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Transcript

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Intro: Welcome to Ready to Be Strong, a podcast where we’re learning how to stay connected with ourselves and each other. I’m Tania Israel, professor of counseling, psychology, and author of two books about dealing with political division, Facing the Fracture and Beyond your Bubble. And I’m Pema Rocker. A creative coach and author, I write about connection and collective healing. In each episode of Ready to Be Strong, we unpack what’s making us feel so polarized because we’re actually not as divided as we think we are. Together, we’ll broaden our minds,open our hearts and strengthen connections in a politically charged election season and beyond. With Pema’s curiosity and storytelling, and Tania’s expertise on bridging divides. We want you to feel informed, empowered, and optimistic. We want you to feel ready to be strong.

Tania:. In this episode, we are talking about using social media intentionally. As I started doing research for my book on navigating political division, I assumed I would find overwhelming evidence for the evils of social media. Perhaps tempered by a few specific uses that were beneficial. So when it comes to politics, social media promoted free speech and organizing the toppled authoritarian regimes in the Arab Spring, and it also has the potential to aggravate partisan ranker that threatens democracy.

So social media is a tool that can be used for many purposes with both detrimental and beneficial consequences for individuals and society. We each have the power to determine our relationship with social media. So in this episode, we’ll discuss how that determination affects both polarization and our personal lives.

Pema: So we will absolutely talk about the hacks and the habits and how to use it intentionally. But what I’m struck by with our topic today, the deeper, maybe more alarming point from which all of those kind of hacks and habits and practices spring is about exerting free will. So that’s a big, big thought, big term. But as I reviewed your writings on this topic, it was a record scratch to recognize that my distracted use of my phone and social media is a surrender of my free will.Will you like bring me back into, into reality? Like, is that, is that really happening?

Tania: Well, we here between the two of us can span everything from philosophy to psychology. So let’s, let’s interweave those in a little bit together. Because there, there’s a bunch of evidence that we are not at the mercy of the machines. You know, when I talk with people about social media, everyone’s like, oh my gosh, the algorithms and, you know, the owners of social media, they’re so evil. But when you look at the algorithms, so Faceboo k tried changing their algorithms to kind of remove the power of those in terms of determining what people are gonna see. And it turns out it didn’t actually affect polarizing attitudes or knowledge or trust. And what that suggests is that it’s the users, not the algorithms that are in charge of how we’re experiencing social media. That even without what, if you take the algorithms out of the equation, people are still doing the same kinds of things and having the same kinds of emotional, uh, responses to social media.

Pema: And so, I mean, it’s those emotional responses that keep us hooked in, or I can say here that keep me hooked in that keep me, uh, defying my screen time clock that says hi get off the phone now.

Tania: Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, in 2020 just before the election there was this experiment done where they tried, um, having some Facebook users deactivate their phones for a month before that election. And it turns out that then people engaged in more offline activities and they ended up less polarized. Now they also ended up knowing less about political news. So, so that there’s a lot of different impacts we might need to make some choices about how much news we need and from what sources, but then really tune out the rest. And that’s the trick. ‘Cause once we’re on social media, it has lots of ways of engaging us so that we stay on it, that’s really the goal of social media is to get us to stay with it.

Pema: Isn’t that the goal of media? Regular media like to ramp up our emotions and keep us tuning in and to be available to that emotional pull.

Tania: So, I don’t know if you saw that movie, the Social Dilemma, but they make this point that if there’s not a product that’s being sold, you are the product, um, that you are being sold to the advertisers. And I, you know what, I actually even remember learning this about magazines like, you know, a long time ago when people read actual magazines, which was that the reason that it’s really cheap to get magazines, they’re basically giving them away is because they make all their money on the advertising and they’re, they’re wanting to bring you in as the consumer. The more magazines they can sell at a pittance, the more money they can get from the advertisers.

Pema: This sounds pretty basic, and I’m thinking if this is so basic, why? Why are we so hooked? Why do we keep doing it?

Tania: Well, again, now we’re back to psychology. And psychology, it turns out, can be used for good, but can also be used to understand how to keep people hooked on things. And so even just things like, you know, scrolling rather than going to another page for something that’ll just make it easier, you know, for us to stay in. It also pays attention to like, what are you spending time on? What are you clicking on? And then giving you more and more of that kind of content. So there are things about the way social media works and, and has you engaging with it. This is how it’s a little bit different from like watching tv, uh, which is that there’s a whole engagement aspect of it that can really ramp up, um, how addictive it is.

Pema: I like that you bring up TV because one of the things that I have noticed about how I engage in social media when I do it’s at different times for different reasons at different times. But most often I have noticed, it’s like when I have sat down to watch tv, I just wanna turn off my brain for a little bit. Um, and scroll. I will scroll for interest. I will scroll just to get that hit of, um, kind of blankness in my brain. That’s good for turning it off for a moment or for a couple hours after the workday is done, after dinner’s over before I go to bed, and I am thinking about TV back in the times when I grew up, there was a set time for a show to come on, and then, then there was a, the programming was over and so it ended for me. So two thoughts. One thought is I get that same kind of relaxed benefit of scrolling that I do watching tv, but there’s nothing turning it off for me, like when the program was over, back in the day.

Tania: There is an endless supply of content. And not only that, no one needs to, you don’t need to pay anybody to create the content. People are just making TikTok videos and putting up posts and, you know, if you are creating content, there’s all these people on social media who are sharing that and amplifying it for you. So it’s really amazing how we’re not only the consumers of the advertising that’s out there, but we’re also putting all of this labor into creating the content for the social media. You know, I make little TikTok sometimes. or I’ll write a post, you know, that people will read or, you know, which is really different from, from media like news, uh, media, magazines, tv, newspapers, where the people who are the consumers of it are not also creating the content.

Pema: Right. Well, I remember the advent of social media and how exciting it was, how connected I felt to be engaging on Twitter with other solopreneurs, other people who sat and stared at their laptop for 15 hours a day, getting the work out there. There was, here comes Twitter and Facebook where you can have conversations with other people who are doing the similar kind of work you are doing. You can share, um, you can share information and what you’ve learned, and you can also have some like break room chat, you know, but right there, online, there was a lot of, um, building off of each other and excitement in that and in, in being the content creators. Um, 

Tania: Yeah. 

Pema: And I didn’t, I don’t remember feeling addicted to it. I remember feeling excited about it. I guess now it’s just really taken off in different directions.

Tania: Well, and it can be all of that. I mean, some of what you’re talking about is community building, and that is something that can happen, you know, for people who might not have other folks around them in their physical space who are like them. So LGBTQ folks who live in rural areas, for example, are so much more connected now than they had the possibility of being before because of social media. So there are absolutely things about it that can be positive, but what you’re also talking about is some of the negative side of it. And so I think the thing with social media, that’s where I was like, I went into writing this chapter that I wrote for my book being like, oh, this is gonna be all about the evils of social media. And then I was like, okay, well one, social media isn’t necessarily driving all of this because it’s how we use social media that drives it. And two, there are things that we can do to get the beneficial aspects of it without falling into some of those traps, but we have to be really aware and intentional in order to do that.

Pema: I am nodding my head over here. We have to be really intentional. And there’s something more now, in addition to this positive connectivity, there’s something that feels like a threat in my social media feeds or kind of mode or mood.

Tania: Mm-Hmm. Sure. Well, I mean, we can look at that on a couple of different levels. Um, let, let’s maybe take the political division level first. So we talked in our last episode about consuming media and about confirmation bias, that is absolutely part of what happens in social media where we pay attention to things that we already agree with. So we’re each in our echo chambers, where we’re just hearing people say the same thing over and over and over again, and we’re not hearing those other, uh, echo chambers of what other people are saying. And so those other people seem like, you know, uh, how can they possibly be seeing things that way? But within the context of their echo chamber, they’re absolutely in the norm. So it creates some division just because we are sort of creating different informational and um, opinion worlds. Uh, so that’s, that’s part of it. But there’s this other really interesting thing ’cause people sometimes say, oh, social media makes people so angry. And I found this great study that showed that actually the people who post about politics on social media are just dispositionally more hostile than other people are. So it’s not actually that social media is making people angry. It’s that angry people are posting about politics on social media. But then it makes everybody seem, everybody who’s talking about politics seem really amped up and aggressive.  The other level of, you know, the dangers of social media, so there’s a sort of separateness, but also people who post about politics frequently are much more likely, like twice as likely to post about people in the other party rather than their own party. And they’re gonna say really negative stuff about people in the other party.

So we have talked some on this podcast about affective polarization, that animosity that people feel toward people on the other side of the political spectrum will. This kind of, um, posting on social media and people just consuming a lot of that and reposting it. It’s really that if you say an opinion about an issue about a political issue, it’ll get some traction maybe, but not a ton. But if you say something negative about people on the other side, that’s the kind of thing that’s gonna go viral. So this is some of what’s really negative for not just politics, but for our society. Um, that, that this sort of framing of those people on the other side in such a negative light is really corrosive.

Pema: Yeah, that’s really kind of painful to hear that, like what comes up for me is. There was this kind of trust, this innocent trust in how this began, how we’re like, oh, um, Tania’s sharing this interesting meme and Tanya’s somebody that I trust, and then, oh, a few weeks later, Tania’s pretty heated over this issue and she’s sharing something else that, uh, has gotten real harsh details on that issue. And I’m like, well, I, I trust Tanya, so I wonder how I feel about that. And then this heat starts coming to the surface around, this issue or that issue. And, my emotions get involved. 

Tania: A hundred percent. And you know, we were talking also in an earlier episode about tribalism and about tribal politics, where we are sort of, um, you know, seeing our group as these are the people we’re connected with and we’re gonna protect and they’ll protect us from, you know, this other group that we see as really aggressive and hostile and how this has to do with kind of our evolution as humans. So, it’s, yeah, it’s exactly that with social media, we’ve created this network of people that’s our ingroup who we really trust. If somebody in our in-group posts something, then we’ll be like, oh yes, we, we trust that and we believe it. And if somebody who’s not in our in-group posts something, then we’re like, so it’s so easy to dismiss that.

So, um, it’s operating on sort of a hyper level of the way that we’re operating in person. And, you know, the other thing is that people will say stuff on social media that it, it’s hard to imagine them actually saying these things about people to their face. And, um, so I always say, you know, if we’re gonna have dialogue across political differences, then we need to do that face-to-face, not Facebook, to Facebook.  Because when we actually post differences of opinion on social media, it’s more likely to drive us farther apart than to bring us together.

Pema: That sounds like a fantastic idea and it, especially the part recognizing, would I say this to somebody in person versus how easy is this to say right here online? Just lemme just type it out while I’m, uh, in my own bedroom or in my own office. That sounds great. And it feels like, yeah, let’s have a face to face conversation. So I started out overreacting about free will and I’m thinking now about exerting some free will over our phones. I’m also thinking about two things. One is. something has stayed in my mind that you said about the data, about hostile content creators, that some folks who are just hostile out in the world are also creating hostile content. And then, the collective we is kind of moving it along the internet, passing it around, and I think, well, that gets my emotions going. We have emotional responses to what’s on the table for a law about abortion? A law about freedom to carry guns, laws about protecting and defending my family laws about who votes and how and when. And those are all very real issues. I feel like I have to make a stand when this is out there in the world, that when this issue is out there and people are being vocal about it, shouldn’t I weigh in on it too? And so when do we know that we’re reacting to this kind of social media pattern? Versus how can I respond in a healthy way to talking about the political issues? How can we have healthy conversations about the actual issues and not all of the emotion around social media engagement?

Tania: Oh yeah, I think that’s a great question. It’s like, is there a place on social media for actual delving into the policies and how we feel about the different things without getting into this divisiveness. I guess the question I would have about doing that on social media is, is that the best forum for doing that? You know, even for talking about our opinions about the issue. Because what I would love to see more of in our discussions about the issues is a little bit more or a lot more depth in terms of what does this issue mean to you? How did you develop your opinion about it? You know, these kinds of things. And I don’t know that social media is so suited to that because a lot of social media is very much one way communication. It’s sort of people crafting what they wanna say and putting it out there in this unidirectional way. And some people will sort of invite a little bit more of the, you know, um, uh, interaction and engagement on that issue. And, and sometimes that can happen. But what often happens is then, you know, somebody responds by crafting what they’re gonna say and putting out sort of a similarly one-way communication, but in response to somebody else’s. And it kind of goes like that. It lacks a human connectedness that is I think the best setting for engaging in more depth and nuance with these issues.

Pema: I think that’s really interesting, the crafting of a response and all it takes to craft a response versus just pop off on a response. I mean, I think that’s interesting about both of those things exist in responding to social media commentary. I also recognize what you’re saying about these. Um, uh, I’m probably going to be commenting on, on somebody’s post who thinks the same as I do, uh, or who shares the same opinions on the issues.

Tania: Well. The other, you know, you were talking about like how long it takes to craft a response and there’s, there’s also an immediacy to social media where you’ve gotta do it fast or it’s irrelevant. So, okay, this is, this is a, um, not exactly political, but this is, Taylor Swift had to cancel her concerts in Vienna, um, because of security issues. And so then the Swifties, like, took to the streets and they were singing and they were making friendship bracelets, trees and being joyful and all of that. And I thought that was delightful, but I didn’t actually catch up on that until like a week after it happened because I was really busy. And then, I watched all the tiktoks of it and it was great. And I wanted to say something about it, and people were like. Oh my gosh, that was a week ago that was forever. Nobody’s gonna remember that that happened. And so that’s one of the things that things happen at the speed of light, where if you don’t have something to say about it immediately, then it’s completely irrelevant. If you wait a day, it’s too long. And so I think people aren’t even taking the time to be reflective and craft thoughtful responses. It’s just a hot take. It’s everyone’s hot takes is what’s out there.

Pema: Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I’m also thinking about being in the same room as somebody, and there’s body language, there’s tone of voice, there’s nuance, there’s halting speech. Like, wait, did you have more that you wanted to say? There’s, I do this a lot, like, hold on, let me just talk that through because I’m not sure that I’ll say what I mean in the first take you know. And a lot of times on social media, I’m pretty quiet because I know that about myself. I’ll also say that I’m appreciating the practice folks have been having this time around. When I say this time around, I mean like this next contentious election every four years in our contentious election seasons, this time around, it feels like folks have practice with social media. see friends saying, alright, listen, how do you talk to your friends on the other side? That’s the first time that I’ve seen that happen in a kind of neutral way on social media versus blasting, blasting, blasting the other side. 

Tania: Yeah. Yeah. And it turns out that over half of Americans across political affiliations have changed the way that they use social media to be less divisive and more constructive. And so that’s super good news. I don’t think we hear about that so much. But, um, there are changes that are taking place, which says to me again, you know, we’re not at the mercy of social media. We can make choices, we can make decisions. Um, in, in this one study, um, Facebook offered users content that contrasted with their views. And then, you know, the user could decide whether or not to click on it. But if they did access those sources, it didn’t change their opinions about the issues, but it made them less hostile toward people who disagree with them. So it made them, you know, sort of more aware of, oh, this might be how somebody’s thinking about it and why they would be seeing things that way. So, this is where some of the potential exists. If we actually bring our curiosity to it and say, no, I really do wanna know where somebody else might be coming from. And some of that might take place in those, um, interactions, but some of that might just take place because there is actually a lot of information out there on media and social media about how other people think. I sometimes go to Twitter and I’ll look at a hashtag because I’m like, I know what my side thinks about this hashtag, but I really don’t understand where the other side’s coming from on it. And I’ll read a few tweets and or exes, whatever we call them now, and I’ll be like, oh, I see how they’re framing the issue. And so, I think that there’s a lot of potential in there, but it all depends on how we’re approaching it and what our goals are.

Pema: I, I love hearing about what our goals are and, and it was really calming for me to see those particular set of friends talk, like opening a more neutral conversation. I found that for my particular nervous system, it was really calming to, to read, somebody who’s. totally on my side, if I can frame it all that way. having a diversity of opinions about a particular issue and how it’s in conversation between her and her friends on the other side.

Tania: Yeah. And so you came into this conversation wanting to talk about free will. But I think a lot of the stuff that we’re saying sort of demonstrates that we have choices that we can make ’cause people are making choices and making changes in how they go about using social media.

Pema: Tania, you’re attending to my existential crisis around social media. So, let’s talk about exerting free will over our phones. I love the story of how you came to notice your dependence on your phone, and then you set up a phone station by the front door in your house. Will you talk about that story?

Tania: Sure. Uh, so, uh, one of the things that brought my connection to my phone, my over connection, to my phone, to my attention was that, uh, I was doing these, uh, um, cloistered weekend. So as part of a Buddhist practice where I would for, uh, the weekend from Friday evening until Monday morning, not have any, um, electronic devices, not be on my computer at all, not be on my phone at all. And so on Friday evening, I would like turn off my phone, plug it in, set it down, and not touch it again for a few days. And oh my gosh, I became so aware of how often I wanted to reach for my phone. I’d be like, I wonder what the temperature’s like outside. And I would wanna look at my phone and like the front door is right there. Like I could obviously go outside and find out the temperature, but what I would typically do is look at my phone or, Ooh, the meal I’m eating is so pretty, I wanna take a picture of it. And I do that on my phone. So. I became aware of how many things I use my phone for and how often I reach for it. And having a few days of not doing that was such a powerful experience for me. And I will admit that like once I started using my phone again, it’s very easy to just go back into using it the same way that I always do, which is a lot. And you know, especially ’cause like when I’m, when I’m living alone, when I’m by myself, it’s sort of a constant companion. You know, I’ve got an audio book in my ear and I’ve got, you know, um, my, my friends are all on my phone texting or on social media or whatever. So that’s when I was like, there’s something I need to do in my normal life too. So I started, like, I set up a little charging station by my front door so that I can, like when I come in the door, I can just plug in my phone and not carry it around with me in my home all the time. And that seems like such a small thing, but it’s actually a very radical change I would say. 

Pema: And how’s that going? Has that been something you’ve been able to keep going? 

Tania: So I don’t do it all the time, but what I will often do is when I’m trying to get stuff done and I’m finding that I’m really distracted, then I’ll just like go over to the charging station and plug in my phone over there and leave it across the room and then go about doing, doing my stuff. And it really does help that way. And if I’m there with a friend, we can, we can have a conversation with each other or we can just be peaceful and quiet, but we’re not there on our phones together. And it’s very seldom I find that I’m actually engaged with somebody and neither one of us has a phone out or checks our phone at all. And it’s really kind of delightful getting to interact with somebody under those conditions. I’m curious to hear more about what your relationship with your phone is like and with social media. 

Pema: um. It’s different all the time. I would say that I kind of use my phone, like I said a little bit earlier as my tv. So at the end of the day, I will wanna check out and so I’ll start scrolling. When that habit starts to creep in on me is when I have finished a task and I will check my phone, uh, again on social media or I check my phone. So my break at the end of the day turns into several breaks throughout the day, which are distracting and I lose sense of time until, so they spread out, meaning that I’m on social media half the day rather than, uh, at the end of the day. And I will consciously consider when I travel, what it feels like to be disconnected digitally. And just like, what does this feel like right now to sit on this plane for two more hours? What am I thinking? What am I feeling? Alright, so I don’t like this. What is there for, here for me to feel, I feel like that’s a practice for me out in my everyday world.

Tania: Oh, yes. Being on airplanes, I never buy the internet because I. So enjoy that time. Not on the internet. And frankly, this, this most recent book that I wrote, I never would have written had it not been for that time on an airplane without the internet, because that’s really where I started writing and something that ended up as this book. And it, I don’t know that it would’ve happened if I had been in a more distractible uh, environment. 

Pema: That’s fascinating because that’s most often where I read your book.

Tania: That’s great.

Pema: Yeah. This has been a rousing conversation about noticing when I am kind of locked in my phone, when I’m surrendering my free will to my phone and how it’s contributing to the ways that I feel in a particular moment or conversation or relationship. So, to know that I have the option to kind of turn it down feels a little revelatory to me. I know it’s kind of a blinding flash for the obvious, but it does feel a little revelatory to me. Can you give us some more tips and tricks about, kind of reducing that relationship with our phone?

Tania: Yeah, I mean, I think that the first thing is experiment with making your phone less accessible to you and making your social media apps less accessible. I put them on not the page that I see when I first look at the phone, but I’ve gotta at least, you know, flip over to another page to be able to see any of my social media apps and just a small thing, you know, like that.  But, you know, plugging in your phone across the room, not having it on you all the time. So things that just, you don’t have to make a choice every time to do it. You’re sort of making a bigger choice to, you know, to be a little bit more separate from your phone. Then in the moment, making choices. Uh, one of the other things I’ve been experimenting with is not taking my phone out of my pocket or my purse as soon as I have a moment free. So if I’m, like at a restaurant waiting for someone or the person I’m eating with goes to use the restroom. Like not immediately pulling out the phone and just kind of sitting there like we used to in the olden days, like looking around and being with our own thoughts. So, um, in, in the moment you can do that and then when in the moment you do say, well I would like to look at social media ’cause I’m curious about what’s going on with pandas or, ’cause I wanna find out what happened in the last debate or whatever it is, make a decision about what you want to to do. What’s your goal and how long do you wanna spend doing it? And maybe even set a timer for yourself and then go look at the thing, do the thing, and then stop. And again, you know, make your phone less accessible or just go back to doing what you had been doing before. But, um, I would say all of those things, be intentional, experiment with, with some things, and notice what that’s like for you. And all of that’s gonna help you figure out what’s gonna be the best way to create a healthy relationship with your phone, where you’re getting what you want and need out of it, but where it’s not actually driving you.

Pema: Right. And as I hear those things, I think right, and the benefit is a healthy relationship with myself and my thoughts and with the people around me. I noticed, um, phone use makes it harder to talk to other people. Like if I’m standing in line to get coffee and, um, when I hear you say those things, I think, right, right, right. Um, I love to connect and so I can see what it feels like to put my phone down and connect in those ways.

Tania: Absolutely. I’m Tania Israel, professor, psychologist, and author of Facing the Fracture. 

Pema: And I’m Pema Rocker, creative coach and author of Ash and Spirit, make Your Choice.

Tania: Are you ready to be strong?