The Effects of Social Media and You Part 1

This is Sam from the Masking Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome once again to Land Talk Radio Podcast. So today we want to ask the question, Roy, what, when you grab your phone, listeners, you got your phone in your hand, you're looking at social media, you're looking at Facebook, you're looking at Instagram, you're looking at TikTok, you're looking at YouTube, you're looking at all of these platforms that you have on your phone. And what is that doing to your children?

What is that doing to you? This is our topic today, Roy. The platform of, of what Facebook and all these other social media sites do is they have to be able to pull you in, you know, so, so there has to be like a hook. Well, of course, social media, it's totally a hook, right? I mean, everybody's on Facebook.

I was just speaking about this the other day, Will, speaking of social media. Look how many people are at restaurants. I mean, couples sitting in restaurants with their family. And listen, man, if you're paying attention, because if you're hearing this and we're talking to you, if you're one of these people, that they're sitting there in the restaurant, all of the family members have their phones out, and they're sitting there messing with Facebook, see what everybody else is doing. And then they might might snap a picture of them sitting at the table so they can post and tell the world that they're at dinner with their sibling and with their children whom they're not speaking with. They might, they won't put that part in there. So they'll paint this story in this picture on social media looks totally different than what the reality is.

Absolutely. Tied up and occupied. And seeing that the and the object is Facebook is what they're doing.

So all these other social media platforms is what they're doing is they they are trying to get the content. And this is why when we're going to be talking today about Frances Haugen. And I just say praise God for her. God bless her. Because what she did is she really, it really took some courage for her to go in front of Congress and go in front of all of the prime time news media magazine shows. And she really put herself out there. And she really put her her interests, you know, because this is this is her future. I mean, here's a here's a Harvard MBA, and well educated woman, very versed, understand the platform of what Facebook was attempting to do and how they hired her some of the things that she was pulled in to do. And then she get in there, Roy, and then all of a sudden she find out that things are not the way that they presented it to her. This is why I applaud what she did, and what she's continuing to do because she cares about children.

And the subcommittee that she sat on, well talked to up in Congress, she it was basically centered around young children. And so dads, uncles, all granddads that's out there. If you're listening, moms, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, this is what your children are exposed to.

Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, they're hooking them and pulling them in. Yeah, we've lost the sense of innocence. Well, there's we've no longer recognize the fact that the young mind is very formidable and very moldable. And the stuff that we're exposing them to is basically creating a numbness, if you will, it's creating a desensitization to everything that's going going on ahead of them.

They're desensitized to sexuality, desensitized to murder, value of life, all those things because of the social media blitz on such a young mind. And then not to mention, it's creating a narrative based on what they're looking at that informs their future, which I'm sure we'll get into later in the show that forms how they're going to think in the future about different items, right? Absolutely. And see, that's why I applaud the subcommittee members, which was a bipartisan type of panel, if you will, or subcommittee. They all were in agreement because the week before they had another VP from Facebook talking to the subcommittee, which said a completely different thing than what Frances Haugen said.

And so they had all these mixed signals. And if you if you're a listening listener, if you want to listen to the whole subcommittee talk that she gave, you can go to YouTube is on there or we can put a link to the to the website from the website, talk them and you can go right there. But it's very, very interesting and it's informative. So this first clip we want you to listen to is this is what Facebook interests is and this is what Frances Haugen said based on her working in Facebook. The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money. So see, that's the that's the gist of what it comes down to. Roy, it's about making money. So it she saw where it didn't matter what Facebook did and in reference to how they are putting our children in harm's way. But what the bottom line was, it was all about the dollar bill. Of course. Well, I mean, most corporations are about profitability, correct?

It is. And even in the situation here, and I guess this goes back to earlier conversations, and I think we spoke to a documentary on Netflix in which we're not sponsored by or get any compensation for it, but with social dilemma. And it spoke to that more about that, not specifically by age group, but how it's shaping around the individual. So Facebook recognized that there was some impact to the children, if I'm hearing this correctly. Right. Exactly. And they and it was brought to their attention what the potential impact was, and then they chose the dollar interest versus the health and well-being of the listener. Because one of the observer or participant.

Exactly. Because one of the things she said, Roy, was 60 cents percent of teen girls and 40 percent of teen boys face negative comparisons. So when they're looking at Facebook, of course, the more content you look at, that's in the advertisements. That's how Facebook gets paid.

And so the more you stay on there, the more you absorb. And so she's saying the things that's being presented on Facebook is having a negative comparison against the teens, because what happens is they look at these things on Facebook and now they want to take on the persona of what these things are. And see, and that's the damaging part, because it's it's it's glamorized, Roy. And by persona, you're referring to what they're seeing in this particular illustration or this particular lifestyle or this particular way of doing things is what they want to now become a part of. And now they want to emulate in their own life. Is that what you're saying?

Exactly. And what and what is that all about? Because when they go on there, they're looking at celebrities, Roy. They're looking at singers. They're looking at dancers. They're looking at movie stars, if you will. These are the people who they are looking at. And so if they're looking at these people who is basically way out of their income zone and now they're putting pressure on these teens to look like them.

And that's just one component. What about the behavior to start behaving like these influences, right? Or to start looking like the influences or start, you know, basically even mirroring back, Will, if we think about some of the negativism that goes on on social media, you know, it used to be that a thumbs up was a good thing. Now it's become a point, if you don't get enough thumbs up, that it becomes a scar in your persona, you know, because, oh, they don't like what I've said. I've got, you know, 200 down thumbs and 5000 up thumbs, you know. So now they, oh, gosh, what am I going to do with 200 people that are that don't like what I've said or don't like me.

And so we were growing up. It didn't matter. You know, I guess we're about the same today. You know, people either love you or they don't love you. That's okay.

You know, they have to deal with their dislike of you or dislike of you. Well, you know, we don't worry about getting this thumbs up on a social media post, right? Or site. So part of that may be because I'm not on Facebook. I don't know if you are, but I'm not on Facebook. I've chosen not to be on it and my wife's chosen not to be on it. And I do have one social media account that's for the ministry and then I follow it on a personal note. It's Instagram, but that's it only because I just keep up with a few family members and that's it. I'm not getting into Facebook. I do it with all that other stuff. It's just I can't do it.

The ministry has it. Somebody else manages some of those other components. Well, see, and the thing about it is, is Facebook and all of the other social media is out there, Roy.

They're, they're not, it was not designed initially according to what Francis Hoggins said. It wasn't designed initially for a lot of what is being presented now on Facebook. And the censoring that's going on. That's the other thing. It's one thing if you've got a platform like Facebook and you let it run.

Good, bad, ugly, let it be. And you don't have the algorithms being developed in the background so that it's shaping content that's coming at you or your children. That would not be necessary, would not necessarily be a bad thing, right?

If you had a platform that it was fully open and it ran like it's supposed to. And this is, and this is basically what she said. And so she said, she went on to talk about, she said there was 600,000 underage accounts. Underage. And that's under the age of 13.

Oh God, under the age of 13. And what year was this? And so this was here recently. And so she said there was 600,000 underage accounts. And once the news broke of what Facebook had, you know, with her coming out and talking about how this is harming children, all of a sudden the 600,000 accounts disappeared. As in they just went away or they were hidden?

Well, that's the thing. Only Facebook knows for sure. Based on recent reports. Because they could say, no, because see, they could say, they could say we deleted them, but how do we know for sure? And what happens to the data?

What happens to all of the data from those 600,000 accounts? So see, again, it's a lot of misnomers. But it's exercising control at their discretion instead of, back to what we were just mentioning earlier, freedom of speech, letting it run as a platform. It's their decision and who are they is the question. And since it's their decision, we don't know who the they is in the background, right?

We don't know that that group is in the background. Exactly. And so, but back to the original point, folks, are you looking at what your children are looking at?

That's the point. You as the parent should be doing it. And you have the right to do it. As long as they're under your roof as your child. Hey, so I trust my children will listen. It's so we all want to trust our children. But guess who's after your children? Who is after their children will the enemy enemy. And that's not just in Satan.

That's many others in the world today that are after your children that are a direct result or lineage of Satan. So, folks, you've got to own this. You can't just brush it off. Absolutely. And and this this number just blown me away. Roy, we're coming up on the break. So when we come back from the break, we will want to talk about the amount of people as of today that's on Facebook worldwide. The number will blow you away.

Well, nothing surprises me these days when we talk about social media. We'll be right back with you folks. Thanks for joining us. We'll be here.

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Call 336-885-1987. Well, praise the Lord. We are back. Once again, we're talking about the social dilemma and you. And so I, I cannot imagine, you know, a lot of what people are maybe considering or thinking about, Roy, when it comes to social media. But we wanted, we were talking about the amount of people when we went to break that's on Facebook as of today. 1.5 billion. Now, that's not million. That's billion with a B.

That's the amount of people worldwide, according to Frances Haugen, that's on Facebook today. And so with this subcommittee, I mean, I applauded all the subcommittee members. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Blumenthal, who is the chairman of this subcommittee. And this subcommittee, basically, it sort of looks at those things. And they constantly referred to a Section 230, which was a PAC Act. And this committee is a provisions of the communication discrepancy or discretionary act. And it's sort of like overseas, the things that are spoken about on social media platforms, but they don't hold the actual platform responsible for some of the things that third parties might put on their platform. And so, you know, and I started reading the section and it's kind of it's kind of intense.

It's really deep and legalized. But what Frances Haugen was saying is that this needs to be fine tuned because it's too broad right now. Right. Will this can we back up just one second on the population or the number of users? You said 1.5 billion. OK, so I quickly did a Google on the total population. 2021 numbers are showing 7.99 billion people. Wow. So if you've got 1.5 accounts or users and then my curiosity jumped out. So let's see real quickly, how many people actually have Internet access or an Internet capability?

So worldwide, there are 4.66 billion, 4.6 billion, call it 4.7 to round up, 4.7 billion active Internet users worldwide as of 2021. Wow. So look at that from the terms of percentages. Wow. So that's roughly less than just slightly more than one third, right? Exactly.

Just slightly more than one third of the total Internet users or accounts in the world that have a Facebook account attached to their usage. Now think about impact. Folks, you want to see how quickly something bad can go from bad to worse to tragic.

We're in the tragic stage right now because of the negativism that goes on and the negative influences overall and the impact and the slow fades that are occurring. Step by step through the algorithms that are being built around these accounts, the searches, the interest, all those things. Think about that, folks. Just stop for a moment. 1.5 billion accounts of Facebook out of 4.6 billion potential customers, if you will, are Internet users globally.

There's 1.5 that already have a Facebook account. Now, do you understand the magnitude of that, the potential impact globally? Now flip that around. If we were as hungry and as eager and as energetic to doing sharing the gospel and going after people and creating those sorts of things to grow the kingdom, man, what a difference we could make. Exactly, Roy. And the thing about it is, you know, I think that Frances Haugen's heart for children and people at large is that she had a heart for them.

Well, she would not have basically sacrificed her career, which basically she done. So there had to be a lot of soul searching, you know, from the standpoint in which she sat and then going forward to reveal some of the things she saw. But to your point, Roy, is that if we had as many people who were open to the gospel and allowing the gospel to be spread, you know, through whatever platform or social media. And we say that that is occurring because I see it in my nieces and nephews and some of my friends, you know, who are living far away. And they're sharing the gospel. There are groups.

In fact, I'm part of a group that they call themselves the next generation. And they're talking about the gospel. They get together and it's that the group is growing. It started out with like 40 or 50. And now it's I don't know, you know, a couple hundred thousand. And these are people around the world. And so they get together. They ask questions about the gospel.

And then you have pastors who are out there who look to answer some of their questions. So social media and my point is this, Roy, is that social media, even though and as as Frances Haugen stated, she said that that because Facebook knows how to make it safer, they chose profits over people. Those were her exact words. And so she understood from the inside and she said people who are never all who will never work on the inside, who never work on the inside, they'll never know what's going on.

Of course not. And so this is this is why I think she took the step forward. So, again, kudos to her, applause to her. And I just thank God for the fact of what she did.

So in this next clip, Roy, we're going to she's going to give you the reasons for the documentation that she took and presented out to the public. The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.

OK, you got to go to that second. I've seen a bunch of social networks and it was substantially worse at Facebook than anything I'd seen before. You know, someone else might have just quit and moved on.

And I wonder why you take this stand. Imagine you know what's going on inside Facebook and, you know, no one on the outside knows. I knew what my future looked like if I continued to stay inside of Facebook, which is person after person after person has tackled this inside of Facebook and ground themselves to the ground.

When and how did it occur to you to take all of these documents out of the company? At some point in 2021, I realized, OK, I'm going to have to do this in a systemic way and I have to get out enough that no one can question that this is real. No one can question. So she she had to gather enough evidence of what was happening into Facebook so that when you looked at the evidence, the evidence was so overwhelming that you couldn't deny it. And see, and I was just going to tag that in with with with what we as believers see when when you do a thorough search of the gospel and you start going down that that road, just as, you know, in a couple of weeks, we're going to have a guest who everybody will will know who's been in been out there reading and know anything about a case for Christ. Yes.

Without giving it away right now. But he he is going to tell you exactly the steps that he took being an individual who was in the journalism field. So he took these steps and then all of a sudden he said, I'm just going to I'm just going to let the evidence lead me to either say, yes, this is a Jesus Christ thing or no, this isn't a Jesus Christ thing. And so he found out through just straight investigation that this was a Jesus. Yeah.

And so the evidence demanded a verdict, same as Josh McDowell years earlier. But so we're excited to have him. It's going to be a great show. So, folks, be sure and join us. It'll be the Sunday, the 21st, if I've got my math correctly, will be the show that it'll be airing on Sunday, the 21st and available for for your listening pleasure.

So we'll back to the downloads and back to the total number of users and that sort of thing real quick. And it's great for this lady to pull the documents out. And, you know, somebody's going to pick her up. It's obvious somebody with that level of integrity and concern over humanity.

Someone has to pick her up. I don't know if you've noticed this week, the Bible app is sending out updates. They're approaching 500 million downloads. Wow.

Now there is hope, folks. So if you say one point four billion Facebook accounts or users or people in the world, there's 500 million of the Bible app that has been downloaded. And I dare say that that's having a much. Well, I won't dare say I will say that that's having a multi time effect over and above what Facebook does in people's lives.

If they're staying in it and watching the reminders and following the program. And the thing about that, Roy, is it's available in so many languages, too. So now you have people all over the world who are downloading this Bible app and they're able to get, you know, it in their own language, which is which is a blessing. But when we see what what Francis done and see, there is laws that protect the whistleblower. We want to make sure we get this in. So what she did, what she did was not was not against the law.

And and Senator Blumenthal, who is the chair of this subcommittee, he basically said, we are going to basically do whatever we need to do, you know, in order to ensure that there is no backlash against her. So, again, praise the Lord for the fact on this coming forward, someone who was working on the inside so that we could look at safety for our children and ensure that we are not allowing ourselves to be disengaged from the Bible and yet engaging in social media. Yeah, that's great.

Great point, Will. You know, you think back and hindsight's always 20, 20. But this was one of those things, along with the Internet access that, you know, early on in our lives when we were seeing what was starting to develop. And we talked about the fact that people should not have, let's say, people, children below the age of 18, should not have free access to all of the stuff that was on the world at the time.

Worldwide Internet, as everybody referred to it as. Right. It should not have been made available. There should have been some limits globally today. If you're doing this type of content, we're not going to allow access to anybody below the age of 18.

And that should have happened. But we've got so far past that it's out of control. Hence, everything is on go.

There are no limitations. Well, folks, we thank you for joining us. Come back next week for part two of the show, Will. We're going to have some more discussion around this topic because social media blitz is on people.

And you as men and women of God, you need to know the truth because Jesus said you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Join us again next week. God bless.

As we wrap up today's show. Be assured that TAWCMM talking and walking Christian men's ministry is building a community of men that are Christ followers with the desire to be servant leaders in their homes, communities, churches and work environments. Check out our website for upcoming events and regularly scheduled meetings. Drop us a note for topics that you would like to have us visit in the future. Thank you for joining us on Man Talk today. Visit us at www.tawcmm.com. Men walking the talk.