Lost in the Feed: Navigating Distraction in the Age of Social Media

With most of us being glued to our devices or screens for most of our waking hours, the distractions are endless. I don't believe this is an accident. I believe our society is intentionally being distracted...but there's good news...YOU'RE in control!

And we talk about the new Florida law, HB 3, designed to protect children from the dangers of social media.

Bill text: _h0003er.docx (flsenate.gov)
Bill summary: 2024 Bill Summaries - The Florida Senate (flsenate.gov)

Chapters

• 0:00 The Dangers of Social Media Distractions
• 8:54 Impact of Social Media on Children

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

There are so many things competing for our attention these days, especially with social media being such a big focus in the everyday lives of Americans and just people around the country In general. It's like we've got this constant flow of content in front of us, and one of the things I'm really noticing lately is a huge amount of distraction, and today I want to talk about that. What are we being distracted by and what are we being distracted from? Hi, I'm Julie Barrett and you're listening to the Woman's Planning Podcast. I'm also the founder of Conservative Ladies of America, which started in Washington State as Conservative Ladies of Washington. We are an organization of like-minded ladies and gentlemen who are working hard to encourage, empower, educate and equip citizens to stand up, speak up and take real action to create change in your local community, in your state and even on a federal level. We are really working hard to grow this movement. So head over to our website and learn more about the work that we're doing and how you can get involved and join us. Head over to conservativeladiesofamericacom. That's conservativeladiesofamericacom, and I've got links in the show notes as well. Well, let's just dig right in. Yes, I'm going to talk about something that might offend people. I'm not sure We'll see how this goes, but I've really been acutely aware lately of the amount of distraction going on, particularly on social media, and I think we all spend so much time on social media I mean, that's where we do our work.

Speaker 1: 1:58

For a lot of people. You're doing your work in front of a screen, on some kind of device, maybe on. You know having to engage in some sort of social platform where you're communicating with other people. Whether you use, you know, a program like Teams to communicate with your coworkers, you're constantly in front of a screen and you've probably got your devices up with. You know notifications coming from Facebook and X and Instagram and you know TikTok and Snapchat. If you do those, um, it's just a constant barrage of information. And if you subscribe to, you know news content like, say, fox news or daily wire uh, the blaze, I don't know. Maybe you're listening and you did still listen to, like NBC and CBS and PBS and some of those mainstream radical left media sources. You get those notifications as well, whether it's emails or notifications on your phone or your watch. It's just constant.

Speaker 1: 2:58

And one of the things I've really been noticing and I got a couple of emails last week that really sparked this for me. With the end of the legislative session, a lot of people are seeing media coverage of bills that are being signed around the country by governors and they're becoming aware for the first time of bills that have passed through their state legislature good bills and bad bills. I'm in Florida, so most of the bills that we're seeing Governor DeSantis sign are good bills and we like them. For my friends who live in Washington state, most of the bills I think just about every bill is a bad bill. So now their first time hearing about bills that Governor Jay Inslee is signing into law and I got a couple of. I actually got several emails last week of people emailing me about different bills that were being signed into law and had I heard about them, did I know about them, what can we do about them? And every one of those bills was a bill that we had done a lot of messaging on. And we try to do a lot of different content, whether it's on YouTube. We're really trying to up our our YouTube game and give people video content. We've done a series of bills of the day. We're very active on X and Facebook and Instagram Substack. We're really putting out a ton of content trying to educate people about the laws that are being proposed, the status, how people can take action, and really trying to get people engaged in fighting these bad policies before they're passed into law.

Speaker 1: 4:40

And as I was reading these emails and I was, you know, since it was multiple emails from different people it really dawned on me that people are so distracted by other things that don't matter. So I'll use Washington again for an example. But you have people who are consumed with the governor's race. That isn't happening until November and obviously the primary in August, but they're consumed with it. They're fighting each other about it. They're arguing about their candidates during the legislative session and, like I'm just like, could we put pause on that, because that's not nothing's going to change with the governor's race right now during the session, and you guys can argue about that after session. But if we could get your attention over here on these bills that are about to be passed.

Speaker 1: 5:33

And it was really frustrating to see how many citizens who are trying to engage in the political process, but they're allowing themselves to focus on the wrong things, and it's not necessarily their fault, I mean, we we do have to take responsibility for the things that we are allowing ourselves to focus on. But we also, I feel like these candidates, have a duty. Like, if you're running for governor, don't you want people to be paying attention to the legislation? Don't like if that's what you're talking to people about, because ultimately, if you're elected governor, you're the guy that's going to be signing the bills into law, and so I guess I feel like there's also the responsibility of the candidates to do that. But that doesn't raise money. Right, teaching people and directing their focus away from your campaign doesn't raise money. Right, teaching people and directing their focus away from your campaign doesn't raise money. So I see that from a political strategy. That that's not strategic.

Speaker 1: 6:32

But I'm also sitting over here thinking we're losing our country and people are distracted by stuff that doesn't matter, and people don't even understand how the government works. We have adults who don't understand how lawmaking is made in their state, in their city, in their county, on a federal level. We're just like living our lives and I get it Like I'm not accusing anybody of something that I haven't done, because it took me until about three years ago to wake up, and I woke up because my world was severely rocked. And I am shouting from the rooftops, because I don't want other people to have to go what I go through, what I went through in order to wake up, and I really feel like we need to be more disciplined with our focus and attention and what we're giving our energy to, because we have a limited amount of energy that we can expend and things that we can focus on and places we can invest our money and our time, and so we need to be protective and, you know, any given day scrolling through X, you can see all these different things that are pulling people's attention that don't matter. People are bickering and fighting and engaging in, you know, these discussions, these huge time sucks that are so counterproductive. Meanwhile, our country is like not literally but figuratively, our country is burning to the ground, and it's so frustrating for me, and I'm not I'm not throwing stones, but I just want to bring this to your attention.

Speaker 1: 8:15

Since you've chosen to give your attention to the Women's Planning Podcast right now, I want to just put this food for thought in front of you, especially as we launch into the 2024 election season and you're going to have all kinds of different things thrown in front of you, and it's so important to be discerning this piece of information that's coming in front of me. What does it mean? Is it accurate? Does is it worth my time? Can I do anything about it, or am I just getting sucked into some kind of emotional ploy or drama on social media? And so really want to encourage you to be more aware of that.

Speaker 1: 8:54

One of the things I have chosen to do and I'm not doing as good at it as I'd like to do, but we have been doing a series. It's called engage and it's Kirk Cameron, through his parent, one of his parenting workshops. It's called engage and we're doing it with um. Our daughter is in the teen challenge program and so we're doing it through teen challenge with the other parents, and it's really about social media and how destructive social media has been for the children and how much of an impact it has on our kids' brain and really their brain development and their wiring and just as we've been working through it.

Speaker 1: 9:35

You know, I think well, to be honest, the hardest thing for me is thinking how I wish I had done things differently, how I wish I could go back 10 years and not ever give my kids a smartphone. But for me personally, I have, as we've been going through these lessons, I just realized how much of a time suck it is for me and how, when I'm on social media and sometimes I have to be I mean, my job is social media marketing, so I have to be on social media for a certain amount of time. But I've, you know, been becoming more, uh, disciplined and making forcing myself to put the phone down, put the screen down and take time, take 30 minutes here to read a book, or, you know, take 30 minutes there to go outside and go for a walk without a phone. You know, I think we are go outside and go for a walk without a phone. You know, I think we are like I don't go anywhere without my phone, and that's one of the things we've been talking about in this class Like we are so addicted to our phone that if we go somewhere without it, we feel like, you know, we left something, a piece of us behind, we just are that attached to our devices, and I don't think that is healthy for us as adults, but certainly not for kids.

Speaker 1: 10:51

So I just want to ask you to think about what are you being distracted by and what are you being distracted from, because there is so much going on that needs your attention, like last week, there was that omnibus, that 1,000 plus page bill that Congress got 24 hours to look at before they had to vote on it, and 101 Republicans voted yes on this omnibus bill and there's like $400,000 in it for chest binders for kids. There's $850,000 in it for LGBTQ plus senior housing. There's a number of different just garbage things in there that are being funded by this omnibus bill, and not a single penny of it is going to secure our southern border, and I don't think I saw a single one of my Facebook friends post anything about the omnibus, and I just think that we are so caught up in things that just don't matter that we're missing some of these big things, and then people are just oblivious to it, and that's what they want. That's how they want this whole thing to be. They don't want you paying attention, they want you sidetracked by whatever is going on with Donald Trump today, or you know something that just doesn't matter in your life. And if we can, if they can, distract you from the things that do matter, then they can, you know, pass all these bills and spend all your taxpayer dollars without you noticing and, mostly without you putting up a fight, and I think it's really important that people start paying attention and stop being. We have to make a choice to stop being distracted by things and, you know, use that filter when content comes across our feeds. Is this something that's worthy of my time and attention? So, while we're talking about social media, I want to shift directions a little bit.

Speaker 1: 12:48

Yesterday, governor DeSantis signed into law HB3, which is a social media bill, kind of banning social media for kids, and there's a lot of disagreement on this bill on the conservative side and, as I've been going through this Engage class and I'm also reading Dr Phil's book which, by the way, highly recommend it's We've Got Issues and he talks a lot about the impact of social media on us as adults, but especially on kids, and how the algorithms are really built and set up to target our kids and how it's really causing the mental health crisis that our youth are facing today. And so, as this bill came across my radar came across my radar earlier in the session, but was paying more attention to it in the last few days as it's been getting more traction and attention now that it's been signed into law and I probably, you know, a few months ago, I probably would have agreed with the people that said this is an infringement on parental rights. But now that I have been really recent, researching this more and getting more information about social media and the impact it has on the brain development of kids, did you know? It is as easy addictive as any kind of drug. It is highly addictive and yet it's an unregulated substance.

Speaker 1: 14:22

A recent study showed that kids spend an average of nine hours a day in front of a screen. 50% of the kids surveyed felt like they were addicted to their phone. In China, screen addiction is a medically defined problem and, as we know, china doesn't even allow their kids to be on TikTok, or it's like a different version of TikTok that's not nearly as garbage as the one that is here in the United States. And we also know that, with the dependence on screen time and has caused us to have an inability to focus and it's given us attention deficit disorder and we're seeing kids, you know, being diagnosed with ADD ADHD at a much higher rate than before smartphones were released in what 2008, 2009. And so this is a huge, huge deal with a huge impact on kids and it's really delaying and changing their brain development and I think that, if we consider that social media is as addictive as a drug, as harmful as a drug, and it's really having this negative impact on an entire generation of children, children who that's all they know is screen time. They're not out playing with their friends, they're not going to a friend's house after school and hanging out with a bunch of people. They all go home after school. They're all on their cell phones, they're even doing homework on their devices and on social media apps and they can't get away from, you know, negative influences at school, negative kids, bullies, whatnot. They've always got this in front of them and they've got this desire to compete for, you know, having a cool life, having the cool clothes, looking good. They have this constant pressure to get clicks and likes and make sure that they're being approved by by their peers and even, you know, strangers on social media. So I actually uh, now that this has come out and it's been signed, I actually think this is a good law. Now that this has come out and it's been signed, I actually think this is a good law, and I think that a lot of parents hand their kid a cell phone and then they don't really monitor it, they don't follow up, they don't set ground rules and I think as parents, we give our kids these phones and then when we try to take it away or pull back or, you know, put in any kind of guardrails, it's met with really strong resistance and I think a lot of parents are afraid to to do that, to put in those kinds of guardrails. So I think this is actually a really good thing. Read you a little bit from the summary.

Speaker 1: 17:13

This bill requires regulated social media platforms to prohibit minors younger than 14 years of age from entering into contracts with social media platforms to become account holders. It allows minors who are 14 or 15 years of age to become account holders, but only with the consent of a parent or guardian. Social media platforms are regulated under the bill if they allow users to upload content or view the content or activity of other users. Satisfy certain daily active user metrics identified in the bill. Employ algorithms that analyze user data or information on users to select content for users and have certain addictive features. Users and have certain addictive features With respect to all accounts belonging to minors younger than 14 and to those accounts belonging to minors who are 14 or 15 years of age but for whom parents or guardians have not provided consent. The bill requires regulated social media platforms to terminate them, and also allows the account holders or their parents or guardians to terminate them. Social media platforms must permanently delete all personal information held by them relating to terminated accounts, unless otherwise required by law to maintain the personal information.

Speaker 1: 18:31

The bill also requires regulated commercial entities that knowingly and intentionally publish or distribute harmful materials to minors on a website or application to prohibit access to such material by any person younger than 18 years of age. If their website or application contains a substantial portion of material that is harmful to minors. Such commercial entities must verify, using either an anonymous or standard age verification method, that the age of a person attempting to access the material harmful to minors satisfies the bill's age requirement. So and then there are actual civil penalties for violations of up to $50,000. It says here on the bill summary that it takes effect on July 1st of 2024, but I feel like I saw that that actually now takes effect January 1st of 2025. So just want to say I'm not exactly sure which date it is, if it's July 1 or January 1, but I actually think that this is a good bill.

Speaker 1: 19:32

I know some people will think this is infringing upon parental rights, but I think there are a lot of other things that are regulated for children and this is no different than that. And I believe that, with the addictive nature of social media and the dangers of social media and the way that we are seeing children being targeted by the social media companies, I think this is a really good move in the right direction. I think this could definitely be a positive thing for children. I think if we can get children off of social media and hold them off until later, I think it will be much better for their mental health, probably also their physical health, and I think that we will be doing them a lot of favors by protecting them from this. And let's remember, you know social media is only, you know, 10, 15,. I guess you know if you go back to uh, what was that?

Speaker 1: 20:26

My space was that early two thousands or maybe even late nineties, but you know, really, to have it in the palm of our hand on a smartphone, we're, you know, looking at like 2008. And so really, we've got kind of the first generation of kids being raised on social media. So there's going to be a lot of learning. There's going to be a lot of trial and error and I think what we've seen so far is that there is a lot of error going on and that we have a lot of correcting to do to ensure that we don't continue to allow our children to be damaged in this way.

Speaker 1: 21:00

So if you're a parent of children that does not yet have a smartphone, as a mom of you know, teenagers, young adults I would say hold off for as long as you can. Don't give your kid a smartphone, um, until they are mature enough. Um, I don't know what that age is, I would say probably 16, but, um, that would be. I know that's difficult, but you know, give them a flip phone so that they can call you and they can, they can text you and let you know where they are and that kind of keeps, that kind of fills that safety need there with the flip phone and, uh, hold off on that cell phone or at least, you know, create some real good ground rules and boundaries to protect your children.

Speaker 1: 21:42

So I'll have links to the Florida bill it's HB three, online protections for minors and I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you disagree with me, I'd love to hear from you, um, what your thoughts are on social media, uh, pertaining to minor children, and how how can we help them. So my email is down in the show notes as well and, like I said, I'd love to hear from you, I'd love to know your thoughts. This is, all you know, just new territory and just kind of developing. So I think it's great conversation to be had so that I think you know, generally speaking, those of us, at least on the conservative side and saying moderate Democrats, the non-communist, non-marxists, really want to do everything we can to protect children and keep our children healthy. So I think it's great that we are starting to have more conversations about social media and children. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'd love it if you'd share it. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast and I look forward to chatting with you again next time.