THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE VIRAL

The internet is terrible. Social media is ruining our children.  It was better before all of this.  That's where my brain was today before is sat down to record this podcast.  And, lucky you, I decided to bring you along as I try to make sense of all of the conflicting thoughts in my head.  Is it really that bad?  Is it ruining our mental health? Or are we simply approaching it the wrong way? It's such a fascinating topic, I could talk about it for hours. But we should probably start with 30 minutes for now...Let's get into it. 

Transcript

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This is Unsided. Unsided.

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Hey everybody, it's Christopher. Welcome back to another episode of Unsided. I hope wherever you are, you are doing well hanging in there. There's a lot happening in the world right now. I don't know if I can say that there's more happening in the world right now than has ever been happening in the world, but we are certainly all much more aware of everything because of our connection to 24-hour news and social media. I personally decided when I was um overseas working recently that I would not check or look at news intentionally anymore. Partially because it was just not of any benefit to me to be controlling different news outlets and and looking for different news stories on social media. It was really messing with my mental health. But also because I was away working and I had something else to focus on, I thought it was a good time to do a little experiment and see if the world would still be standing if I didn't check CNN or BBC or Al Jazeera or watch videos on my social media feed that were about all of the horrible things happening in our world. Because let's face it, that's what the news generally is about. And you know what? Miraculously, the world kept spinning even though I didn't participate in that narrative in my mind anyway. We're still alive and breathing and safe, thank God, my family, and America is still standing as a country, and the world hasn't broken out into nuclear war and an asteroid hasn't hit the planet. I kind of figure, and maybe this is naive, and that's okay. That if there's something really huge that I really need to know, there's no way it's gonna get by me. Because I can't block everything out. I can block out my and my intention or my action of going and looking and seeking out the news. But it's gonna find me, especially if it's big. And it it made me realize these past, I don't know, I guess it's been about a month now. Uh it made me realize what a trap it is. I mean, this is not new information. We all understand this, right? On some level. We all understand, especially those of us who are around before social media, before the 24-hour news cycle. We understand that the world kept spinning before that. And we didn't really need that. I mean, I'm gonna be really honest with you. Here I am, you know, recording a podcast, and I'm gonna put it out on the internet so that people can listen to it. So I'm fully embracing the internet, so this is gonna sound hypocritical. But I also feel like the invention of the 24-hour news cycle and then the internet further connecting us is terrible. It's terrible. I mean, I I actually I have to say, I guess, because I believe that we all collectively um manifest together and that there's, you know, I don't believe in predestination, but I believe certainly our collective consciousness creates things that obviously it's what we wanted to create. So I guess I'm only speaking from my personal point of view. Right here, I'm not making a blanket statement that it's terrible for everyone because some people are not going to think it's terrible. But I personally think that it is much more stress-inducing than it is beneficial and stress-relieving. Certainly, there are cool things you can do on the internet. Certainly it's great to have connection to other people's stories, certainly it's great to feel not so alone. But I gotta tell you, when I was a queer kid in the 80s and had no way to to to learn anything about what that meant, unless I went to the library and found books, photo albums from Robert Maplethorpe or the bookstore or something like that. I I I didn't know. And then I went to college and I I figured it out just by being around people. I didn't need to look it up on the internet to understand. I didn't need to hear other people's stories to be okay. I would I would say that I was more okay then in many ways than I have been over the course of the last, you know, however, however long we've had the internet, 30 years, whatever it is. That there was a there was a peace in just being on my own and not having to be connected to so many people, so many other people's stories. And I can, you know, I can even uh I can only imagine what some people are thinking as they listen to this, and I can I can hear in my own head, oh, but Christopher, it's so great. People found community, they don't feel so alone. It's been really important in so many great movements and our world and and the expansion of education, which then, you know, would seemingly lead to the expansion of understanding and compassion for others, but I would challenge and say, is that actually happening? Are we having more compassion for others, or is it just getting worse or louder? Is it is our combativeness and our racism and our bigotry and our misogyny and and our our uh homophobia, is it just getting louder and our fear of others, our otherism? I don't think it's gotten any better just because we're hearing other people's stories, because that's what I mean. Listen, I'm I'm again with the hypocrisy. I'm here on a podcast talking to you to connect to you so we can share our stories. But there were other ways to do this before the books, articles, television talk shows, you know, before that, radio, and before that, just one-on-one, or meetings or gatherings, you know, speaking. So I guess this is just an extension of that. And what I'm talking about specifically is the desire to pull in eyeballs that and ears that has really become the entire uh I don't want to say the entire motivation for the internet and social media, but certainly for social media, I think. I'm participating in it myself to some degree. I certainly don't go all in like many people, and a lot of times I think, wow, if I really had, like, you know, if I'd really post every day and if I really put myself out there every day, how large would my following actually be? And unfortunately, I'm not a person who has, or fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know, I'm not a person who has a crazy, crazy drive to be seen. I have a drive to be of value and to fulfill my purpose. My voice happens to be the way that I feel most comfortable or feel like I am actually fulfilling my purpose, using my mind, using my voice. If I didn't have the internet, if I didn't have podcasts, you know, I make movies for a living. If I couldn't do all that, I'd find another way to use my voice. Because that's what I do. But here we are talking about what it means when the entire world has access to a platform and feels the pressure to connect and feels the pressure to succeed and feels the pressure to know every news story. And if people don't know every news story, or especially if you're a celebrity or have some sort of following and you don't comment on every news story and you don't speak out for every group, then you're somehow failing someone has gotten us into this place of kind of constant bickering and arguing. And, you know, I I know I had a lot of stuff happen when I was a kid, right? Like a lot of us probably did. I had a lot of crazy, intense, unfortunate things happen as a kid. I had a lot of great things too, but I had a rough childhood. Like so rough that it the fact that I'm here right now is, I mean, it's pretty amazing to me. I'm pretty stoked. I'm happy to be here. But I survived most of that, the majority of that, without the world knowing what I was going through. I couldn't post my stories, which is why I'm I used to post a lot more on social media about my past and things like that. And it's I think it's important and helpful and it's there. Um, but I find it, I find myself hesitant to talk about all of that because I, you know, I've figured a lot of that out. And I know that there's value to sharing, but to my point today, talking about what people need in order to survive in order to feel connected, you know, I managed to make it all the way through into my college years and beyond, mostly just dealing with the things and the people who are directly in my face, because we didn't have all of this massive connection. Now, I have teenage daughters, almost 14 and 15 and a half. Um, and I watch and listen and learn as much as I can about what it means to be born in 2010, 2012, when certainly everybody was connected already. And by the time they had the access to phones and social media and things like that, the world was fully embedded into this way of being and communicating. And it's hard for me to wrap my brain around because I know that I have the ability to say, I'm just not gonna look at the news, I'm not gonna participate in social media, I'm not going to use the internet in this specific way, whatever. That's fine because it's a tool for me. Because it came later in my life as a, oh, look, these are things you can do. But for them, and for so many people, young people especially, it's embedded in them. They know no other way. You know, it it is how they get their information by and large about who they're meant to be or what's happening in the world in relation to them. And I wouldn't say my kids, you know, I they do have some social media. We monitor it, and um, my kids are, you know, pretty good, responsible kids, as far as I know, although they're getting into the teenage years, and I hear a little voice in the back of my head saying, you know, if only you knew what your children were doing. But I think for the most part they're you know, they're they're pretty balanced. I talk sometimes with my husband about social media and what what it means to them. And if we took it away from them, for them to really disconnect from social media and the internet, I'm not saying it's not possible, and sometimes I make them do it, and maybe I should make them do it more, but their entire friend groups are structured around communicating through text and social media. And because that's how their friend groups communicate, if you remove that from them, I'm keenly aware, if I remove that from them, then they are at a big disadvantage when it comes to socializing. And socializing, particularly in the teen years, is super important. Now, people talk about how dangerous social media is, and I understand that, but listen, it was pretty dangerous to be a group of kids who didn't have cell phones or connection like that. If someone wanted to bully you, then they could do that, and the nobody would know there would be no trace of it, there'd be no record of it on social media or anything. Like it just happened. That kind of stuff, that kind of behavior has been happening forever and will continue to happen. Social media can make it easier and faster and expansive, and some say easier to hide. But man, I could hide anything that happened to me when I was at school. I just didn't tell my mom about it. And and I don't really thank God my kids aren't experiencing any of that sort of thing on social media, but I still feel like it sucks away their brains sometimes. And I'm going back and forth with, okay, I don't want you to have a phone, but you should have a phone. I don't want you to, you know, if you're gonna look at the internet, please look at these kind of sites. You know, don't brain rot by just scrolling through YouTube forever, although maybe there's a value in that too. I don't know. I digress. The point is, there's a part of me that thinks it's terrible that we have all become so dependent on the internet and on social media and that we are feeling pressure as a result of it. And yet I have my children and a whole generation, they don't have this thought. They don't have the before. So all they have is how to manage what is now. Right? So I, as a parent and as a human, I can have this thought, but I need to move away from it. You know, this thought that I think it's terrible and horrible and we should get rid of it. I need to move away from it, and I and I need to move into a place of non-resistance for my children so that I can learn. And for myself, frankly, so that I can embrace it and not be a Luddite. All of that being said, and me having like balanced out that conversation in my head, because that's what I need to do. I need to look at all the sides the good, the bad, the ugly. The reality is it's here. And it's not going anywhere. And I think what's the most interesting thing is that it's an opportunity to curate your thoughts, your creation, your manifestation in a really particular way. Now, I'm taking a little segue here away from the internet, it's terrible, into how how my brain works. So that's what happens with the topic. I will think, oh, this is driving me crazy. And then I'll think the I'll find an opposite point of view, like my children. And then I'll come back to the middle and I'll say, okay, here we are. So how do we actually use this? What is the benefit of it? If I get my emotions out of it on either side, if I stop being so triggered and I just acknowledge that it's here, like the internet, like this mass connection, then I think what's important and responsible is to acknowledge, okay, so here we are. Like when people started driving, okay, now there are automobiles. Now these are the dangers that come with automobiles. And as the years go on, you know, they do things like install different safety systems and seatbelts, and then pass laws about seatbelts. And we start to regulate. We start to figure out where the advantage is, and we highlight the advantage, we highlight the comfort, and then we we make sure that we put all kinds of rules and guardrails around things so that they can be most beneficial but least harmful. I don't know exactly how we do that with the internet. I feel that it's spiraling just a bit. And maybe that's important. You know, maybe if I were to correlate it to something like automobiles or something else, I don't know that I'm making such a random comparison here that I have no information for, but maybe there was a period of time when there were so many deaths, and then we we decreased the number of deaths and we made it overall safer. I mean, I have to believe that's the case. That must be the case. And maybe we can do that with the internet too. And it starts certainly on the parental or the guardian level. You know, there have to be rules and guidelines. And recently I've been a bit challenged with that with one of my children, especially, but like even both of them telling them they, you know, at one point they needed to keep their phones out of the room at night. They would charge them at night and they would use the alarm in the morning. And then I found out, of course, that I was being an idiot and they were using their phones late into the night and not getting sleep. So then we put them out of the room. And then somehow summer came and that went away, and then the phones went back into the rooms, and then my youngest started seeing a guy. Now, mind you, my youngest is in eighth grade, right? And this guy doesn't go to the same school, and they they want to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Listen, I get it. I remember wanting to talk late at night to whomever whoever it was when I was a kid. It's a thing, it's what we want to do, right? But it was a little harder because I had to drag the phone. Either we had a cordless phone or I had to drag the cord underneath. I think that never would have flown with my mother. That must have happened at my dad's house. But sometimes I do recall being on the phone, like with a pillow over my head under the covers late at night, but probably not in eighth grade, right? So I decided to, you know, that was starting to cause some problems and some conflict, and she wasn't being as responsible and she was getting way too attached to that phone. And I had to set some guardrails for her and pull the phones out of the room, and then we had some arguments about it. And uh in any event, it was it was tense because I realized that once again I had let these guardrails lapse because that's the thing about the internet or social media or the children having phones, and like the kids need to have phones so they can be, you know, they have all these different rehearsals and they end at different times, and we need to get in touch with them. We become so reliant on them as a family. So we we need to have them. And I have no idea how to set up all these guardrails all the time. You know, I'm looking at it for myself, but I have to look at it for the kids as well. And I think we have to look at it for the community at large, like our lawmakers are and our advocates. And it's a big thing to to bite off. But I think about it a lot because what I think most of us end up doing, like my my daughter, who was spending way too much time talking to this kid and therefore ignoring other parts of her life, that's what we start to do. We're not intentional with the internet. We're uh always. We're not intentional with social media, we're not intentional with this mass connection. It just kind of happens and we expect it. And that's that's dangerous, in my opinion. And danger is such a weird word. It's like this, you know, it's like a buzzword to get people, oh, that's dangerous. I I just I guess what I mean is it's if our goal is to continue to find our fulfillment and our center and our happiness and a connection to who we are, which I believe is the only purpose of life, honestly, is to become more authentically ourselves and to quiet out the noise. And and the only thing that I think is going to combat it, because it's not going to stop. We're too connected now, is we have to be intentional. Stop. I've said this so many times on my on my one social media page that I really have. Stop watching the news. You don't need to see the news. And I'm saying this as a queer man who is married to an immigrant in America, not entirely marginalized, but a marginalized group. You know, maybe I should know, especially with gay marriage and the immigration issues in America, I should pay attention. But you know what? I know that's not going to slip by me. We are moving through our lives not being intentional as a society. And again, that's a great big blanket statement, but I see it everywhere, more often than not. And I guess I'm painfully aware of it because of the age of my children. And I look at their friends and I look at how they interact and how they communicate. And we as parents, this generation, we're kind of, you know, the first generation, at least mine, I'm 51, so Gen X, whatever that is. The first generation to have most of our lives without it, and then we have it. And so we're trying to figure out how to work with it ourselves and then teach our children to work with it. And and meanwhile, you have the media coming at you every day telling you all of the things you need to know and all of the things you need to watch. And we just and we just take it in like, oh, that's the way it's always been, and that's the way it's supposed to be. And if they're telling me I need to pay attention to this, I do. You don't. Sure. There are things happening in the world that we in general need to know about. But you don't need to know a play by play of every once a war breaks out, you don't need to know a play-by-play of that war. I'm sorry. And if that makes somebody mad, fine. I if unless I'm fighting the war, I don't need to know a play-by-play. Because did did anybody know a play by play of all the terrible things happening in my life? And did I still survive? Did I just deal with it? Yes. I did deal with it without anybody being in the play-by-play, without stressing them out about something that they couldn't do anything about. Because that's all it would be. If my life had just been broadcast and all of the crazy things that were happening in my life were broadcast to other people, it would just become noise. And that's what it, I mean, we see that kind of stuff too, not just wars, but we see into people's personal lives and the dramas where they're divorces. We as a society are just getting triggered and more triggered and more triggered, and then we're sharing our triggers publicly. And then other people are coming in and saying, Yeah, that's my trigger too. And listen, I'm not gonna say I've never done this. If you look back at some of my early social media, I was there. And I left that content up for the most part because it's a record of where I've been and what I've learned. And I I you know, I've always I've always felt like we heal each other in our personal connection. And I would be remiss not to share that I've certainly found people on social media, some of whom I know, some of whom I just have a parasocial relationship with, like they don't they don't know me and I just watch them, who've been healing to me. That's no different than going out and seeing a therapist or seeing a tarot reader or talking to a good friend or reading a book by somebody. It's it's the same kind of exchange of information. And that makes the internet valuable to me because I chose to curate the value in that way. And so I guess, you know, as I'm thinking through the bold statement I made at the top of this, or many times that the internet is terrible, you know, if you've been here long enough, you know that I like to work my thoughts out as I go, which is what I do with you. I I let you into my brain as I'm processing something, and this has been on my mind. So I guess that I've worked my way from the internet is terrible to what we are doing with the internet is terrible. Is at least missing the mark of the possibilities. And I'm being reminded again by the little voice in the back of my head that this sounds like a blanket statement. Um and it's not. I'm I'm talking about me and my perception of things. The internet, social media, the 24-hour news cycle, they can be a benefit, but you must curate it. And when we do start to curate where our eyes go, rather than the news and media and outlets fear mongering and showing us all the terrible, horrible things that just fill our brains with anxiety so that we're constantly in that fight or flight space that that can that fill us with comparison to others and shame and all of that, when we when we stop looking at all that and we stop thinking we need to know every news story that's happening, and we stop pressuring our celebrities and people with the platform to speak out about everything. If we stop giving that that kind of attention en masse, then they will have no choice but to change the direction of the energy they put out. Because it's all, you know, money is also energy, and money is at the root of all of these things, including the covering and the extensive covering of every war or every tragic news story that's happening in the world. And guys, I'm sure some of you are going to think that it's absurd for me to say that we shouldn't be constantly covering wars and things around the world. I'm I'm not saying we shouldn't cover them, but I'm saying there's a way to do it that is fear baiting, rage baiting, and then there's a way to do it that's informative so that we learn and that we grow and we educate. And we're watching the collective mind of humanity try to figure out how to put the guardrails up around this easy, easy access to the world. Anybody can get on their phone or record something and post it and have access to the entire world. All it takes is one little thing to make that go viral, and the world suddenly knows your name and your point of view. And there's a responsibility that comes with that. If we say that we what we want is connection and we want, you know, I think that's what we're saying. We want people are saying, oh, we want world peace and we want connection and we want understanding and we want compassion. Well, yeah, sure, absolutely, but you we're not acting like that. Because we're not we're not teaching our children to curate their experience with this massive amount of connectivity we have, and we're not curating the experience ourselves. We're staying stuck in in we're letting our dopamine centers get hit or whatever. You know, so we just keep doom scrolling. Isn't that what they call it? Doom scrolling. The world's not gonna change unless you and I and we collectively decide to change. And I guess the big question is, do we really want to change? Because, you know, this world peace and all that stuff that we talk about, that's not gonna happen. I mean, that's an episode for another time, but that's not going to happen. That's not actually what we want. We think we want that, but that if that was if there was any chance of that happening, we would have seen a glimpse of it somewhere in our recorded history. And as far as I know, we haven't. People segregate themselves. People operate out of their own fear structure, they choose their own religions as a result. And if other people encroach on that, fights happen. And then certainly there are groups who go out and try to make other people believe by believe like them. Like that's just that is all of our history, right? And that's what's happening with the internet too. Believe this now, believe this. You should be this way, you should hate this, you should love this, you should look like this. You should speak up against this or speak out for this. And if you don't, you're a terrible person. So now we're crossing all the borders of the world, all the countries, and we're getting all the pressure and all the guilt and all the shame from everybody. And, you know, let's be clear, we're getting a lot of joy and education and love and connection too. I am not saying we that is not happening. But I don't think that is the greatest part of what people are using this connectivity for. I think they're using it for control and power and fear, and I think we're feeding right into it. So, as tempting as it may be to need to know what's happening in the state next to you or the country across from you, or around the world from you, you don't need to know. I will die on that hill. You don't need to know. You need to take care of yourself. You need to make, I need to make my world, my corner of the world, as peaceful as it can be for myself, for my children, for my husband, my friends, my family. I need to be the best version of myself. I need to curate how I use the internet. I need to curate how I use connectivity. I need to curate how information comes into my brain so that I can be a specific energy for the world. And trust me, I have gotten caught so many times in the loop of the things they want us to be afraid of or the things they want to occupy our mind with. And I guess that would that's my choice, and that's your choice too. If you want to do that, do it. Like I'm making these bold statements about what we have. You don't have we don't have to do anything. As I see it, we say we want one thing, but we're not acting like it. And that's always what it comes down to for me when I'm talking to anybody or about anything. Unhappiness and discontent comes from saying we want one thing, but not doing the things that it requires to have that thing. It comes from opposing forces in our mind. And we have a little bit of that going on, a lot of that going on with the internet. And I think we're trying to figure it out. And and I have faith in us that we can figure it out. We're not going to, it's not going to destroy us. Which is also something that certain people want us to believe. But I think as it's being used right now, we're in that kind of like terrible phase. But if we can get really intentional and we can really pay attention to how we are letting information come to us, when we are letting information come to us, and be more focused on interpersonal relationships one-on-one, getting our heads out of our phones and our computers and talking to people, being with people. And if you can't be with people, stop reading about them halfway around the world because the information you're getting is probably not accurate. But stop being a part of the system that is trying to control through fear, that is trying to gain power by hijacking your mind or your children's minds. Critical thought does not come from sound bites, or it doesn't come from the constant regurgitation of other people's ideas. It comes from an interaction from a knowing, from a learning, and then from stepping back and looking within ourselves and processing. It comes from the ability to question everything that you see, hear, read, and really take it in and process it against your own understanding. And then from there we can align the truth of what's happening with the thing that we say that we want, and we can find the balance. Am I using the internet or is it using me? Am I using social media or is it using me? Am I getting the information that I need for the benefit of myself and my family and then really processing it and thinking about it critically, or am I just doom scrolling, taking it in and letting it control me? I don't know. I don't know where you fall in that lineup. I don't know if it's something that you think about or not, but it's certainly something that's been on my mind, particularly as a parent, but also as an individual myself. And wherever you are, wherever you're listening to this, I would encourage you to really pay attention to the things that stress you because we need you to be as peaceful and calm as possible. We need that of all people. That's that's where we can actually make change for the better, I believe. Is when we work on it at an individual level, when we work on our peace, and we when we spread that out to our family, our children, our friends, our spouses. That kind of individual work, then spreading out, and that kind of critical thought, and then sharing that thought and being in communication and conversation with others. That's where the healing comes from, and that's why I'm here doing this. And wherever you're listening to this, I hope that you're well, and I hope that there was something in here that made you think about the choices you're making around what's bombarding you every day. And if none of this resonated with you, that's okay too. This is just what was on my mind today and my heart today, and I always enjoy being in conversation with you, and I look forward to it the next time. I thank you for listening. If you have anything specific you'd like to hear me talk about, feel free to leave a comment. Um, and always feel free to leave a review if there's something in this episode or any episode that has really sparked for you. I would appreciate um, I'd appreciate hearing back from you. And with that, I'm gonna send you on your way, and I look forward to talking to you again really soon. Bye-bye. Uncided.