The Effects of Social Media and You Part 2

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Here's our hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones, Jr., a black guy and a white guy. We are once again talking about social media and you. Are you spending too much time on social media? What about your children? Do you know what they're looking at? Do you know what they're listening to?

Do you know what the spouse is looking at or listening to? See, we don't want to just stop at children, but we saw Roy from last week's show that social media is having a very negative impact on the population at large, because it incites hate, and this is according to Frances Haugen. God bless her.

We love you for what you've done, in reference to making this known, being a person on the inside, to bring this to our attention, to say that our children are being harmed by this, adults are being harmed, spouses are being harmed, aunts, uncles, granddads, grandmothers, all of them, Roy, are being harmed by this. If we let it, that's the key, because, see, born-again believers, see, we're led by the Spirit. Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God. Amen. And the key there, Will, is, I think we need to differentiate, right, real quickly here. Just because you're a follower of Christ, doesn't mean you're protected from the ill intent or impact of social media. You, as the follower of Christ, have got to self-monitor, you've got to self-isolate, you've got to withdraw from much of this.

And folks, for those of you that don't know, we've talked about it on multiple shows, and we'll just briefly mention it again, in case you missed last week. When you start searching on social media, and when you start looking at different material, you're helping to build algorithms in the background on your search history and on your interest. And then those algorithms create additional content to send towards you, and start stimulating with you, and start coming at you, because it basically emulates you behind the scenes.

Okay, Will likes this, Will likes scripture, Will likes different speakers, Will likes Tony Evans, Will likes Lee Strobel, Will likes Roy Jones, Will likes whomever. These are the types of things that they start building in the background. So now all of a sudden, those are the things you start seeing.

But if you're a person who's a naysayer, who's in a negative environment, your conspiracy theory, whatever you happen to be in the middle of, pornography or whatever, the system is building in the background, the algorithms to start throwing more stuff at you, send more ads towards you, to send more opportunities, other apps to join into, other organizations, other Facebook groups to join, because of who you are, they already have all that information going in the background. And that's what most people don't realize, Will. And we talked about the documentary, right, Social Dilemma. As we mentioned on the last show, folks, if you haven't seen it, go watch it. It's not a Christian-based documentary, but it speaks to the very thing Will is opening up to us with on Facebook and all these other social media sites. So let's listen now to the next clip, Roy, clip number three, where Francis is talking with the host of 60 Minutes. And if you haven't seen it, go out and check it out. It's only about 13 to 16 minutes long.

Or you can also go out on the website and look at the full version of her talking to the subcommittee. It erodes our faith in each other. It erodes our ability to want to care for each other. The version of Facebook that exists today is tearing our societies apart and causing ethnic violence around the world. So it's tearing our society apart and it's causing ethnic violence. So when we look at some of the things that's happening in other countries, Roy, see, we may not see ethnic violence happening over here to the extent of what is happening abroad. But this is why we have to be made known about what's happening inside the social media. So now when we exposed ourselves to it, and you and I both know, Roy, when something piques your attention, such as you might see someone get shot or, you know, someone like the story that you shared with me about the individual who was raped on a train in broad daylight.

Talk about that, Roy. Yeah, that goes back to, I think, the desensitizing that goes on from all this social media and all this exposure wheel. There was a young lady in Philadelphia several weeks ago that was on a commuter train, I think the L's they call it. And apparently some guy sat down beside her the way the story, the first story read. And of course, the narrative's changed some since then and kept messing with her, antagonizing her, basically harassing her.

And then eventually the harassment turned into a physical assault, which eventually turned into rape. And the way the police report was that initially was that multiple people were in and out of the train. And some, I think, maybe even been on there while this was happening, but nobody stepped in. They basically were bystanders. And I think part of that goes in.

Initial reports indicated there were those that had pulled their cell phones out and were filming it rather than intervening to try to save this young lady. And which we'll talk about that, you know, men, if you're listening to that, that should make you sick. And ladies, if you're listening to it, turn to your man and say, you know, you need to be a man and someone should intervene if you're ever in that type of situation, which we've talked about several times, Will, off the radio is that you really have to be a person that's willing to put your life down for another. And scripture talks about that. No greater love than a man lay down his life for a brother or a friend.

For a friend. Exactly, Roy. And I think, you know, people, because the enemy wants to bring about hate, he wants to bring about terror, he wants to bring about fear.

So those are his weapons of warfare. And but I believe the believer, when I believe, when you take a stand for the good that God will and can protect you in certain situations. Oh, you know, because because I can think of numerous times in my life to where I shouldn't be sitting here talking with you, Roy. And I'm sure you could you probably have some as well, you know, that we shouldn't be sitting here talking right now.

But God spared us. And of course, I know the ones that we shared, you know, on the air and on the podcast was the time when the the roads were wet. And, you know, I was coming down what we what they call Death Alley, which where 40 and 85 merge.

Yeah. And all of a sudden, you know, the the car, it was car merging, you know, from the right hand lane on to the left hand lane was merging right into me. And it just seems like I had nowhere to go. But it was like an arm. Just push the car. And instead of ending up flipping several times or doing a donut, Roy. God blessed me to land on the grassy knoll.

Yeah, that was the hand of God or a guardian angel just reaching and pushing you right where you need to be a grassy knoll. So so I know that God will protect you in certain situations. And the thing about it is, is see, once we realize, Roy, what social media can do to you is when we should be listening to podcasts like this, because see, it we want to heighten your awareness. And you say, so what does this have to do anything? It's harming your children.

It's bringing this type of content into your home. And you're wondering, why is my son or why is my daughter responding the way that they are? Yeah, one of the questions men and women that you're listening, you need to ask yourselves, how is this impacting my kids future self? So if what they're taking in and visualizing and experiencing is going to impact their future self, you need to intervene, if it's especially if it's in a bad way. But if you're not monitoring it, you have no idea what they're up against. If you're not looking at it, you have no idea what they're looking at. If you're not listening to it, you have no idea what they're listening to. So folks, we're not we're not getting on you here. We're trying to encourage you in a very, very firm and loving way that do not trust, do not trust that those young eyes and those young minds know what to do in the when they're tempted, or when they're in the middle of this.

And the other thing is, they could be getting indoctrinated and entrenched in things that are absolutely against your value system, absolutely against your values, exactly. And if you're a follower of Christ, then you need to say, I am going to stand today for my family, and for my wife, and for anyone that you have impact and influence over, you're gonna say it stops with me. I am the watchman on the wall. I am the warrior for my family. And I am the guardian of my house. If you are not willing to say those things, then you need to self reflect and say, what is it that I'm doing that God wants me to do? Am I and if you're answering that you're not gonna do any of those other things, I can just about assure you that you're off center to what God's will is for your life.

Amen, Roy. And, you know, I'm looking here at Proverbs 26. And verse number four, and it says, I'm reading from the CSB, don't answer a fool according to his foolishness, or you will be like him yourself. That's amazing. Well, I was looking at that very scripture this afternoon, when when we're talking about that is just a God thing. Absolutely a God thing.

And there's another one in here. Let me pull this up real quick. Well, it's, it's in James themselves in chapter four, I believe about if you know the right thing to do, and don't do it, don't do it yet.

I want to put my hands on that. But anyways, we'll paraphrase and I'll find the exact scripture for you. But if you know the right thing to do, and you don't do it, it is what sin it's a sin. Now listen to that.

Let's repeat that. If you know the right thing to do, and you do not do it, it is a sin. Now that can be translated, you're riding on a train, a young lady's being attacked and you're watching, you just committed the sin. You are as equally as culpable as the person doing the act. It may not be the same consequences, but you're equally as culpable in God's eyes. You knew the right thing to do, but you didn't do the right thing. You allowed the attack to occur, and you stood on the sidelines. Men, get off the sidelines, start protecting your family, start guarding their eyes and guarding their ears, and guarding most importantly, the hearts that God has entrusted you to watch after. Amen. And in chapter 25, Roy and verse 28, a man giving false testimony against his neighbor is like a club or sword or a sharp arrow.

So in other words, you become deadly against the person who you're giving this false testimony to. So see, and this is the thing in what social media is doing. It's putting out these behind the scenes things that we don't know about. And see, it's presenting the things that is making them money, which is inciting hate, violence, and things like this. Pornography. Pornography, things like this. And so it's, as Roy stated, it's building these algorithms about what you're looking at and what you want to see. And so it continues to feed you those things.

Because the more content you absorb, according to Francis Haugen, the more content you absorb, the more money Facebook makes, and the more content of that sort that they put on there, because it's all about selling. It's all about making the dollar bill. James 4.17, you're right.

It's James 4.17, so get a moment, mark that, highlight that in your Bible, put that on your diaspora, and grain it on your heart. Join your hosts Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Affordable chiropractic in High Point. As you might tell from their name, affordable chiropractic, even for the cash patient. Dr. Jeff Fricke has been caring for patients in High Point for 34 years. Physical therapy such as ultrasound and spinal decompression for disc conditions such as herniation, comprehensive care for auto accident injury patients with no out-of-pocket expense. Remember, affordable chiropractic on West Lexington Avenue in High Point.

Call 336-885-1987. We are back. Man talk. And we're talking social media. We're talking the harm social media does. Now again, we are not bashing social media. Social media can be used for good, but if you as the user allow social media to influence you, to get you off track biblically or spiritually, then what you've done, if you have allowed yourself to be the enemy's pawn, because that's what he wants to do. Well, he wants to just basically use us like puppets and he'll use you up.

But see, God in his loving mercy, God, Roy, in his loving grace loves us so much, he don't want us to go down these roads. This is why Roy and I listener are doing, we're doing topics like this because a lot of us, I'm talking about people, Roy, who I've known, who were friends for a long time. And when all of the things started coming out on social media in reference to the election, they are friends no longer. Oh, I know. Yeah. Well, I had that happened, right? And someone that had grown up with a young lady, which is not young, young, but I mean, a neighbor that I'd known since I was five years old, out of the clear blue, sends me a note and wants to know if I support Donald Trump when he was in the middle of the office. So I sent her biblical responses back, right? And then it became a biblical-based conversation, but she didn't want to respond on a biblical basis.

This was a quote unquote believer. This was a person that I had known since I was a kid, married, got several children. And because I didn't answer the way she wanted me to answer, she says, I'm going to unfriend you for life.

So I mean, this is somebody I've known for over 50 years and she's going to unfriend me for life, you know, right at 50 years, unfriend me for life, to your point. Okay. And I was not getting into an argumentative stage. I was taking everything from a biblical standpoint and, you know, and hey folks, whether you like the current administration or not, or the previous administration, if you believe the word of God, then he's there for a reason that God put him into place. Whatever the bigger picture is that we don't understand, God allowed that person to be in that role of leadership in that moment in time. And it obviously fits into his larger plan, which we know how the story ends, right? So let's go back to this thing. I think we can't make a large enough a point here for the role of the father and the husband to be the guardian, to be the watchman on the wall.

It's much better that your child gets upset with you, even your spouse, when you cut off a social media presence or account or activity, because it's for the better health and mental health and the spiritual, most important, spiritual wellbeing of that individual. Don't be afraid to upset them and do it out of love and explain why you're doing it, but stand on your standards. As an old boss of mine used to say, stand on your standards. And in our case, that's standing on the word of God, the biblical standards and the truth. And if you're afraid to stand on the truth, go back and have that inflection and say, where am I at? And take an introspective look at yourself, right? And say, am I really doing the will of God here?

Doing a self evaluation and examination is basically what we look at. See, while you were talking about that, I was looking up Proverbs 13. And if you look down again, I'm reading from the CSB version, verse number five and six of Proverbs 13. The righteous hate lying, but the wicked act disgustingly and disgracefully. Righteousness guards people of integrity.

Do you hear that listener? Righteousness will guard you. If you have a heart of integrity, let me finish reading, but wickedness undermines the center.

So people, when they find you out, and if you keep talking to them, they will, especially a believer. If you keep talking about that, eventually Roy, they'll slip. There'll be an opening.

There'll be something that will contradict what they're saying. That's right. And when that happened, now the door is open and you've been exposed. That's right. The sermon is fully unveiled.

Absolutely. So we, as God's people, we need to live with the heart and mind of integrity. Let this mind be in you, Philippians 2, 5, which is in Christ Jesus.

Take on his mind. If that mind is in you, then think like Christ's thought and understand that we, as God's people, are getting away with nothing. We're getting away with nothing. He sees everything.

He knows all. So we're not getting away with anything. You may be fooling yourself and maybe a few people around you, but to your point, it'll eventually be unveiled as a friend once said, the light will be shown on your sin and on the darkness. And I like what my pastor used to say.

You might get by, but you're not getting away. Amen. Fool some of the people, some of the time, but you can't fool God none of the time.

That's right. Amen. So, you know, it's a blessing Roy, because again, you know, going back to Frances Haugen and this whole social media dilemma and things that we're seeing, let's listen to the next clip that we have on here, which basically talks about civic integrity. They told us we're dissolving civic integrity. Like they basically said, oh, good, we made it through the election.

There wasn't riots. We can get rid of civic integrity now. Fast forward a couple months, we got the insurrection. And when they got rid of civic integrity, it was the moment where I was like, I don't trust that they're willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous. And see Roy, that's what civic integrity, the group that they hired her for, was designed to do is to keep this hate platform and keeps the social media as a place of integrity. And so when they instituted that, when the election was going on, and then after the election was over, they got rid of it and then wham bam, you have the insurrection.

Well, you know, it's interesting. If you think about civic integrity, and then they've they've done away with it. Now the elections are what's the opposite of that?

Lack of lack of absolutely. So if you're willing to say we no longer have an integrity platform, we now have, it's gone. We don't we don't have a need for civic integrity anymore.

It's no longer important to us. Well, what does that say? It says, all bets are off. All anything goes, right? Whether it's truth or not damaging or not, it all goes.

Absolutely. And see, this is why she said, she said, I don't trust them any longer to basically do the right thing when they hired her for civic integrity. And then they dismantled the group. Now, the host went on in that interview, we don't have the clip here, but the host went on, he went on to talk about he said, so basically, what happened to the group? And so when they reached out to Facebook, they said, oh, all of the the jobs that were in the civic integrity department of group just got spread out amongst the other people.

Yeah, we did away with within within, you know, Facebook. So that was the answer basically that they gave. So this is why I think, Roy, that this Frances has a heart for the children. And she wanted to do the right thing. And she saw that it wasn't doing the right thing. You know, once she got into Facebook, and she started saying that there was this double standard that was being discussed and and she just couldn't take it anymore.

That's why again, I just can't say enough. God bless her. Give her two thumbs up for what she for what she did. Yeah, it is a bold thing for someone to that level to step out and say, okay, I am going to try to make a difference.

And I do applaud her like you will for trying to make a difference. Now the key is that now that Congress has the information, what will they do? Or will they just get pushed back on their heels from lobbyists and funding and all that sort of thing to where it becomes? Okay, it was a great discussion. We're not going to make any changes.

We're not going to hold anyone accountable in this arena. Okay, next topic, or are they going to truly do something with it? And that's what we got to see. Because when I looked at the subcommittee talk, you know that she gave the the panel of senators who were on there, they were very open. And basically was saying how we do have to move forward. But I think the proof is in the pudding, so to speak. So that that's what we got to see.

Now on this last clip, we want to get this in. She's talking talking about the changes in algorithms. Facebook's problem is in a change in 2018 to its algorithms, the programming that decides what you see on your Facebook news feed.

So, you know, you have your phone. You might see only 100 pieces of content if you sit and scroll out for, you know, five minutes. But Facebook has thousands of options it could show you. The algorithm picks from those options based on the kind of content you've engaged with the most in the past. And one of the consequences of how Facebook is picking out that content today is it is optimizing for content that gets engagement or reaction. But its own research is showing that content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing, it's easier to inspire people to anger than it is to other emotions.

Wow. So, so see, so if you're out there on Facebook, and, and you're listening to what we're talking about on this particular podcast, and you see hate, you see divisiveness, this is the intent, because they want you to respond to it. So when you start responding to that, they're collecting the data on you from these responses. And now Roy, all of a sudden, you're pulled in because you're like, how dare they say this, and, and you don't know what's happening.

And it all is based on your search content, just back what we've been saying from on this show, last week's show, and on previous shows. So folks, right, there it is, in a congressional hearing, exactly what we've been telling you, algorithms are being built in the background. Well, Proverbs 24, 11, through 12, this, this is perfect ending to our show today is that rescue those beings who are not in the world, rescue those being led away to death, hold back those staggering towards slaughter.

If you say but we knew nothing about this. Does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? So listen, folks, we're telling you, you know that folks are being led to slaughter, because you're letting it happen in your house, in your community, in your church even.

So you as the watchman on the wall and the guardian and the warrior for your family, have a responsibility, a God given responsibility to be the caregiver and the protector. And if not you, then who? So that's, that's the question. If not you, then who?

Because if you allow Facebook and all these other social media platforms to do it, now you're giving into the enemy. If it's going to be, it's up to me. That needs to be your motto. If it's going to be, it's up to me.

You've got to be the one doing it. Folks, it's been a pleasure being with you. Will, we don't talk anymore about the black guy and the white guy. I'm Roy Jones, the white guy.

And I'm Will Hardy, the black guy. It's been great to be with you again, brother. So we'll see you again next time.

God bless everyone. 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. This is the Truth Network.