at home interaction that shapes some of that early on before school. So we see a lot of loneliness and a lot of the relationships people do get into on the apps often end up in a very toxic manner or a terrible outcome.

And that's part of, I mean, I would say a very toxic dating culture revolving around hookups, which I would say are kind of band-aids for loneliness. They are band-aids that ultimately when you peel them away, leave a deeper wound. I mean, what would you say along those lines? Uh, I think you're right about that.

I think we, we all want to love and be loved. It's what we most desire. We all, you know, we need each other as human beings. When you go on these, on the dating, on dating apps, I mean, okay. A lot of people are meeting on dating apps today, and it's not that, that, you know, you're, you're doomed for failure if you go on one of these apps because there are a lot of successful, healthy marriages of people that have met on that.

Right. But I think you're right that there's this, there's this hookup culture and a lot of people are kind of, you know, using these apps to kind of, uh, in a way it's becoming kind of like. Like, like looking at other human beings as disposable. Like, okay, if this person can serve my needs, kind of like ai, as you said, you know, it's just, it, it, it conforms to your needs as opposed to when, you know, you describe being on a, on a, on a, on a, on a work team for a project and it's, it is messy.

You know, relationships are messy and it, they require us to attune to others. And it's kind of like playing basketball or tennis or football or baseball. If you, you can read all about them as long, as much as you want, but you gotta get out there and play to get better at playing them. Right. And I think the same is true for relationships and this is what's happening as a lot of people are, are sort of going out there and going, okay, wow.

Well people are becoming less empathetic. You know, part of it is that they're going there, they're, you know, these AI chat bots that you mentioned. But another part of it is there's, there's research that's found that cognitive empathy, which is also called perspective taking, putting yourself in someone else's shoes, effective empathy, also known as empathic concern, feeling what others feel.

Both are down 40% over the last 10 or 15 years. What we're seeing is that for a lot of people, it's really, it's, it's not just the dating apps, it's, it's the whole society now. Yeah. Where people kind of seeing others as being kind of disposable. Like, okay, why, why, why should I sit and listen to you for 10 minutes when I've got 30 text messages and other, you know, WhatsApp messages and Instagram messages and so forth that are waiting for me on my screen.

And, and so yeah, we need, we need to change this because we're essentially losing our humanity in the way we're approaching relationships today. I am gonna make a box that everyone puts their phone in when they walk into a restaurant. That way everyone has to talk to each other. You know, like I obviously that's a joke, but honestly, like we go to a lot of restaurants and you see that kind of culture where people are just on their phones, they're not talking.

Or one thing you talked about is the distraction with all the other notifications. People having conversations with individuals who are on their phone, you know, answering other texts. We're not seeing that full. Thing. And you know, I talked about it once actually. I got questioned why, you know, even though I'm not Catholic, I do the sign of the cross.

And someone said, why do you do that? You know, you could pray to God anytime. And he's, he's right there. And I said. Well, let me ask you this. When you're talking to another person and you really want them to know that you're listening and you respect them, what do you do? You put down your phone, you make eye contact, you listen.

For me, that's what the sign of cross is, and we're losing that in society between people now as well. And I wanna talk about, I won't call it causation, but definitely a good correlation is we see loneliness almost proportional with. Our self-worth. And what I mean by that is we're seeing very low self-worth.

And this is because of the self-esteem issues produced by social media. People chasing validation through likes, re-shares, comments, whatever it is, comparing themselves to all these images and values we see online. Not all of which are real. Not all of them showing everything else involved, most of them highlights.

And so what we see is. I believe that people with lower self-worth feel lonely more easily is, is what I've observed personally and even in my life. And so we see people relying on that external validation through social media or whatever it is, to feel their self-worth to feel less lonely rather than loneliness being based off of human connection.

Sometimes loneliness is also a self-absorption. What would you say along those lines? Well, there is a, there is a, a part of loneliness that is narcissistic, that self-absorption. 'cause as you mentioned, because what, what we often do is we say, well, why, why aren't others including me more? Why aren't others treating me better?

Why aren't others reaching out to me? And, but what we don't say is, why aren't I treating others better? Why aren't I reaching out to others? Why aren't I including others? And I think this, the more we're on our screens, we also get, become kind of very self enclosed and we start to resent people out there because we say, well, uh, they're, they're not making much effort with me and so forth.

And we lose sight that, that, that actually strips us of our power because. The only power we, we really have is to give to others or to change ourselves. We have, we have zero power over what we receive from others. We can't control it at all. What we can control is how we give to others, how much we give.

What we give to whom we give. And so I, I always, so I, so I, so I, I, I write a lot about loneliness and teach about it. In fact, both of my last two books screened in and love and suffering. Loneliness is a, is a pretty constant theme running through them. And one thing, uh, one thing that's, that's, that's I think really accentuating loneliness in our sort of digital mediated society is.

That when we're communicating through technology, we're usually communicating either. Either like one-on-one interpersonally through email or text, or some kind of textual exchange, or we're communicating between ourselves and a group through social media. And if we, so if we just isolate those two cases and look at, well, okay, what's the what, what, what sort of, what's the emotional component of the, of each of those?

So first of all, if we look at the textual exchanges, the interpersonal. What we, what we find is that there's a negative effective bias, meaning that when you send an electronic message or text and you intend it to be emotionally positive, Chris Byron at Georgia State University found that it's, it's usually received as being emotionally negativ.

I'm sorry if you send it me intending it to be emotionally positive, it is usually received as being emotionally neutral and if you send it, intending it to be emotionally neutral, it's usually received by the recipient as, as emo as being emotionally negative. So there's this negative downward SL on the interpersonal electronic communication.

Now let's go to the inter, you know, the individual to group communication or group communicating communication through social media. And so if you look, there's been, there was a study at Cambridge University and if you look at like Congress people and politicians, and if you look at when they, when they send a negative message, they basically upload a negative, a mess message attacking the outgroup, attacking their opponents or the, the other party.

Um, and you also compare those with. With, when they send an emotionally neutral or positive message to their own supporters, well, those negative attacking visceral vitriolic messages are liked and forwarded at 2.7 times the rate of those emotionally neutral or positive messages. So, once again, the, the, the, all of this electronic communication, whether it's through social media or through through email, through chats, through texting.

The business model of these tech companies is to, you know, grab 'em short, keep 'em long, you know, grab your attention and keep your attention. There's all this research by like, by, you know, social psychologist, Roy Baumeister and others, uh, it's called, you know, good, it is called bad is stronger than good.

Like we, we, we are drawn to negative events and we keep our focus on them much more than positive. And that's how they're profiting. Right. And we know that the social media platforms have paid psychologists working to keep you hooked on the apps. And in fact mm-hmm. I saw not too long ago that a number of them had quit because of moral.

Conflictions with what they were doing because they were seeing how it was affecting the mostly children who are using the app. You know, teenagers, childrens, and young adults. One thing I wanna go back to that you said that I really liked was it's about your own personal effort and control. And when you put it into the hands of others, you lose that control.

And there's a very old saying, I guess as old as phones maybe, that says the phone works both ways. Right. And I think what we've gotten used to, like you said, is. The phone works one way, which is people should be calling us. And I think part of that entitlement comes from one thing we've seen, and I'm sure a lot of us have experienced it, is we send a text and we know the person is online or has their phone on them, and we're like, why didn't they answer me right away?

Right. We've kind of expected people. To revolve around us because now they have a means to where we can be connected regardless of whatever is going on in their life. And I think that has been a huge factor in shaping that mindset. You know, especially with these social media apps that show this person is online, yet they have not read your message or responded to your message.

And that has boosted that entitlement, unfortunately, that we have. But like you said, it's about. Have we reached out? And also one thing we need to accept about loneliness to a degree is that you can't force people to spend time with you or to invite you out. If you have reached out and done all you can, you've made your efforts.

'cause I've had friendships like that where I was always the person reaching out and initiating, and there came to a point where I had to drop it. You know, if people aren't going to respect it and have it be a mutually beneficial relationship, then sometimes we have to drop that. And it's less lonely than actually constantly chasing after someone, in my opinion.

You know, and everyone experiences that differently. And then going back to communication, these one-on-one text message conversations, what we've also seen, especially in the recent years, is a huge shift in the way we talk to each other, at least for the younger generations and even the, the older generations conversation shifting from actual text messages, sentences, and communication to just.

Filler, uh, memes, for example, and for anyone who doesn't know what a meme is, you know, typically a online video or image that is humorous or entertaining in content. And we see a lot of friendships or even family relationships are being sustained just with that form of communication. Now, is it better than no communication?

Is it damaging to, uh, is it misleading? You know, and that's something I definitely wanna discuss with you because a lot of people. Or just quote, memeing each other. How does this shape our communication and our social circles and our own mindsets? Well, okay. A lot to unpack you. You really shared some insightful, insightful ideas there.

So, well, let me, let me, let me respond to, to a few of them. So, so, uh, I had a friend when I was doing my doctorate at ESA Business school in Barcelona. I had a friend who, he was Scottish and his girlfriend's Polish, and they're actually married now, but they, they, they were really close friends of ours and, and came over a lot.

We lived, we lived a block away from them. And, uh, they, this guy, um, he, in his two years of his MBA, um, he did not have one phone call with another student. Everything was by WhatsApp, texting essentially, and. And it's interesting 'cause when you said, you know, the phone works both ways. My thought was yeah, you can use it to send electronic communication or you can use voice and you can call, of course you meant it differently, right?

That, that other people can call you and you can call them. And, uh, in, in my, in, in my book screened in the art of living free in the digital age, uh, i, I write about what I call the communication reciprocation downgrade. And what the communication reciprocation downgrade is, is like you send a rich. A rich form of communication, like a phone call voice is much richer than, uh, a than a text message, right?

And you send, you, you, you call someone, you leave a message and they send back. Um, a, a, a, a much poorer form of communication, which would be a text message. So it's basically saying, okay, thanks for thinking of me and calling me. I'm gonna reply with, you know, what's gonna take me 45, 5 seconds to put together electronically and send to you?

And, and I think you're right. Uh, when people do not reciprocate with, it's not just reciprocating by calling you back, but also with the, with the, with the richness of, in, of, of modality of the type of communication. I think then it's really, it's really hard to develop a meaningful relationship that way.

And this has happened to me a lot, so I'm, I'm, I'm like you, like, I'll, I'll call people, I'll make an effort. Uh, I'm, I tend to be the one who's like. Trying to get a bunch of people, let's all, let's all go out together and hang out. And, and also individually one-on-one, if I like someone, I'll call 'em, Hey, you know, we should get together.

And, uh, and what I found over time is that I think a good way to approach social relationships is I call, is kind of what could be called social mirroring. Mm-hmm. And I see this even in, in my own family. So some people I will call and they'll call, they'll answer the phone or they'll call me back. And other people I'll call and I'll, and I'll get a call back like two weeks later.

And so with that, so if I then call them like two hours later and then I leave a message and they call back again two weeks later, you can see there is a, there's a real kind of, kind of, it is really off kilter. The way the relationship, I call it phone tag. Is, is, is what? Yeah. Phone tag refer as phone tag.

Yeah, but it is phone tag. But it's also different in that, in that they're, they're, uh, they're waiting two weeks to, to, to, to call me back. I'm, I'm waiting two hours and I think. Relation What, what, what they're, I don't see it as a kind of vindictive, like, okay, they're gonna wait two weeks, so I'm gonna wait two weeks.

No, but I see it as they're saying like, okay, this is, this is the time and effort I have for this relationship, and it's, it's at that level for me. So they're coming in at that, at, at a, at a certain level. And so what I, over time I do is just kind of like mirror that, okay, well, uh, I don't need to like cut off the relationship completely, but I'm not gonna put much stock in that relationship and you know, I'll call 'em back after a week or two, whatever, and just know that this is not gonna be a very close relationship at this point in time.

Hmm. I found that it's better not to just write people off completely because sometimes that person who takes two weeks to get back to you or even doesn't get back to you. Two years from now, something could dramatically change in their life, in their life. And the window kind of opens and then they want to, they wanna spend time with you.

And of course, the best friends are are where it, it, it's consistent and it's constant. Um, but it's not, it, it is, it is not easy. And then, and then how we manage that in terms of loneliness, you know, I think, I'm sure you've heard like lonely in a crowd. You, you talk about sending and receiving MEMS as a, as a form of communication.

Like that's kind of saying, like saying, okay, it's kind, you know, it reminds me of a guy I know whose, whose father abandoned, abandoned him when he was very small and his father was in the military. And he would get, he would get, like once a year, he would get a postcard from his father for Christmas. And the, the postcard didn't have any message on it.

It just had his, his father's signature. Wow. And that really crushed him, you know? It was, it was so hard for, as you can imagine. And, and it really struck me that, that, and I think this is a, this is a challenge that many men in particular experience, where as men, we are often not really taught how to express our emotions.

And I'm guessing. Speculating that his father didn't know how to write to him, didn't know what to say, and didn't know, and felt so many strong and conflicting emotions over having abandoned his son that he just, he just signed his name and. And I think this is what, what happened, you know? So when you, when you were mentioning about people just sending Mims to each other as a, first of all, even just writing something in a text is at least expressing something.

Right. And that's, that's really one of our, one of our poorest forms of communication today. I think sending MEMS is even one step down because now it's like, it is like, you're not expressing anything. You're just saying, okay, someone in Cleveland, Ohio, um, created this mem and it's meant to share a certain sort of dimension of the human experience, and that's.

Somewhat aligned with what I want to share with you, so I'm just gonna send that to you. I mean, I think that can be, there's no reason not to, not to send someone a me, but I think as a compliment to, uh, richer forms of communication as opposed to a substitute. I really like how you worded that. I agree wholeheartedly.

You know, it shouldn't be our only communication. It should be an add-on. And one thing you mentioned there that I think is really important for us to note is not mistaking occasions with patterns. And so sometimes people, people don't answer the phone or text because of something that's happening. But if it's a repeat pattern, then that's a different way to look at it, you know?

So I think one thing we do is you mentioned we write people off too quickly. And I think that is a result of how easy it is to just get people out of our lives nowadays. You know, blocking them on the apps and mm-hmm. And just cutting off communication with them. Um, you know, as someone in the military, I have to say, you know, I have a lot of friendships.

I see them once every few years sometimes. Mm-hmm. And, you know, we have a mutual understanding and respect that we're all in different time zones doing holiday shifts, night shifts, whatever it is, you know. I think it's really about, you know, matching and understanding how you communicate with that person.

And I agree that text messages are so, you know, up to interpretation. And I really like that negative biasing because that's very true. And I think, I don't remember the exact study, but I had read somewhere about the exact percentage of like. Yeah. If a argument happens over text versus phone call, the percentage of success or failure drastically shifts and essentially to, to paraphrase the summaries, uh, argument over the phone can be solved faster and more efficiently than a text message.

And I think like couples that argue over a text message are statistically much more likely to fail in resolution than calls. Mm-hmm. And that's on top of. Communication in couples resolutions to arguments already being affected by so many factors nowadays. And I wanted to get into, you mentioned your books, uh, you know, a couple times here.

Could you kind of break down each one individually? What kind of inspired you to write them and you know, what can people really get out of them? Sure, sure. Okay. And before I do that, is it okay if I say something about just, just kind of responding to what you just were sharing, which I think was an excellent point of course.

About how relationships can fracture. Um, over text or email? Uh, so in, in, in my first book, which I wrote about 15 years ago, um, it's, it was, it's a Simon and Schuster book. It's called The Connection. And in that book I have the distinction between what I call theoretical motivation and experiential motivation.

Mm-hmm. And the idea is that. Is that when we take actions, theoretical motivation is, is when we try to, we try to induce ourselves into action through the mind, through theory, through through cog, through cognition, experiential motivation. On the other hand is when we try to, um, in kind of impel ourselves into, into action, through the heart, through experience.

So it's kind of like if you, if you wanna learn how to play basketball or tennis, for example, well. You can read all you want about basketball or tennis. This would be the theoretical motivation I'm gonna under. I'm gonna cognitively, psychologically understand how to play tennis or how to play basketball, and you're probably not gonna become a very good player.

Whereas if you say, you know what? I wanna learn how to play basketball or tennis and I'm gonna go out and start playing through experience, you start to feel it and feel what it's like to be a basketball or tennis player, and then you wanna do more. I think theoretical motivation, it is a really poor form of motivation.

It's, it's like, it's, it's, it's like, it's good. I mean, we need to read, we need to understand. It's good to, it's good to have conversations with people and develop our intellectual abilities, don't get me wrong, but when it, we really want to move into action. I think the, the reason that a lot of us stay like comfortably hidden behind our screens.

Send out these electronic messages is because the, the idea like, okay, I, I'd like to go out and, and, and connect with people. I'd like to go out and be more social. I'd like to have more friends. Well, okay, let me try to go on social media and see, you know, see how I can become friends with people there.

The problem with that is that it's all in the mind. It's all, it's all like, okay, I'm gonna engage in this sort of mental routine of getting out and, and typing on my computer and, and, and, and scrolling other people's feeds and so forth. And what I write about in, in screened in the art of living free in the digital age is that we go online seeking social connection.

But what we end up with is social information. Where, where, and so again, that's the theoretical motivation from the previous book. The, the, the social connection is experiential. That's in the heart, you know, so we, we, we, we either think what we should do with the mind or we feel what we want to do with the heart, and it's that feeling with the heart.

I think really that's, that's really what, what produces social connection and then we connect with people and then we're like, Hey, uh, I really like this person. I wanna spend more time with them. It's kind of like the, the, the flame is lit and things just take off. Whereas when we're, uh, when, when we go online, that's what we desire.

We're seeking social connection. We end up with. Though what we end up with is this social information. And the social information has the opposite effect. It, it polarizes us. Oh no. That person's a Republican or they're a Democrat, or, uh, whatever. They, they, you know, they don't, they don't share my view on this or that, and we start to go right into the mind and then we, we start to feel separated from others.

And actually if you look, there was a German study found that, that the number one reported emotion of Facebook users. I write about this in screened in number one reported emotion of Facebook users is envy. So soon after it is, is depression and loneliness. The number one emotion of Facebook, and I'm sure it's, it's pretty similar for, for Instagram and other, other, uh, social media platforms is envy because, uh, we, we, we go online and we see this very meticulously curated, uh, kind of, kind of display of another person's life.

We see, we see like the one moment in their family vacation, their week long family vacation where everyone's smiling and we go, well, well, why doesn't my family smile like that? We see for guys, we see the pictures of them right outta the gym as buff as possible for women. Women often use this in this, uh, this shrinking software to make themselves look thinner.

We're, we're so, whichever way you look at it, we start to think, well, I don't really measure up. And, and this is, this is a huge challenge. Um, so, so anyway, so just to, to finish the, with the question. So that's a little bit about screened in, uh, love and Suffering is my, my recent book, uh, and from April of last year.

And, uh, the idea in love and suffering is that, so, so when I wrote screened in, I spent 10 years researching the effects technology is having on us, on our relationships. And there's a lot of negative there. There's a lot of like, like negative the, the outcomes of our relationships with ourselves, relationships with others.

And so I decided after that, I said, well, I wanna look at something more positive. Now I wanna look at like, okay, how do we create, how do we create. Healthy relationships. And in particular, I wanna know how can we create a relationship, which is what I call A-C-M-S-R. A-C-M-S-R is a compassionate, meaningful, sustainable relationship.

How can we create that? And those words, I didn't just pick them out of a hat based on, um, the loneliness research that I'm doing. Uh, we, I've, we, along with Sarah Wright, New Zealand and other scholars I've been working with, um, we identified that, you know, essentially the, the, the three most common causes of loneliness come down to like a lack of compassion, meaning, or sustainability and relationships.

Mm. So, so I'm really, I would say now my personal mission is to help people create compassionate, meaningful, sustainable relationships. And love and suffering was all about that. And I realized. Going through the psychological research and also a lot of stories from my former clients. So I've been, I've been a leadership coach, professor, trainer, I have, I have tens of thousands of former clients from.

Companies like, like, like Disney, Google, Boeing, apple, um, bank of America, most of the world's largest nonprofits. Their senior leaders like Save the Children Care, world Wildlife Fund, political Leaders, mayors, G 20, cabinet, min Ministers. And what I learned from, from, and I'm still learning from all of these, all of these like high level executives that I coach, is that.

Every single one. The reason they come to see me is because they're stuck in some area of their life, and it's always without, without any variance. It's always because there's someone in their life they were never able to forgive. So love and suffering. I have what I call the four plateaus in this, in what's called the love progression model.

Toward love and their acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, and love. Each of the plateaus has an obstacle that has to be overcome, so we have to overcome suffering. To reach acceptance, we have to overcome resentment to reach forgiveness, we have to overcome judgment to reach a state of gratitude, and we have to overcome what I call incarceration to reach a state of love.

So I wanna go back to a couple different things you mentioned there. Uh, one of the things that came to my mind was, uh, part of my college classes recently, I. Read and studied an article on social media's effect on cultural intelligence and you know, the desire to, uh, be more well-rounded in cultural diversity and knowledge.

And basically, you know, it was same of what you mentioned earlier, that the difference between going out and actually experiencing another culture and just seeing it on social media. Uh, it was much more negative on social media where people felt just information overload or they're just reading all this stuff.

Half of it is false, half of it is true, and they'd rather just go out and experience the culture. And that developed cultural intelligence and that desire for it, uh, more significantly. And as someone. Whose been to Japan? Comparing my personal experience in Japan to what we see online with influencers in different clips, drastically different places.

Uh, honestly, like at least from what I saw it, my feed on different social media platforms for Japan. It was like the same few spots really just. Pushed out and representing the whole country, and then actually going there and going to more remote, you know, rural areas and checking it out. Such a different experience.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and that's, that's all of social media. What we've talked a lot about, um, you know, all the misinformation, uh, from fitness influencers to finance, show people, you know, with podcasting and social media, one of the best parts of it. One of the strengths is that anyone can do it. And this takes away barriers for people based off age, race, gender, whatever it is, right?

I mean, I started my podcast when I was like 20 years old, right? And normally to do what I do, uh, on a traditional platform would take a lot more work and experience. The downside of that is the same that anyone can start it, right, including anyone who just has an opinion or is spreading misinformation.

So it's a strength and weakness we see. And part of that goes into back to the texting, misinterpretation. You know, a lot of us read texts, like you said, in a different way than their intended, which. We don't get the tone necessarily as much as we would with actual inflections in the voice with body language.

And like we said, that leads to a lot of issues. And I recently read a study that was talking about. Emojis specifically are different per each generation, and I mean from individual to individual in general, but also there's just a standard almost, or a common use of emojis per each generation. So how, for example, a boomer might send an emoji, meaning one thing, but a Gen Z individual.

Thinks that emoji means something different and uh, you know, we won't go over and list all of them, but that's something to keep in mind as well. Uh, not just emojis, but certain words. I know words that used to mean one thing for a prior generation. Now in Gen Z means something probably sexualized and terrible.

Uh, you know, we've seen a lot of words from the younger generations. Just, um, degenerative, but that's also something to consider in, uh, texting as well. I like that you're focusing on the positive, though. One thing that you mentioned earlier on is that we have a tendency to focus on negativity, right? That spreads so much faster, right?

All the news channels in social media thrives on negativity, right? I mean, most of the humor we see is sexualized. It's racist, it's gore, it's just. Terrible stuff compared to positive stuff. And I think that's just also how our brain works when it comes to self-talk. It is so much easier for us to negatively self-talk ourselves than it is positively.

I have always felt that negative thoughts, the momentum builds so much more quickly than a positive thought. I feel like speaking positively to yourself is like pushing a boulder uphill and speaking negatively to yourself is pushing a boulder downhill. That's, yeah, I like that. I like that. Uh, it's. I think you know the reason for that, as far as I can tell, it's like if you, if you go back to our ancestors in the wide open plains and the dark forest, they, they had to be very acutely sensitive to any kind of threat, uh, in order to survive.

And so there was this, this kind of hypervigilant. Approach, uh, where, which I think we still retain to this day, that if something's negative, like, okay, I'll give all my attention to it and focus on it. Whereas if it's positive, well, okay, I can get to that later and, and so forth, so, so negative. Events, situations, emotions tend to command attention, including in our self-talk.

So it's a good point you made, I think it's amazing what you're doing. I mean, 23 and, and, you know, you're, you're, you're doing really well with your, with your podcasting and all the other things, great things you're doing. I think, you know, I'm 58 and, and I, one thing I admire from, from, you know, people in younger generations is really how.

There, there, there, I think there's a lot more kind of, of an innovative approach to, uh, to careers, to life. Uh, I I also think, you know, it's interesting 'cause we're we're talking about loneliness in the Cigna study I talked about earlier. You know, that when we, when we think about loneliness, we think about elderly people as being the loneliest, loneliest in society, right?

Because their, you know, their, their, their friends are dying out. Uh, their health is not as good. They feel more vulnerable. Um, they're, they're not working often. Uh, they're retired and, and they're not meeting people through work, which is, you know, really commonplace to meet people these days. And, uh, and, and yet today, if you look at that study in others, it's the youngest generation.

That's the loneliest. And I think a lot of that, I, I say it's like kind of like. For adults, um, adults who are kind of pointing the finger, I would say, or, or, you know, older adults, boomers and so forth. I say when you point your finger at someone, there are three fingers pointed back at yourself. Uh, because I think that our generation, my generation has largely failed the younger generation.

Uh, there, there. You know, we, we've, we've, especially, especially for our digital natives, who've, who've born with like, okay, there's a, there's a tablet, there's a phone. Uh, by the time they're two, three years old, they're, they're, you know, they're there. This has become kind of the electronic babysitter, and I view that the, that the, the most important responsibility for any parent is to help your child assimilate into social groups.

That's the most important thing, because whether you look at. Long-term wellbeing, happiness, success, leadership, all of those require more than anything the capacity to develop meaningful relationships with others. And when we as parents, we sort of delegate that responsibility to these digital devices, we're really short changing our, our kids.

And then we're seeing this like massive increase in loneliness in the youngest generation, which is really saddening because. You know, you guys are taking over the world. It's your generation that's gonna be, you know, running, running things as we die out. So, uh, and, and, and I think also last thing I'll share is that, you know, I know you, you have a military background and you just came back from Japan.

Uh, when, when you're talking about Japan, I was thinking, I was thinking about what John Lennon once said, which is. Life is what's is what happens while you're making plans. So we can be on social media, and again, that's the theoretical motivation. We're in our minds. I'm going to Japan, what am I gonna see?

But just being out there and exploring. And that's, it just takes on a life of its own. You, you start to feel what it's like to be a traveler in Japan and, you know, you start meeting lots of people and then you, you, you have this wonderful experience in terms of the military background in, in, in love and suffering.

Uh, the, the, so for example, when we talk about overcoming suffering to reach a state of acceptance, um, one of the, one of the case studies in love and suffering is a guy named Bill, who's, you know, he's. He's in the Midwest of the United States, and he's sitting in his comfortable suburb suburban home with his wife and two kids who, who, you know, he's only been married for like three years and he's got two small children and enjoying his life there.

He gets drafted. This is around 1971. Next thing you know, um, he's in Vietnam. And he, he's captured, you know, and you know, so this was called the Vietnam War by Americans. It's called, I spent a lot of time in Vietnam. It's called the American War by Vietnamese. Um, anyway, you look at it, he, he's there and he's in this, he's in this rat and lice and cockroach infested cell.

And in the space of like a month and a half, he's lost like 30 pounds. And he's just like. He's just like, what has happened? Like I lost all of what my life was and here I am. And he just feels like a victim, understandably. And he's miserable and he is really, he's really about to die. And Bill believes that he hears this voice and the voice says, this is your life.

And from that moment on, everything changes for him. He starts to exercise, he's, he starts to get to know some of the other POWs and, and sort of joins their like, you know, prison community. And he that helps him get through the war and, and get home eventually, uh, back to his family. And I think that's the thing is that many of us.

Especially with what's going on in the world today, we don't wanna accept it. We just say, this is, this is horrible. It's, it's repugnant. It's, it's like, it shouldn't be like this. And we throw our hands up and, and I think so few people would say, okay, I'm willing to accept what's happening in the world.

And whenever I share that, people say, what, are you kidding me? That's the kind of a recipe for passivity. Like, we need to change what's happening in the world. We need to improve it. And I agree with that. The first step towards change is acceptance because until we accept exactly what's happening in our lives, we, we, we can't engage in self-directed change 'cause we don't have the right information.

Instead, we're engaged in what, what? What, what psychologists call ex experiential avoidance. Starting with Freud. It was this idea that like, that like you're gonna avoid like the reality of what's happening in your life, avoid what your emotions, what you're feeling. And I think when we, when we do that, that's actually the basis of all addictions.

It's, it's, it's like avoid. The naturally, the, the natural emotions that we experience saying, I don't want to, I don't wanna experience those difficult emotions. So, you know, whether it's like, you know, alcohol, sex, drugs, you name it, it's, it is just trying to escape from our current reality. And that's where I think acceptance is, is, is probably one of the hardest steps in love and suffering, but one of the most important.

I agree a hundred percent. And one thing we didn't get to discuss here that I encourage everyone to look up and research on their own. I also have several episodes about it, which is the, for lack of better words, correlation, but really, I, I would say a causation to argue between the launch of social media and its growth and the rise in committed suicides, especially in children starting as young as eight, nine, and 10 years old.

I've done episodes before. To recap, uh, since social media has launched, the number of suicides committed has drastically increased. If you study. Suicide attempts completed versus, uh, just self-harm based on gender and age. There are some really interesting studies with that, and a lot of this plays into, again, loneliness, communication, social interaction.

If you wanna learn more about it, we're gonna have, uh, Dr. Lars books in the description below on his website where you can find out a ton of information. Everything we've done today is really just a surface level, 30,000 foot overview. Everything we're talking about, like we've mentioned, has a lot of different studies coming out.

Studies are only as good as you use them though, right? You know, we need to understand that each of these numbers represent a real person who is dealing with loneliness, with a lack of social interaction, with suicidal thoughts, with envy, with depression, you may be one of them. The people in your lives may be one of them.

So I think it's really important that we take this conversation, one with acceptance as you said, and two, with a plan forward. So many people want to fix global issues and I'm for that as well, but I say, let's start with us, our local community, then our online community. Work your way in and outward.

That's the best way to have that ripple effect in that, uh, most impact that you can. Uh, Dr. Ard, thank you so much for your time today and is there anything else you'd like to leave us with? Well, just to, just to build on what you shared. Yeah. You're, you're absolutely right. And I, and I'll have to watch your other episodes.

Suicide is, is skyrocketing. Uh, it's actually the most significant cause of death for British men 45 and older. Um, actually, the suicide rate in the US is now for the first time in US history higher than the homicide rate. So, uh, and you know, with people being behind their screens, they're, they're, you know, they're, they're, they're staying at home and, you know, you get, I write about this in, in screened in like if you, you're rejected by, on, on, on, on the playground or you're rejected in a group of friends.

Uh, today, a lot of those rejections are carried out over so over, over social media, and you're, instead of being out where you might meet another person, that experiential motivation, like when you're in Japan walking around now, you, you know, instead of that you're at home in these four walls and you, and you feel like no one likes you.

Um, so, and then you're right about the gendered effects of self harm. We could talk about that another time. Uh, but there's definitely like, like self self harm. If you look at. Essentially from two years after the first iPhone was introduced in 2007. So from 2009 to 2015, you're seeing an 18% increase in self-harm for girls in emergency, in emergency room visits every single year.

And you don't see any increase for boys or, or, or young men. So we're seeing, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. I'll share, let me share this with your listeners if it's okay. If you, if you do buy love and suffering or screened in a hundred percent of the proceeds, go to nonprofit education programs in Africa and Latin America.

And if buying a book is not top of mind right now, I know times are difficult right now. Uh, then I'd like to offer two free books to each of you. And the first book is called The Myth of Happiness, how Your Definition of Happiness Creates Your Unhappiness. The second book is The Myth of Friendship, a lot of what we talked about here today.

Mm. The Myth of Friendship, how your misunderstandings about friendship keep you lonely. You can download both books by going to the Art of Living free.org/free happiness and FR and Friendship books once again, the Art of Living free.org/free happiness. Friendship books. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation.

I wanna thank you for inviting me on your show, and I'm, I'm really impressed. I gotta say, man, if I, if I knew what you do when I, when I wait what you do when I was 23, can only imagine where I'd be right now. Yes sir. Thank you. And I'm sure we'll be talking again. I.