My comment is late to this discussion. I am still limiting my political content consumption because I am still not ok and I know I need to gear up for the clusterf*%k that I will have to wade through the next 4 yrs (and beyond). Regarding Sarah and Beth's comments on legacy media and journalism, I feel that they "jumped the shark" back in 2016 when they literally attacked Hilary for basically breathing and gave this "man" a platform. The way they have attacked Prez. Biden and VP Harris the last 4 yrs and just basically fawned and stayed on the fence to see who would win the election has been so disheartening and despicable that I don't know how they get their credibility back. By allowing all these billionaires to own our media companies, we have allowed and almost invited the reality that we are going to be under an oppressive regime. I get my news from NPR, and foreign news outlets (BBC and some Latin American sites) plus pay for independent journalist that I have vetted. I am also very careful about the the political influencesers I watch and the podcasts (THANK YOU PANTSUIT POLITICS) I listen to because I don't want to just live in my BLUE bubble, but I also don't want the normalization of the hellscape that is waiting for us to be shoved down my throat. I am 46, I never got onto the tik tok thing, so it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. I love IG but because I have curated it to only show me what I want and my actual friends. I see the ads and just keep scrolling, not because I am not susceptible to them, but because I am trying to spend less so I don't bother watching the ads. I don't follow anyone that doesn't bring something to my life and I routinely look through my list of who I follow and cut it down. I don't think I will ever trust our news outlets again, because they have lost their integrity and only care about the company's bottom line and not actually being journalist. If we really cared about national security, then why did this cancer get voted back in??? He is just going to give everything to his cronies and I fear for any of our allied nations and hope they are protecting themselves from us...which makes me so sad, because I never thought I would never trust my own county to keep us safe and now our safety will go to the highest bidder. But hey, we might get cheaper eggs....
A head's up that he's a Christian and does bring some faith-related themes into the book, but not in a way that I think would be a turn-off to someone who isn't religious.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen to our society if everyone had to go back to reading physical copies of their local newspaper to get their news. That practice has got to be so much better for our brains! Can you imagine if we introduced that habit to our teens instead of giving them tech to access this stuff?
I think I've shared my social media journey several times so I'll try not to repeat myself. I joined Facebook due to a job requirement. I consider myself addicted. However, Facebook solved a few problems for me that no other platform has. And I think my experience with it is different because it was colored by a low-key stalker incident I had in high school, so I was a little bit more privacy focused than many of the early Facebook users. I only friended people I knew IRL (until Maggie Penton. She's the first person I friended whom I've never met). At first, I only friended people I knew from work. We had had Linked In for this prior, but at the time Linked In lacked any way to just blast those old coworkers and say "Hey, this is what I'm interested in now." I haven't really found another tool that allowed me to stay in touch with casual acquaintances for this long. I have always appreciated that aspect of it and therefore, I hate to see it go away. I've watched old coworker's kids grow up on this platform. It's essentially got the same function for me as an extensive Christmas Card list. I don't want to be on a group chat or Marco Polo with 50 people I worked with in 2008, but I do want to keep in touch.
I'm not shy about being brutal with the friend list. If somebody posts only toxic things, I'm not their friend anymore. If that person is a relative or for whatever reason I can't unfriend them, I hide their posts.
Here's what I suspect because I've seen this journey too many times. We have a group of individuals looking for a way to connect. At first, there is no tool, and the connections are difficult. Then, they discover the tool, and it's great. It solves the problem. Until more people join. Some of those people are just assholes. Some are very bad actors who use the tool for evil. Then the "good" people drift away to a new tool. And it's great. Until the bad people find out about that tool. It happens Every. Single. Time. At the end of the day, people suck. And people are wonderful. Both things are true. And it happens no matter how we communicate.
I would love to hear what barriers have worked for Sarah and Beth to keep them off social and their phones. This is a constant struggle for me and I work in social media / influencer marketing so deleting is not an option.
Also relieved I’m not the only one who can’t seem to keep their kid off YT shorts. How do we stop this, it feels like I’m constantly reminding my son to get off of it.
I’m really struggling with the “all violence is bad” and “no sane person would commit an act of violence” sentiments.
Paired with the joy for the rebels overthrowing the Al-Assad regime in Syria….it just feels disingenuous. Do we believe rebels just went in and asked Bashar nicely to step aside? In the photos I see, they’re heavily armed.
Why celebrate the use of violence to gain freedom for Syrians, but full-stop condemn the use of violence for freedom from an oppressive healthcare system in our own country?
Over the course of history, no one has ever given freedom to people who simply asked nicely. People had to literally fight for more freedom. See also: the Haitian Slave Uprising.
I’m more interested in a nuanced discussion about this complexity than I am in hearing “all violence is bad,” because that feels like a conversation- and a momentum-stopper.
Both Sarah and Beth, what a treat! (But next time, let’s meet over a more uplifting occasion.) And Amberlee, I LOLed at ‘an apples to cars’ comparison.
I’m listening. I see the point about group vs individual action. I see the point about many agonizing years of civil war and still nothing promised. I still think of the French Revolution (I see your MTS title!) and domestic violence self defense situations and the slavery uprisings and Civil War in our own country — which was also a long slog, but led to better life overall.
I’m feeling quite radically ‘spicy’ these days and am challenged by the recent conversations you’re having (in a necessary way). Thanks for still engaging and for having me under this PP umbrella.
I think we deal with this societally by recognizing that some violence is not crime. We have, for centuries, been working through what constitutes a just war and what are the rules of war vs war crimes. We recognize self-defense, imperfectly and inconsistently, but we keep trying. So I’m with you in the sense that violence is a tool of change and we have some kind of social contract around that idea. But the more I study war and war crimes in particular, I’m just convinced that it’s the worst possible tool for change. And I don’t know that I think it’s ever ok for an individual to try to prompt societal change (I’m making a distinction here between societal change and personal change given your reference to domestic violence) through an act of violence. Political violence has so many horrifying, predictable, certain consequences that I think even when it is “justified,” it should be entered into through collective decision making.
Thanks for offering this, Beth. I listened to the More To Say and can admit that for me, this is a totally theoretically exercise. I have never been up close to another person’s death. It’s easier for me to be theoretically ‘for’ violence when it’s at a distance, and when I’m not thinking about the ripples afterward.
This idea of societally trying to define what is violence or what is a crime… I think you’ve hit on something there, and perhaps it’s what has me stuck on this event. What have we decided is violence?
For me, for example, putting food behind a paywall, inevitably causing some people (including children) to starve, is violent. But it’s a violence we’ve numbed ourselves to and accepted as normal. Also, it’s not a simple event to point at and name “violence.” But it ends or degrades lives all the same.
Thanks for engaging. Wishing you rest and peace in the coming weekend and year’s wind-down. :)
I am happy that the Syrian people have been freed of this violent dictator, but I still lament the process that led to it. This is why I oppose violence—it only leads to more pain and death. It has taken thirteen years of civil war to oust Assad with no promise of truly better or more just leadership. Half a million people are dead and millions more displaced. So no, I do not have an opening in my heart for violence as a tool of problem-solving. If it can at all be avoided, I want to avoid it because it is the least effective, worst possible path forward.
I admit I had some gut punching moments watching the events in Syria unfold, and take over the building as it immediately reminded me of the guy taking pictures in Nancy Pelosi's chair during the Jan 6th riot. I'm not familiar with the Syrian conflict, so I may absolutely be comparing apples to cars with that comparison, but I did "feel" it.
This event with the murder of the CEO, is a complicated event for sure.
Backtrack, when the Trump attempted assignation happened, I think most of us agreed, that was heinous and 100% not acceptable. We also had to acknowledge, that Donald Trump's words & actions, also held him somewhat responsible for that level of vitriol to exist for him. You can't be vile and awful and then not expect a possible vile, awful, reaction out of someone.
I feel that way about this too. This CEO was a man. A father, a husband, friend, etc. The world is less without him in it and this man who they have arrested, is owed his day in court, and put behind bars for his crimes. But outside of that, our healthcare system/insurance companies in the USA, is legit killing people everyday by denying them the healthcare they need (and they pay for it). That seems pretty vile & awful too. The "why" this happened is very real to almost every American, which is why I think you see a real lack of sympathy or even agreeance with this terrible incident. I don't have any answers for it, but I feel like some entity should.
I personally distinguish group violence from individual violence for what it’s worth. The threshold for us as social creatures to join a group committing violence is MUCH lower than individually assaulting someone.
"I'm not sure how we protect children better online until we change adult's social media habits." - Beth
100% - I have thought about this even for myself and I don't consume nearly as much as my peers. For years I cut off most news outlets because my job in the markets mandated I try to have as clear as a mind as possible curating trades for customer's needs and they could NOT be politically biased. I still use Reuters as my go-to news source. However, I put a lot of thought into how I can divert my kiddo's attention away from screens, yet start my day everyday with Wordle. I have a cup of coffee while checking what goofy costume Kate Beckinsale put her cats into. And yet I am annoyed my 9 year old starts her day with her tablet watching cat videos (hypocrite much?!). I really think it's up to us as parents to as usual, we have to be the change we want to see in our kids. (Yeah I stole part of that from Ghandi, sue me.)
But forget banning Tiktoc (I'm for it for so many reason), like alcohol, isn't there a limit we should set on social media consumption and say anything over "this" is too much? Anything over "this" is dangerous? (Also if this is actually out into the world and I'm just uninformed of what it is, please link me to it LOL). I hear things like, "No more than 30 minutes a day." I think, really? I feel like might start some sort coupe/overthrow the parents in my home, if I told my kids no more than 30 minutes of screen time a day. Just wish there was more consensus/guidance around it all.
The discussion around kids and social media was so helpful for me to hear. I have two pre teens who are getting phones for Cmas this year. But I’m also going to start tightening up in their “short form video” watching. You tube is the worst. I just don’t know how they can function in the real world after being sucked into that vortex. So thank you for giving me more context as I think about how to do this. I want them to have access to friends, to me, safety (thus the phones) but I need to find a way that doesn’t create a whole other job for me to do. So much to think about.
Full grown adult here. I pretty easily gave up other social media a few years ago. But then randomly I found myself going to YouTube more and more, and getting sucked in. I had to block it on my phone, which is not something I had to do with the other platforms (maybe because YouTube doesn’t require a log in, but still). The worst.
Counterpoint: I teach piano lessons and I love that I can pull up a quick video of someone playing whatever piece we are working on. Also I started watching videos of late night talk show hosts, which feels like one of the only ways I am ok with the news right now. Also, my son has learned to cook a couple things on YouTube. But probably most of the YouTube consumption in my house is a waste of time.
I haven’t even listened to the episode yet but totally agree on the YouTube front! My husband and I are very strict on no YouTube for our kids (unless it’s a very specific video they’re looking for - like an old kid show from the ‘90s that I want to share with them, like the Disney sing alongs!). But furthermore, we always press on our kids that whatever they are watching needs to be a story and have a beginning, middle, and end. There is just SO MUCH weird (no point to it all) content out there that this often helps filter what we allow and we stress the same parameters for anyone watching our kids, like grandparents.
We recently gave our child a phone to connect with their friends and we did a lot of lock downs on it (no internet access, only contacts we enter with a code are allowed, no apps). It has gone really well for us.
Of course - YouTube is accessed through a tablet and we are always in a push/pull with it. Here with you in spirit and I hope it all goes well!
(although, I have a two friends who works in National Security/Defense (but they don't know each other or work in the same department) and they each told me separately that if you have TikTok on your phone, the Chinese Government knows everything that is on your phone. And that has given me pause for a long time. But, as far as the "brain rot" of it all goes, YOUTUBE!!!!
Has anyone read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt? This book…wow…really has made me evaluate my children’s screen usage, MY s teen usage. And yes, it’s the damn phones. He has such great data to support it.
I would recommend the If Books Could Kill podcast episode on The Anxious Generation for some counterpoint. Basically, the data is not as clear as Haidt wants to portray it.
Yes! That book really confirmed for our family that we needed to stick to our intuitive choices about technology (specifically phones) for our young teen and tween kids. Also, the principle of our middle school read this book with her teachers and the PTO pushed to make it a school wide read. Two days after the election I sat in a room of 50 parents who all just cared about what was happening with our kids. I have a meeting on Friday and we are going to see if we can get every administrator in the district to commit to reading the book. We have already seen one school wide change regarding Chromebook’s and we are hoping these are just baby steps into a more thoughtful use of technology in our schools. This feels like what I can do in my small community that might have a big impact.
I was coming here to post the same thing. I'm reading "Anxious Generation" now and am changing some of my kids screen options accordingly. Goes right along with this episode!
I’m really struggling to figure out what to do with my news consumption. I want to stay informed but I also don’t have the bandwidth to constantly be reading long-form articles because as a toddler mom, any time I have a moment to sit down and read something long, I want it to be a book I’m reading for pleasure.
So how can I stay informed without being on 6 different social media platforms and not watching cable news?
I also loved the commentary about “is this what we want the modern workplace to look like?” As someone who WFH and spends all day in front of a computer screen, I can attest and say 1000% NO! How do we fix this????
Someone was asking where Pantsuit Politics fits into all this in this thread. And, I would like to say that I think we're trying really hard here to thread that needle of "help people be informed without being overwhelmed or making it your job" "News that leaves me energized not despairing" all that. And, I hope that we can fill that part of your news diet and leave room in your heart and mind for the other things, like enjoying and being present with your little. I know I started listening to Sarah and Beth when my girls were toddlers and I loved podcasts because it was some of that "grown up" conversation that I was so starved for in that season of my life. -Maggie
I can only speak for me, I don't get my "news" from you guys but I do come here to help me process the feelings I may or may not have on it. Usually I think, "they'll talk me off the ledge/my high horse" but then I tuned in after the Biden/Trump debate and Sarah was channeling all my feels from the DNC and I thought, "Ah-ha! I'm not making this up, this is total BS." LOL
I recently read about how much water is used ( to cool the systems?) by one series of ChatGPT prompts. A tremendous amount of water is used up by AI. I don't know where I read it, but it's like a splinter in my brain, I keep thinking about it. SO WILD.
I can appreciate that people are finding helpful uses for it but right now I’m feeling annoyed at how it’s creeping into places I never asked for it like my email.
I guess my (most) unpopular opinion is to take the screens from your children. Actually, take the internet from your children. My journalism career overlapped with my website management career, so I have strong opinions about both and about how "content" happens both on- and offline. If you value your brain, your attention span, and your ability to think critically, you must remove the glow of a screen in your face.
Every parent has their “thing” that they really go hard on and I feel like screens are mine (and my husband’s). We were super strict about no screen time at all, including tv, until 2. Now they can watch tv but it is pretty limited. At ages 4 1/2 and 7 they have no other screen time. No iPads, video games, and zero access to our phones. I KNOW this will change as they get older and not looking for a pat on the back here, but limited screen time for especially young kids is possible. Not easy, but possible. And I mention all of this, Norma, to say that there is someone else who shares your “unpopular” opinion 😊 Additionally, the boys’ school is participating in the Wait Til 8 program where parents pledge to nit give their kids smartphones until at least 8th grade. Holding off on that stuff is made easier when the kid’s friends don’t have phones either!
Our district also uses AI to monitor activity on school owed devices. The initial intent for these software investments were focused on flagging schools safety risks, particularly related to weapons at school, not necessarily suicide or other student harm. Over time it does seem that an unintended result has been the ability to catch other concerns before they escalate. I’ve personally heard of many instances in our district where school resource officers and local police have worked in partnership to intervene before a situation was able to elevate to a tragedy. This includes suicide but also intense online bullying by groups that target an individual. As long as we allow devices in school I feel like these sorts of surveillance are a necessary tool.
I just finished listening to the episode (I have a lot of thoughts lol), and two things really stuck out for me that Sarah brought up. 1) I have worked in education for over a decade now, and I cannot agree more with the use of technology in our schools has been and continues to be a failure. This doesn't mean that there aren't good example of teachers and students using technology, but overall it has decreased focus, increased negative behaviors, and is overall a net-negative. In my role as a behavior systems specialist now, I have been encouraging my teachers to return to an 80/20 model of 80% of the class time is without tech, 20% with if needed. 2) Like Sarah, I'm just ready for change. I just want something to happen. Ban TikTok. At least you are doing something! We have spent the last ten years not doing anything meaningful as a government because all we've been doing is being anti-Trump. I'm ready for someone to just do something. Make a stand. Be unpopular if you need to!
I was talking to my mom about this upcoming administration, and her point (which I think is a good point) is that because Trump and his people are emboldened, and he doesn't have to worry about re-election, that he'll actually do things to change America. Her metaphor that I think she got from somewhere else is that Trump is like a hammer. Sometimes, he hits a nail, other times, he hits a kitten. When we hits a nail, it's satisfying. When he hits a kitten, its the worst thing ever. Hopefully he and his people can hit more nails than kittens. *fingers crossed*
As someone who is hiring in college graduates, this argument that they need all this technology so they are ready for the real world is a farse. These kids (I'm 40 I can call a 22 year old a kid) have NO idea how to even use Outlook! Their typing speed is abysmal. They lack just basic Microsoft tools/training - i.e. How to create a folder. And they are college graduates no less. I wanted to think maybe it was just a fluke but my high school senior (now Freshman at ASU) I quizzed her one day on some basic computer tasks and she had no idea how to do them. She graduated with a 3.8 GPA - so it's not intelligence based. I don't know what they are doing with tech but it is in NO way preparing for them for life outside of school. I am starting from scratch and having to have them do very basic elementary trainings on tech before we can even get going with their actual job. Some gaps exist because school systems tend to lean more into Google classroom due to cost & cloud features, where in the big world most companies are still Microsoft Office based. I know we sound old but I still see very little reason why my first grader needs a Chromebook in class. Now to that end he loves his reading program on there and is highly addicted to it and I credit the fact he reads on a 4th grade reading level to that program quite a bit LOL - so I'm not saying ALL bad, but definitely needs reduction.
I'm curious what people mean when they say "technology." In the past 20 or years, my workplaces have struggled with new college graduates and their lack of technical skill in a number of areas. (not a new problem, in other words) Anecdotally, it's Gen X and a narrow swath of older Millennials who are *actually* tech savvy. Not remembering life without smart phones is a bug, not a feature.
Are basic computing and typing classes in high school not a thing anymore? As a 90s kid, we learned both Microsoft and Apple systems at my high school. Microsoft was used in the business classes, and Apple was used everywhere else, and we had separate computer labs for each platform. I remember Apple having specialized software for science classes, music, and art classes; and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing was installed on every machine and was a required 1 hr module 2x each week in every computer class. Eli Lily at the time was based in my home town, and our schools received a huge amount of grants from them for technology and science programs and equipment. I think we were one of the most computer savvy school districts in the region in the 1990s, and had some of the first programs in the state in computer literacy, web design with HTML, and coding.
No idea. I must be older than you because our only computer class in high school was "computer math" in which we found solutions by programming in BASIC. Typing, however, was an elective beginning in middle school. I don't know too many people who didn't learn to type at some point.
Yes, my sister and I have noted it's our 55 year+ and our 30 year- crowd that want us to be in office because they need us to bridge the gap between them. Younger people crave the office engagement more and require a lot of hand holding & training which the 55+ doesn't have time to do nor can they. The 55+ have known most of their careers in office, and most of their management skills are around managing people as they see them, not as much on productivity. I find those younger and older than me are almost paralyzed with technology or don't know how to google, "How to ....." It makes sense for those who are older, it was something they had to learn to utilize. But you would think the generations that have had internet since they could remember would run circles around me, and it's the exact opposite. Their confidence is much lower as well. I watched my 25 year old co-worker one day spend 20 minutes writing/editing a simple teams response that I would've just quickly responded with, "Let me look into this and get back to you." I don't say this with a "kids these day suck" I try to hold a lot of empathy for them. We are truly hurting them not helping them. AND they are the next generation of workers, so dismissing them isn't an option.
I've seen this inability to communicate as well. And I've had a few emails that could have contained exactly your phrase ("Let me look into this and get back to you") and were awkward and long and guess who's using AI for that??? It makes you look ridiculous and incompetent.
Also, IF YOU DON'T KNOW SOMETHING, JUST SAY IT. Real inability to just speak the truth/acknowledge that you have a hole in your skillset.
Recent resumes you can absolutely tell which of them are using AI to write them. If nothing else they include words I have to google, and I'm not exactly low on the vocabulary totem pole. i.e. Latin words (none of us know) that try to make the resume "stand out." There's stand out, and then there's just, that's odd. We are financial advisors, not English gurus lol.
I'm willing to concede your second talking point comes with age. I certainly thought in my younger years, if I didn't know everything then I was an idiot and everyone would think so. I had not worked enough to know that no one knows everything, and as long as you do indeed, get back to the person with the info they need, 99% of the time it's fine. Or, that people won't shoot you on the spot for saying, "I don't know how to do that can you show me/lead me to a source that will?"
But yes, they are indeed struggling. Some of it just growing pains and I'm sure I was not a thoroughly put together college graduate so I try to give grace that I am almost double their age. The same way I know my Mom gives me grace by struggling raising children, while I have no clue the struggles of parenting an adult. But I'm just not going agree with the, we can't cut the tech b/c it will stunt them in the real world. I've seen it, the tech itself is stunting them. But we raised/are raising them, I struggle with blaming "them." I think it's just unintentional consequence we didn't foresee and now that we do, we need to auto-correct a bit.
In NYC in August there were 15 murders. You can quibble with extrapolating from a summer month, but essentially that's one every other day. The clearance rate for murder in NYC is about 50%. So every four days there is a murder committed in NYC that will go unsolved. Where is the exhaustion-level allocation of police resources for those murders? Where is the saturation-level media coverage? I really want someone to say it out loud.
Because if you live in NYC, I would discuss this differently. Since you don't, I'll say that if you're making the point that the planned killing of this CEO is getting outsized coverage, I would say that 1) not a local, so there's more interest outside of the city (see also any time a tourist dies here) and 2) this is a carefully planned execution of a crime, so unusual, and 3) I would argue that New Yorkers don't actually look to news media for information about crime because we know that there isn't time to cover everything and only the most "interesting" circumstances will float to the top.
I can understand the discrepancy in media coverage but the discrepancy in police resource allocation only has one answer that I can think of, and it isn't a very noble one.
I feel like a similar talking point could be made about Hannah Kobayashi. Women go missing every day and don't get national coverage. And lord help us, that one we have now discovered is alive and well, and just decided to ghost her family for reasons unknown. But this just isn't a new concept that some crimes get more attention and resources than others. Lots of factors go into that. Pressure from politicians. Politicians getting pressure. Police need to improve their image. Need to give the vision the city is safe. The person(s) affected are more infamous than others (I believe that's the case for the CEO of UnitedHealth). The list goes on and on as to why certain crimes become the focal point of national attention.
My comment is late to this discussion. I am still limiting my political content consumption because I am still not ok and I know I need to gear up for the clusterf*%k that I will have to wade through the next 4 yrs (and beyond). Regarding Sarah and Beth's comments on legacy media and journalism, I feel that they "jumped the shark" back in 2016 when they literally attacked Hilary for basically breathing and gave this "man" a platform. The way they have attacked Prez. Biden and VP Harris the last 4 yrs and just basically fawned and stayed on the fence to see who would win the election has been so disheartening and despicable that I don't know how they get their credibility back. By allowing all these billionaires to own our media companies, we have allowed and almost invited the reality that we are going to be under an oppressive regime. I get my news from NPR, and foreign news outlets (BBC and some Latin American sites) plus pay for independent journalist that I have vetted. I am also very careful about the the political influencesers I watch and the podcasts (THANK YOU PANTSUIT POLITICS) I listen to because I don't want to just live in my BLUE bubble, but I also don't want the normalization of the hellscape that is waiting for us to be shoved down my throat. I am 46, I never got onto the tik tok thing, so it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. I love IG but because I have curated it to only show me what I want and my actual friends. I see the ads and just keep scrolling, not because I am not susceptible to them, but because I am trying to spend less so I don't bother watching the ads. I don't follow anyone that doesn't bring something to my life and I routinely look through my list of who I follow and cut it down. I don't think I will ever trust our news outlets again, because they have lost their integrity and only care about the company's bottom line and not actually being journalist. If we really cared about national security, then why did this cancer get voted back in??? He is just going to give everything to his cronies and I fear for any of our allied nations and hope they are protecting themselves from us...which makes me so sad, because I never thought I would never trust my own county to keep us safe and now our safety will go to the highest bidder. But hey, we might get cheaper eggs....
Coming to this discussion late, but wanted to share a book I really enjoyed that came out this year: https://bookshop.org/p/books/reconnected-how-7-screen-free-weeks-with-monks-and-amish-farmers-helped-me-recover-the-lost-art-of-being-human-carlos-whittaker/21517504?ean=9781400246465. It gave me SO much food for thought around phone and internet usage, and I really appreciated the nuace he brings.
A head's up that he's a Christian and does bring some faith-related themes into the book, but not in a way that I think would be a turn-off to someone who isn't religious.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen to our society if everyone had to go back to reading physical copies of their local newspaper to get their news. That practice has got to be so much better for our brains! Can you imagine if we introduced that habit to our teens instead of giving them tech to access this stuff?
I think I've shared my social media journey several times so I'll try not to repeat myself. I joined Facebook due to a job requirement. I consider myself addicted. However, Facebook solved a few problems for me that no other platform has. And I think my experience with it is different because it was colored by a low-key stalker incident I had in high school, so I was a little bit more privacy focused than many of the early Facebook users. I only friended people I knew IRL (until Maggie Penton. She's the first person I friended whom I've never met). At first, I only friended people I knew from work. We had had Linked In for this prior, but at the time Linked In lacked any way to just blast those old coworkers and say "Hey, this is what I'm interested in now." I haven't really found another tool that allowed me to stay in touch with casual acquaintances for this long. I have always appreciated that aspect of it and therefore, I hate to see it go away. I've watched old coworker's kids grow up on this platform. It's essentially got the same function for me as an extensive Christmas Card list. I don't want to be on a group chat or Marco Polo with 50 people I worked with in 2008, but I do want to keep in touch.
I'm not shy about being brutal with the friend list. If somebody posts only toxic things, I'm not their friend anymore. If that person is a relative or for whatever reason I can't unfriend them, I hide their posts.
Here's what I suspect because I've seen this journey too many times. We have a group of individuals looking for a way to connect. At first, there is no tool, and the connections are difficult. Then, they discover the tool, and it's great. It solves the problem. Until more people join. Some of those people are just assholes. Some are very bad actors who use the tool for evil. Then the "good" people drift away to a new tool. And it's great. Until the bad people find out about that tool. It happens Every. Single. Time. At the end of the day, people suck. And people are wonderful. Both things are true. And it happens no matter how we communicate.
I would love to hear what barriers have worked for Sarah and Beth to keep them off social and their phones. This is a constant struggle for me and I work in social media / influencer marketing so deleting is not an option.
Also relieved I’m not the only one who can’t seem to keep their kid off YT shorts. How do we stop this, it feels like I’m constantly reminding my son to get off of it.
I’m really struggling with the “all violence is bad” and “no sane person would commit an act of violence” sentiments.
Paired with the joy for the rebels overthrowing the Al-Assad regime in Syria….it just feels disingenuous. Do we believe rebels just went in and asked Bashar nicely to step aside? In the photos I see, they’re heavily armed.
Why celebrate the use of violence to gain freedom for Syrians, but full-stop condemn the use of violence for freedom from an oppressive healthcare system in our own country?
Over the course of history, no one has ever given freedom to people who simply asked nicely. People had to literally fight for more freedom. See also: the Haitian Slave Uprising.
I’m more interested in a nuanced discussion about this complexity than I am in hearing “all violence is bad,” because that feels like a conversation- and a momentum-stopper.
Both Sarah and Beth, what a treat! (But next time, let’s meet over a more uplifting occasion.) And Amberlee, I LOLed at ‘an apples to cars’ comparison.
I’m listening. I see the point about group vs individual action. I see the point about many agonizing years of civil war and still nothing promised. I still think of the French Revolution (I see your MTS title!) and domestic violence self defense situations and the slavery uprisings and Civil War in our own country — which was also a long slog, but led to better life overall.
I’m feeling quite radically ‘spicy’ these days and am challenged by the recent conversations you’re having (in a necessary way). Thanks for still engaging and for having me under this PP umbrella.
I think we deal with this societally by recognizing that some violence is not crime. We have, for centuries, been working through what constitutes a just war and what are the rules of war vs war crimes. We recognize self-defense, imperfectly and inconsistently, but we keep trying. So I’m with you in the sense that violence is a tool of change and we have some kind of social contract around that idea. But the more I study war and war crimes in particular, I’m just convinced that it’s the worst possible tool for change. And I don’t know that I think it’s ever ok for an individual to try to prompt societal change (I’m making a distinction here between societal change and personal change given your reference to domestic violence) through an act of violence. Political violence has so many horrifying, predictable, certain consequences that I think even when it is “justified,” it should be entered into through collective decision making.
Thanks for offering this, Beth. I listened to the More To Say and can admit that for me, this is a totally theoretically exercise. I have never been up close to another person’s death. It’s easier for me to be theoretically ‘for’ violence when it’s at a distance, and when I’m not thinking about the ripples afterward.
This idea of societally trying to define what is violence or what is a crime… I think you’ve hit on something there, and perhaps it’s what has me stuck on this event. What have we decided is violence?
For me, for example, putting food behind a paywall, inevitably causing some people (including children) to starve, is violent. But it’s a violence we’ve numbed ourselves to and accepted as normal. Also, it’s not a simple event to point at and name “violence.” But it ends or degrades lives all the same.
Thanks for engaging. Wishing you rest and peace in the coming weekend and year’s wind-down. :)
I am happy that the Syrian people have been freed of this violent dictator, but I still lament the process that led to it. This is why I oppose violence—it only leads to more pain and death. It has taken thirteen years of civil war to oust Assad with no promise of truly better or more just leadership. Half a million people are dead and millions more displaced. So no, I do not have an opening in my heart for violence as a tool of problem-solving. If it can at all be avoided, I want to avoid it because it is the least effective, worst possible path forward.
I admit I had some gut punching moments watching the events in Syria unfold, and take over the building as it immediately reminded me of the guy taking pictures in Nancy Pelosi's chair during the Jan 6th riot. I'm not familiar with the Syrian conflict, so I may absolutely be comparing apples to cars with that comparison, but I did "feel" it.
This event with the murder of the CEO, is a complicated event for sure.
Backtrack, when the Trump attempted assignation happened, I think most of us agreed, that was heinous and 100% not acceptable. We also had to acknowledge, that Donald Trump's words & actions, also held him somewhat responsible for that level of vitriol to exist for him. You can't be vile and awful and then not expect a possible vile, awful, reaction out of someone.
I feel that way about this too. This CEO was a man. A father, a husband, friend, etc. The world is less without him in it and this man who they have arrested, is owed his day in court, and put behind bars for his crimes. But outside of that, our healthcare system/insurance companies in the USA, is legit killing people everyday by denying them the healthcare they need (and they pay for it). That seems pretty vile & awful too. The "why" this happened is very real to almost every American, which is why I think you see a real lack of sympathy or even agreeance with this terrible incident. I don't have any answers for it, but I feel like some entity should.
I personally distinguish group violence from individual violence for what it’s worth. The threshold for us as social creatures to join a group committing violence is MUCH lower than individually assaulting someone.
"I'm not sure how we protect children better online until we change adult's social media habits." - Beth
100% - I have thought about this even for myself and I don't consume nearly as much as my peers. For years I cut off most news outlets because my job in the markets mandated I try to have as clear as a mind as possible curating trades for customer's needs and they could NOT be politically biased. I still use Reuters as my go-to news source. However, I put a lot of thought into how I can divert my kiddo's attention away from screens, yet start my day everyday with Wordle. I have a cup of coffee while checking what goofy costume Kate Beckinsale put her cats into. And yet I am annoyed my 9 year old starts her day with her tablet watching cat videos (hypocrite much?!). I really think it's up to us as parents to as usual, we have to be the change we want to see in our kids. (Yeah I stole part of that from Ghandi, sue me.)
But forget banning Tiktoc (I'm for it for so many reason), like alcohol, isn't there a limit we should set on social media consumption and say anything over "this" is too much? Anything over "this" is dangerous? (Also if this is actually out into the world and I'm just uninformed of what it is, please link me to it LOL). I hear things like, "No more than 30 minutes a day." I think, really? I feel like might start some sort coupe/overthrow the parents in my home, if I told my kids no more than 30 minutes of screen time a day. Just wish there was more consensus/guidance around it all.
The discussion around kids and social media was so helpful for me to hear. I have two pre teens who are getting phones for Cmas this year. But I’m also going to start tightening up in their “short form video” watching. You tube is the worst. I just don’t know how they can function in the real world after being sucked into that vortex. So thank you for giving me more context as I think about how to do this. I want them to have access to friends, to me, safety (thus the phones) but I need to find a way that doesn’t create a whole other job for me to do. So much to think about.
Full grown adult here. I pretty easily gave up other social media a few years ago. But then randomly I found myself going to YouTube more and more, and getting sucked in. I had to block it on my phone, which is not something I had to do with the other platforms (maybe because YouTube doesn’t require a log in, but still). The worst.
Counterpoint: I teach piano lessons and I love that I can pull up a quick video of someone playing whatever piece we are working on. Also I started watching videos of late night talk show hosts, which feels like one of the only ways I am ok with the news right now. Also, my son has learned to cook a couple things on YouTube. But probably most of the YouTube consumption in my house is a waste of time.
Very true. Tons of helpful stuff. I am just one of those people that can’t be responsible with it, and it’s super frustrating to me.
I haven’t even listened to the episode yet but totally agree on the YouTube front! My husband and I are very strict on no YouTube for our kids (unless it’s a very specific video they’re looking for - like an old kid show from the ‘90s that I want to share with them, like the Disney sing alongs!). But furthermore, we always press on our kids that whatever they are watching needs to be a story and have a beginning, middle, and end. There is just SO MUCH weird (no point to it all) content out there that this often helps filter what we allow and we stress the same parameters for anyone watching our kids, like grandparents.
We recently gave our child a phone to connect with their friends and we did a lot of lock downs on it (no internet access, only contacts we enter with a code are allowed, no apps). It has gone really well for us.
Of course - YouTube is accessed through a tablet and we are always in a push/pull with it. Here with you in spirit and I hope it all goes well!
YES! YOUTUBE IS ACTUALLY THE WORST! -Maggie
(although, I have a two friends who works in National Security/Defense (but they don't know each other or work in the same department) and they each told me separately that if you have TikTok on your phone, the Chinese Government knows everything that is on your phone. And that has given me pause for a long time. But, as far as the "brain rot" of it all goes, YOUTUBE!!!!
Has anyone read The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt? This book…wow…really has made me evaluate my children’s screen usage, MY s teen usage. And yes, it’s the damn phones. He has such great data to support it.
I would recommend the If Books Could Kill podcast episode on The Anxious Generation for some counterpoint. Basically, the data is not as clear as Haidt wants to portray it.
Yes! That book really confirmed for our family that we needed to stick to our intuitive choices about technology (specifically phones) for our young teen and tween kids. Also, the principle of our middle school read this book with her teachers and the PTO pushed to make it a school wide read. Two days after the election I sat in a room of 50 parents who all just cared about what was happening with our kids. I have a meeting on Friday and we are going to see if we can get every administrator in the district to commit to reading the book. We have already seen one school wide change regarding Chromebook’s and we are hoping these are just baby steps into a more thoughtful use of technology in our schools. This feels like what I can do in my small community that might have a big impact.
I was coming here to post the same thing. I'm reading "Anxious Generation" now and am changing some of my kids screen options accordingly. Goes right along with this episode!
I’m really struggling to figure out what to do with my news consumption. I want to stay informed but I also don’t have the bandwidth to constantly be reading long-form articles because as a toddler mom, any time I have a moment to sit down and read something long, I want it to be a book I’m reading for pleasure.
So how can I stay informed without being on 6 different social media platforms and not watching cable news?
I also loved the commentary about “is this what we want the modern workplace to look like?” As someone who WFH and spends all day in front of a computer screen, I can attest and say 1000% NO! How do we fix this????
As a fellow toddler mom, I find NPR’s up first podcast a good start for National and international news since it’s less than 15 minutes.
Oh I used to listen much more regularly. I should pick that up again!
Someone was asking where Pantsuit Politics fits into all this in this thread. And, I would like to say that I think we're trying really hard here to thread that needle of "help people be informed without being overwhelmed or making it your job" "News that leaves me energized not despairing" all that. And, I hope that we can fill that part of your news diet and leave room in your heart and mind for the other things, like enjoying and being present with your little. I know I started listening to Sarah and Beth when my girls were toddlers and I loved podcasts because it was some of that "grown up" conversation that I was so starved for in that season of my life. -Maggie
I can only speak for me, I don't get my "news" from you guys but I do come here to help me process the feelings I may or may not have on it. Usually I think, "they'll talk me off the ledge/my high horse" but then I tuned in after the Biden/Trump debate and Sarah was channeling all my feels from the DNC and I thought, "Ah-ha! I'm not making this up, this is total BS." LOL
Yeah that’s how I feel. It helps me process what’s happening *in* the news.
An aside: I have serious concerns about the environmental effects of AI.
My 16 year old daughter yells at my husband about the environmental impact every time he mentions using Chat GPT.
I recently read about how much water is used ( to cool the systems?) by one series of ChatGPT prompts. A tremendous amount of water is used up by AI. I don't know where I read it, but it's like a splinter in my brain, I keep thinking about it. SO WILD.
agree completely. maybe naively, this is actually my main concern with AI.
I can appreciate that people are finding helpful uses for it but right now I’m feeling annoyed at how it’s creeping into places I never asked for it like my email.
I guess my (most) unpopular opinion is to take the screens from your children. Actually, take the internet from your children. My journalism career overlapped with my website management career, so I have strong opinions about both and about how "content" happens both on- and offline. If you value your brain, your attention span, and your ability to think critically, you must remove the glow of a screen in your face.
Every parent has their “thing” that they really go hard on and I feel like screens are mine (and my husband’s). We were super strict about no screen time at all, including tv, until 2. Now they can watch tv but it is pretty limited. At ages 4 1/2 and 7 they have no other screen time. No iPads, video games, and zero access to our phones. I KNOW this will change as they get older and not looking for a pat on the back here, but limited screen time for especially young kids is possible. Not easy, but possible. And I mention all of this, Norma, to say that there is someone else who shares your “unpopular” opinion 😊 Additionally, the boys’ school is participating in the Wait Til 8 program where parents pledge to nit give their kids smartphones until at least 8th grade. Holding off on that stuff is made easier when the kid’s friends don’t have phones either!
Our district also uses AI to monitor activity on school owed devices. The initial intent for these software investments were focused on flagging schools safety risks, particularly related to weapons at school, not necessarily suicide or other student harm. Over time it does seem that an unintended result has been the ability to catch other concerns before they escalate. I’ve personally heard of many instances in our district where school resource officers and local police have worked in partnership to intervene before a situation was able to elevate to a tragedy. This includes suicide but also intense online bullying by groups that target an individual. As long as we allow devices in school I feel like these sorts of surveillance are a necessary tool.
I just finished listening to the episode (I have a lot of thoughts lol), and two things really stuck out for me that Sarah brought up. 1) I have worked in education for over a decade now, and I cannot agree more with the use of technology in our schools has been and continues to be a failure. This doesn't mean that there aren't good example of teachers and students using technology, but overall it has decreased focus, increased negative behaviors, and is overall a net-negative. In my role as a behavior systems specialist now, I have been encouraging my teachers to return to an 80/20 model of 80% of the class time is without tech, 20% with if needed. 2) Like Sarah, I'm just ready for change. I just want something to happen. Ban TikTok. At least you are doing something! We have spent the last ten years not doing anything meaningful as a government because all we've been doing is being anti-Trump. I'm ready for someone to just do something. Make a stand. Be unpopular if you need to!
I was talking to my mom about this upcoming administration, and her point (which I think is a good point) is that because Trump and his people are emboldened, and he doesn't have to worry about re-election, that he'll actually do things to change America. Her metaphor that I think she got from somewhere else is that Trump is like a hammer. Sometimes, he hits a nail, other times, he hits a kitten. When we hits a nail, it's satisfying. When he hits a kitten, its the worst thing ever. Hopefully he and his people can hit more nails than kittens. *fingers crossed*
As someone who is hiring in college graduates, this argument that they need all this technology so they are ready for the real world is a farse. These kids (I'm 40 I can call a 22 year old a kid) have NO idea how to even use Outlook! Their typing speed is abysmal. They lack just basic Microsoft tools/training - i.e. How to create a folder. And they are college graduates no less. I wanted to think maybe it was just a fluke but my high school senior (now Freshman at ASU) I quizzed her one day on some basic computer tasks and she had no idea how to do them. She graduated with a 3.8 GPA - so it's not intelligence based. I don't know what they are doing with tech but it is in NO way preparing for them for life outside of school. I am starting from scratch and having to have them do very basic elementary trainings on tech before we can even get going with their actual job. Some gaps exist because school systems tend to lean more into Google classroom due to cost & cloud features, where in the big world most companies are still Microsoft Office based. I know we sound old but I still see very little reason why my first grader needs a Chromebook in class. Now to that end he loves his reading program on there and is highly addicted to it and I credit the fact he reads on a 4th grade reading level to that program quite a bit LOL - so I'm not saying ALL bad, but definitely needs reduction.
I'm curious what people mean when they say "technology." In the past 20 or years, my workplaces have struggled with new college graduates and their lack of technical skill in a number of areas. (not a new problem, in other words) Anecdotally, it's Gen X and a narrow swath of older Millennials who are *actually* tech savvy. Not remembering life without smart phones is a bug, not a feature.
Are basic computing and typing classes in high school not a thing anymore? As a 90s kid, we learned both Microsoft and Apple systems at my high school. Microsoft was used in the business classes, and Apple was used everywhere else, and we had separate computer labs for each platform. I remember Apple having specialized software for science classes, music, and art classes; and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing was installed on every machine and was a required 1 hr module 2x each week in every computer class. Eli Lily at the time was based in my home town, and our schools received a huge amount of grants from them for technology and science programs and equipment. I think we were one of the most computer savvy school districts in the region in the 1990s, and had some of the first programs in the state in computer literacy, web design with HTML, and coding.
Typing is not taught in my kids' high schools. My daughter had to take Computer Science for a semester but it didn't seem that useful.
No idea. I must be older than you because our only computer class in high school was "computer math" in which we found solutions by programming in BASIC. Typing, however, was an elective beginning in middle school. I don't know too many people who didn't learn to type at some point.
Yes, my sister and I have noted it's our 55 year+ and our 30 year- crowd that want us to be in office because they need us to bridge the gap between them. Younger people crave the office engagement more and require a lot of hand holding & training which the 55+ doesn't have time to do nor can they. The 55+ have known most of their careers in office, and most of their management skills are around managing people as they see them, not as much on productivity. I find those younger and older than me are almost paralyzed with technology or don't know how to google, "How to ....." It makes sense for those who are older, it was something they had to learn to utilize. But you would think the generations that have had internet since they could remember would run circles around me, and it's the exact opposite. Their confidence is much lower as well. I watched my 25 year old co-worker one day spend 20 minutes writing/editing a simple teams response that I would've just quickly responded with, "Let me look into this and get back to you." I don't say this with a "kids these day suck" I try to hold a lot of empathy for them. We are truly hurting them not helping them. AND they are the next generation of workers, so dismissing them isn't an option.
I've seen this inability to communicate as well. And I've had a few emails that could have contained exactly your phrase ("Let me look into this and get back to you") and were awkward and long and guess who's using AI for that??? It makes you look ridiculous and incompetent.
Also, IF YOU DON'T KNOW SOMETHING, JUST SAY IT. Real inability to just speak the truth/acknowledge that you have a hole in your skillset.
Recent resumes you can absolutely tell which of them are using AI to write them. If nothing else they include words I have to google, and I'm not exactly low on the vocabulary totem pole. i.e. Latin words (none of us know) that try to make the resume "stand out." There's stand out, and then there's just, that's odd. We are financial advisors, not English gurus lol.
I'm willing to concede your second talking point comes with age. I certainly thought in my younger years, if I didn't know everything then I was an idiot and everyone would think so. I had not worked enough to know that no one knows everything, and as long as you do indeed, get back to the person with the info they need, 99% of the time it's fine. Or, that people won't shoot you on the spot for saying, "I don't know how to do that can you show me/lead me to a source that will?"
But yes, they are indeed struggling. Some of it just growing pains and I'm sure I was not a thoroughly put together college graduate so I try to give grace that I am almost double their age. The same way I know my Mom gives me grace by struggling raising children, while I have no clue the struggles of parenting an adult. But I'm just not going agree with the, we can't cut the tech b/c it will stunt them in the real world. I've seen it, the tech itself is stunting them. But we raised/are raising them, I struggle with blaming "them." I think it's just unintentional consequence we didn't foresee and now that we do, we need to auto-correct a bit.
In NYC in August there were 15 murders. You can quibble with extrapolating from a summer month, but essentially that's one every other day. The clearance rate for murder in NYC is about 50%. So every four days there is a murder committed in NYC that will go unsolved. Where is the exhaustion-level allocation of police resources for those murders? Where is the saturation-level media coverage? I really want someone to say it out loud.
Do you live in NYC?
No but I grew up on Long Island. Why?
Because if you live in NYC, I would discuss this differently. Since you don't, I'll say that if you're making the point that the planned killing of this CEO is getting outsized coverage, I would say that 1) not a local, so there's more interest outside of the city (see also any time a tourist dies here) and 2) this is a carefully planned execution of a crime, so unusual, and 3) I would argue that New Yorkers don't actually look to news media for information about crime because we know that there isn't time to cover everything and only the most "interesting" circumstances will float to the top.
I can understand the discrepancy in media coverage but the discrepancy in police resource allocation only has one answer that I can think of, and it isn't a very noble one.
I feel like a similar talking point could be made about Hannah Kobayashi. Women go missing every day and don't get national coverage. And lord help us, that one we have now discovered is alive and well, and just decided to ghost her family for reasons unknown. But this just isn't a new concept that some crimes get more attention and resources than others. Lots of factors go into that. Pressure from politicians. Politicians getting pressure. Police need to improve their image. Need to give the vision the city is safe. The person(s) affected are more infamous than others (I believe that's the case for the CEO of UnitedHealth). The list goes on and on as to why certain crimes become the focal point of national attention.
How do you know there is a discrepancy in police resource?
Officially deleted TikTok after listening to this episode. Been cutting way back since the election but this episode helped push me over the edge!
Did I hear Sarah mention a podcast called Hysteria or Hysterical or something like that, what was the title of it?
Hysterical, yes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hysterical/id1753789609