Chasing life with Dr. Gupta

What is the Future of the Internet? Hank Green and the Internet as a Teacher’s Companion to Dr. Jeremiah Gupta

We have talked about the potential dangers of social media and how much time we spend online. What about the educational side of the internet? Dr. Gupta talks to Hank Green, one of the earliest content creators on the internet. Hank talks about the state of the internet and the responsibility of having a platform. They wonder if the internet’s future is utopian. Is there a Dystopian? Or maybe both?

I’m on the Internet to help people learn and understand so they can do better in school, and to know more about the mysteries of the universe. And that that’s beautiful and it’s fun. I get so much pleasure from that.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

Hank Green: From YouTube to YouTube, from a journalist to a vlogger and a father-of-a-child

Hank Green. He’s an author, a science communicator, and a vlogger. In 2007, he had his first appearance on the video sharing site. Think about that. That was before the term “content creator” existed. So he has seen the digital evolution play out in real time.

I remember that in 2012 and 2013; it was a lot of cruel and devious things that were being made on video sharing websiteYouTube, and I was watching a lot of it.

He was one of the people who uploaded their videos to the video sharing site. He was making vlogs with his brother and I can really relate to him trying to educate people. Along the way, Hank got quite a following. A million and a half followers on Twitter, 7 million on Tik Tok and tens of millions on YouTube channels with his brother, some of which are shown in schools throughout the country. But part of the reason I wanted to speak to Hank today is because he’s also a dad. We share some of the same concerns.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

What is life like on the other side of the screen? A conversation with Hank Green, a fellow dad, and the CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, during the Chasing Life Season

Is my son worse off because his dad is an Internet guy and he’s going to be on the Internet the whole time. All the time and like. I can’t be like you can’t use social media. He is going to ask, what do you do?

In the season so far, I’ve been asking doctors and professors questions about screen time and social media. But now I wanted to hear from someone who makes the content that we see when we are scrolling.

I think now we’re all kind of comfortable with the idea that the Internet is good and bad and that it’s a tool and you can build a house with a hammer or you can, you know, hit somebody in the head with it.

Today, my conversation with Hank Green, a content creator and a fellow dad, about what life is like on the other side of the screen. I’m Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent. And this is Chasing Life.

So far, this season has been a bit heavy, you know what I mean. It has been very personal. I’ve had a number of conversations with my three teenage daughters, and they have all been wonderful and frightening at times. They live another life, their digital life, which I simply don’t know as much about. And I think we often fear what we don’t understand imagining and anticipating all the potential dangers of social media and screen time. I realize that something else as well, something that surprised me a bit. And that is despite the worry and the concern, I do realize that our phones and the Internet, it can be a sincere source of joy and connection and learning for so many people. I was really excited to talk to Hank. He’s someone that kids like, my daughters look up to.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

Is it really helpful to teach kids how to use the Internet? I’ll tell them how to do it. I’m afraid of social media

I do. And I think that the the idea of teaching people science in particular, just as a scientist myself, I think is super important. The three teenagers with videos in their classrooms have been shown them. They know you and they know that I was interviewing you. This is cool, because you’re cross-generational.

I’m not really sure but I feel like they’re able to help you with how to use a tool well. And so the question that that comes up in my mind is like, is my son worse off because his dad is a Internet guy and he’s going to be on the Internet the whole time, all the time? And like and there’s no way I could be like, you can’t use social media. He’s going to be like, What do you do all day, every day? I hope that more young people who use social media when they were younger will be able to have better talks about it, or discuss it with their kids in a better way. I think it’s like any other sort of thing that can feel good without a lot and it’s a little like candy, you know. It tastes good, but it isn’t a lot of substance. I want to be able to get to a place where we know how to use it. You know, it’s okay to have some, but you’re going to have to have some real food to.

Balance may have been the reason that the millennials had the best childhoods. There was time to be connected to the digital world, and there was time that you were not connected. I was happy that the kid knows what she’s talking about because it’s my main job to talk to people about balance. I think there’s a lot of fear associated with social media. People just want to take away, take away, restrict, restrict, ban and like that’s not really realistic. First of all, adolescents don’t respond very well to that.

How to Find the Balance Among Your Responses to What Has Happened to You, What Have You Done and What Has Been Done?

The flip side is that she knows what’s happened to her, and it’s done to her. It made me feel a little bit better because she would dial some of that back. Like, I feel like a lot of times the inclination In medicine, we assume worst case scenarios all the time. We need to assume the worst but hope for the best. And everything that we do in terms of our how we respond is, is that that worst case scenario. But that is not the case for most people. So how to find the balance there? I don’t know the answer and you don’t know the answer but I am curious how you think about it.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

The metaphor of junk food versus real food. Where is the problem? A discussion with my daughter, Hank, and a meme she saw on social media

You know, this idea of the metaphor of junk food versus real food. I think that really resonates with me. There’s a lot of junk but the content is thought out and educational, and Hank’s content is well thought out but also a lot of junk. And therein lies the problem. Recently I was having a discussion with my youngest daughter, who was showing me a meme she had seen on social media. It was funny. We laughed at it but it wasn’t true. And I asked her, I said, Soleil, you know, this isn’t true, right? She showed me her phone again. Yeah, it’s on Instagram. And I said, Right, right. But, you know, it’s not true. And what she said next is something that really kind of stopped me in my tracks. “I really don’t think that anything that I see online is real,” said Dad, to be honest, what she said. Think about that. Most of the stuff she sees is garbage. As a result, it all becomes garbage. It becomes suspicious. It is all lumped together and suddenly you find yourself in a really kind of scary place where nothing, nothing at all can be trusted. They aren’t taken seriously when using social media in the Internet. And that drags everyone down. It drags everything down. Even for someone like Hank, who by all accounts makes good, credible, fact checked, vetted content.

We are discussing like sense making at this point. Like there’s always been structures of credibility. If you go back to when newspapers were first published, everyone was aware there was a communist newspaper and there was a Republican newspaper, as well as business news, so we have that now. And that when I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, that was very that was more much more clear. And now it is very not clear. And so one thing that I try to do very hard is to get stuff right with the content that I’m making and when I get stuff wrong, talk about the fact that I got it wrong and why. It’s almost as if you can walk down the path of your assumptions, even if you’re fallible, as long as you’re on the right track. I worry about it being focused on one person, because a person can only do so much, and a good organization cannot scale them the same way. and you can’t you can’t build in fact checking the same way as you as you can with like a strong, robust news organization. I think that’s a bad world if we end up in a situation where we only believe individuals.

This is something that you’re good at. And I’m not I’m not saying this just to flatter you, but a lot of people do pay attention to you and your work is also shown in schools, you know, and people that these things out and they want to obviously educate their kids in a good way. But how do you you will admit when you’ve got something wrong, That’s one thing you said. How much time do you spend thinking about the institution of trust with your own content? You want to get it accurate, but just the idea of trust, everything from word choice to, I don’t know your background to your your presentation, how much do you think about that in this digital world?

I mean, I think about I think about it all the time. It’s one of the things I worry about it and on a lot for a lot of different good reasons. You know, I worry about it for my own. I think a lot of people would be pretty devastated if, like, I didn’t live up to the, uh, the sort of, you know, what I, what I’ve been trying to portray publicly as, you know, the parts of me that are me. I like to say that when I make content on the Internet, I am like everyone that you see. You can’t see all of me. And I worry a lot about, you know, I’ve seen people both in just mistakes and in like really intentional ways to do things that have really destroyed a lot of their credibility. And they’re not just destroying their own thing, they’re destroying something else that is bigger and it’s inside of other people. And that’s the thing that I want to be most careful with.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

What Do I Ever Learn from Being a Professional Arbitrator? An Educating Look at How I Wanna Be Presented with a Podcast

Hank interacts online a lot more than I do, and that can take a toll even for a professional like him. We should avoid getting into it for yourself when we come back.

Over the years, I have become better at realizing that I can’t argue with a professional arguer without becoming a professional arguer. I do not do that for a living.

I mean, I was working through it. It is a weird job and not many people have had it. And I was 27 when I uploaded my first YouTube video. I was married as an adult. I, you know, had a pretty stable set of situations. It’s not the truth for most people. Like most of the people who were like my colleagues in that era where we’re like 18, 19, 20, maybe even younger than that. It was more easy for them to make worse decisions. And because, you know, for all the reasons and and I kind of wanted to walk through like just sort of let let a character make some mistakes for me I wouldn’t be able to make it. I think the internet will be in the future, and it will be good at turning something into a fight, so I want to explore more about that.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

How much time do you spend online? A simple way to describe what is online for a user and what kind of content do you consume?

How much time do you spend online? To make your content, you’re spending time online. Just as a user of these different platforms, how would you describe your use?

It would be hard to call it work in some parts, so I’d probably make the case to myself. It’s likely to be 2 to 3 hours per day. The weird thing is that like what is online? Everything is online to some extent. And so like Netflix is online that I’m not counting that. But in terms of like using Twitter and TikTok and YouTube. It’s probably 2 or 3 hours per day and includes doing social media and consuming content.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

What’s up with the Internet? How does it come to you? What do you like to ask yourself? What are you saying? When do you want to tell a story?

I feel like it’s a thing that you have to get good at. It has been destructive for me at times, but I have been using it as if it is. I’m trying to find a reason to be upset. I’m. I’m like, I’ve, I’ve stumbled across a piece of the Internet or like I sort of set of the content creators who are saying things specifically what bugs me probably the most of all things is when they’re taking some like nugget of scientific truth and then usually biological and then applying that to a social system or to politics in a way that is really appealing. It’s sort of back-pedaling to the perspective that they wanted to have. I’m so mad because I want to do things like grab some sciencey thing and telling a story, and doing unscientific things with it. You can’t just say things! You know? It’s true that you can just say things, but I can also get angry that the world is not the way I want it to be. And, and my wife kind of can quickly identify when I’m in that space. There’s something you’re not happy about and it has nothing to do with what you do. You also have to recognize that like the present, like you can’t fix everything. And so, like you have to focus on what you do and what you’re good at and what you actually like instead of, you know, it’s it’s harder to be a good dad and a good partner and a good leader at my businesses. I think that the internet is meant to catch us in conflict so that we can stay on the platforms, which is what they’re designed to do and what their algorithm is designed to do.

Your wife is very wise. Obviously. These videos and content that you’re consuming do rile you up in similar ways that you described, so I am curious like that. How does it get to you? Is it part of your feed? Is it being fed to you by one of these algorithms you’re describing?

People asking me questions is one of the highlights of my job. And so one that I saw just this week, it came to me because several people on TikTok had seen this video, which got millions of viewers, and it was talking about some things in a scientific frame. And a bunch of people had tagged me and they said, Hank Green, is this true? And I mean, it was not. You’re just trying to lend credibility to your argument by taking something that sounds sciencey. But I, you know, like, I get in, I get into that and I like it gets my blood pressure going. But I’ve gotten better over the years at realizing that. One of the things, that’s it. I realized, that you can not argue with a professional arguer without becoming a professional arguer. And that’s not what I do for a living. I do not argue with people for a living. I’m not on the Internet to yell at people. I’m on the Internet to help people learn and get curious and do well in school and and understand more of the knowable things of their universe and know more about the unknowable things. That is beautiful and it is fun. I get a lot of joy from that. It does more good than getting into a fight, I think. You are aware.

It’s easy to get people to appeal to the brain area of their choice. You know, they’re emotional centers of the brain. It will get a lot of reaction and it will have a lot of views. Do you resist the urge to go that way to have fun? You know, it’s possible that more people will like and share your videos.

Yeah, I’m lucky to be in a situation where I don’t have my goal right now isn’t to get more attention or even money or whatever it is. According to research, shouting at people and talking about how bad they are is not good for your cause as it creates a dichotomy of the conflict. Like it does not convince people of things. It pushes people to sides. It only does that.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

I’m not censored. It’s a good self awareness to realize that you have more power than you thought you had

It’s very complimentary and thankful to the person when they come up to you in real life, but you know the things that you have taught them. And I imagine that it’s the same way online in terms of the comments section and stuff like that. Do you read comments and get the same response in the online world as you do in the real world?

Yeah. Yeah. For most of the time. And like there are comments that are cruel to me sometimes and there are people who disagree with things that I’ve done in the past and in one way or another, because, you know, I am not shy about my feelings on some controversial topics here and there. I’m kind of fine with that. It it’s taken I think it’s taken time to get there and to understand the extent to which I am some, I’m kind of not a person to some people? They don’t see me. They see me as a sort of a shell that contains a brand or a I don’t I don’t know. There is an idea that I have more power than those people, and also that I am comfortable with that. They believe they have the ability to throw a punch. and I won’t feel it. When you’re online, you feel like you step on them with a transformer robot foot, and that’s how they will feel if I hit that. and you have a you have a following and you have. You have, you know, status for lack of a better term. You kind of have to know that you wield more power than you think. And I watch people all the time, and I, it really bugs me to be like, I’m not going to censor myself just because I have an army of angry people who will attack anyone I attack, and that we will come into their lives and make themselves absolutely miserable to the point where they have to delete their Internet history. I won’t censor myself just because of that. And I’m like, Well, it’s not really censoring yourself to not to to, like, recognize that you have more power than you once had.

It’s really good self awareness. I mean, to recognize that you’d be punching down, so to speak, and with a pretty heavy blow if you decided to engage in that way. You know, the flip side is that people may not know that you can leave a mark on someone just because you are.

They have no idea. And people have been you know, John and I, my brother, have made this content together. We have been through times where a lot of people don’t like us because they are just kind of for fun. They think we are having a good time, and that it’s just fun. And we aren’t. But like, we can’t say anything. We have to live with it. You know, it’s it’s a bad part of a good thing.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

The Internet of Things: Is it going to change the lives of people in the 21st century? What are we going to do in 2023?

Absolutely. I don’t know how it gets better. I think it will require a lot of individual people with good, thoughtful thoughts, and good conversations, and a lot of time and experience with this. I think about the printing press a lot. We now had people who disagreed with the church who were allowed to speak to the catholic church and say “I think you’re doing it wrong”. We’re going to let you know about it. We’re going to be better at it than you, and we’re going to be more nimble than you. And it has so many parallels to that that sets of conflicts that we have now. It was a messy time. It was it was very bad. And lots of people died. It was a novel that nobody thought we shouldn’t have. We know how to have books that aren’t societally destructive. We figured out a way to move through that time so that we didn’t end up in a world with so much power in the church. We needed to move into a world where there was more individual agency. I believe we’re having that now. That is not a conversation about young people and screentime. That’s a conversation that every single one of us in the society we exist in right now.

I think about that. The thing I’m working on right now is about the Internet and what it could be, if we were careful with it. It’s very different from what we have now. So like I say, you never feel that you’re in history when you are. We always are. You never think of yourself as a part like that. That this moment that we’re in right now is going to be part of a much larger story than most of these things that we’re talking about in 2023 are going to be entirely forgotten. But but we are. And we’re at the beginning of this revolution in communications. I know people who run big social media companies who think about the societal implications of what they do and how they can change society for the better, along with their employees and their advertisers and their investors. But like, mostly the thing that we’re we’re fine with is like, okay, you’ve got this technology, use it how you can and make as much money as you can, because that’s how that makes sense. We haven’t really thought about how to do it in a way that’s really pro-social. We haven’t thought about how to sort of make the tool best for a human and best for human outcomes, because that’s really complicated and it’s kind of scary to say like, Oh, I’m going to use the social media platform is gonna make me happier. It’s like, Woo hoo hoo. That seems like they shouldn’t be able to push those buttons, but they can. So what? What will that future look like? And and is it dystopian or is it utopian or is it a little bit of both? Because that’s sort of what the future always is.

The future. All of it at the same time. It’s a really beautiful way to look at it, an authentic way to see it. It’s true. We never know which way things are going to unfold. You will be surprised, if the impact of these technologies will get better? Will they get worse over time? Maybe it’s going to be both. All that we can really try and do is understand them, these tools, at the time we are using them. Hank said we can develop an expertise in how to use them, like he said, and sharpen our awareness of how they can hurt us. Hank mentioned that even for him, someone with years now of experience, the pressures of being online can take a toll. He probably has more skin than most. And frankly, that troubled me because Hank is Hank. But I’m worried about regular people. I am concerned about young people. This is something I’m hearing about even from my own kids.

How people see you, I guess with social media, you want to put out like a good picture of yourself, make it seem like. Your life is perfect. Not everyone’s life is perfect.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/6c51819a-d613-4cff-9637-afbb0016bec8

What Do We Worry About Online Social Media? A Conversation I’m Going to Have with Sky at the Children’s Psychiatric Hospital

My daughter Sky will be having a conversation with me next week. The pressures of being a teenage girl online. This is a conversation I will never forget. I will be talking to the child psychologist about the effect this pressure has on young people.

So we’re all just in this like, feedback loop of looking at perfect pictures and perfect photos, even though we know that’s not reality. So we’re just comparing our worst days. Our worst moments are worse angles to other people’s best. You’re going to feel bad when you do that.

Chasing Life Podcast: Why I’m soooo excited about how I became a mom when I was a babysitter

Chasing Life is a production of CNN Audio. Our podcast is produced by Grace Walker, Xavier Lopez, Eryn Mathewson, and David Rind. Haley Thomas is our senior producer. Andrea Kane is our medical writer and Tommy Bazarian is our engineer. Dan Dzula is our technical director. The executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. Special thanks to Ben Tinker, Amanda Sealy, and the CNN health team.

A lot of what is happening for the average teen is like they live in the digital world on social media. And so much of this is connected and impacting their mental health and their presentation and how things work for them and how they feel about stuff.

The voice you just heard belongs to a very special member of my family, my 16-year-old daughter, Sky. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love all of my daughters equally, of course. Sky though, is unique in her own way. Every other parent in the neighborhood goes to her for advice. She’s the one who knows CPR. She is the absolute top choice for babysitter for everybody. She is really something else.

She even makes jokes. If you’ve been on this journey with me since episode one, you know that I brought all three of my daughters along for the ride this season. That’s something I’ve really never done before in more than 20 years of being a medical journalist. I’ve made my kids stay away from television and media in my world. But I really wanted to have honest conversations with them about how technology has shaped their childhoods. They’ve grown up in a digital world, which is good and bad at the same time.

What do we talk about? What are we trying to tell you? How do we know what’s going on in our head, and what kind of information do we need?

Yeah, I do have friends. More of them deal with anxiety than depression, and I think most of them are not caused by the phone. It is definitely true that I see that concern.

I was asked what the inspiration was for the season. And I guess that was probably it more than anything else. Exactly what you’re talking about. And we still don’t really have a good handle on, right?

I think it’s different for everyone. You never know what’s happening in a person’s head. We talk a lot, even like my best friends. We like, can I feel like I can tell them anything. I still don’t really know what’s going on in their head exactly.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/279fb31f-f176-4d8c-af8b-afc401155ab0

The Funny Thing About You: How Does Your Mind Get Difficult to You? And Why Do You See What I’m Wearing?

Sky’s right. There was no surprise. Even though we are very close to our friends, even though we don’t, maybe we can’t always know how they are feeling. What I can say with more certainty is that my daughter’s mental health is one of the most important things in the world to me. And throughout the season it’s been at the top of my mind.

Yeah. I like, I definitely want to like, put like a good image of myself out on social media. I have had a thought or two about something and it’s just like, I’m not sure.

The funny thing about you is that and I don’t say this again lightly, but you look good in every article of clothing that you’ve ever worn. You look good in every color. I mean, it’s kind of crazy.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/279fb31f-f176-4d8c-af8b-afc401155ab0

Chasing Life: What social media is driving in the tragic deaths of teen girls and their parents? A conversation with Dr. Tanya Sinclair-McBride

The movement to use social media in a more authentic and authentic way has been amazing to watch among Generation Z and even younger generations. It makes me feel pretty hopeful, and it’s something that I see my own daughters doing as well. They are proud of themselves and most of the time they put up a photo of themselves that is not boring. But I do know there is that pressure to be perfect and it can still get to them. It’s something that Sky told me at the very beginning of our conversation.

We are seeing a lot of depression. A lot of anxiety is what we are seeing. A lot of trauma is being seen. These are some of the main reasons that young people end up in front of me.

I want to know what I can do as a dad to support Sky and the rest of my girls as they navigate this new world. I’m Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent. This is calling it Chasing Life.

You know, just a few weeks after I recorded that conversation with Sky, there was some new data that came out from the CDC confirming some of our worst fears as parents. Before I read your opinion on the statistics, I want to warn you that a few are pretty disturbing. A few mentioned suicide.

Let me be more specific here. What they found was that 57% of teen girls reported feeling sad or hopeless. That was almost double the rate for teen boys. The next one will shock you, as it did me. About 25% of teen girls were planning to kill themselves. One out of four girls. That was not easy for me to hear as a parent. Hearing about young people in distress, feeling alone and like they had nothing to live for. That is a gut punch. And we cannot turn away our eyes to this. What exactly is driving it?

Basically, the numbers have worsened every year my girls have been alive. And that does coincide with the birth and the growth of the digital world. After looking over the report, thinking back to my conversation with Sky and my other daughters, I couldn’t help but wonder what role is social media playing in all this? What can we say for sure?

That’s Professor Keneisha Sinclair-McBride. Her job is to care for adolescents’ mental health. She is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a licensed clinical psychologist. She is working with Dr. Michael Rich who we heard from earlier in the season. A lot was learned from Dr. Rich. I’ve been reflecting on that conversation quite a bit. I called Professor Sinclair-McBride because I still had questions after reading the CDC report. I started by asking her to simply respond to the one statistic from the report that I think really stuck out the most. And that is that more than 40% of high school students report feeling sadness or hopelessness. That’s keeping some of them from living their lives. 40%. I wondered if she was seeing or hearing the young people she treats.

When you hear something like that, that’s, we’re talking about symptoms of depression. A lot of kids are facing an epidemic of loneliness. There’s a lot to be gloomy about if it’s the lens you’re looking at, or if you’re still learning and growing. Everyone’s upset about something. Bad things happen all the time. So when you think about a young person trying to figure this out as their brain is developing in the shadow of a world altering event with COVID 19, this is not a surprising statement from the CDC’s report. Maybe the numbers are surprising people, but the actual diagnostic elements of it in terms of like these are the symptoms that kids are reporting, don’t feel surprising.

Body image issues and eating disorders are some of the things that you specialize in. Do you think that this is all related when we, when we’re talking about what we’re seeing with mental health overall, body image issues, eating disorders and the impact of social media devices, content being fed to people on a regular basis, is it too flimsy to draw a connection between all these things, or do you think it exists?

I don’t think it’s too flimsy at all. I think that may start out innocently, like, I’m going to follow this person’s diet or workout routine, if it looks really healthy. Maybe I’m going to copy some of her recipes and that can be super innocuous and fun and simple. You can fall down a rabbit hole of more and more depending on your makeup. There’s so much of people’s appearance in the digital world that it’s not real. Right. A lot of teenagers who are still getting used to their new looks are comparing themselves with people who have the filters, software and enhancements that they have. Well, I don’t look like her. It’s like she doesn’t look like her either. But you don’t know that, right? Her social media feed is a good indicator of her personality. But now you’re feeling inadequate because of what you’re seeing on your screen.

Professor Sinclair McBride believes that this is the “Selfie Effect.” What the studies have shown is that scrolling through an unlimited supply of picture perfect images and then comparing them real time to your selfies – bam! It can have an effect on people’s moods. Young girls are affected mostly by the trend, but it’s not the only one. People of all ages and genders have experienced it.

They know that these filters exist. They know that there’s Photoshopping and all that. Even though they know it’s fake, they still think it’s an ideal. It’s filtered in some way. It changes what they aspire to be or look like.

Right. Like if you think about the trend lately now I think it was a couple of years ago now, like the idea of someone being goals, your goals, that person is goals. You don’t know what’s happening in the background to make them look like that, right? Or like, you don’t know how realistic this is. Or maybe that’s not your body type, you know it’s just so much more variety in life than a few set ways of being. Those are the things that get a lot of attention. It’s like you can see how that would change people’s perception.

Has that sort of thing been there much longer than social media. I mean, you know, when I was growing up again, it was magazines and pictures of just inexplicable models. They wouldn’t be able to have that skin or body type. Isn’t it the same thing?

But it’s much bigger than that. There are only a few fashion magazines. And once you read that issue, you could keep it. But that’s the end of that, right? You looked at the images after you read the whole thing. That’s what it is. But now you’ve got the stuff in your phone and it’s always there. It’s always available to you. You can look at hundreds of pictures of the people that you’re interested in looking at. It’s never done, never ends. And I think that that accessibility is what feels different. We have always been comparing ourselves. The accessibility of all of these things feels very different, other than that they are the same.

And I guess the persistence, like you’re saying, it’s just always there are something you’re carrying around in your hands. What does it mean for a person who’s been exposed to these types of images for a long while, that their brain is not yet fully developed? Does it affect their brain in a way that they don’t expect?

If that’s what you’re seeing, it’s got to do something to your expectations of what people look like, which I think is why that like kind of tuning your feed, deciding where you’re going to put your attention, kind of creating that balance becomes super important because you don’t just have to look at one type of body on your social media. But I think that that involves having a conversation with young people to really like kind of see where their heads are around this stuff, right? A lot of things can be affirming. It’s important that we look for it. We have to give our attention to it. The internet is full of people who want to buy you time. I talk to young people about that a lot because they don’t like to be played. This is a business, it’s important to like so. She is trying to get more sponsorships while she is doing a workout. If you want to buy my time, I’ll give it to people who are standing for what I believe in because when you see a business for what it is, you can kind of take that step back and be like, okay.

You know, you’re absolutely right about that. I found it funny when I talked to my girls about that and they said it seemed to get to them the most. The idea of being played, like you say, you know, someone’s trying to take something from them – that did seem to get their attention a bit. I wonder you run a practice where you’re caring for these children, these young people, adolescents. How big a problem is this? Is there a way to contextualize this?

You should still say it, even if they roll their eyes. Like, as much as teenagers are like, of course you have to say that, you’re my dad. Or like, of course my parents think that, they always say I look great. They say it with a smile, but also with an eye roll. Like people need to know that they’re valued, right? People need to hear that there is a safe space to come home to. They are supposed to, so they are going to give you that eye roll. I believe the amount of children who will tell me what their parents say is more important than the amount of kids who won’t believe it. But like, they’re like, happy or proud or pleased. They may not want their parents to always know that. But the stuff that you guys say really does matter.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/279fb31f-f176-4d8c-af8b-afc401155ab0

What Do You Want to Know about Mental Health and Social Media? If You’ve Already Learned Something, Just Ask Me – I’m Here

That’s coming up in just a moment. But before we go to break, you know, I’ve been the one asking a lot of questions this season, but I also do want to hear from you. I know this is deeply personal for a lot of people. What do you want to know when it comes to mental health and social media? Have you made any changes to your own digital diet since listening to this season of the podcast? Just give me a call at 470-396-0832. Leave a message. It would mean a lot to hear from you, and we might even include your voice on an upcoming episode of the podcast.

What does that balance look like? Professor Sinclair-McBride says it’s different for every teen she treats, and it typically starts with a few questions.

What are their goals? Is the school play something they’re participating in? They might be doing community service. Like whatever it is, they have something. If you don’t have that, I’m more worried about you lying in a bed looking at the phone all day.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/279fb31f-f176-4d8c-af8b-afc401155ab0

What do you want to do when you’re not doing anything right now? Tell me how I feel about what I’m doing, what I wanna do, and what I would like to do next

If somebody is listening right now and says, okay, yeah, I am checking these boxes that they’re talking about in terms of I realize that this is interfering with my real life. This is I’m not doing some of the things I’d like to do. But what do you tell somebody then who says, yes, that’s me. I’m experiencing these issues.

First, I give a lot of praise andAffirmation, because it takes a lot to say hey, I’m having a problem with something. There’s a vulnerability to that and a humility to that that definitely needs to be honored. Because there’s a lot of shame in realizing that you’re not kind of living your life the way you want to be living it, right? It’s the first step for me. I like to find out what you wanted to do after the problem was solved. How were you? What did you do? What were you interested in? What did you and your friends do? So, how about going back and forth between the past and future, what do you want for the future? Not necessarily what you want to be when you grow up, what kind of stuff you want to spend your time doing, right? What do you wish to do after you graduate from high school? What are you goals? What is it that makes you happy? What is your dream vacation? Like just any like sort of like, where are you trying to go with things? It’s more than just the device because it shows me what we can spend time on.

That burden should not be on the individual and it should not be on the parent to hold. I realize that, it was not my fault that I was so anxious and depressed as a young person online. It was the fault of the companies and designers that built addictive technologies that they were harming me and not doing anything. For instance, looking at Francis Hogan’s whistleblower report. Meta was aware that their platforms made their body images worse. That was a moment when I began to understand that the burden had been completely flipped. I knew it was important to engage in top down advocacy efforts.

The public is informed about transparency. Like, you know how you said the thing that resonated with your daughters the most was when they realized it was a business. There are people trying to buy your time. I hope that the information is always available to them. If you were watching a TikTok and it said that under this person is sponsored by a company, then you should be proud of it. Not in a way that you can avoid it or like, you know, this person is selling you this supplement, but really they work out five hours a day. Like I don’t know, whatever it is just to make it really clear what’s really happening.

I don’t want to, but I was really interested in her comments about the “Selfie Effect” and the filters and all that. And I mean, should should these filters, I guess they’re going to exist. It is, is as one of my daughters said, we talk about these things as being good things or bad things. Sometimes they’re just a thing. They are there. And, you know, people like to look at beautiful pictures of sunrises and sunsets and mountains and nature. When trying to filter the Human, you know, our own body and stuff. If you were to wave a magic wand, or the tech companies came to you and said, with all your expertise, how should we handle the idea of people modifying, altering their appearance in ways that make it less authentic?

I think I have a kind of an intersectional response to that in the sense that, like a lot of the filters kind of have a very Eurocentric lens. So it would be great if they did not make people’s skin colors lighter or change the shape of their noses or change how big their eyes are, or do things that make them more towards a certain.

Standard of beauty may not be from the culture that they’re from. That would be crucial, I think. Like it would be nice if like when you put a filter on, it said you’re beautiful as you are, but you can play with this if you want, right? It’s a tool and something that is here. The picture of you without the filter is really cool. And I notice that some kids are really into sending them each other unfiltered, silly pictures or like making like really ridiculous faces and like, that’s a sense of a kind of like vulnerability or connection that like, I really care about you, we’re really close because I sent you this really unflattering picture of myself.

Ten Years Later: How Will We Live and How Do We Get There? A Tale of Two Rooms in a Times of Change and Frustration

Ten years from now, social media will not be what it is today. My generation’s build it is what it will be. We want to build a different building. We want to build it right.

The period of adolescence is what I think happens with the amount of time. I also am very inspired by how much this generation of kids is very take-no-prisoners about things that cause them harm or needs to be fixed in the world. They might be the ones who figure out how to make it happen. I can’t believe that everyone who is 14 now will be sitting at 30 looking at the same filters that they are currently using. There will be something different, but I think that they might be part of the change that makes this feel more balanced and empowering.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/279fb31f-f176-4d8c-af8b-afc401155ab0

Do I look like I’m all perfect? My thoughts on how I felt when I first started looking at my family and what I’ve learned from her

I don’t want to be naive here and I really don’t. I think I was surprised by Sky when she said that she looked at the pictures of my family. I think you’re all perfect no matter what. You look great, no matter what. But it is, I don’t know, it kind of gets to me a little bit. I think I get emotional thinking about her saying that because I feel like it is not that big of a deal. The picture is the one you are seeing. It’s not. I believe she would agree with that. And yet the motivation for her to have said that must come from a deeper place where something has, it’s not that it’s harmed her, but it’s made her feel that way. I want to make sure my kids don’t feel that way. If I simply say, hey, you always look great, then that’s not going to work. I’m just saying that, Dad, I’m going to say that, because that’s not something that doesn’t get through.

I think that this kind of stems from this, a fear of like fear of imperfection. Like if I if I make a mistake, if I’m not always presenting my best, the bottom is going to fall out and I’m, people are going to reject me or I’m not going to get the things that I dream of getting. A set of bad circumstances or good circumstances does not necessarily make someone feel like that. If you get a lot of positive feedback, you want to keep getting it. And so being being able to feel comfortable in your mistakes and in your imperfection is like a continuous lifelong process. And as she gets older, I think that that sense of just feeling more ownership over that, this is me all the good, all the bad, and you know, I have value that starts to really kind of solidify for people as they get older.

If it means my daughters know that I care, then I will take the eye rolls. Sometimes it does feel like the words you say to your kids don’t really make a difference. They do. They are listening and playing a role that they have been given. That role is to roll their eyes, to be nonplused. I’m not bothered, Dad. They are listening to you. They are working on what you’re saying. They are storing that information, hopefully feeling affirmed by all of it as well. After speaking with Professor Sinclair-McBride, I’m much more inspired to keep telling my daughters how important they are to me. It’s important. I hope you’re going to do the same with your kids, but also your friends, your loved ones. Because being in a world surrounded by screens, those real life conversations, they make even more of a difference than ever.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/279fb31f-f176-4d8c-af8b-afc401155ab0

Emma Lemke – A 20-year old student’s perspective on social media’s impact on the young people in the U.S.

There was another part of the conversation with Professor Sinclair-McBride that really stuck out to me, and that’s when she called for social media companies to be more transparent. It is an interesting proposition. Throughout the season, I’ve asked different experts their opinions and takes on what we can do to make social media a better place. But now there is a push to pose that very same question to the social media companies themselves. And the professor isn’t the only one calling for change.

Emma is right in the middle of this sort of push and pull between social media companies, the users that want to see change and the lawmakers in charge of reeling in big tech. Is it going to take a lot of things to make social media safer? Is it even really possible? Should the companies responsible for the harms young people like Emma are alleged to have had be held accountable? This isn’t easy, and yet it is one of the most important issues of our time. We’re going to get answers from a tech journalist who will educate us about the decades old law in front of the Supreme Court that could decide the future of the internet.

That’s Emma Lemke. I think you need to remember that it’s a name and you’re going to be hearing it a lot. A college student is named Emma. In fact, she’s not much older than my own teenage daughters. She and many of her peers have decided to take on a fight that is big, bigger than themselves.

The hearing was about how to better protect kids online. The 20 year old had a very clear message for the senators in the U.S.

As you likely know by now, I’ve spoken to each of my own daughters for this season. I did it mostly because I’m worried about the impact that social media and technology could be having on them and all young people. I don’t want to spend the season talking about young people. I wanted to talk with young people. Why? Because I wanted their perspective. I know that they have many ideas. They know how to make these spaces better. Emma is a prime example of that. She founded the Log Off movement in 2020. That’s an organization that aims to raise awareness about social media’s impact on youth mental health. Something that I care about very much. She also works on politics. The youth led advocacy group wants to make sure the rules protect young users. Now, all of this activism has landed Emma in the spotlight. It was also the way she encountered a panel of lawmakers.

I have heard, as members of my generation have expressed concerned, not just for our own well-being, but for younger siblings, for cousins, and for all those to come after us.

What do we really need to know about tech and mental health? I’m afraid I don’t have the skills necessary to be a cybercriminalist

You know, partly because of Section 230, a lot of the lawsuits that have been brought in relation to tech and mental health have actually not gone anywhere.

And I’ve heard that myself over and over again. I have friends in the cybersecurity world that told me to just completely remove the app from my phone because of that potential. But I wanted to ask Brian about Tiktok’s response. How do they respond to these accusations that their app is a threat to cybersecurity?

I saw my friends having conversations and attention being pulled away from me, when their eyes looked up at me. It felt like it was dropping. Each one would go and spend a lot of time on their phones and screens, instead of talking with me.

I was an 11 year old when I believed that there had to be something magic and mystical within these platforms that was taking my friend’s attention away from me in the moment.

It seemed like it was magical. You know, when I was a kid, if you had told me that one day we would carry these devices in our hands, that with a swipe of your hand, could conjure up images and sounds from all over the world. I would have thought of the supernatural. But here we are. Not only does the technology exist, but there seems to be this strange obligation to constantly interact with it. There is this constant pressure that young people have to be online. It can be challenging for girls. My daughters and Emma are young women who feel the pressures of being a young woman and being a young woman online.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/63bb7b1b-4a4a-4704-b8b0-afc8014ce9fa

How Do You Make Money, Mr. Facebook? An Insight from Emma’s Way of Talking to Senators about Social Media and Social Media

I consistently could see how many people liked my video, how much social feedback I was getting, how many people commented, what did they say, how many likes and followers do I have, is my follower to following ratio off.

That was Emma’s way of saying something. Emma claims that there’s something about the way social media draws you in and doesn’t let you go, something that feels manipulative by design. In fact, the idea reminded me of my conversation with Catherine Price earlier this season. If you remember, she had a similar take. A lot of these apps are designed to look like slot machines in order to keep you hooked, and keep you pulling the lever. Emma simply doesn’t think this is right. In fact, she believes that it’s time for a redesign and she believes that the responsibility to fix it should come from, you guessed it, those who designed it in the first place.

So she started out small looking at any legislation that could make a difference. And at the age of 17, she was advocating for changes to policy at the state and then the federal level behind all of Emma’s work is this idea that we cannot legislate on behalf of young people without giving young people a seat at the table.

Sometimes I think people don’t think legislative action will solve the problem. It can be complicated and slow, and that’s one reason. You get clips of senators asking, “How do you make money, Mr. Facebook?” You know, like these these basic questions that you would think, oh, no, as a 12 year old, I could answer that. What are you doing? You’re the person who’s supposed to protect me. In going there and D.C. I see that the senators really understand these issues by bringing in young people like me.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/63bb7b1b-4a4a-4704-b8b0-afc8014ce9fa

What Do Social Media Companies Really Know About Child-Rich Children’s Health? A Comment on Brian Fung from a CNN News Reporter on the Case of the Communications Decency Act

What does that mean? Well, for Emma, she knew how autoplay would take her astray. She was pushed toward an eating disorder due to suggested content when she searched for something as simple as healthy meals. It is just so strange, but disordered eating content would fire up the emotional centers of your brain and get you to stick around longer. Candidly, it’s pretty sick and Emma does not want anyone to go through that. She says it’s important for the public to know just how these algorithms work and how they end up recommending content that isn’t good for them.

Then I think the second thing we have to address is how do we build in safeguards to protect young people? Design features such as stopping autoplay by default, banning targeted advertising to young people, and banning other harmful content can be used to regulate. It’s also looking at features that allow children to be communicated with by adults they don’t know. And I think in investigating how to put into place those two things, safeguards and algorithmic transparency, that we will see the most effective solutions emerge.

If you’ve been paying attention to the news in the past couple of weeks, you might have come across a story or many stories about the ongoing legal battles social media companies are currently facing. This topic is one that really hits home because of the fact that many of these brawls are focused on the safety of our children. But the truth is, some of the legal lingo can feel confusing even for me. One of my colleagues is a huge fan of social media and tech.

That’s Brian Fung. He has been a reporter for CNN for many years and is based in D.C. I wanted to ask Brian a bit about some of the questions that Emma brought up earlier. Like, why do those algorithms feel manipulative and the reality slash possibility of holding social media companies accountable? Interestingly, Brian says the answer partly lies in a piece of old legislation called the Communications Decency Act. You have already heard about it. It’s called Section 230. You know, I read one of the articles you wrote recently, and it was about Section 230 and the headline that you put on there, it really kind of got my attention. The Supreme Court could change the internet. It’s a big deal. I mean, it sounds like a big deal. Brian, I wonder if you can just tell us about Section 230.

In the early days of the internet, there were a number of cases in the courts about whether or not internet portals could be sued for their users’ content on their platforms. And the courts came down with kind of conflicting answers. So Congress decided that it didn’t want this legal mess to choke off the economic tool before it had a chance to take off. So what we’re going to do is create a special category of legal immunity for websites and people who use the Internet so that they don’t have to be legally responsible for the speech that others put on the Internet. Tech companies, ranging from AOL to Facebook to Snapchat to Twitter, have all used this law to say, hey, we can’t be sued for content that our users post online. And by the way, we can’t be sued also for deciding to moderate content in the ways that we see fit, which is another critical piece of this legal immunity shield that has kind of come under attack in these court cases that the Supreme Court is now considering.

Look, I know that a lot of this can feel dense, but it’s hard to understate just how big these court cases are. Legislative action can be very slow, but when the Supreme Court hands down a ruling, change can then come very quickly. And there’s one case in particular Brian’s been paying close attention to.

Gonzalez is facing off against Goggles in the case of Gonzalez vGoogle. And the case is all about whether YouTube can be sued for algorithmically recommending videos created by the terrorist group ISIS to YouTube users. 230 has been focused on what users post on social media sites. But now we’re getting into content recommendation algorithms and are algorithms protected by section 230? And this question of whether algorithms are protected by 230 is really important at a time when more and more companies are relying on AI to curate and moderate content. So the outcome of this case could determine how many lawsuits companies like Facebook and Google and YouTube might have to face if their users post something that another user doesn’t like.

Okay, Again, I know that sounds like a lot. Are you wondering why I care about how companies moderate content? Why? It strikes to the heart of what most of us use social media for. Think of it like this. The programrecommends things. We talk with those things. It learns what we don’t like. Should the person who likes or retweets a harmful or objectionable piece of technology be held responsible for the damage it causes?

You heard this, and a really important exchange between Justice Amy ConeyBarrett and the lawyer for the lawsuits that are against Google.

Justice Barrett asked, Hey, if I go to Twitter and I retweet something under your legal theory, you’re saying I’m not protected by Section 230. And the lawyer responded, Yeah, that’s content you’ve created.

If you’ve created this content, you are potentially liable for it. And you’re not simply just passing on someone else’s content, even if it’s just a retweet. That is a big deal.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/63bb7b1b-4a4a-4704-b8b0-afc8014ce9fa

Why Snapchat and TikTok are so Popular in the U.S. and Canada, and How Do People Get Their Social Media Attention?

This hits on, I think, so many sectors of society. I think it’s relevant to everyone. Is there any lawsuits that have traction over this association between these platforms and mental health?

And this is key. In our last episode, we heard about how the law allowed for misinformation to be easily distributed and accessed by people in vulnerable moments, and we heard it again in earlier episodes. Section 230 is the main reason why social media companies have been shielded from legal action by families who have been hurt by this content.

A few weeks ago a congressional hearing where a mother tried to file a lawsuit against a company after her son took his own life due to being bombarded with messages about being a bully on the app.

After his death. We discovered that Carson had received nearly 100 negative, harassing, sexually explicit and humiliating messages, including 40 in just one day. He asked his-

All of the teenagers are going to do something. They’re going to set their phones so that they live in Canada and they’re still going to use Snapchat or TikTok.

I don’t use it. It’s no longer on my phone. My daughters and I know from your reporting that TikTok is influential in a lot of ways. It’s it’s it’s controversial, but it’s hugely influential. And there’s a lot of news that’s coming out. Canada is banning it on government devices. Certain states have done that in the United States as well. What do you think is is driving that with with TikTok specifically? Is there something different fundamentally about TikTok?

There is no evidence that the company that owns TikTok has accessed this data, because of the concerns about China. It’s right. Do you think there’s validity to these concerns or is this more anti- Chinese rhetoric, which we have heard a lot of, during the Pandemic? The posturing has seemed to get more critical as time goes on. Is this part of that? Are there valid concerns here or is it just getting wrapped up?

You know, this is a question that I’ve been grappling with at a very personal level. I’m Asian-American myself. My family has Chinese roots. And so it’s often hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. I believe that there is a legitimate national security risk that has been established. The question is what to do with it. I think that’s right, as you know, history. Typically the U.S. is in a kind of competition mode with China, and so it’s low hanging fruit at the moment to take a tough stance against China. And I think that there’s probably some blurring of the lines between what is very much a legitimate national security concern and being critical of China in ways that yield political dividends.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/chasing-life/episodes/63bb7b1b-4a4a-4704-b8b0-afc8014ce9fa

Do We Live in the United States? Does the U.K. Have a National Privacy Law? What have we learned in the last few years?

There’s no national federal data privacy law. California is the toughest state to govern how companies handle user data. And so the fact that we don’t have a national federal privacy standard is kind of a glaring missing piece that U.S. lawmakers have been trying to fix for many, many, many years.

Do you think the United States is different than other countries? Let’s not talk about China or even the U.K., there was a court that said that social media companies were to blame for the suicide of a teen. I believe it was last year. First of a kind ruling. The U.K. has criticized TikTok for failing to protect children’s data. We’re hearing about all these sorts of things in the U.K. That’s accountability. It sounds like it. It is, it’s happening overseas, but not here in the United States. Is it not happening yet? Do you think it’s a sign that there’s something going to happen here? Is the United States different?

It’s evident that the UK and the EU have been ahead of the game on a lot of these issues. There is a reason for that and it is the way that regulation happens. In the European context, there’s much more of an expectation that the government will impose rules ahead of time rather than try to enforce rules, you know, after the fact. Whereas in the United States, the legal regime is kind of flipped where corporate accountability happens generally after things go wrong. There are some signs that it may be about to change. Those laws that the EU has passed are a reference for how our own laws are created. There is definitely a lot of cross-pollination happening. It is possible that this can be enough to overcome sclerotic political divisions in our government.