As you probably guessed, there are both positive and negative effects of social
media. Little heads up, the bad news is also the good news. Stay tuned.
Vicki and I
were married in the late 1980's. Now you can go do the math if you want and see
if you can figure out how old I am but I've already told you in other videos.
When we were married, this was a time when social media, internet, all of those
kinds of things were barely starting to make an appearance on the scene. We did
not have email, we did not have Facebook, we did not have internet, okay. Maybe
universities and military had them back in those days but we didn't yet and I
remember Vicki telling me what she said, "Wouldn't it be really awesome if there
were some phone number that we could just call and we could say someone's
name and it would tell us where they are, what they're doing, what they're up to."
And we used to think about that as if it was this space age, wow, that would be so
cool, you know, if we could just kind of drop in on people without disturbing
their life but just kind of find out where they are,
you know, people from high school or other phases of life. Now fast forward to
2017, that phone number exists and we don't even use the phone for it, it's the
internet, it's the information age and what we used to fantasize about as being
something that would be so cool is commonplace today. Now social media has
absolutely changed our world and we can, in just an instant, we can find out
information about people. In just just a moment or two, we can compile bodies of
information that used to take months to accumulate through much more tedious
processes. I did a doctoral dissertation before all of this became so prominent
and I remember long days in the library, poring over
books and documents and card files ,whole new world today, right? So as we
consider the power of the Internet, I want to bring another analogy to the
stage for a minute. If you were building a brand new home
and you got it all framed in and you've got all this beautiful construction
going on, it's not finished out yet, it's still kind of just raw wood but it's
it's coming into shape, right. Would you ever go into that place and light a fire
right in your living room? No, you toast the place, right? Because
fire is bad. No, fire is not bad. Wait a minute but it's destructive, right? Hang on.
So is fire good or bad? Fire is awesome, we cook our food, we heat our homes, we
run our automobiles on processes of fire but wait, it can destroy homes and it can
burn up neighborhoods and it can take down entire forests. Fire is neither
good nor bad, it's powerful. Are you with me? When we're talking social media, it's
exactly the same thing, it's not a good thing, it's not a bad thing, it's a
powerful thing and because of that, it's important to understand some of the
upsides and some of the downsides so that like fire, we can use it
appropriately in the right contexts for the right kinds of purposes and then it
can be enormously beneficial and productive so I've thought through a few
of the upsides and downsides of social media, let me just run a few of these by
and see what you think. Up side, we can exchange information immediately and
share it easily, total upside, right. Downside, the validity or relevance of
that information is not established and it's very variable as well. How do
you know that what you've read is true? Well because I read it on the Internet.
You see how flimsy that could be? Because anybody can publish information on the
internet now, there's not the same stringent controls in say research
design so we have to be really careful about the validity of the information we
get but it is easily and readily available so upside and downside. There's
another one. Upside, you can connect with lots of people, awesome. Downside, those
connections tend to be more superficial and sometimes contrived, yeah? Because we
don't really go deep for the most part in social media. You can have a feeling
that you're connected to a lot of people, I just looked at my Facebook account,
I've got like three thousand plus friends. Really? What I have actually
defined all those people as friends. See, that kind of changes the definition of
friend if it's someone who connected to you on Facebook and you don't even know
where they live so that's what I mean, upside in the downside. Here's another
one, social media gives us an easy way to check in on people, this is the miracle
phone number that Vicky was talking about when we were first married. Not
hard, you can do a quick search, oh, there they are.
Oh guess what, so and so's doing. You got the whole profile there, you got pictures
of their kids, I mean, you can check in on people very easily. Downside, social media
makes it very convenient to check out on people. Have you had this experience too?
That sitting in a restaurant, just a couple of weeks ago,
Vicky and I, are sitting there just enjoying some conversation, a couple of
crossed from us both buried in their cell phone, both of them. What's happening
to this connection here real time, in front of my face if I'm busy checking my
facebook feed or my Instagram feed, right? Up side, you can check in on people. Down
side, you can easily check out on people and let's be careful that we don't
sacrifice things of greater value. You got a person right there in front of
you, put the phone down, engage with a real person. Here's another one. Upside,
social media facilitates support and love. I saw this in abundance, oh, it's a
couple of years ago now I guess when a good friend of ours contracted stomach
cancer, stage four, stomach cancer, the outpouring of love and support that
came from people all over the world on social media and that combined with the
people who are nearby who could actually put their arms around this good family
as their son passed from stomach cancer. Wow, that's a real upside. The downside,
social media facilitates hate. I don't even have to tell you stories about this
because you can think of examples, can't you? And you know what, especially with
our young people, we have an act epidemic right now of suicide and one of the
causes tends to be linked back to social media because if someone disparages
another child in a school, the whole school can know about it by fourth
period and not only that but the school across town and the school across the
country can know about it within minutes and whether that information is true or
not is not the relevant piece here, it can be very damaging information so it's
just like the fire, it can destroy a home or it can warm a home and it depends on
how it's used in what context. Here's another one. I like this, this was kind of
fun actually. Social media magnifies and accelerates.
I was in a seminar long ago when technology was just becoming one of the
main tools the businesses used to accelerate their progress and the
trainer made this important distinction. He said, technology does not create
progress, technology accelerates progress, it accelerates and magnifies it,
that's the upside. Downside, technology and social media magnifies and
accelerates. You know what, I remember a comedy routine when the
comedian was being questioned about drug use and he's like, oh, good, what's the
thing about drug use? And he said, that the person he was interviewing said, "Oh,
man, because using drugs magnifies your personality." And then the comedian
responded with, "Yeah, but what if you're an idiot?"
See the problem? Social media magnifies and accelerates, doesn't distinguish
based on quality of whatever it's accelerating and magnifying, it's kind of
like money, you put a whole bunch of money into an unscrupulous persons hands
and you just magnified the problem, has to be used carefully and with finesse
because it's powerful. So going back to the fire analogy, I don't know if you
started looking at this video thinking, oh, what if Dr. Paul's going to slam on
social media or if he's a proponent of it. I want to acknowledge that it's there
and it's powerful and just like fire, anything with power has to be handled
with care and according to the safety guidelines, when we do that, it actually
can be a very beneficial force in our world, when we violate those principles,
it can take us a whole different direction and just as fast. I've given
you a few of the upsides and a few of the downsides of social media. I want to
see some more right down there, let's see what you're thinking.