Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 126: Social Media and the Fitness Industry

Episode Date: September 21, 2021

In this episode, coach Danny outlines how fitness, health, and performance are conveyed on various social media platforms. There is also discussion about the potential long-term ramifications of social media being a primary source of fitness information.---Thanks For Listening!---Grab the new Female Physique Advanced HERE!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE!Want Coach Danny to Fix Your S*** (training, nutrition, lifestyle, etc) fill the form HERE for a chance to have your current approach reviewed live on the show. Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS:Sign up for the trainer mentorship HEREFollow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.

Hey, everybody, welcome in to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, it's your boy, your host, your one and only host, Danny Matranga. And today's episode is going to focus on social media. This is a bit of a tricky topic for me because one of the primary conundrums I find myself in fairly regularly is as a content creator, as an entrepreneur in the digital age, I need to have a presence on social media. But I would be lying to you if I didn't tell you that every single day I stop and ask myself, is the current pattern that we are in as a society with regards to our relationship with

social media, a healthy one. And I generally fall into the camp that no, I don't believe it is. And we're going to talk a lot about that today. I'm going to talk about some of the facts, some of the statistics. We're going to talk a lot about how social media affects things like body image, how we're feeling, what we're exposed to day in and day out, how it kind of cannibalizes our time, a lot about it, but mostly with regards to fitness, misinformation, health, wellness, et cetera, because social media has become a particularly ugly space for all of this stuff. And you just hate to see that in all the ways it's good, there's so many ways it's bad.

We're going to highlight all that specifically looking at the fitness industry, which is, I think, going to make for a really interesting and engaging conversation. So stay tuned. Be sure to listen to the whole episode. But before we get into the facts, let's talk a little bit about how you can support the show. So many of you guys have been phenomenal about leaving five-star ratings and written reviews on iTunes. In fact, I have a few that I want to share with you today before we get started. This one comes from Kapooch, and they say, such useful information and so easy to comprehend. I'm currently in certification for health coaching and plan on getting my personal training certification. I'll definitely be recommending this podcast to my

clients as a reference. I also love that they are only around 30 minutes short and sweet. Thanks so much for the info. Thanks a ton, Kapooch. Reviews like this make a huge difference. They help other people find the podcast. They keep me motivated as a creator to continue pumping them out for you. And like I said, there are some very simple ways that you can help the podcast. The first, if you listen on iTunes, leave a five-star rating and written review. That makes a huge difference. If you're primarily an iTunes listener, another thing you can do, subscribe on other platforms. It increases the downloads and again, helps more people find it. So if you listen to most of your podcasts on Apple, but you listen to most of your music on

Spotify, or even if you have things like Spotify or podcasts on Apple, but you listen to most of your music on Spotify, or even if you have things like Spotify or Amazon podcasts, whatever, on your phone, hit download on multiple podcasting apps. It really helps drive the downloads up and helps more people find the show. Another way you can support the show is by purchasing from our partners. The first partner I want to highlight today is Legion. Legion makes some of my favorite sports performance supplements on the market, and supplements are typically marked up

six to 12 times before they are sold. So you end up paying a lot of money for very little active ingredient. And a lot of companies underdose their products specifically or fill them with ineffective ingredients or maybe even the effective ingredients, but they dose them improperly or hide behind proprietary blends. And some companies don't even do you the service of having third-party testing, right? They just hide behind affiliate marketing, sponsored athletes, and pixie dose their products. You don't want that. You want supplements that are backed by science, backed by evidence, and have the clinically proven effective dosages in the products. You don't want to need to add stuff to what you're already taking. Take stuff that has

exactly what you need to work. That's what Legion does. That's why I decided to partner with Legion two years ago, and the partnership is continuing to go strong. If you need creatine, fish oil, multivitamins, greens powders, things I tend to take on a fairly regular basis, consider going to legion.com, shopping using the checkout code Danny. All of that stuff helps support the show. Another partner I'd like to highlight today is LMNT Electrolytes. These are my go-to from when I'm golfing and it's hot, when I go to the sauna, when I train fasted in the morning, if I'm going to fast in the early part of the day and get my food in later, I love

to have sodium, potassium, and magnesium to help me stay hydrated, to help my energy. Right now, I'm recording. It's eight o'clock in the morning on the West Coast. I've been up since five. All I've had today is supplemental electrolytes. I have the citrus flavor and a big glass of water, or a big, what are they called? Hydro flask full of water and a big glass of water or a big, what are they called? Hydro flask full of water. As I kind of got my morning going, went through two clients, had a little bit of an espresso shot. I'll have some protein here in about an hour when I finished recording. But on the days that I don't train, I actually like to start off with just supplemental electrolytes and water and go through my day. I find it gives me fantastic clarity. It gives me great energy. It gets me hydrated early and you can get a free sample pack where you can try all of

elemental labs. Awesome flavors. My favorites are the citrus, the mango chili and the raspberry. So you can head over to drink lmnt.com slash coach Danny and get your free sample pack, support the show, just pay shipping. Okay guys guys, so let's get into some of the statistics about social media that I think are important for the conversation that we're going to have today. First things first, we got to talk statistics. Per Forbes, Forbes, the media outlet, the average American spends one hour per day on Facebook, 57 minutes per day on Instagram, hour per day on Facebook, 57 minutes per day on Instagram, and 50 minutes per day on Snapchat. The same study found that Gen Zers, and so for those of you who don't know, Gen Zers follow millennials. So those are people born after 1997 and into 2012. So kind of your

newest generation. Anybody born after 2012 effectively's unfathomable for me when people say oh when's your birthday 2013 like when you're talking to a child it's like how is it possible that you were born in that year um so gen z is the youngest demographic we have that basically has access to technology anybody born after 2012 might not have the same level of accessibility to these technologies um but they found that Gen Z people get about nine hours of screen time per day, including TV. So to flesh this out over a lifetime, you can expect to spend over a year of your life on Instagram, almost a year of your life on Snapchat, almost two years, one year and seven months on Facebook and about a year and 10 months on YouTube. That makes a little bit more sense because there is so much long form content on YouTube, but that is pretty startling. And then let's just look at per statista,

the average amount of time in minutes spent on social media from 2012 to 2020. So in 2012, going chronologically, 90 minutes a day. 2013, 95 minutes a day, a five-minute increase. Then things start to pick up from 2013 to 2014, right? This is right around the time that iPhones really became popular. We go from 95 minutes up to 104 minutes, 2015, 111, 2016, 128. That's actually our biggest jump. 17 minutes a day from 2015 to 16. From 16 to 17, 128 to 134. 2018, 142 minutes a day. And then 2019 and 2020, we're sitting at about 145 minutes a day. That's two and a half hours a day just spent on social media. Again, that's per statista. So why go over this stuff? Just so you guys have an idea

about what your level of exposure is. So if you're Gen Z, we know you're getting about nine hours of screen time a day. And on average, this is everybody. We're spending about two and a half hours a day on social media apps. So over, you know, if you break your day down into a 24 hour block, that's over one 12th of your day. And if you break your day down into a 24 hour block, that's over one 12th of your day. And if you break your day into three segments, right, you're working for eight hours, you're sleeping for eight hours, you're socializing and free time for eight hours. That's a common breakdown for most people. That means that over 25% of your free time is spent on these apps. And quite frankly, a lot of you guys probably spend time on these apps when you should be

sleeping or should be working. So interesting to highlight there. What's my experience like with social media? And this is where we're going to get into how this kind of blends into the fitness space. Social media was a huge reason why I got into fitness. I remember very early on when I started exercising, I went to YouTube. And I watched a lot of videos from guys like Chris Jones, Matt Ogis, Steve Cook, Rich Piana. I watched a lot of pseudo bodybuilding, macro recipes, macro counting, getting cut videos, even some guys like Christian Guzman who are more lifestyle. But I really got engrossed

into the social media aspect of the fitness industry or where fitness and how fitness is pervaded in social media. So that was big for me. And one of the things that did was it really skewed my idea of body image. And I actually started to idolize some of these people. Like I really looked up to a lot of these people. I remember early on in my fitness career, when I first started personal training, when I was a freshman in college, even when I was a senior in high school and I was just working out at the gym and teaching my friends how to work out based on what I was getting from YouTube, I would go to bodybuilding expos and stand in line to meet these people for, God, over an hour sometimes just to take a picture, a flexing picture with these people. And now I cannot even begin to tell you how funny it is to me because, and I'm not going to name names, but when, when I look at the content that these people

create now, when I look at how much bullshit, a lot of these people put onto this base, nobody that I named specifically in this podcast, but just people that over the course of the years, I looked up to or thought were cool. Uh, one of the things you'll learn is that social media one is not real life to a lot of these people in person are actually quite shitty. They're, they're, you know, uh, insufferable to be around. Um, they're kind of nasty. They're focused on, you know, whatever, whatever they want to focus on. They're smaller in real life. That was one of the things I remember being shocked about. Um, they don't look photoshopped in real life. Some of them definitely do. Like I remember being at the Mr. Olympia and you see the guys who compete. Uh, there's no hiding that those guys look insanely huge and jacked, but you see a

lot of these influencers in person or what we would now call influencers back then they used to call, they were just like sponsored athletes. Influencer wasn't even really a term. They don't look the same because they mostly just post pictures when they're jacked all the time and they post their best pictures all the time. And then again, another thing that I do is I use Instagram, Facebook quite a bit for my business. And so those are important for me. So my relationship with social media, body image and the fitness industry is pretty robust. But I think as we move forward, we need to set some guidelines and we need to kind of look at this and apply some nuance because we're in a pretty precarious place. If you look at what's happened with the COVID-19 pandemic and the spread

of misinformation, particularly anti-vaccine misinformation, that's keeping people from getting vaccinated. I fully understand that there are people who are more than capable of making the decision whether or not they should be vaccinated. I'm not saying that I'm quote unquote for vaccine mandates. I think people should have the freedom to make the decision, but I am quite disappointed that a lot of people's decision not to be vaccinated is so heavily influenced by misinformation because misinformation has run rampant on social media with regards to the pandemic, but it's also been running rampant for a long time with regards to things like fat loss, nutritional tips, training tips, all this stuff. And so there's a lot of cons,

but before we get into the cons, let's talk about the pros. The pros of how social media has influenced our fitness and health for better or for worse. So some of the pros, there's certainly more information out there, which is not necessarily a bad thing. If you know what you're looking for, you know how to discern between what might be misinformation and what might need a little more nuance or a little more fleshing out, but there's definitely more information. There are more good content creators now than ever before, right? Some of the guys I looked up to growing up like Matt Ogis, Chris Jones, for example, those guys still have social medias and they still actually make pretty

good content. So some people have been doing it for a really long time. The cream tends to rise. A lot of people have been doing it for long enough now that they have multiple different forms of content. You have people with YouTubes, you have people with Twitters, you have people with Instagrams, you have people with TikToks, you have people with podcasts, people who have multiple. And if you find good content creators, a lot of them have multiple forms of content that you can digest. And if they're reputable, if they bring on good guests, if they continue to kind of walk the right walk and they don't fall down this slippery slope of bullshitting you, there's a lot of really good content creators, right? More social media has increased accessibility. Before, you used to have to get a lot of your social media information, or sorry, fitness information off of social media

from things like television, books, and magazines. And now, social media with things like YouTube, Instagram, let's call podcast social media, even though it's not really social, Instagram, let's call podcast social media, even though it's not really social, there's a lot more avenues. And so more access is awesome. There's also greater access to things like coaches and accountability, given the fact that online coaching has exploded in large part due to social media. You can find a coach whose values resonate with you on the internet. So for example, I was coaching in person for seven years before I started coaching people online or six years before I started coaching people online. And I started making content specifically to practice making content and grow my in-person

business. And then I started after about six months to a year, getting a bunch of questions from people all over the country, all over the world. Do you do online coaching? How do I work with you? Can I work with you remotely? And that was crazy for me to be like, wow, there are people who like what I'm about so much that they want to work with me online. And I think that that's a pro because one of the things that's challenging about getting into a fitness routine is finding people who you trust, whose values resonate with you, whose vibe you like, right? It's really hard to find a coach whose vibe you like. And that's one of the things that's awesome for me about core coaching method. My coaching company is, yes, I'm the face of this brand.

I've built this brand, but I've hired coaches who I've worked with in person for years, who I know are phenomenal in person and online coaches and whose vibes work really well with my vibe. And so bringing those people into my company means that when people apply for coaching with core coaching method, whether they're going to choose to work with me or one of my other coaches, the vibe is going to be consistent. The approach is consistent. The standard is consistent. And social media is basically allowing people all over the world to find content creators, coaches, and accountability. That's really tailored to their vibe, what they want to get out of it, the personalities they know

they'll work well with. And that stuff's really, really big. I think that's a general positive. I have noticed a shift towards more evidence-based fitness content being produced because you have really good creators who are out there making sure that if you're bullshitting, they're going to call you out. Somebody that comes to mind with this example specifically is Lane Norton. Lane is somebody whose content I've consumed for years and years and years. I started out actually watching Lane's YouTube videos, again, 2013, 2014. Now he's big on pretty much every platform. But one of the things he does on Instagram is he makes a point to call out people who spread misinformation and are not evidence-based. And I think that that's

actually a positive is giving people who are willing to police, who are willing to go out on a limb and say, Hey, look, this is bullshit. I think we don't necessarily need a bunch more people who are super abrasive, but having a lot of people out there who are willing to go, Hey, this looks like misinformation. Just want to put it out there. You probably find better sources than this person. That's so cool. That's really good. Another pro is community.

Hey, guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. There are a lot of awesome online communities that can help you with your fitness, right?

There are weight lot of awesome online communities that can help you with your fitness, right? There are weight loss groups. I'm in a couple garage gym groups that have helped me build out an awesome studio gym in my garage. Tons of online forums for everything you could possibly imagine. I'm in a couple bodybuilding forums. I'm in a couple physiology forums. There's a lot of communities online that will allow you to improve your well-being, improve your health and fitness, have access to people who might give you some from the trenches information. All of that stuff is good. And then the last things are interaction and engagement. It's definitely cool to be able to interact and get engagement from other people on your fitness journey. And social media provides all of those things. But there are some cons, and I've really boiled these cons down to three big things. The three are clutter and saturation, misinformation, body image and mental health. These are the three things that I think are the biggest issues or let's call them the three biggest red flags with regards to how social media is influencing us on our pursuits of health, fitness, better body composition, you name it. So let's start with the cons of clutter and saturation. So in the fitness space, there are

a lot of personal trainers, but only about 10% make it through the first year. That's right. It has about a 90, 80 to 90% dropout rate in the first year. That's not ideal. Okay. So a low barrier for entry is a problem. And what do I mean by a low barrier for entry? Well, it doesn't take that much work to call yourself a certified personal trainer or a certified nutrition coach. This is coming to you from somebody who is effectively a personal trainer and nutrition coach. Now I have a bachelor's degree in kinesiology. I have a ton of additional certifications. I've been doing this for 10 years. I have a phenomenal network of people who are smarter than myself.

So yeah, that does elevate me above the average personal trainer. But again, being as honest as I can, pretty much anybody can do a two-day Marriott by the airport personal training certification course and get a license. Or you can do something like a NASM or NSCA's program, which might take a little bit longer, but you're still going to enter into the space with very little functional knowledge. You'll understand the textbook stuff, but the barrier for entry is extremely low. Additionally, a lot of trainers go through those certifications with the sole intention of just getting a piece of paper that's going to allow them to practice however they please. And right out of the gate, they just start training people the way they train themselves. And they're not data

literate. They're not scientifically literate. They're not competent with communication. So what they're putting out into the space is anyone's guess. And some of them are really good. I've run into some phenomenal new personal trainers who are really good, really ethical. They want to do a good job. Those are the people that I know are going to be in that 10% that makes it. But a lot of them are just people who like to work out and are like, oh my gosh, I can get paid to hang out at the gym all day. This is awesome. They don't even care about people. They just want to get in shape. So a big clutter and mess has been made because anybody can go on the internet and call themselves a coach or an online coach, whether they are or they aren't. And even if they are, the barrier for entry is just super low. So

that's a little bit of an issue. And I'd love to clean that up. My solution is making personal training something or a license for personal training, something that's harder to get your hands on. I think we give people way too much ability to fuck people up. Like you can, like I said, take a two day course down at the airport and the Marriott down by the airport. That's like a little meme, you know, the airport Marriott two day personal training certification. And then I'm training out of shape, general population clients. However, I feel like it, you can hurt people. You can mess people up. There should be a greater barrier for entry and personal training. In my opinion, this also allows anybody with a good

body, right? Social media allows anybody with a good body, right? Social media allows anybody with a good body to masquerade as an authority because one of the things we do as people is we look at somebody's body and we go, wow, they look phenomenal. They must have all the answers. And look, I did the same thing too early in my career. It makes a lot of sense to look at somebody who's jacked

and go, wow, clearly they've got this all figured out. But it's not that simple. And I'm not saying that you should just listen to smart people who have mediocre bodies like myself. You know, I'm not, I don't have by any means, but when you look at the fitness industry, my physique is very much mediocre average, middle of the road.

For a natural guy, I think I'm maybe slightly above average. And I have decent genetics for muscle groups like my abs and chest. But if you looked at me, you wouldn't go, oh my God, like that dude clearly knows everything about fitness and his physique says it does. No, you have to consume some of my content, see how I approach things, you know,

and then you'll get a vibe for what I'm all about and you can really run with that. But social media allows people who look phenomenal, whether that be because of drugs, because of Photoshop, because of hard work, genetics, or any combination of what I mentioned, to almost become instant authorities because you can build huge audiences, huge followings based almost exclusively on how you look, and then use that to spread information that may or may not be well-informed. And before social

media, that just didn't happen. So it's something to be aware of, right? Followings have a tendency to legitimize people for better or for worse. A good example of this I look at is a lot of the female fitness influencers who have massive followings, many of whom are men who just follow them to look at their ass. I know that sounds slightly misogynistic, but you can actually look up the following demographics for some people using some websites. And it's quite fascinating to me how many female fitness influencers have massive male followings who just follow them to look at pictures of themselves. And there's also this huge idea that a huge amount of following means you're going to have a huge amount of revenue. And a lot of times that's not the case at all. I know coaches who

have less than 10,000 followers who make over $100,000 a year on social media. And I know people who have nearly a million followers who make less than six figures a year on social media. And I know people who have nearly a million followers who make less than six figures a year on social media, but followings legitimize people as authorities and they make people more or less likely to consume their content, more or less likely to consume their products. And I think we need to be aware of that a following may or may not be representative of what somebody is offering here. So it's something to be aware of. Um, and then the last thing for anybody who's new, I don't want to discourage you from making content. Like I said, if you're one of those trainers who falls into the 10%, you really want to help people. It's not that complicated. Make

unique content that is evidence-based, that you are confident in, that you know helps you, that you know will help your clients and look at content creation as a skill and, and, you know helps you, that you know will help your clients, and look at content creation as a skill and commit to it in the long haul. I look back at the content I used to create, I thought it was horrible, but now I look at what I'm doing with the podcast, with social media, with my coaching company, and I'm really content. I, of course, want to improve and get better, but it all starts small and starts by doing things the right way. So moving on from the clutter and saturation negative aspects to the misinformation negative aspects. And I should clarify, there are very few, if any, positive aspects of misinformation. I don't think there are. Almost all of them are negative. But one of the primary

issues with social media is it is a hub for misinformation. We've seen it with the vaccine right now. It's literally causing people to die unnecessarily. There are plenty of people who have logical reasons potentially for not getting vaccinated. I'm not gonna go there. They might not be logical to me. Some people have religious things. Some people have health things. Some people, again, have fallen down

this political or misinformation rabbit hole. But social media has allowed for that kind of information to propagate and be spread. And so we see similar things with fitness. The more videos you watch for supplements, fad diets, the probiotic that helps you remove the 20 pounds of toxic waste from your intestinal tract, all this mumbo jumbo, the more time you spend interfacing with that, whether it's stopping when you're scrolling, watching an ad before a video, all that stuff, the more the algorithm will feed you. And because there are so many different advertisers looking to sell snake oil, looking to sell fad diets. There are so many products

that are bullshit that are just simply looking for people to buy them, right? It's a two-way street. You don't log on to social media and just see what you see there are people paying for you to see what you see advertisers that's one of the big problems with the model and the more you interface with these things right so i'll go back to the um covid example if you were interfacing with a group that was previously prior to covid COVID expressing some vaccine skepticism, Facebook will be more likely to share more content with you that they believe would be palatable for somebody who was skeptical of vaccines. We're not going to go into the rationale behind that. Just understand this is a very, very applicable thing for where we're at right now and people understand what I'm saying. very, very applicable thing for where we're at right now. And people understand what I'm saying.

So same thing with fitness. If you watch a fat burner ad or you buy a fat burner, advertisers are going to basically say, Hey, I'm going to pay you $10,000 a month to access people in this demographic that represent the customers that buy fat burners, fit teas, waist trainers. I want access to people who are showing me they don't have discerning capabilities to pick apart what's true from what's not. And I want to hammer these people with fad products, with fancy videos. That stuff is nasty. And so misinformation has a tendency to spread way faster than traditional information. So what you'll see is anecdotes, crazy shit like, oh, don't eat carbs after 6pm, you'll get fat. That stuff gets out there really fast. But stuff like, hey, you know, a calorie deficit is the only way to lose body fat. So you need to change your eating behaviors as well as

your eating environment in the long term and pair that with resistance training if you want to lose weight. No, no, no, no. That stuff does not get out there as fast as sensationalized information or misinformation. So knowing that it spreads rampantly, knowing that there are bullshitters, charlatans, marketers paying to access those of us who don't have the ability to discern fact from fiction is scary. And it's one of the big time issues with social media and how it's influencing our health and fitness. And then the last piece I'll leave you with guys is body image and mental health. I really wanted to pave the road before we got to this point because I think it's far and away the most obvious thing. This is something that I've struggled with. My own body image has been heavily influenced by the things I've seen on social media.

The fact that there's little to no regulation around photo editing. Some countries require you to disclose if a photo has been edited in magazines, maybe even in social media, not here in the United States. Heavy usage of photo editing software is really, really sticky. Not disclosing the use of performance enhancing drugs, you know, it's tricky because it's in the financial best interest of people who are using PEDs, performance enhancing drugs, who are using Photoshop, who are using angles, who are using PEDs, performance enhancing drugs, who are using Photoshop, who are using angles, who are using great lighting to continue to project that they have these phenomenal physiques and you should listen to them and you should buy their products and services. We're not going to have this revelation come to Jesus moment where people start telling you the truth. It's already the formula. The formula is look hella good,

either take drugs, post your best photos, post in good lighting, put it out there, sell products, sell services. And a lot of people are doing this and a lot of people are making a lot of money. But when you see that stuff and there's high levels of engagement, high levels of commenting, people are sharing this woman's post because her posterior looks phenomenal or this guy's post because his abs look phenomenal. More people see that. More people get skewed because, yes, people are allowed to look phenomenal. They really are. But if you don't know that this person is on drugs, that this photo was edited, that the lighting was phenomenal, then you are left to kind of fill in the gaps. And that's where things get a little tricky. And I think that that stuff really can damage our body image and our perception.

And I've experienced it. I cannot tell you how many of my clients have experienced it. I talk to people every day who tell me that they see things on social media that make them feel poorly. So some things that you can do about it. You can get off of these apps. You can spend less time on these apps. You can unfollow accounts that make you feel

like you're less than, like your body is subpar. You can continue to follow them if they're providing inspiration, but if they're making you feel bad you're less than, like your body is subpar. You can continue to follow them if they're providing inspiration, but if they're making you feel bad all the time, I would recommend unfollowing them or muting them. Engage more with content that makes you feel good, that makes you feel inspired, that makes you feel educated. If you're a parent, consider whether or not you want your kids on these phones and on these apps altogether, right? I would mute content or reduce your exposure to triggering content, particularly political stuff, because too much of that can just really bog you down and kind of leave you in a funk. And then the less this stuff is likely to elicit comparisons or

negative emotions, the better. So follow accounts, subscribe to podcasts, subscribe to YouTube channels that are motivating, educational, or inspiring, not stuff that's negative and makes you feel bad. And to close, I want to close with something that was reported by the Wall Street Journal from a internal Facebook meeting that Facebook did about younger users. This stuff was not supposed to be shared, but clearly somebody at the Wall Street Journal is getting information from inside of Facebook. But this is from an internal presentation from Facebook and Facebook Clown that they made body image issues worse for one in three teen girls, that Instagram is clearly linked to rising rates of anxiety and depression in teens, and that over 40% of the users of Facebook and Instagram are under the age of 22. So this stuff isn't just affecting us adults, it's affecting our children. And more importantly,

it's impacting people who are in the most impressionable part of their life. When you're in that mid to early teens into your early twenties, you're forming a lot of your identity of who you are as a person, shaping your identity and your worldview, and social media gets a little sticky. And I think it can have way too much influence on how we look at ourselves, how we look at the world. And as somebody who engages with it, who uses it as part of their business, I often find myself in what I would describe as an ethical conundrum. I use it because I know I need to use it, but I definitely think there are a lot of bad things out there on social media. Do I think there's a lot of good things? Absolutely. We highlighted those, but I want you guys to continue to be careful, share this, understand that a realistic,

uh, you know, stance on your body image should be much more influenced by your genetics. Okay. You should take your situation and lifestyle into account, your stress, where you're at on your fitness journey. If you're new, shouldn't be stressing about how you look if you're brand new, right? Everybody has different genetics. These things should all play a much larger role in how we look at our bodies, what we can do, what we can perform than what we are seeing on social media. We're giving this stuff way too much power. As for where we get our information, remember, follow creators who are evidence-based. Try to unfollow people who spread misinformation or sensationalize it, maybe even call it out. Share it with content creators who you respect and say, hey, is this legit? I want

to know because there's a lot of garbage out there. Follow evidence-based creators. Minimize your exposure to the crap. You guys, I hope you found this helpful as a primer to maybe how to navigate social media, how to look at it moving forward. It is tricky. This is something that's inextricably connected in our lives. It's only going to continue to become more and more integrated over the years. I have no doubt about that. It's basically weaponized at this point, but I want you guys to do everything you can to look at things through a nuanced lens. Try not to let what you see on social media be the end all be all. Always double check. Always check sources. Try not to let your

body image be influenced too heavily by what you're seeing. Remember, there's always things like photo editing, filters, good lighting, performance enhancing drugs. Some people really do look phenomenal. You can look phenomenal if you work hard enough, but a lot of what you see on social media, just plain ain't real. Don't let it affect you too much. And do not, do not, absolutely do not let your kids near this stuff. In my opinion, if you're young, uh, you have younger children, if you're a newer parent, you have younger children. I would try to keep my kids away from this as long as I possibly could, or at least, uh, use some of the parental controls to try to keep them away from some of the content that might have a long-term influence on things like their body image,

their self-worth. Again, it's all right here. One in three teen girls are having worse body image issues. This is from Facebook's internal presentation, right? And that Instagram has become a source of rising anxiety and depression. That's scary. That's not the stuff we want to see for all the good these apps do. We don't want them to do any bad. And a lot of rising anxiety and depression. That's scary. That's not the stuff we want to see. For all the good these apps do, we don't want them to do any bad. And a lot of that comes down to how we interface with them. So guys, thanks so much for tuning in. If you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button.

Leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. If you want to support the show, the best way to do it is to work with me and my team over at corecoachingmethod.com. If you want to lose body fat, build muscle, prepare for a bodybuilding competition, lose 10 pounds before your trip to Mexico, you name it, we've got you covered. We work with all clients from all walks of life, and we've been doing it for a really long time.

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