← Something You Should Know
Something You Should Know
How Smart People Can Make Dumb Choices & The Serious Dangers of Social Media
00:50:25
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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
Mike Carruthers
Today on something you should know. Some things you really need to throw out right now, and I promise you'll never miss them. Then we'll explore the reasons why really smart people can make amazingly stupid choices.
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Christopher Ferguson
Generally speaking, when we're in a period of experiencing heightened emotion, we tend to make worse decisions. The more frightened we are, the more angry we are. Even with positive emotions sometimes, the more excited, the more happy we are, we tend to make worse decisions.
- [01:00]
Mike Carruthers
Also, what could happen to your pets if you die? I don't think you really know. And too much social media can mess with your brain. And it's not just a kid problem.
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Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
The sobering statistic is that about 21% of adults admit to being addicted to social media. So it's definitely more pervasive than people think, especially in adults.
- [01:24]
Mike Carruthers
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Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you.
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Christopher Ferguson
Can use in your life today.
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Mike Carruthers
Something youg Should Know with Mike Carruthers. I know you have some things in your house. I know what they are and I'm about to tell you to get rid of them. Hi, I'm micahruthers. Welcome to another episode of Something youg Should Know. So look, we all accumulate stuff. We all accumulate the same stuff and we all have the same tough time throwing it out, even though we don't need it or want it. And here are a bunch of those things that you almost certainly have that you can toss out right now and free up some space in your home. First of all, that extra pack of buttons that came with that shirt that you don't even have anymore, you can throw that out. Old holiday cards, old Christmas cards, birthday cards, graduation cards. There's a pretty good chance in your freezer or your refrigerator you have things wrapped in foil and and you have no idea what's underneath that foil. Get rid of that. Old calendars, promotional mugs or glasses that are way in the back of the cupboard that you never use. Ticket stubs to concerts, movies, or places that you don't even remember going to. Expired coupons they can go. All of those half scrawled lists, notes, and post itself reminding you of things that you don't even remember what they are. Old invitations, hobby supplies for hobbies that you don't even have anymore. Paperback novels you'll never read again, DVDs that you'll never watch again, and there's probably some old VHS videotapes laying around and you don't even have a player anymore. Printed recipes that you've tried, didn't like, but you save the recipe anyway. Pens that no longer work and then all of those chopsticks, duck sauce, ketchup, hot mustard, soy sauce packets, and pizza refrigerator magnets that you just don't need. And that is something you should know.
- [05:25]
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- [05:56]
Mike Carruthers
You'Ve probably noticed in your life that when there's an emergency or a catastrophe or when something in your life goes extremely wrong, you have trouble thinking. You panic. And as a result of panicking, you can make some pretty bad decisions in that moment. Sometimes those decisions make the problem even worse. So why is it we do that? Well, here to discuss this is Christopher Ferguson. He is a professor of psychology at Stetson University in Florida, and he's author of the book How Psychology Explains why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse. Hey, Christopher, welcome to Something youg Should Know.
- [06:39]
Christopher Ferguson
Thanks for having me on today. It's a real pleasure.
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Mike Carruthers
So to get people on board here with what you're talking about. Give me an example of how good people make bad decisions even worse.
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Christopher Ferguson
Actually, one of the instances that really caught my attention, I thought was really fascinating, was the case of Air France447, which is a flight that crashed in the Atlantic about 10 or so years ago. And a lot of things went wrong on the flight. There were some mechanical issues. But the basic issue that resulted in the crash is that the pilot misperceived what was going wrong with the plane. The plane was losing altitude, and he believes that the right thing to do was to pull back on the stick, which is kind of normal sort of response, and flying a plane to increase altitude. And what in fact was happening is he was putting the plane into a stall.
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Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
And.
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Christopher Ferguson
And what's interesting about that is he kept trying the same thing over and over and over and over again rather than trying something different. And that's the kind of the example of the sort of error that interests me. It's not that he was a bad person. It's not that he was a bad pilot. It's just in a moment of panic, really, when things were going wrong, he kind of got stuck in the situation of thinking that a particular behavior really, really should work, and as a consequence, wasn't able to think his way through and try something different that might actually have possibly saved that plane and the passengers that were on it.
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Mike Carruthers
Well, I'm sure everybody's felt that panicky feeling. And, you know, you can remember how difficult it was to make a decision when you're in panic mode.
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Christopher Ferguson
Absolutely. I mean, one of the things we find is that generally speaking, when we're in a period of experiencing heightened emotion, we tend to make worse decisions. Now, there are a lot of things that happen that, know, result in us making bad decisions. But the more Frightened we are, the more angry we are. Even with positive emotions, sometimes the more excited, the more happy we are. You know, we feel like we're in love, for instance. You know, we tend to make worse decisions. It makes it more tempting for us to look for evidence that supports the way we view the world already and ignore that which does not. And that can result in us making, you know, horrible decisions, even though our intentions are good.
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Mike Carruthers
And it makes you wonder why human beings have this. It seems like it's fairly common, almost universal, that when panic sets in, people tend to do what appear to be, in retrospect, pretty dumb things, but at the time seemed like a good idea. You would think that evolutionarily, that we would work that out of us.
- [09:25]
Christopher Ferguson
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what happens is with a lot of these situations, if you're feeling fear, if you're feeling anger or something negative, negative in particular, you may be, at least evolutionarily speaking, in the situation of needing to make a very, very fast decision. So if you think of the example of, you know, 20,000 years ago, you're an early human, you're in the savannah or some other place, and you come across another human being, you need to make decisions about that person very, very rapidly and whether that person's going to kill you or not, basically. So you need to come to that decision very, very quickly. And so what happened is that we evolved a lot of cognitive tendencies to try to evaluate situations rapidly with limited data. Now, that might serve us well for being chased by a tiger, for instance, but those same adaptations don't always serve us well in a modern, complicated, multiracial, multi ethnic society. So again, what we tended to do in the past is we tend to look for superficial differences to try to evaluate is this, you know, different from my group? And knowing that was useful, you know, in terms of estimating how likely that person was to be aggressive. But it's not very useful to us again in the modern United States, where you now see the same types of cognitive biases result in ethnocentrism, racism, and other kinds of problems that we're dealing with today.
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Mike Carruthers
So give me some more examples of how this plays into our thinking and our lives and the decisions we make.
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Christopher Ferguson
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, some of the kind of typical cognitive biases that we see include things like the one is what we call the availability heuristic, which means that if you, it's easy for you to remember an event, you tend to overestimate how frequent that is and how big of a problem it Is so once again, I mean, the example of plane crashes were kind of a classic example that plane crashes tend to be very memorable. They get a lot of news attention. They're actually quite rare for the most part, and they've been increasingly rare over time. But what happens is people see these, they see them on the news, and they tend to worry more about traveling by air. So we see a lot more people who have phobias of air travel and things like that. People tend to overestimate how frequent air crashes actually are compared to automobile accidents. And what happened is a lot of scholars, and of course the air travel industry spent decades telling people over and over and over again that you're actually more at risk traveling by car than by air. And it's eventually kind of worked. So I think people kind of know that now. But it did take a lot of effort to present the data over and over and over and over again to get past some of those cognitive biases involving the availability heuristic. We see the same kind of phenomena with things like people overestimate how frequent crime is, People overestimate how frequent a lot of bad things are. This kind of focus in on bad things, and if we can remember specific bad things, like mass homicides are another good example, we tend to think they're a lot more common than they are. That's just one example of a very common cognitive bias. I mean, there are others, but basically we tend to adopt particular beliefs about the world. And it can be very challenging. Not impossible, but it can be very challenging to get people to, to challenge those beliefs by looking at data and actual evidence.
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Mike Carruthers
But that's just how people are. I mean, we all do it and that's the way human beings are. So what's the harm? What's the, what's the problem?
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Christopher Ferguson
Well, oftentimes what happens is that we end up trying to fix a problem. Either fix a problem that doesn't actually exist, or we end up fixing the problem in the wrong way, or we fix the wrong problem. You know, so there may be an example of a real issue. So let's take for instance, climate change. You know, so climate change, you know, most of the data suggests is a real problem, that at least in poor humans are contributing to this problem. And there are lots of different solutions that we may have to, to deal with that. One of these is this issue of nuclear energy. Right? You know, so the evidence we have right now, and you know, and I'm a psychologist, I'm not an energy researcher by any means, but you Know, I looked through this evidence, you know, in considering this, but the evidence suggests that for the most part, nuclear energy is pretty safe. That the number of deaths attributable to nuclear energy is a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction compared to coal fired plants and even natural gas and things like that. But there's a lot of resistance from particularly the left in regards to nuclear energy. People are worried about the radiation, they're worried about contamination, they're worried about accidents like Three Mile island, which continues to be brought up even though that happened decades ago. And as a consequence, you can end up in situations like what Germany is facing right now. They are struggling to meet their energy needs because of the war in Ukraine and they've been shutting down their nuclear reactors. And what we're seeing in Germany is because of that sort of suspiciousness of nuclear energy, what they're doing is they're going back and firing back up their old coal plants to try to meet the needs that they need to get for energy over the winter. So there you see a situation where people are overestimating the risk. There's not zero risk, but people are overestimating the risk of nuclear energy. And it's actually causing people, at least in Germany, to move back into using a lot of fossil fuels, which is going to worsen the problem of climate change rather than fix it. So again, you have a movement from the left that is worried about climate change. That's a good faith effort, it's a real problem. But their fears about nuclear energy are actually making that situation worse rather than better.
- [15:21]
Mike Carruthers
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- [17:14]
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Mike Carruthers
So Christopher, what you were saying, what you were talking about, about nuclear energy, that's an example of something I've always found interesting, and that is nuclear energy has a reputation. It has an image that, as you say, the left thinks it's horrible. And therefore if you're on the left, you kind of have to adopt that stance. And a lot of people, if you ask them about nuclear energy, wouldn't even know very much about it. They just adopt the stance because that's what their tribe does.
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Christopher Ferguson
Absolutely. Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of attitudes in our ways of thinking things do come from the sense of social conformity. So if you look at things like climate change, you'll see that neither Republicans or Democrats or the right or the left are necessarily any more educated on this issue. So Republicans tend to be more skeptical of climate change, climate change, because that's what Republicans do. And you know, Democrats make fun of that a lot. But the reality is that Democrats believe in climate change because that's what Democrats do. It's not really that they know more about climate change than Republicans. We tend to oftentimes adopt our attitudes about the world by looking around and seeing who also believes in something. And if they're people that are quote unquote on our side or part of our tribe, as you said, we tend to be more likely to adopt that. It's actually fairly rare to find people who are. It does happen, but it is fairly rare to find people who are willing to kind of buck the social trend to stand up to their own group and say that their own group may be wrong. And of course, when they do, they're usually immediately punished for doing so. Certainly social conformity is a big part of the problem we have in making in good decisions. I mean, I. I see a lot of the people that have these signs on their yard of, you know, we believe in science. And I actually tend to, you know, speaking as a scientist, worry about that, because science really isn't a group of thoughts that are handed down from on high that are absolutely true. It's a process, you know, and that process is messy and complicated and nuanced. And very rarely does science on most issues tell either the left or the right what they want to hear. So I think that those statements tend to be a little bit of a distortion of how science works. But there again, you can see that there's this kind of moral element to it, that what they're hoping for is that science is going to support their moral worldview of how the world should work. And it's very difficult. Once people start to wrap their beliefs in a sense of moral goodness, it becomes even more difficult to help people understand that things may be more nuanced or different, or that they might even be, again, in good faith, simply wrong.
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Mike Carruthers
Talk about toilet paper.
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Christopher Ferguson
Toilet paper is a great example of how everybody kind of knows something is wrong and there's nothing you can do about it because of the way that social processes inform people's decisions. So of course, this is referring to the early days of COVID 19, when suddenly we were all without toilet paper and nobody could figure out why. So this is a kind of a behavioral phenomenon that's called an availability cascade. So basically, once the ball kind of gets rolling on something, even if you know that it's misinformed, it's really difficult to do anything about it. So at the beginning of COVID 19, if people don't remember, all of a sudden there were these, you know, toilet paper shortages because people were hoarding toilet paper. Toilet paper had nothing to do with COVID 19. But essentially a few people started to hoard toilet paper. And we could kind of look at them. I think initially people did assign, well, they're irrational. What they're doing doesn't make sense. But once they begin to do it, then even if you recognize that hoarding toilet paper is kind of silly, will you begin to think, well, if they're hoarding toilet paper, then I should begin to hoard toilet paper too, because the less informed people are going to have all the toilet paper if I don't. So basically, even if a process has started by people who perhaps are less rational, they're less informed, they're responding emotionally to that, it sort of traps us all in the same pattern. We really can't resist it. Or else you can be the smart person saying like, look, it's actually very easy to make toilet paper even during COVID 19, so I'm not going to hoard anything and you're going to end up without toilet paper because everybody else is engaging in hoarding. And so it points out how these social processes can make it very difficult for people to make good informed decisions when everybody else around them is not.
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Mike Carruthers
So other than looking at this and finding it really interesting, is there any advice from all of this?
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Christopher Ferguson
Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely there is. So what you can do is, you know, start presenting the data. So people do actually kind of listen to data. Yeah, I kind of use the example. I actually have done a lot of research on violence in video games. I've been involved that for 20 years. And when I first started in this field, everybody thought that violent video games cause mass shootings. And now very few people do. You know, some people still do and it still comes up. Absolutely. But there's been a real change in public attitudes around video games over the last two decades. And a lot of that has been, you know, scholars, myself being one, but certainly other people as well, presenting the evidence over and over and over. There really just is not data to link violent video games to mass homicide. And you know what I kind of tell people, and this sounds a little depressing, is it really was a 15 year process, you know, that if you kind of start with people having a really wrong idea, let's say nuclear energy is dangerous or whatever it might be, and you have good data and you present it over and over again calmly and rationally, you can expect within 15 years to have sort of changed public attitudes in a more data based direction. So it does take a while.
- [24:14]
Mike Carruthers
You mentioned that in Germany that the problem with coal and nuclear, has it changed minds now that these coal plants are coming back online? Have people gone, oops, we made a mistake or they go or not?
- [24:29]
Christopher Ferguson
Yeah. So you have really two different groups of people that, you know, when presented with the oops moment, you know, tend to react very differently. So with any kind of issue like that, you're going to get a certain group of People who are highly invested in the mistake, you know, they stake their reputations, they made big promises about that issue. And generally what we see is that those people almost never back down. Sometimes they do. And I have been impressed occasionally by some. You know, there have been a few people that will say, you know, I dedicated my life to X and it turns out X is wrong. You know, so there are some brave souls out there. But generally speaking, like the people who are most invested, they're the loudest activists, they're the loudest politicians, very rarely back down off of, you know, a big claim like that. But then you have the general public, you know, who's much less invested, you know, in this issue, and aim the data at them and try to bring them around. So, I mean, I've seen a little bit of movement on nuclear energy, and just in the last year or two, as I think people have started to understand that maybe nuclear isn't so bad. And I think that part of that is these situations where, you know, we're seeing that solar and wind and geothermal are really not succeeding in meeting the immediate needs that people have with energy. You know, there's just no way that solar and geothermal and wind and water are going to meet the needs of the European continent. So we're seeing a lot of Europe shifting back to coal, which is not the direction we want us to go. And so I think people are starting to understand that some of the promises that were made about renewables maybe 20, 50 years from now, maybe that really, really, really will work. But right now they're not.
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Mike Carruthers
Well, this whole idea of how our emotions and our beliefs affect our thinking and our decisions is something that people don't think about, that we like to think that we make decisions based on the facts that we know we can look at a situation and understand it. And it's really interesting to hear how what you believe is probably influenced by a lot more than the facts. I've been talking with Christopher Ferguson. He is a professor of psychology at Stetson University in Florida. And the name of his book is Catastrophe How Psychology Explains why Good People Make Bad Situations Worse. And there is a link to that book in the show notes for this episode. Hey, thanks, Christopher. Appreciate you being here.
- [27:05]
Christopher Ferguson
Awesome. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on and hopefully this was useful.
- [27:10]
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Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
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Mike Carruthers
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Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
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Mike Carruthers
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Mike Carruthers
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- [28:12]
Mike Carruthers
It'S pretty clear that our preoccupation with social media and its influence influencers is having a strong impact on how we think, feel and perceive everything around us. In some ways, social media becomes a lens through which we see the world. And what's a bit scary is that you might not even be aware of its effect. You may think you're immune to it, but you're probably not. You are about to hear a story about a doctor who is also one of the leading authorities on human perception. He was sucked into the world of social media and his life completely changed. And it can happen to you too. Whether you're an influencer on social media or you follow other influencers. This is an important discussion I think you'll want to hear. Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler is an MD and popular influencer on TikTok with over 3 million followers and he is the author of a book called Influence the Impact of Social Media on Our Perception. Hi Brian.
- [29:18]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
It's a pleasure to be here, Mike.
- [29:20]
Mike Carruthers
So tell the story of how you got pulled into the world of being an influencer and how it affected you and not for the better.
- [29:29]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Basically it really started. My story is that when we started with the pandemic, I had a lot of unaccustomed time on my hands and at the time my daughters were 14 and they said, dad, there's some really good doctors on TikTok and if you're interested we can help get you started. And so I found my niche pretty quickly as a doctor calling out health related videos that had gone viral with hundreds of thousands or even millions of views, but the information in them was not accurate. So people were relying on faulty information, and I was calling out those videos. And that's where my following really started to explode and eventually getting me into the, you know, several million follower range and becoming known as one of the people to go to for the community in social media in general for these health videos. But where things took a deep turn was when I got so involved and essentially addicted to social media because of that rush of dopamine. When you have videos going viral one after the other and, you know, people are wanting you, they're commenting for you to comment. And it's just this huge rush of being a sort of virtual celebrity. It's dopamine that's getting stimulated, stimulated in our brain. And so even though I'm a doctor, this problem affected me and ultimately I was able to get through it with the help of my family. But I learned and realized that if it could affect me, it could affect you too, or affect anybody.
- [31:10]
Mike Carruthers
So what is this effect? What is it? And it's not just people who have a following, but I assume this relates to people who are just the ones who follow.
- [31:20]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Absolutely, yeah. That's most people who are followers and users. And every time you scroll up on a video, what's happening is you're getting a little bit of that dopamine and you get more for some videos and less for others. But it's like you're pulling a slot machine lever and you just don't know the next one. Is it going to be a really good one that makes you feel good and entertains you, or you learn something and that's stimulating dopamine. And so it's the unpredictable nature of the scrolling of the videos, which is why they are so addictive and also why gambling is so addictive too, because of the same unpredictable component. So, yes, this is a bigger issue than people realize. And it's not just a teen or child issue with becoming addicted.
- [32:08]
Mike Carruthers
And addicted means what? Because addiction to gambling has a price. It's a monetary price. Addiction to watching TikTok videos. I mean, I watch TikTok videos and I. I'm a sucker for, you know, because they can be so satisfying at some level, but it's not costing me much. And I can stop, typically stop pretty easily. So there's a difference between watching social media and losing money at the gambling table.
- [32:42]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
And Mike, the hallmark of addiction is that it's interfering with some aspect of your life. So for social media, in my case, what was happening is I would come home and my daughters would be telling me about their day and as teenagers, wanting to do that with parents is already a rarity. Right. So. But I'm on my device. I'm so engrossed with refreshing my screen, for example, seeing how many more views I got on the video I just posted, responding to people's comments, looking at videos that I'm getting tagged to look at, to see if, you know, that's a video that is going to be one that I'm going to react to or comment on. So it becomes so engrossing that I was actually ignoring essentially my kids, and that was damaging the relationship I had with them. And that also spilled over to my wife as well in our relationship because I became so engrossed. I was missing out on a lot of. Of family experiences because of my involvement in social media. To the point one time at their volleyball game, I snuck out to go do a TikTok live in the car and brought my scrubs. I have a certain look I have on social media. I've got my scrub top, my hat, and my mask around my neck, and I plan to do this. I popped out missing their volleyball game and actually got caught because during lunch, their friends said, you know, your dad's doing a TikTok live right now. And they're like, oh, that's why he's not at the game. So I was missing out on a lot of family experiences. So it wasn't a monetary cost, but it was a relationship cost. And so that's one of the hallmarks of social media addiction is people forget and lose sight of. Of the real relationships which are ultimately the most important in people's lives.
- [34:39]
Mike Carruthers
But that's you. I mean, that's. That's a struggle that you deal with, but that's a pretty broad brush to paint everybody else with.
- [34:49]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Well, that's when people get addicted, right? So lots of people, like you just said yourself that you can just turn it off when you want. So that's not an addiction. An addiction is when it starts to interfere with. With other aspects of someone's life. That's part of the definition. And so for a lot of adults and teenagers, you know, this is an issue. And social media is just going to continue to grow, so it's not going away.
- [35:18]
Mike Carruthers
It's not just videos, though. I mean, what if. If I post something on. On Facebook or whatever? It just. I do like to look and see, you know, how many views did it get, how many likes did it get? But I don't post that much, and after a day or so, I don't check it anymore. I kind of forget about it. And that doesn't seem to me to be a problem. But I understand what you're saying that people who post all the time are always checking how many likes and all that. And other than sucking up half your day, what's the harm? I mean, if that's how you want to spend your day, what's the harm?
- [35:56]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Well, the harm potentially, like in my case, was I was not paying attention to the real most important people in my life, which is my family. And I wasn't present. Right. Like, I'm present, but I'm not really present a lot of times. And so that caused a lot of stress. And to the point that they actually, one time, the three of them basically had a TikTok intervention with me to explain, like, I've been out of control and not paying attention and not being present as a father and a husband. And initially I was not open to this. I actually resented it because I thought, well, you know, you, my daughters were the ones that got me started, and here I have millions of followers, I have all this success, and now you're not being supportive. So again, when somebody's addicted to anything, a hallmark typically is they don't have insight that they are having a problem. And so I was in denial and I thought, well, I'm just going to double down my efforts and have even more success to show you. And then what happened once was one of my videos got taken down for a community guideline violation. And at that point on the platform, none of my videos could go viral for about two weeks. And so that really forced me into a classic withdrawal situation, which also is a hallmark of addiction. When you don't get what you're addicted to, you go through withdrawals. So I had a lot of stress and anxiety and some mental health challenges during that period, but that was necessary because that allowed me to have the insight to, oh my gosh, like, what have I been doing with my family? Like, I've been putting my virtual children ahead of my real children. And it gave me that realization of what I'd been doing. And actually I felt really very guilty and remorseful and actually went to the bedroom and just cried. And they forgave me after. I apologize. But now I have a very healthy relationship with social media, and I'm still active. I'm still very active as an influencer, but I am existing with it in a much more healthy way now.
- [38:17]
Mike Carruthers
And so do we have a sense? Is there any sense of, like, how many people fall into that category? Of having trouble with it versus people who are users of it but can shut it off when they need to and live their lives the way they need to.
- [38:33]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Well, I think the sobering statistic is that about 21% of adults admit to being addicted to social media. So this is not really a teen situation, and there's not at this point any official diagnosis yet. But it does. It's a real phenomenon, and it's definitely more pervasive than people think, especially in adults.
- [38:59]
Mike Carruthers
And what about kids?
- [39:01]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
In kids also, I was just visiting with a friend of mine who was from out of town with his teenage daughter, and, you know, she and he both admit, like, she's addicted to TikTok, for example. So we were talking about some of these things that she can do and he, as a parent, can do because a lot of parents also don't have the tools to even understand. Like, where do you even start with your children to help modulate their behavior on social media? And the thing about children and teenagers is that their brains are still developing. So the prefrontal cortex, which is our higher level of functioning in our brain, that's not going to really fully settle and cure if you think of concrete curing until about age 22 or 25. So they're really susceptible. And the research that I did really discusses what those brain changes are, and they're real. And the unsettling thing is in 10 years from now, 20 years from now, as adults, nobody knows what the impact is going to be in the future until we get that timeframe down the road and we can look back and see. So there's almost like a very large social media experiment happening right now with teens and children for that reason.
- [40:22]
Mike Carruthers
Well, it's hard to imagine preventing a kid from interacting with social media because all of their friends are. They would be so out of the loop if they were forbidden from participating.
- [40:36]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Well, there is a lot of pressure because friends are talking about the videos that they're watching and influencers that they're following. So there is a pressure, and it makes it a lot of times challenging because, remember, teens and children don't have the discipline, the critical thinking skills developed to be able to modulate as successfully as adults. And even adults, as we discussed, aren't great at it either for a certain percentage of them.
- [41:07]
Mike Carruthers
When you look back at your own experience, though, do you. Can you see it for what it was? And why couldn't you see it at the time that, I mean, did you really. What would you be thinking when you're in the car doing TikTok videos at your. At your daughter's sports event. How do you justify that to yourself? I mean, what's the thought process?
- [41:27]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Well, at the time, I want to be of service. That's the whole reason I actually started on the platforms, is because I wanted to be of service, to help people understand in a public service way which videos they can rely on and which ones they can't, from a health point of view. So. And I'm also at the same point, consumed by feeling the rush of that experience in being of service. Essentially, it's like being a celebrity in the virtual world. So that clearly overrides a lot of good decision making, which and certainly take responsibility for. But, you know, there's people who get addicted to all types of things, and you look at them and you're like, well, how could that have happened? But again, and because of that feedback loop in the brain for wanting more and more and more of that dopamine and what comes with it, that's the underlying cause that drives what's happening in terms of my behavior and other people's behaviors. And fortunately, my family forgave me, and now I've. And that's what I developed too, certain systems that people can employ as users, because most people are users, not influencers, so that they can keep it under control and not have it affect their job and not have it affect their relationships and not have it affect their school.
- [42:55]
Mike Carruthers
If you go back a couple of generations, you would have heard parents talking about how their kids are addicted to television. They're always watching television. How is this different from that?
- [43:10]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
That's an interesting thought. Except the one difference is you don't carry a TV around with you all day long. Once you leave the room, you're not watching TV anymore. Whereas you go out, you go out to dinner, you go out for some event, you're just hanging with friends or you're with family, your phone is with you all the time. So it's like, in that analogy that you discussed, it's like, imagine if you could carry your TV with you. That's kind of the equivalent of what we have now. So it's. It's a bit different than the TV situation, which is why it's more. Much more of a concern right now.
- [43:48]
Mike Carruthers
And so when people. I mean, when you go out to dinner, people are always checking their phones. I don't know what they're checking. Maybe they're checking voicemails or texts or social media or whatever. I mean, I sometimes will check, check to See if I've gotten an email or whatever. But I don't go, if I'm with other people, I don't go on social media to see what's going on there because I'm in a room where stuff is going on here. So when people do that, what is it that compels them to do that?
- [44:21]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Largely it's fomo, which is an acronym for Fear of Missing out. And that's a very big driver for why people go to their phone or they hear notifications go off, the dinging or a vibration or the screen lights up, even if it's on lock screen that there's a notification. And it's like being like Pavlov's dog, right? You get that notification, you want to see what's happening and you go to the phone and you start checking. So you know, you have a good handle on it as you've described. But unfortunately more and more people don't have that handle anymore and it's really difficult to self regulate, which you know, is part of the research that I did, you know, in putting putting this together.
- [45:09]
Mike Carruthers
And so what's the advice here? What's the prescription to help resolve this?
- [45:16]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Find a solution to recognize that social media is like fire. It can be used for illumination, but you can also badly burn yourself. And you need to be aware of what the pitfalls are and then also understand what are some safeguards that you can even build in for yourself or for those around you.
- [45:41]
Mike Carruthers
So give me some strategies here because as you said, I mean, people wouldn't even know how to begin to get a handle on this problem. So help me specifically take some baby steps to get a handle on this problem.
- [45:56]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Like one tip is turn off the notifications on your phone because that's what's a big draw. So if you have everything on silent, then at least you've eliminated the susceptibility to wanting to go pick up your phone. Then there's other things too that can stimulate dopamine in a more healthy way, like laughter, exercise, certain types of food foods, certain types of aromatherapies and other activities that are dopamine releasing and make you feel good, but it's in a more healthy way. And you can also do that with other people and share in the experience.
- [46:33]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, well it, it does. And listening to you, it just reinforces this idea that people have a sense that there's a problem here. I think that they know they spend a lot of time on social media and they probably shouldn't and they probably feel a Little guilty about it, but they don't stop. They don't. And they've got all the triggers like the notifications and everything else on that's going to make it even harder to stop. It's like, I know there's a problem, but maybe nobody will notice or maybe it won't matter or maybe every, oh, everybody else is doing it it.
- [47:13]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
So it's okay for me particularly parents are just like they're out in the ocean without an oar and without anything to try to help get back to shore with kids because parents aren't savvy like their kids are. So, so they don't really understand what they're doing. And because of that, they are at a real disadvantage. Even though they want to help them, you know, they, they want them to not spend so much time that it interferes with school potentially and other things. But there's no tool set that's being provided to them.
- [47:50]
Mike Carruthers
So open up that tool set. I mean, turning off notifications is fine, but that's a pretty mild strategy. What else can people do to particularly parents do to tackle this?
- [48:03]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Well, one of them is, which is going to initially cause a lot of anxiety and is get on Tik Tok. If you're a parent, join it. Join the apps your kids are on. Because what research found is that when you are actually on the app and then discussing with your children some regulation techniques, if you have the experience, you have credibility and you're talking to them from a position of credibility versus a parent who's just like, oh, we're just going to, you know, close it down and stop cold turkey. That's going to breed a lot of resentment. So not to say that parents, you need to start creating content on the platforms, but you should join them. You should see who the influencers your children are following and therefore you can evaluate if that content is appropriate, if those are good influencers, because not all influencers are good.
- [48:58]
Mike Carruthers
Well, your story is a cautionary tale because if social media can affect you the way it did, it can likely affect anybody. And this is really important for parents and really for anybody who uses social media to understand what can happen. I've been talking to Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler. He's a medical doctor and author of the book the Impact of Social Media on Our Perception. I'll put a link to that book in the show notes, and I'm reluctant, but I'll put a link into his TikTok account so you can see his videos if you would like to. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for telling your story.
- [49:39]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Well, thank you, Mike. I appreciate being here with you.
- [49:45]
Mike Carruthers
Have you ever thought what would happen to your pet if you died? Most people assume a friend or family member would step in and care for the pet, but don't count on it. In the eyes of the court, your pet is considered property. According to attorney Rachel Hirschfeld, author of the book Petriarch, there is a real chance that your beloved pet would be euthanized after your death without proper planning. And she says designating a home for your pet in your will may not be enough because it can take months or years to settle your estate. A better option for your pet is to construct a freestanding pet trust. But those can get pricey. There is a less expensive option out there called a PPA or pet protection Agreement. You don't need an attorney, but you will need to designate pet guardians and have the document signed and notarized. You can find pet protection agreements online. One place I saw them, it was a website called petrust lawyer.com and that is something you should know. We don't ask for much, but one way you could show your support for something you should know is to tell a friend. Ask them to listen and see what they think. It helps us grow our audience. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. You might think you know fairy tales and you might think that they are cute and sweet and boring. But the real grim fairy tales were.
- [51:15]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Not cute at all. They were very dark and they were often very grim. On Grim Grimmer Grimmest, we tell a.
- [51:22]
Mike Carruthers
Grim fairy tale to a bunch of kids.
- [51:25]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Perfect for car rides or screen free entertainment. Grim Grimmer Grimmest activates kids imaginations and instigates fun conversations. Because fairy tales speak to all of us at a very deep, primal level and they raise interesting topics and questions that are worth chewing over together as a family. Every episode is rated Grim Grimmer or Grimmest. So you, your kids, your whole family can choose. What is the right level of grim for you though?
- [51:51]
Mike Carruthers
If you're listening with grandma, she's just gonna go for Grimmest. Trust me on this one.
- [51:55]
Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler
Tune in to Grim, Grimmer Grimaced and our new season available now.
- [52:01]
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Christopher Ferguson
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Are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks and me, Melissa D. Montz for Don't Blame me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up four hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. And Don't Blame Me. We dive deep into listeners questions offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong? Which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert. We are actually, quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more. Check out See you next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't Miss Fisting Friday, where we catch up chat about pop culture, TV and movies. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast that feels like a chat with your besties, listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? On Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday.