Speaker 1: What began as a tool to help reconnect with old friends has rapidly evolved into multibillion-dollar ad campaigns, causing Americans to spend over $71 billion a year just on impulse social media purchases, raising the question, how did social media capture the minds and wallets of 63% of the world's population? While social media may come at no direct cost, these platforms, particularly Facebook, rely on surveillance advertising, also known as online behavioral advertising, to collect vast amounts of personal data, which they then share with advertisers. While we could assume that these platforms are collecting information such as our name, birthday, and maybe even our address, the extent in which this data is being collected is far more invasive. They capture your network details, connection type and speed, your IP address, with TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram in particular being able to access information on other devices attached to your network, and even how you interact with those other devices, the keystrokes on your keyboard, with Facebook even tracking the type of mouse you use and the way in which you tap it, monitoring your interests in specific people, pages, accounts, and hashtags, observing the frequency and duration of your interactions, all in an attempt to tailor advertisements to be the solution to your newly-founded concerns. And with nearly 50% of people shopping on Instagram weekly, social media platforms also track extensive transaction details, both on their interfaces and through third-party sites, including credit or debit card information, shopping details, and authentication data. And even if you're not actively using the platform like Facebook or Instagram, they are still gathering immense detail, and the other sites that you visit then share the information back towards those social media platforms. These sites share how often you visited, what brands and styles you viewed, and even how much you considered spending, allowing social media sites to then specifically target you with ads for those products. These social media platforms claim this data to be necessary for online safety and a more personalized experience. But with social media advertising projected to exceed $260 billion in the next five years, well over a quarter of all global ad spending, it's clear that profit, not your privacy or enjoyment, is the primary concern. And this immense amount of data collection has specifically gained interest from regulatory figures, such as Rohit Chopra, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and former FTC commissioner, who stated, behavioral advertising generates profits by turning users into products, their activities into assets, their communities into targets, and social media platforms into weapons of mass manipulation. In a 2019 lawsuit against Facebook, where the FTC imposed a historic fine of $5 billion after the company violated a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information, stating, to maximize the profitability of inducing profitable user engagement, Facebook has a strong incentive to A, increase the total time a user engages with the platform, and B, curate an environment that goads users into monetizable actions. To accomplish both of these objectives, Facebook and other companies with a similar business model have developed an unquenchable thirst for more and more data. This data goes far beyond information that users believe they are providing, such as their alma mater, their friends, and entertainers they like. Facebook can develop a detailed, intimate portrait of each user that is constantly being updated in real time. The company can make more profit if it can manipulate us into constant engagement and specific actions aligned with its monetization goals. As long as advertisers are willing to pay a high price for users to consume specific content, companies like Facebook have an incentive to curate content in ways that affect our psychological state and real-time preferences. And this profit-driven focus becomes evident when we consider that the average American spends over two and a half hours on social media and three hours watching TV daily, encountering roughly two million ads a year, armed with more personal data and insights into our habits than we know about ourselves, manipulating individuals into consumers rather than a place for genuine self-expression. Which brings us to the next point. To what extent is this mental manipulation actually occurring? Social media platforms tap into the same neural pathways that make slot machines and... so addicting, using intermittent variable rewards to deliver unpredictable dopamine spikes. This tactic keeps users more engaged, fostering an endless sense that the next rewarding moment is just one more scroll away. Cornell professor Brian Wansink did a study where participants with a bottomless soup bowl consumed 73% more calories than those with a regular bowl, demonstrating how unlimited stimuli can lead to excessive consumption. However, this pursuit of endless dopamine has severe consequences, completely altering our neural pathways. Dr. Anna Lemke, American psychiatrist and chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, highlights, we go into a dopamine deficit state. That's the way the brain restores homeostasis. If there's a huge deviation upward, there's going to be a deviation downward, resulting in feelings of depression and anxiety, fueling impulsive behavior to regain that dopamine high. This is supported by a study involving 479 college students in China that found that both active and passive social media use increased enjoyment, but passive use significantly heightened depression, with the results showing that both enjoyment and depression were linked to significantly higher rates of impulse buying. The only group able to break free from this pattern were individuals who practice self-control and could distance themselves from the constant lure of those platforms. And when we consider the nature of most social media posts today, it is incredibly rare to see something that isn't extreme in some degree, leading to 48% of people to make impulse social media purchases or $71 billion nationwide, with 68% later regretting it. Dr. Philip Ozmek from Ruhr University Bochum conducted a survey with 1,230 participants who use social media at least once a week, averaging over two hours daily. The study examined materialistic attitudes, social media comparison tendencies, active versus passive social media use, addiction levels, stress, and life satisfaction. The results revealed that those with stronger materialistic attitudes were more likely to compare themselves with others, especially through passive social media use by simply viewing others' content. This passive engagement was linked to increased materialism, addictive behaviors, heightened stress, and decreased life satisfaction as individuals developed a fear of missing out, transforming keeping up with the Joneses to all new extremes. Currently, 80% of American shoppers base their purchases on their friends' social media posts, and it doesn't just stop with material belongings. A Forbes Advisor survey found that 42% of people went into credit card debt or exceeded their budget after seeing similar vacations online, with 78% of Gen Z, 50% of those making at least $120,000 a year, and 47% of those making between $90,000 and $120,000 overspending or taking on debt. And we're not just talking about a couple hundred dollars. 23% of those who went into debt or overspent due to comparison on social media spent between $1,500 and $2,000 to replicate these experiences. Only 6% surveyed overspent by less than $500. This growing need to keep up with social media standards is causing an extremely expensive cycle of conformity, often at the cost of developing one's own unique identity.

Speaker 2: I've seen like on TikTok a lot of girls making fun of young girls who don't have Stanley Cups or can't afford them.

Speaker 3: Ohio mom Dana Motika went viral on TikTok posting how her nine-year-old daughter was bullied for bringing a less expensive lookalike to school. So she gave in and spent about $35 to buy her daughter a real Stanley Cup.

Speaker 1: Statista research revealed that 78% of marketers plan to increase their advertising budget towards social media influencers to a total of $7.1 billion by the end of 2024. And from a business perspective, this makes absolute sense as 74% of consumers have purchased a product after an influencer recommended it. However, leveraging public figures to influence consumer behavior is not anything new. Throughout history, celebrities have represented brands of all kinds. And while Ozzy Osbourne being the face of butter or Muhammad Ali representing roach traps logically seem like odd choices, celebrity endorsements are massively successful representing credibility and leveraging the trust of their fan base to believe this is a product that is good for you since it is used by them. Take Brad Pitt's Pringles commercial, for example. My logical side absolutely does not believe he eats Pringles, but my emotional side quickly begins to think that a can of Pringles does sound pretty good. And regardless if he eats them or not, at the end of the day, we really have no idea who Brad Pitt actually is. But with an influencer, you most likely spend more time watching or listening to them than you do those who you are closest with. And over time, we begin to think of them as if they were actually a non-digital part of our lives, trusting them as if they truly are one of our best friends. At the end of the day, I believe that most influencers are authentic in their expressions. I personally have met some truly incredible creators and influencers and really enjoyed getting to speak with them and found it very pleasurable. And they've also represented some really great brands. And overall, it just felt like such an authentic experience. It's really great to meet someone that is the exact same, if not better, than what they show towards the camera. But with that being said, I have also seen the exact opposite. Whenever I left my banking job and ended up doing an internship at a podcast studio here in Austin for about seven months, for me personally at least, it completely removed the veil of what is happening to some of these popular creators or the mindset behind some of these influencers. I have seen when a creator that you guys may know had no idea the brand they were representing until the camera turned on. The only reason they were doing it was because they were paying them a bunch of money. I've had instances where brands booked a podcast spot to fake a podcast with influencers that had no idea what they were talking about until they came into the studio, got briefed about the brand, and then did these little fake spots or little fake recordings of them discussing that brand in particular detail. That one was really grimy. But the worst one was a podcast that you guys probably have definitely heard of. The co-host got called out by their partner for faking their financial stories. And I will tell you, those people were the most miserable, disrespectful, rude people I've talked to in a very long time. And it's really unfortunate. And I have had direct conversations with very popular creators and influencers that were jerks, that were not respectful whatsoever. But with that being said, that is not the case for all of them. I think it's just really important that we take it upon ourselves to just consider what financial incentives some of these creators might be facing. And are they doing it for genuine and authentic reasons? The never-ending restocking of a fridge, pantry, or shower is not the reality of 99.99% of the population. The endless gadgets and trinkets are not things that are particularly used and are just funnels to Amazon links. With that being said, how can we practically change what it is that's going on? What are some actual steps that we can take? Now, right before I began this channel, I had just finished or was finishing up on two years free of social media. Now, again, I did use YouTube during that period of time. I personally have never thought of YouTube even as social media. I kind of have just always used it as an educational platform. But with that being said, I want to share the practical tips that I use to be able to now use social media as a tool in my life instead of a hindrance, but also the things that I would have done differently. Because there's definitely a couple few things that I think I made it a lot harder on myself than if I would have just gone the easier route. The number one thing that I would do is remove all notifications on my phone or on your phone. I do not have any notifications on my phone except for text messages. I even had to do that with YouTube comments. I will be honest, it was getting to the point to where I wouldn't say that I couldn't handle it, but it's difficult when you're getting your hair cut or you're on a date or you're doing these certain things, your phone pops up and you look and it's some random comment or some random notification or some random thing that you just weren't in preparation for. I think that whenever we frame it as, and I deserve to be in control, you can begin to kind of say, I don't need those notifications at all time because when they're consistently bombarding you, they are in control. Now, the second thing that I would do, and this is how I would have done it differently, is I quit social media cold turkey. And for the first three weeks, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but then I had a very traumatic event that happened in my life and I started to experience severe anxiety. And I think that a lot of this was a result of that experience I had, but I think that there was also a portion of it that was me beginning to kind of wane off that consistent dopamine hits that I was getting. What I would do this time, or if I was going to restart to what I would recommend, is to not delete your social media, but to delete the apps and to log into your web browser, whatever platform that you feel it necessary to be on, whatever is the hardest for you to do. That way you can still access it, but it's not as enjoyable and dopamine driven of a system. It is very clumsy to access Instagram on like Safari or whatever. But something that you should do is sign out every single time you're done using it. That way, not only do you have to go search Instagram, you then have to put in your username and your password. Whenever I even struggle with that and I find myself still checking it, I will put some random password to now I have to go on a clumsy platform. I then have to type in my username and password, which I then have to reset my password. And by then, typically I'm not interested in doing it anyway. The more restrictions that we can begin to set in place, the less likely we're going to actually spend an endless amount of time on that platform. The third thing that I would recommend is to actually find ways that you can turn your phone either solid red, which removes a lot of the blue light that disrupts our eyes and the ways that we perceive light and different things like that. But overall, it leads to a lot of that brain fog that we experience. I think it's about 15 minutes of staring at your phone and your brain completely gets fried with the blue light. Andrew Huberman talks about it much better, but I will do a link in the comment section of the iPhone routes that you can make your phone screen turn red, just clicking the power button. And hopefully I can find some Android one as well. But that is one that I have found incredibly useful. I typically respond to comments using the red screen or if I'm gonna read or do something like that. And I don't ever experience that brain fog anymore. The next step that I would do is to make sure that you tell people in your life, hey, I'm not on social media anymore. That feeling of FOMO of, hey, maybe somebody DMed me or somebody sent me something, or I'm missing out. The reality is, is it's going to happen, but try to mitigate that feeling as much as you can. I was very thankful that I had, my closest friends were also quitting during that same period of time. So we kind of all just started texting each other and it was more intentional anyway. But I will admit, during that period of time, I was actually doing some modeling and this isn't for me to like say, talk, brag about myself or whatever, but I ended up missing out on a magazine from LA wanted me to be on the front cover of their fashion magazine or whatever it was. And I completely missed it. I mean, I responded like three and a half months later. And when, and why I mentioned that is that when I saw it, I felt bummed for maybe like three minutes. And then I was like, you know, these past four and a half months was so much more enjoyable than whatever that experience would have been doing that. And that really put into perspective of this next tip that I would recommend is to be outside as much as you can. In the financial sector, you are never supposed to guarantee anything, but I almost guarantee you that if you can put your phone down, give yourself a week of no social media and go outside and walk for at least 30 minutes a day, you will remove the veil and the haze that you're experiencing in your life and see things in an all new perspective. I am telling you, it is one of the most life-changing things you can do. Going outside, seeing what life is about will truly change a lot of what it is you're experiencing. And I think that that's kind of about it on the practical tips. I know that they sound incredibly easy, but they work. I promise you, they work. If you have any other tips, please leave it in the comment section below. I think that there's a lot of things that we all can use and learn from each other. I hope that it works. I would love to hear your insights from what you guys have to say as well. Thank you all so much for your time. Have a wonderful day. Bye-bye.

Speaker 3: I'm Squidward.

Speaker 4: What kind of fool do you take me for? He's Squidward. He's Squidward. You're Squidward? I'm Squidward. Are there any other Squidwards I should know about?

Speaker 1: Meow.

Speaker 4: I'm out of here.