SIO253: Unpacking 'The Social Dilemma'

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 253. I'm Thomas, and back again is Lindsey Osterman. How you doing?

0:00:38 Lindsey: Awesome! I'm doing great!

0:00:39 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, I am very excited to have you on because there is a little Netflix documentary that has been causing a stir. It's in the top 10 of all streaming right now, you know, along with, along with Cobra Kai, I'm sure, which I highly recommend, if anyone hasn't.

0:00:52 Lindsey: Is it really? Oh, I've seen the first two seasons of that, it's fantastic.

0:00:58 Thomas: Yeah, it's all there is right now. So, you've seen the whole thing, yeah, it's great, it really is good, yeah,

0:01:02 Lindsey: Yeah, we watched it before COVID, unfortunately, so that wasn't, we couldn't use that for quarantine time.

0:01:09 Thomas: That was a foolish error. I'm glad I glad I waited and like had it for, but then we watched it so quickly because it's so bingeable, uh, that, that we're already, it's already over, so I need the next several seasons of that. But anyway, along with that on Netflix, also there is uh, The Social Dilemma, a lot of people have been talking about it, and uh, what better person to come on and break it down than a, I always say psychologist, should I, I clarify, evolutionary psychologist, does it?

0:01:12 Lindsey: I know! Yeah.

0:01:38 Lindsey: Well, I think my training as a social psychologist is probably most relevant here. Yeah. I

0:01:43 Thomas: Okay, okay. Well, but what everyday life, how should I refer to your expertise?

0:01:50 Lindsey: Mean, I guess I'm a social psychologist that cares about evolutionary explanations of behavior. There we go. That's a mouthful though.

0:01:56 Thomas: Okay, so I'll say social Psychologist. That's easier. Yeah, because people are very worried about this. I mean, this is the kind of thing, now if you've listened to a lot of the same podcasts I listened to, which is like Ezra Klein, know, back in the day, Sam Harris, and I'm sure a lot other ones, they've had at least two of the people involved in this on their shows so you know Tristan Harris is one of them, I'm blanking on the other guy, but he's somebody that you will have seen, so it's for me it wasn't exactly new, but you know it is good to get a lot of these issues out there, but if you've already heard those people interviewed, I don't think it's as though this is like some new groundbreaking thing, but it does seem like putting that in a consumable documentary on Netflix that everybody can binge while they're stuck at home with COVID is, you know, that's bringing new attention to it.

Part, my first, I got to say though, my gut reaction, right? Like off the bat, when everybody is talking about this is like, great. Okay. I'm going to, yeah, better delete all my social media. And then I'll just sit and look at a wall all day. Like I'll jut stare.

0:02:31 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, that sounds fun.

0:03:05 Thomas: I'll sit in a chair, set it up a couple of feet from the, like, it'd one one thing if, you know, the, the world weren't burning to ashes around me and COVID weren't keeping us from doing anything at this point, I'm like, what's a few, you Know, toppled, uh, democracies in exchange for having social media to go on. But anyway, that's just my gut reaction at first.

0:03:08 Lindsey: You could write letters.

0:03:24 Lindsey: Sure. Yeah, I mean No, I mean, but that was, that was part of the thing that bothered me about this is that I think that people's take-home message, or one of the big take-home messages from the documentary, is going to be like, oh, so the thing I should do in response to this information is like change my Facebook settings. And that, that is, that has a big critique that I have of this documentary. Cause I don't, I mean, I'm not saying that it's bad to change your Facebook settings. You should do that, but that doesn't address the bigger issue in my opinion. Um, and I think that's real rhetorical failure of the documentary. Where should we begin? Uh, I meet.

0:04:01 Thomas: Okay. Well, where should we begin? Where do you want to start? And, uh.

0:04:09 Thomas: Or, or do the main issues that this documentary and the people in it, what, what are the main critiques, what are they trying to tell us, no, highlight, right?

0:04:17 Lindsey: Yes. Okay. So the central claims are that social media is designed to manipulate us to spend lots of time on it. That's true.

0:04:25 Thomas: Interesting.

0:04:26 Lindsey: And that the more time we spend on it, the worse off we are in several specific ways. So they make a bunch of claims about how time on social media harms psychological health and well-being. That is not a well-supported claim. They make Claims about the negative effects on social development, you know, for kids and adolescents who spend a lot of time on social media, also not a well-supported claim.

Um, and then they, they end, like, really not enough of the documentary was on this last part that I think really is an issue, which is that, um, social media is designed in such a way that it can draw people down rabbit holes preferentially, um, and that's definitely the case, and that, you know, the, the way it's structured can, has, can have huge unintended consequences, um, like on political behavior. And I think that this is really important, and in the, in the wrong hands, it could be really catastrophic. Um, so those last two things, I think, you know, really are super important. We should take them seriously and, um, and act, but I just, uh, yeah, I don't think that they're making the case in the way that they should, not

0:04:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:28 Thomas: Interesting. Interesting.

0:05:32 Lindsey: The way that I would, right?

0:05:32 Thomas: Okay, good. I'm glad you laid that out. So the last two points, I think, yeah, you know, more or less, we can all agree with the documentary on that. Specifically, too, you know, they talk about there are countries where the internet is synonymous with Facebook or vice versa, you know, like, that seems like a massive problem. And something that I don't think you or I changing our settings or is going to do much about. So So, well, let's table that and talk about the first, you know, two or three points you brought up there that you don't fully agree with. I'm very interested in that. So, yeah, first off, is there a little man or three little men inside my phone directing me? I'm sorry. Pause. We'll talk about The Dramatizations. I know you can't, we can't

0:05:47 Lindsey: Yeah, huge. Yeah.

0:06:13 Lindsey: Yep. I can't.

0:06:19 Thomas: Resist anymore.

0:06:19 Lindsey: I can't, I can't, I can't not talk about that immediately, immediately, for an hour.

0:06:22 Thomas: It's so weird. What a weird choice. So pause on all the issues. Why? Why, why did they do that? I don't get it. Like, and I will say this as somebody, you know, I'm interested in, in, I do theater. I do a little bit of acting. I was interested in that kind of thing. They probably did it about as well as you could, I think, but it's such a hacky thing to do that. It can't help, but come across as like an afterschool special. You know, I don't, why do it? I either want the afterschool especial, like either make an episode of black mirror. That's going to be all these things, which is kind of what they were trying to do, sort of, you know, do that or give me the documentary. I really, this might just be a preferential thing. Of course, it's all, you know, it'S all a matter of opinion, but like, I really want one or the other that doing, you know, a little bit of interviews about the harms of social media. And then all

0:06:23 Lindsey: Oh, I don't know. I guess. Right. Right, right, yeah. Yeah.

0:07:16 Thomas: Of a sudden we're, there's actors and they're acting out like a thing. I'm like, it looks so dorky to me.

0:07:23 Lindsey: And I'm guessing that the reason that they, they had, uh, what's his face, from that, was the guy from Mad Men, right. Yeah.

0:07:27 Thomas: The guy from Mad Men. Yeah.

0:07:29 Lindsey: Yeah, they had him, uh, but three clones of him, and I'm guessing they did that because they filmed it during COVID times, and he couldn't like, be in the room with other actors.

0:07:32 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Um, no, I think that's just supposed to be like the AI, you know, cause otherwise that wouldn't apply to all the other ones where they are in the same room. I thinkthat's just like a, a matter of like portraying the AI as a, you know, not to mention you can get three times the work out of one actor, you know, you don't have to hire. No, I like, I don't mind that choice. Again, if this were a little episode of something, maybe not Black Mirror cause the tone wasn't, wasn't quite as apocalyptic. That's the funny thing too. By the time you get to the end of the doc, it's like they didn't want to go so far as to have the kid become a school shooter or something like that, but they also wanted to try and have it be negative, so in the end, this kid and his sister just get calmly arrested at a demonstration, and it's

0:07:45 Lindsey: That's fair, true. Oh, right.

0:08:24 Lindsey: How,

0:08:25 Thomas: Kind of weird. I see where they're at, though, because if they had gone too dramatic, then it really really would have seemed like, you know, reefer madness, some sort of afterschool special thing. I don't know.

0:08:36 Lindsey: How was it not already there, though, like, they were, they were literally doing quick cuts between these claims about the addictiveness of social media and heroin needles. It was crazy.

0:08:38 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And My next thought on all this is, this is a very high budget thingy. Who is paying for this high budget thingie? And I'm like, is this just a ploy from Netflix to be like, quit all your other apps, everybody, delete all those other apps. You know, you the only sure bet is to watch Cobra Kai on, that they should have put an ad for Cobra Kai in the middle of this. You know what's not going to topple democracy? Cobra Kai.

0:08:46 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:09:12 Lindsey: That's Right, yeah, Ralph Macchio, um, yeah, no, you know, I hadn't even thought about the fact that this was a Netflix original, um, and Yeah.

0:09:19 Thomas: Yeah, I think it is, right? Yeah. Right.

0:09:21 Lindsey: Netflix doesn't use algorithms to manipulate people's behavior. Definitely not. For

0:09:24 Thomas: But They only do it in a good way. I

0:09:27 Lindsey: Good reasons. That's right. And that's the, that's the point, I think, as the

0:09:31 Thomas: I don't know how much more to say about these reenactments. I really, again, I actually like, the actors are fine, the writing's actually not even that bad, I don't think. Like, it was, it was funny, they decided to do, instead of having it be like, oh, the alt-right, or the radical antifa, or whatever, they're just like, they decide that the, the scourge of this world is the radical center or whatever, extreme Center.

0:09:51 Lindsey: Extreme center. That's great.

0:09:53 Thomas: Which actually, I kind of like that. I thought that was, it's, it's funny and clever, like, because they probably, they don't want to alienate like one side or the other, you know, so they probably want to like present it in a way, but I also love, God, there was a quick, speaking of the both-sidesy stuff, there was one quick part where they're like, yeah, look at how it works on, on both sides of the political spectrum, it's whatever, and I, I, I should have written it down, the left side, I remember specifically, the left side was a video that, where it was like, top three Republican contradictions or something, and that was the left hand, and then the right side was like, let's have a Holocaust, you know, know, it was something like that. And I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, totally equal there. That's both sides for sure. Yeah. On one side, there's some contradictions on the other side. It's some horrible, like alt-right, you know, Jews will not replace us or something like it's yeah.

0:09:53 Lindsey: Uh, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, God.

0:10:45 Thomas: Anyway. So have we, have we let out enough steam on the reenactments? Anything else you wanted to say about that?

0:10:45 Lindsey: Yeah, it's awesome, I guess, except that not everything is heroin, it's just, not, not everything that you don't like is heroin. I, it's like the, the equivalent of the, not everybody don't like is Hitler, or whatever. It was so annoying. I'm really tired of the addiction framing being used to describe everything, by the way. Like, no, it's not.

0:10:56 Thomas: Yeah.

0:11:12 Thomas: Well, That's interesting. Okay. So on one hand, okay, I take your point, but but that has been, I think, a mainstay of Tristan Harris and some of these other people, of their criticism, is, what's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? You know, what's last thing we tend to be doing when we go to sleep? It's, you got your phone, like you're doing it right even before you do anything else. And like, yeah, that's true. And so maybe it is quite addictive. Where do you where do you see that as, you know, being inappropriate in comparison?

0:11:39 Lindsey: Yeah. I just, I, so I'm not, I don't want to make it sound like I'm defending the fact that these platforms are manipulative in the way that they are. They definitely are.They're definitely designed in a way to try to keep our attention for as much time as possible. Um, but ultimately, like, this is, this is a rewarding thing because it's social, you know? And I just, I have problems with, um, putting the addiction framing on things that, like we actually need, I suppose.

0:12:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:12:21 Lindsey: Um yeah, like I, I, I don't, I, don't think that that's, uh, food addiction. I don't think that, that's a good framing either. Like there are definitely problems that can arise from, from eating different things and we can, you know, have desires and wants that get up, get out of control because of predictable things about our physiology, physiology, but just, I don't know, framing all of those things as addictions. I don't think it's particularly helpful.

0:12:21 Thomas: Especially right now. God, especially heroin addictions, you know, like contrasting it with something like that. Okay. I hear you. Yeah, it does get tiresome. I'm just trying to think off the top of my head, you know, lots of stuff, fantasy football. There's a lot of stuff where it's like, you know, for a given person, they're really into it and they get all it. And it's, if you alternate the shots of the heroin needle, it's like, okay, at what point can I be into something and not have it be heroin? You know, like what is the only solution that I have to be equally into certain things for like 20 minutes each a day. And then that's the only way I'm having a healthy relationship to

0:12:48 Lindsey: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and it's fun and they like it. Yeah that's right.

0:13:20 Thomas: Things. Okay.

0:13:20 Lindsey: That's right, moderation.

0:13:21 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. So let's talk about the, those points going back. Um, you know, the idea that social media media companies are trying to keep us sucked in, monopoly monopolizing our attention, you know, the attention economy stuff seems, seems sort of troublesome, seems pretty much true.

0:13:21 Lindsey: That'S the key. Yeah mm-hmm.

0:13:43 Thomas: What do have to say about that part?

0:13:43 Lindsey: Oh yeah, Yeah. I think that that is worrying. And I did hear the interview with Tristan Harris years ago when he was on Waking Up and I was worried about it then and I'm still worried about it. And it was that interview that in fact, you know, I took the Facebook app off my phone so I wouldn't get notifications. And then I started getting Facebook notifications through Chrome, by the way, so I had to turn off those too. So that was cool.

0:14:07 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:11 Lindsey: But yeah, so no, I take those seriously. And it's true. And, you know, the, the companies admit to doing these things. I mean, it's not a, it's Not a secret that they're designing them this way. That's, that's what runs the ad based economy.

0:14:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:14:23 Lindsey: So yeah, that's, that's a problem. And that, that technology, now that it exists, and now that it's so good, in the wrong hands, that's hugely dangerous. And that is, I think, one of the, the most important things that they're, they're showcasing here. Yeah.

0:14:36 Thomas: Okay, so good critique there, you know, and as far as the documentary is concerned, so that, that part of it, yeah. I mean, I, yeah, I don't know. I've done, done the same thing too, where temporarily I took off the social media apps from my phone. I was like, "Oh, I'll just go on the laptop when I want to go on." And I did. That for a little bit. And then I, I ended up undoing it. I don't remember why. I also don't think it again, I guess there's always, you can tell us all about the problems of self-reporting stuff, but, um, I don't think it changed anything in my life when I did.

0:15:10 Lindsey: Well, Yeah.

0:15:11 Thomas: I mean, that's, it's hard to judge by me because cause I have a weird life, you know, as a, as a podcaster, but like nothing changed. I mean, I, maybe I was like, I ended, actually, you know what I did? This is why nothing changed, I just ended up going on Reddit, so you always find something on my stupid phone, I guess, unless I take the extreme measure of, you know, like deciding I can't be on my phone at all for certain hours, which maybe, maybe I shouldn't represent that as extreme, maybe that might be a healthy thing to do, but I I ended up just replacing it with some other app that wasn't exactly like Facebook and Twitter.

0:15:17 Lindsey: That's True, but Was still fulfilling a social function. Yeah.

0:15:51 Thomas: Well, that one's more like browsing news, I would say. It's not so much a social. I don't have friends or anything on that. It's just like, oh, what's everybody talking about? What are the funny memes? You know?

0:15:56 Lindsey: Okay. Yeah. I mean, but it's not identical to to browsing like Google News, I guess, is all I mean. Like, it's a, you know, it's, it's people posting about, I, I don't read it a lot, but um, But It's. Yeah.

0:16:08 Thomas: Yeah. I love Reddit. It's really grown

0:16:17 Lindsey: I Mean Okay, maybe I'll have to get more into that, replace my, My Facebook.

0:16:17 Thomas: On me lately. I'm not defending

0:16:22 Lindsey: There, yeah.

0:16:23 Thomas: It as, well, I think it's a little bit better. One thing that's worth talking about maybe at a later date is Reddit. Reddit has done a lot more to moderate recently, like, I think it wasn't, I think it used to be terrible, but um, you know, they got rid of The Donald, they got rid of, and a lot of these communities that are very successful, if you pick like a subreddit, they're called, for, for, for all you grown-ups listening, um, I totally am not at all an expert on any of them, but uh, from what I gather, the subreddits, you know, they, one reason they're successful, and I think I heard Ezra Klein make this point, and it was, you know, as a some semi user of Reddit, I was like, "Yeah, that's totally true." They are very restrictive in their given thing. So if it's like, oh, what are they, are slash, you know, classic cars or whatever, you know, whatever the interest is that you have, you know, these subreddits, they, if you're in that subreddit, usually they are incredibly censorious to those things.

0:16:35 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:17:29 Thomas: So like people think of Reddit is like, Oh yeah, free speech. You can say pretty much anything anywhere, but it's actually not entirely true. It's, it's actually very heavily moderated and that has led to a lot of success. Now, I think that's very specific to, to a given subreddit. So, you know, that's going to, your results are going to vary depending on where you are. But a lot of them, a lot Of the most successful ones are like, Hey, we don't even want to hear a single thing about this, you Know, such and such topic or such and such topic. This is just a place where you post pictures of classic cars that that's, I don't know. We don't want to hear it. And they're heavily moderated and it actually does help quite a bit.

0:18:09 Lindsey: I'm Sure, I mean, yeah, in my very limited experience, I, yeah, I've run into issues with that on a couple of subreddits that I was trying to recruit data from, um, uh, yeah, anyway, um, and yeah, so, so that's really interesting, because I think that it probably cuts down on some of the, the problems that we'll probably talk about, out.

0:18:26 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:26 Lindsey: You know, Um, the,

0:18:27 Thomas: Yeah. So I really want to ask you about when you talked about, you already hinted at it, I'm sure people's interest is piqued, the psychological claims, perhaps, like the fact that, and I'll be honest, I'm very worried about my kids and using social media. And I want to know the state of the science as best as you can describe it. Is this not going to affect people's self-esteem, uh,

0:18:28 Lindsey: Yeah, Uh, Yeah, okay, all right, so this is, this is fun, um, so you remember how your parents always like to tell you that TV rots your brain. I, I mean, my, my parents did, I don't know, maybe yours didn't.

0:19:03 Thomas: Yeah. I I Uh, We had almost no TV. We had very crappy TV, so they, they successfully were like, "Yeah, you're not gonna waste your time watching a bunch of good TV." What we would often do is watch really boring, terrible TV on the, you know, three main channels that you could get, back back in the day, but we didn't have cable.

0:19:06 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. PBS. Okay. Yeah, yeah, actually we, we didn't for, for a long, long time growing up either. And that's, you know, whatever. I spent my time doing other terrible things, I'm sure. But so I bring that up, though, because I think, and I wasn't, I wasn't always in this camp, I've had some concerns. You know, I've got a, I've got a stepson that's, that's 10. So he's just starting to get into social media and stuff. And, you know, I've had my, my concerns, um, but I, I, uh, just to, just to intro this a little bit, um, one of my, one of my colleagues in, um, in literature at the, at the college, gave a talk a couple years ago, and he was, um, he was talking about some of these concerns about how, you know, social media is, is changing society for the worst, and, and all these things, and he showed some historical, historical documents on a slide, um, of people saying exactly the same thing about pretty much every social technology ever.

0:19:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:20:24 Thomas: Ever, the

0:20:25 Lindsey: Um, you know, they, they said, they set it about the radio. They set it up about the, I, well, I'm kind of serious.

0:20:25 Thomas: Printing Press, they got, yeah. They would

0:20:31 Lindsey: I mean, they couldn't print it. No. Um.

0:20:31 Thomas: Yeah, they, I'm sure they orally talked about it for the, because they couldn't, you know, they couldn't print it, so there's

0:20:38 Lindsey: But they said it, yeah.

0:20:38 Thomas: Maybe some handwritten notes about it. Yeah.

0:20:40 Lindsey: No, they sent it about phone. Um, they said about, they send it about, about the Pony Express. People were really, really concerned when mail transit became faster that everybody was going to forget how to socially interact with people because they'd just be holed up in their houses, addicted to writing letters to each other, right? I'm dead serious, dead serious.

0:21:02 Lindsey: He showed something, you know, somebody making this argument. And so, yeah,

0:21:02 Thomas: God, I would kill for a society of letter writers. I've never written a letter in my goddamn life. I've, I've gotten, I can't even, I cannot write, like, I don't mean, you know, like choosing words, I mean, physically my hand can't do the motions of writing. I can't do it. It's awful.

0:21:24 Lindsey: Well, It's all those editing injuries, that's That's what it is, yeah.

0:21:26 Thomas: Well, that's that I, I would love to blame it on that, but I just truth be told writing after school, it wasn't something I just don't do. I don't do it, so my handwriting is terrible. But anyway, jokes aside.

0:21:36 Lindsey: Yeah. My handwriting's got pretty bad too. But jokes

0:21:39 Thomas: Also that Pony Express, they were right about that. This fucking ponies are are everywhere. Just nothing but ponies. No, not true. Okay.

0:21:39 Lindsey: Aside. And They're So fast.

0:21:47 Thomas: Yeah. So, okay. I get that argument and that's sort of addressed a little bit in the, or responded to in the doc, which is okay. Sure. These arguments are always there, you know, like, oh, this technology, but then they say this one's different. And that's not, to me, that's not a crazy argument. Like, it is different to have all of the billions of people that are on social media in the ways that they are with, with algorithms doing what they're doing. Like, it might be true that this is just a different thing.

0:21:47 Lindsey: Um, Yeah. It Is But Yeah. But This one's different, yeah. No, It, it, it totally could be true, and I think that it is true about certain issues, but Not about the issues regarding like psychological well-being and not about the social developmental issues. At least, at least, if it is, we do not have strong evidence to make that claim yet. Like, how could we, you know? Like, these platforms haven't even been around that long. How would they have any solid information about the long-term effects of this stuff?

0:22:22 Thomas: Okay. Okay. Yeah.

0:22:43 Lindsey: It's, yeah.

0:22:43 Thomas: But that, I mean, that, that worries me though. So what, so when you, okay. You talked about your stepson is 10. If I'm worrying about, you know, my kids and using social media and the doc has a very dramatic, you knows, uh, I don't know how old the girl's supposed to be, but she seems around nine, 10, 11, something, uh maybe a little older. And she's, you know, having real self-esteem issues. She posts photos, and people are like critiquing her and I could certainly, you know, it seems plausible that that would be a big issue. Why are you maybe not as worried about that, or are you worried about them?

0:23:09 Lindsey: Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, yeah, no, no. I think that's a great, that's a great point. Okay. So, in preparation for this, I talked to somebody in the department who's a developmental psychologist, and I just asked her, shout out Danielle, if she could tell me what she knows about this literature, because this is adjacent to stuff that she does. And she pointed me toward three recent meta-analyses that look at cumulatively something like, I don't know, 80 studies that have been done on these topics. And the overall takeaways, I'm going to add some some complexity onto this, but the overall takeaway is that, um, the relationships that they were making it seem were rock solid in the documentary are just not consistently in the literature. So I'll start with one that was on, um, time spent on social media sites and, uh, psychological well-being.

They said that this was mostly with student samples, but I'm not sure if they meant college students or younger, unfortunately, because I couldn't get access to the full text. Um, but at any rate, this, this 61 studies that examined these relationships. They were looking at, you know, time on these sites and well-being indicators like self-esteem and life satisfaction, loneliness, depression, and just seeing if these things were correlated.

0:23:47 Thomas: Okay, okay.

0:24:38 Lindsey: And they found that when they, you now, meta-analyzed all these different effect sizes, that the relationship between time spent on social networking sites and psychological well-being was around zero. Yeah. Yeah.

0:24:52 Lindsey: And the time, the correlation between time spent on social networking sites and these positive indicators, so that was for like negative indicators, was around zero. The correlation with these positive indicators like self-esteem and life satisfaction were, again, about zero.

0:25:10 Thomas: So Okay, so it's not doing anything negative, not doing anything positive, according to this, interesting, pretty Pretty neutral.

0:25:14 Lindsey: That's what the state of literature is now, right? And I mean, again this is very new. A lot of this research is cross-sectional, so we don't really have a lot of nice longitudinal data to look at at this over time. But yeah, I mean, it seems like you get the effects in some places, you don't get in other places, and across the literature, it doesn't look like there's much here, right? Okay, so then there was a second paper. This was not technically a meta-analysis, it was a critical review, but they were doing something kind of similar.

So they looked at a set of papers on time on social media and mental health indicators, specifically in adolescence, to see if there were any relationships there, and this one only had again like 13 papers in it, so there wasn't nearly as much on this, and again mostly cross-sectional, and they found that the results were not very consistent, but that in general they seemed to see that there was some correlation between time on these social media sites and mental health problems, but they noted, noted that, like, the authors in pretty much all of the papers had huge caveats in terms of how they were describing these effects. So very, very few of these studies were really designed to explore this issue in much complexity, right? So most of them noted that this is a highly complex issue, right, it's not just that social media is leading to these negative effects, right? It's probably that it's interacting with these other variables like sociocultural variables and predispositions and all kinds of things to maybe produce outcomes some of the time.

0:25:15 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:26:50 Lindsey: And most of the studies were not designed to address those things, but the ones that were, at the things like mediating variables, like explanatory variables, found that, to the extent that social media was having an effect on these mental health outcomes, it seemed to be mediated by things like sleep deprivation, because these adolescents were like up too late staying on their phones and things, right? Yeah.

0:27:13 Thomas: Yeah, that's interesting.

0:27:16 Lindsey: It is, and so to me, right, this, the literature so far is showing us that, like, social media probably is not having a direct impact on these things. It's not causing the kinds of problems that they were catastrophizing in the documentary. It might be leading to some problematic behaviors in some people some of the time that cause issues, but not everybody. And honestly, if we didn't have social media, those people might be engaging in other behaviors in other platforms, right? Or, you know, maybe just in normal social interactions that would probably cause some of same problems. Yeah.

0:27:54 Thomas: Yeah interesting. And it's it's well I'm trying to think how to how to go forward because there are some other problems that I came across. I came came across a great article on the verge dot com. I'm going to link that I think had some, some good critique of this. And when you're trying to isolate variables here, I think it's interesting to there. There are some assumptions that kind of, I think are in this doc that when you separate them out, maybe start to point to some of the flaws when they have dramatized or whatever, the, the three clones of the guy or two, the The guy and the two clones of the madman guy thing. And they are treating that as like, okay, here's the algorithm that's trying to manipulate you into staying on this thing. And that's, you know, and that's pretty central in the doc. Like, I think it's very central. Like, it makes the algorithm to be one of the key villains.

0:28:30 Lindsey: Yes. Yes. Yeah.

0:28:53 Thomas: And I'm not here to tell you that there's no problems with the algorithm. But far from that. Like, obviously, there are major, major issues there. But this article on The Verge that I'm going to link in the show notes points out that like, well, one of the some of the biggest problems and when you talk about racism, when you talk about these alt-right movements, when You talk about school shootings and that kind of thing, those tend to be in not regular social media. Oftentimes. Those tend to be in 4chan or 8chan. There are a lot of problems in other countries where entire disinformation campaigns are happening via WhatsApp. So those are things that currently, as the best of my knowledge, those aren't really curated experiences. Those aren't things where the algorithm is manipulating you. WhatsApp is literally just a messaging platform, and, uh, 8chan, there's no, there's, I think the whole point of it was like there's no curation or moderation or whatever. So when, when you've set it up that the enemy is the guy from Mad Men, the algorithm doing this manipulation, that I think that misses a lot of what's going on.

If, if it's really true that, you know, uh, in India, I think was the, the country it brought up, where WhatsApp is just a huge problem, in that there's these, these like misinformation networks kind of that are really causing a lot of violence and stuff like that.

0:29:24 Lindsey: Yeah. Yes.

0:30:20 Thomas: That's a messaging app. Like if the problem is that people are able to message each other, then that's not a problem we're going to solve by saying like, well, let's take a look under the hood of this algorithm or let's, you know, like if that's an extreme level of thing, we're not going to just all of a sudden say no messaging. No one can message anyone. And so I think that's an important thing to think about, you know, and a lot of these like the Christchurch shooting, a lot of these shootings are usually 8chan. Those aren't, there's no algorithm there. There may be other things going on. It might be true that, and again, this is not to minimize a lot of the bad effects we know are there, but I think it's, it's to try to put it into some context and maybe

0:30:35 Lindsey: Precisely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:07 Thomas: Not make the, the entirety of the villain out to be the algorithm and Facebook and that kind of thing.

0:31:13 Lindsey: That's, that's, yes, absolutely right. And, and you're, you're making me think of a couple of other things that I think are relevant here. So, um, you know, uh, the, the problems that can arise when people message each other, right? So, like, cyber bullying is definitely a problem, and having easy means of communication like social media, it's not just social media, but including social media, um, you know, provides a platform for that to happen, and that's a problem, and so yeah, to the extent that somebody's getting cyber bullied, then yeah, that person is probably going to suffer a number of harmful effects from that. Um, but yeah, it's not as straightforward as just saying the algorithm or social media in general, right?

0:31:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:31:52 Thomas: So what are we to make, though, of what I think, you know, is inarguably a at least, you know, at least we notice it more that there are there seems to be an increase and they cite this in the documentary, an increase in, you know, suicidal ideation or suicide attempts and actually, you know, successful suicides among some of these younger age groups. That's certainly something that worries me. It's something that Lydia reacted really strongly to, like, you You know, that that's very worrying.

0:32:24 Thomas: Is this something, you know, that's, that's in the research or do you have any, any science to bring to that topic?

0:32:23 Lindsey: I mean, uh, not regarding social media specifically, but based on the things that I did read, it just seems like a huge oversimplification. And shame on Jonathan Height a little bit, I mean, maybe he was just edited to make it sound like he was simplifying this more than he really was, um, but, like, seriously, shame on whoever was responsible for that for making it seem like this is a one-to-one mapping. I mean, um, we should say this for another time, but I actually did a significant amount of research on suicidality in, uh, when I was in grad school, and there are a ton of factors that contribute to suicide rates, and there are a lot of things that have been happening over the past 10 years that could be contributing some variance to why suicide rates are going up. I mean, oh,

0:33:14 Thomas: Okay. Well, yeah, definitely for another time, but can you give us any, you know, a few tidbits there of what, what other factors you might be thinking of? I, I, for, for example, if you want to, if you wanna take a second in this verge article that I keep talking about, they do mention you know socioeconomic problems I mean, in the last 10 years and in the next 10 years after all this nonsense, yeah, that's going to be a big factor.

0:33:23 Lindsey: Man, I mean, so when was the Sure, it is. I mean, yeah, so socioeconomic factors are demonstrably a huge factor on, uh, that influences suicide rates. Yeah, so to the extent that that some of those same issues are emerging at around the same time as, I'm trying to remember what the time frame was that Height was referencing specifically, I want to say it was like 2011 or something like that. Does that sound right?

0:34:03 Thomas: I can't remember. I only remember the like the by age, not necessarily by the time, you know, like what year the data was. I didn't really track that, I guess.

0:34:04 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. It, I, yeah, I don't remember either, but it was recent and you know, I can think of, so let's say it was somewhere around 2010. I mean, I dunno, 2008, some stuff happened. It was kind of crazy, right? I mean I, I Don't know. It's, um, but, uh, I reacted incredibly strongly to that scene in particular, like, uh, yeah. So to, to bring that all down to social, social media, I just think is is a gross oversimplification of what's going on.

0:34:23 Thomas: Yeah. OK.

0:34:42 Thomas: Interesting. Yeah. OK.

0:34:44 Lindsey: So just one other thing about, um, the, uh, the research that I was looking at about social media, um, the last paper that I looked at was like a theoretical review paper, and they were talking about the fact that there seemed to be all these contradictions in the literature about the, the association between social media use and well-being. And their claim, which I thought was kind of interesting, was that it's not really about social media used per se that's causing these problems. It's about people's motivations when they're using social media.

0:35:17 Thomas: Hmm.

0:35:17 Lindsey: So to the extent that some people are using social to make meaningful social connections, it can actually have positive effects on well- being, which they found in some studies. But if people are using it in some of the ways that you were actually referencing a minute ago, like, you know, they're making social comparisons, for instance, you know, they have problems with self-esteem. And so when they go on Facebook, they are primarily looking at their friends and thinking that they are more attractive than they are, that they're having more fun or whatever. So if somebody has that kind of motivation when they are using social media, then that would be more likely to lead to these negative impacts. But again, it's just, it's not like it's not an inherent part of using social media, it's, it's related to a bunch of other factors that are likely to be influencing the person's psychology. Yeah.

0:35:24 Thomas: Right.

0:36:06 Thomas: That's interesting. I mean, I wonder how we would get those, you know, I mean if it came to be one way or the other that there was a self-esteem shift, there was, you know, a trend where people are comparing themselves, you know, to people too much and it's leading to certain bad outcomes, and maybe if the counter argument is, well, it's not the social media exactly, because if you go into it, as you're saying, if you go into it with these motivations it's fine, could could you make the counter argument that's like, yeah, but the social media being there is encouraging those motivations going into it

0:36:43 Lindsey: Yeah, I do, I do. I think that, I think that if you if you have those pre-existing motivations and then you have this tool that makes social comparisons super easily available to you, then yeah, you're gonna, set you're gonna suffer more negative outcomes because of that, I

0:36:44 Thomas: Okay. Well And I'm saying maybe you don't have those pre-existing motivations, but just by, you know, by way of going on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, it's going to encourage those motivations. Reservations.

0:37:10 Lindsey: I think that it can, but I don't think that it necessarily will. Yeah. So, and I mean, again, you know, based on the, the data that have been collected so far, I don't think we have any evidence that it does per se, you know, um, if that were really something that were, um, that was sort of eliciting those kinds of reactions, that to any degree, then we'd see some correlations here, and we're not really seeing them at the rate that we would, would expect to. Yeah.

0:37:14 Thomas: Right. Yeah, sure.

0:37:41 Thomas: Wow. Okay. Well, that is somewhat reassuring.

0:37:42 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah, but we do, I had, just to, to, to qualify things like a scientist, I mean, there really is not enough evidence on this. Like, what we really need are some nice longitudinal studies that, that sort of measure all the kinds of personality traits and stuff that we're talking about, and then watch how social media use affects those traits over time, or affects well-being over time, or whatever. And we don't have a lot of good examples of that yet. So, and once we get that, I mean, you know, it's possible that some evidence accumulates that it does have some effects over time, and they just aren't showing up yet. But anyway, I think that's an important caveat. But yeah,

0:38:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. So would you be worried as a parent, either in real life or as a hypothetical parent, depending on what age of whoever you might be worried at, would you be worried about your kids having access to social media? I mean, is this the kind of thing you would, would want to limit, or, or because I, I honestly, I still, as as reassuring as this might be, I still, I'm very worried about my kids having a phone before a certain age. I just don't, I don't want to do it. I don't know, maybe I'm being a boomer. Okay.

0:38:56 Lindsey: I don't blame you. No, I think it's, I think that millennials are the crotchety ones now. So you can, uh, yeah.

0:39:03 Thomas: Okay. Millennial. Yeah.

0:39:05 Lindsey: Yeah. I think it is a fair question. And I mean, you know, as I said before, these are concerns that I have. I just don't know how justified they are in this respect. You know, I mean I think that there are other things you could worry about. Um, like, you know, my stepson, yes,

0:39:21 Thomas: Like Sexting as a kid, that would be worrisome.

0:39:24 Lindsey: I am very concerned about that. I'm very concerned about the, the vulnerability, right, of kids, because they, they aren't, uh, jaded yet. And so if some creeper comes and and talks to them, they're not necessarily going to be able to recognize the, the red flags that something weird is going on, so I worry about all those things.

0:39:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:39:43 Thomas: Everyone Needs to get real jaded real fast. Okay.

0:39:45 Lindsey: Um Yeah Yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's definitely true.

0:39:50 Thomas: That's fair. I mean, definitely a lot of concerns beyond simply Facebook algorithms or something, right?

0:39:50 Lindsey: Yeah. And But also I am also concerned because my, my stepson really likes TikTok, and he's come, he's come to us occasionally with these tidbits of information, and they're just nonsense, and he doesn't, he doesn't have any sort of framework to, to sort out the nonsense from the sense, and so, I'm trying to think of an example, he, I mean, it wasn't flat earth stuff, but it was stuff like that, where he's like, I saw

0:40:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:40:24 Thomas: I was actually gonna joke that it was water, yeah.

0:40:26 Lindsey: Yeah, and so I don't know, I mean, we talked to him about it and and try to of point out that, you know, I know it seems like there's these people that have platforms, and you respect them because of all their followers, and they seem to have people that agree with them, but just because all that's true does not mean that these are actually consensus positions. It doesn't mean that they are actually true, and they're not. So yeah, I don't know, talk to your kids, I guess.

0:40:51 Thomas: Okay. Yeah, um, we talked, talk to your kids. Yeah.

0:40:54 Lindsey: I guess the other things that I thought might be worth getting into are not, not critiques, these are, these are more about the stuff that I think is actually a problem, um And like the reasons that these algorithms can be so problematic, right? Um, um, so I do think that, uh, again, like the rabbit holes and the social media bubbles, I think that those are very real threats, and I think that, you know, in the wrong hands, they can do a lot of damage, which they spent all of like three minutes on at the end of the documentary, which was annoying.

0:41:02 Thomas: So

0:41:30 Lindsey: Um, and I,

0:41:30 Thomas: In your opinion, it really should have been more about that than the other stuff.

0:41:34 Lindsey: I really think so. Um, I mean, yeah, so yeah.

0:41:36 Thomas: Yeah, the YouTube stuff is really, I've talked about that before. I don't They're probably always adjusting their algorithms, but it really does seem like YouTube was made to lead people into alt-right rabbit holes.

0:41:51 Lindsey: Oh yeah. Yeah. Actually, have you, have you listened to the, to the New York Times thing, the, the rabbit hole series?

0:41:53 Thomas: Oh, no, the separate series?

0:42:01 Lindsey: That, Yes, it is incredible. It is, it is super, super well done. And I, I recommend that to everybody. Um, but it's a, it's about specifically this issue, um, about YouTube's algorithm and yes, they've changed it since then, but at one point it was, it was set up specifically. Yeah, so that people would get into these, these alt-right rabbit holes as you say and that's a problem um

0:42:01 Thomas: No, I haven't.

0:42:23 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. And the moon landing stuff and the flat earth stuff. It just seemed set up to keep suggesting these shittier and shittiest videos.

0:42:26 Lindsey: Yeah yeah Yeah, it is, and I mean, you know, from their perspective, again, it's just about time on the app and keeping people watching, um, but it has these really horrible unintended consequences because yeah

0:42:41 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So do you do you agree with the basic premise of they are going to profit more when they keep us engaged? I think you've already agreed with that when they want to monopolize our attention, which, you know, fair enough. A lot of stuff does. And advertising, having your attention and sending ads is the main business model. Now, what about the part where then they say, OK, the best way to keep people on these things is to keep us mad at everything all the time? Um, is yeah Is that something supported by science? Is that a concern that that you think is valid?

0:42:55 Lindsey: Oh yeah that's true. Yes. Yes, I do. Um, they actually, there were a few, uh, talks about this at a social site conference that I went to a few years, years ago, uh, where they were doing these analyses of, um, tweets and like which tweets go viral and it was specifically ones that had like out- outraging content that were most likely to go viral, yeah.

0:43:21 Thomas: Okay. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like moral indignation kind of thing, yeah, I've really worried about that. You know, it sucks that so many things it, yeah, that that is, that is a problem. I'm constantly not sure what to do with it, you know, I, mainly because sometimes I do tweet along those lines. Not that anything I say really gets much attention, but, but you know, and the stuff that I do tweet that's more moderated or more, uh, I don't know, doesn't involve that like kind of, it really is a specific tweet. And I'm sure we all without, if you're on Twitter can kind of imagine what it is. It's like this, it's like a moral indignation combined with like an, a little bit of an own of somebody, you know? Like look at how this thing they said is a blah, blah, bla. That's the thing that really goes viral and it, it really does seem like it's collapsing our conversation a lot, um, and yeah, I do worry about that. I don't know what we're

0:43:43 Lindsey: Yeah. Exactly, yeah, um, sure. Yes. Yes. Yeah Well,

0:44:40 Thomas: Supposed to do about that, though.

0:44:41 Lindsey: Okay, but like, that's the thing, right? Like, like so the, so their call to action, and like, to their credit, they did spend all of like 17 seconds talking about how we need to be pushing for more regulations on these things and ways of of changing the incentive structure so that these, so that these algorithms don't work the same way. Or what was the one guy's suggestion about like taxing companies on data usage? Usage, yeah.

0:44:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah Oh, Uh, well, I don't, I missed that, I guess, I don't remember, yeah.

0:45:16 Lindsey: Um, and like, great, those, those were all like excellent yeah

0:45:20 Thomas: I've heard before, we should get paid for our data kind of thing, is it along those lines, okay.

0:45:25 Lindsey: Yeah, it was, I can't remember exactly how he phrased it, but it was essentially the idea that, you know, um, the data is their profit and so they should be taxed on it, um, and so those kinds of strategies that are, are, you know, systematically changing things from the top down, like that's where our attention needs to be focused, and so that that, I think was like the most important part of the call to action, and then immediately they follow it up with all this other stuff about how like, all right, so make sure you keep your kids off social media and change your app settings, and it was just very frustrating to me because I thought that like through the entire documentary they should have been keeping the focus at this more systemic level. This is

0:45:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:46:06 Thomas: They, they could have done a lot more on Congress and how atrocious some of those hearings were, you know, when they, I guess they did some of that, but I, here's, here's the thing that I think this, again, this verge article that I Think was really good mentioned. There's somebody named Sophie Zhang. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly. She was a data scientist fired in August from, I believe, let's see, Facebook. Yeah. Yeah. And she, she wrote like a 6,000 word farewell memo and Buzzfeed, I guess, published it or whatever. And it it's, it's pretty troublesome. And I think it, it kind of, I think het agrees with you. This, this verge article agrees with you that it was a lot about how she, you know, here she was essentially, I think she describes herself as something like an entry level employee or she, describes herself as, you You know, she's not an expert in politics or government or anything like that.

0:46:06 Lindsey: Yeah Right.

0:47:07 Thomas: And yet the thing she was doing personally was affecting like whole countries, you know, like these like actually like presidents and stuff and that it needs attention. Like this can't be something that some people in Facebook are responsible for. It's like too big of a thing. And the point that the Verge article makes is that, you know, and I want to give credit again, I'll link it, but it's written by, let's see, Casey Newton. And it talks about like maybe focus on this a lot. Like this is, it's less about like, okay, you and I need to change our privacy settings, which, okay.

0:47:14 Lindsey: Absolutely.

0:47:25 Lindsey: Which

0:47:44 Thomas: Yeah. I mean, it could be a good individual choice. I don't know.

0:47:43 Lindsey: Does nothing, I mean, yeah. Yeah it's

0:47:47 Thomas: I haven't

0:47:48 Lindsey: It's helpful to us, but it doesn't address the problem, yeah.

0:47:48 Thomas: Really. Right. Well, I mean, if the idea is, oh, if we all do that, it'll make a difference. That might be true. But also, it's I don't know that it's going to make a difference with a lot of these bigger issues, especially in other countries where Facebook is the Internet like that needs to be regulated. We need massive oversight of these companies, I think.

0:48:03 Lindsey: But Exactly. Yes. Yeah, no, that, that, that is exactly, yes, that's exactly where I'm at, um, because it's, it's like, it's all of, there are so many issues that are like this right now, you know, um, with with climate change right

0:48:14 Thomas: OK. Yeah, I brought that up as well with this.

0:48:22 Lindsey: Um yeah Yeah, yeah, um, yeah, I remember that, so yeah, and I, and I totally agree with it, like this idea that like, you know, the thing that we need to do to solve climate change is for each of us to recycle, like, I'm not saying don't recycle, you should, but also it's not going to fix the issue, you you need systemic change to fix the issue, and then it's almost like people who, who want to be shitty about this stuff can come back and be like, well, if everybody had just recycled more, climate would be better. It's y'all's fault.

0:48:35 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It really does suck that so much of everything comes down to, well, if we had actual humans in government that wanted to do the government part of government, then maybe we could do something about this. But unfortunately that is what it comes down to. So like, I hate that every, every episode collapses into that, but like, it's just the truth.

0:49:10 Thomas: Yeah, you're not going to get the regulation you need unless people like, Like, I don't know, Elizabeth Warren have the more power, have a Senate majority, not that she has to be president per se. I would have liked it, but that, you know, we have a senate majority to where our stupid system that is broken and was designed by, you know, slaveholders

0:48:53 Lindsey: Uh-huh. Yeah that's where we are Uh-huh. Yeah

0:49:30 Thomas: In the 1700s or whatever. Like it's we have to have the power to be able to do this stuff, unfortunately.

0:49:36 Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, I, I can't remember if I, if I messaged you this or not when I was watching the documentary, but but like all the way through I kept thinking like, you know, the bottom line here, when people come away from this documentary, the bottom line they need to take away is like, shit, I should have voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primaries.

0:49:37 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:49:53 Lindsey: Was it? No, like, everybody's focused on the guy spying on them, you know, still talking to their ex-girlfriend or whatever, you know, that puts the focus on entirely the wrong thing, um, I

0:50:06 Thomas: Okay. So in your opinion, do we want to try to bring it to a close? Is there anything else that, you know, you really wanted to get out there to people that they should know about this?

0:50:17 Lindsey: Don't think so, I, I had like a couple other things, but I think we can skip them, um, I'm

0:50:22 Thomas: It's up to you. I just, I, you know, I wanted to maybe just ask you as a human person, what is your takeaway from the, you know, putting all this that, you know, of the science and everything together, are you deleting your accounts? Are you, you now, what, what? How do you take this personally?

0:50:38 Lindsey: I'm not deleting my accounts there, but but I have, I have, again, I, I have changed things so that I have more control over when I engage in social media. I do not like having constant notifications interrupting me. I don't like any of that, and so I keep my phone on silent, and I disable as many notification settings as I possibly can, and when I want to be on social media, I'm on it, and when I don't want to, I'm not constantly reminded of it, and I think that that works for me, but no, I am not going to delete social media. It's great.

0:51:12 Thomas: Yeah, it really is. The Facebook groups are my favorite thing now. I mean, I really do like Reddit though. That actually, Reddit is also my favorite thing. It's just fun to go. I just go on the front page of Reddit and I just see like, what's everybody into today? It's a really, I don't know, I find it fun. But Yeah, I think we really would be losing something if we all dropped out of the groups that I know a lot of people listening are in. I'm loving, I love our groups, OA and SIO and Philosophers in Space. They're a lot fun. I know people have a ton more than that. Yeah.

0:51:16 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And weasel stronghold. Yeah.

0:51:43 Thomas: People have a lot, a lot of groups they like, and and part of it is like, okay, yeah, I can see how some of this stuff would rabbit hole people into becoming school shooters and that sucks, absolutely, but I'm not gonna be a school shooter, so like I, you know. It's it's weird to be like, I need to delete my account because someone else is on here and gonna become a shooter, I don't know, it doesn't, it doesn't seem like it's going to do anything, but I don't know. I could be wrong.

0:51:54 Lindsey: Mm-hmm. No. No, it's not. It's not only Elizabeth Warren can solve this problem. So

0:52:13 Thomas: Oh, well, there you go. Only. Oh, but in seriousness, we need oversight of these stupid companies. I don't know if I, you know, maybe I'd want to see some, some research and some proposals, but I could, I could even see supporting like massive action. Like what if we, you know, oh, what's the word I always forget where the state takes over the, you know, socialized, not exactly socialized. But what if we if we turn this into a utility kind of thing, like some of these things, rather than being a profit center? I don't know. I mean, maybe it is to the point where we don't want some company just screwing with our minds all the time on that with the algorithms. I don't know. One way or the other, something on a governmental level needs to be done.

0:52:13 Lindsey: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed.

0:52:56 Thomas: All right. OK, well, thanks for that breakdown. I feel a little better about all this. And, you know, with the caveats that you mentioned, scientific caveats. But yeah. All Right. So maybe if you don't want to, don't delete your accounts, everybody.

0:53:07 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. No, no. Elect Elizabeth Warren.

0:53:15 Thomas: Yeah. Elect a majority so that she can be in charge of a subcommittee that will do this. There we go, all

0:53:21 Lindsey: Yes. Okay. Yes, yes. All right. I like that. That's good plan B.

0:53:25 Thomas: Right. Well, thanks again so much, Aaron, for for coming on, give us giving us the scientific breakdown. I really do enjoy it, it, it's nice to feel like, you know, have a little more of a handle on these issues.

0:53:29 Lindsey: Yeah yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Lots of fun.

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