Passion Struck with John R. Miles - Isa Watson on Why Life Beyond Likes Is Finding Authentic Joy EP 277

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

I am joined by Isa Watson, founder and CEO of Squad and an award-winning researcher and scientist who was named one of Inc’s 30 Under 30, as well as a Top 100 Female Entrepreneur of 2020 and one of the 100 MIT Alumni in Tech in 2021. We discuss her debut book "Life Beyond Likes: Logging Off Your Screen and Into Your Life." In This Episode, Isa Watson And I Discuss Her Book "Life Beyond Likes" In this episode, Isa Watson and I discuss how modern society has fallen victim to the illusions of social media. We dive into the causes of digital addiction, our detachment from reality, and the need to reprioritize authentic in-person relationships. Full show notes and resources can be found here: https://passionstruck.com/isa-watson-on-why-life-beyond-likes/  Brought to you by Green Chef. Use code passionstruck60 to get $60 off, plus free shipping!” Brought to you by Indeed. Head to https://www.indeed.com/passionstruck, where you can receive a $75 credit to attract, interview, and hire in one place. --► For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to: https://passionstruck.com/deals/  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally! --► Prefer to watch this interview: https://youtu.be/6UQqsnwiViU  --► Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel Here: https://www.youtube.com/c/JohnRMiles Want to find your purpose in life? I provide my six simple steps to achieving it - passionstruck.com/5-simple-steps-to-find-your-passion-in-life/ Catch my interview with Gaia Bernstein on how to overcome tech addiction: https://passionstruck.com/gaia-bernstein-fix-the-tech-addiction-crisis/  Want to hear my best interviews from 2022? Check out episode 233 on intentional greatness and episode 234 on intentional behavior change. ===== FOLLOW ON THE SOCIALS ===== * Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/passion_struck_podcast * Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnrmiles.c0m  Learn more about John: https://johnrmiles.com/     

coming up next on PassionStruck. If you are waking up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your social media or the last thing you do before your head hits the pillow at night, is check your social media. That's an addiction. The average millennial has nine social media accounts and people are spending between three and a half and four hours on social media each day. So when you add an eight hours of sleep and eight hours of work, people are spending a third of their waking hours on social media. So where does that lead time for genuine connection, spending time with your family, cooking, cleaning, all the

things that you have to do every day? Welcome to PassionStruct. Hi, I'm your host, John Armiles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guest ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become PassionStruck.

Hello everyone and welcome back to episode 277 of Passion Struck, ranked by Apple as one of the top 20 health podcasts. And thank you to each and every one of you who come back weekly, but listen and learn how to live better, be better, and impact the world. And if you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here, or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or family member, we now have episode starter packs which are collections of our fans' favorite episodes that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starder packs to get started.

And in case you missed it, earlier this week I interviewed Dr. Rhonda Patra, host of the Found My Fitness Podcast. We discuss the benefits of Sana, Micronutrients, and Optimal Hell. I also interviewed John List, a professor in economics at the University of Chicago, and the chief economist at Walmart. We discuss his latest book, The Voltage Effect. How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale. Please check those out in case you've missed them.

I also wanted to say thank you so much for your continued support of the show. All your ratings and reviews go such a long way to improving the popularity, but more importantly, bringing more people into the passion-struck community where we can give them weekly doses of hope, connection, meaning, and inspiration. I also know our guests love to hear your comments. Now let's talk about today's episode. The increase in online presence in our lives has resulted in even greater connection, yet significantly more detachment from what truly matters.

It's time to break free from the illusion of our curated online personas and to prioritize authentic relationships over social media validation. In today's episode, I will explore those things in an interview with Isah Watson, who is a scientist, founder, and CEO of Squad, and an expert in social media and connections. Isah is a leading voice around the impact and harm of our social media obsessions. Today, we discuss her debut book Life Beyond Lights, logging off your screen and into your life. In our interview, we explore the dichotomy between our seemingly perfect digital selves

that we choose to present on social media and the much messier complicated truth that we live in our actual everyday lives. How one can overcome digital addiction and showcase their authenticity. What steps can be taken to identify harmful patterns and to establish positive habits? We go into how do you embrace vulnerability for genuine connections and friendship, as well as determining when a friendship may be ending and how to end it in a healthy manner.

Isow Watson was named one of INCs, 30 under under 30 as well as a top 100 female entrepreneur of 2020 and one of the MIT alumni in tech for 2021. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your hosting guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin. I am so excited today to welcome Iso Watson to Passion Struck Welcome Issa. Hi, John. Thanks for having me. Well, I want to start off by congratulating you on your new book, Life Beyond Likes, logging off your screen and into your life. Congratulations. Thank you.

It's definitely been a process, but really excited to share the core message with the world. Well, I found it a very timely message that we all need to hear now that we're in the middle of this digital age. We're gonna be talking a lot about today, but that's actually not where I wanna start today's interview. I actually wanna start it by talking about an instrument

that's actually been played for hundreds of years. When my kids were young, three or four, we started them each playing piano. And for each one of them, I think it's unlocked so many different gifts within them. And it's also allowed them to pick up, I think STEM programs better, other instruments in a much easier way. But I understand that you're a classical pianist yourself,

and I wanted to understand how has your playing piano helped shape who you are today? John, that's a good question. And I would say it's a few things. I've been playing piano since I was five years old. I wouldn't say I was a quiet child, but I wasn't that emotionally expressive. And piano was the first place where I learned to express my emotions before I could even orchestrate words around them. So I could literally play the same song. Like let's pick for release by Beethoven.

I play it one way. I'm like really amped up. I had a crazy day. I played another way. I'm feeling really mellow or sad about something. So it's one of those things where I was like definitely something that expressed myself with. But the other thing too, my piano teacher said this to me. She said, I said, most of the people that I have trained on piano end up being STEM majors on college. And I never understood that. I did study chemistry and mathematics, and that was my backing. There is something that's interestingly technical

about piano with a splash of creativity, which is what I think actually is reflective of the STEM environments itself. And to your point about playing other instruments, while piano is the core instrument I've played throughout my entire life, there have been times, especially in elementary and middle school, where I was an orchestra for the cello or the violin.

I was in band for the clarinet, and it was actually much easier for me to pick up those other instruments, especially on the string side, having a piano background. Yeah, it's interesting when my son was in middle school and we were in Austin, Texas, he went to this middle school called Hillside and their middle school band had almost 200 members on it and everyone wanted to be in the drum line, but in order to be even considered, you had to have played piano, which was an entry

way for them, I guess, to screen, but to also make sure that a person knew how to read music, knew how to implement it. So it is interesting how it is a gateway playing other things. Yeah, my father actually was recruited to the United States and college. He went to Hampton University in George Washington to play in the drum line, but he was also a pianist. And he's the reason that I started playing piano when I was five. So it's interesting you say that because my dad had that piano drumming connection as well. You bringing up your dad leads me into the next question I was going to ask you and that is well have moments in our life that have a huge bearing on who we become.

How did your father's unfortunate death lead you to go on the path that you're on today. at some of those things that my dad would always say to me as a child and I was like, I couldn't really absorb it. I was like, oh my god dad, just be quiet. But I carry a lot of the values that my dad instilled in me. My parents, both my parents really, the values of hard work, the values of kindness, the values of treating the janitor just as you would treat a fortune 50 CEO. And one thing my dad always sets me, he said, Isa, you're a blessed girl. And I sure job to share your blessings with as many people as you can while you're on this planet because your time is limited. And I didn't quite understand what that meant. We can talk about, well, I'm sure we'll get to my career at some point, but during my time on Wall Street, and JP Morgan, my parents, they sponsored a bus trip for kids to visit

Hampton University every year. And it was usually kids whose parents maybe couldn't afford to take off, to take them to visit school. And it was a really nice open house. It was something my parents really enjoyed doing. And this particular year, the bus ran off a street road, flipped over and ejected both of my parents out the front window. And my dad didn't survive that.

And my mom barely survived. And it was one of those situations where I just hit rock bottom emotionally, mentally. I mean, all the things, right? It took me a while to just stabilize at that moment in my life. All I could really focused on from a mental capacity perspective was just working and just getting just a little bit every single day. And a lot of the things that unfortunately, a lot of these lessons that my dad would always try to instill in me that the ones that I didn't quite catch as a kid,

it was very apparent to me as an adult having gone through that experience. And so one of the things that was really pertinent to where I am today is the fact that when I was at JP Morgan Chase as a very kind of early stage rock star and really focused on just that next thing, a cheap and that next award that top 30 and a 30 top 40 under 40 top MIT alumni, you name it. I think I was so focused on that that I neglected my real life relationships in a big way and under invested in that.

And so when my father died tragically, it was the loneliness I've ever been in my life in part because I had neglected some of the very real components of my life, some of those very stabilizing forces of my life. And being able to get myself out of that to understand, hey, Aiza, you really have to invest in your centers of joy in the relationships that matter as opposed to just this kind of achievement unlock situation. My dad was always about, how do you care for people? How do you build connection? We used to always call my house and Chapel Hill in North Carolina,

the community home of the town. And when I developed enough comfort, and I moved past it enough to be able to talk about it, I found that a lot of people were of the town. And when I developed enough comfort and I moved past it enough to be able to talk about it, I found that a lot of people were in the situation of kind of feelings of loneliness and collecting big parts of their real life. And so fast forward, I left JP Morgan to create a company called Squad. It's a venture back tech company that serves as a world building tool for you to just build a place to chat with your friends every day in a super easy and fun way away from social media. But it also led me to write this book life beyond likes logging off your screen and into your life because the reality is that we've become so focused and so obsessed with the perfectionism echo chamber of social media that we've neglected big parts of our real lives, some of those stabilizing forces.

And sometimes I see myself as a conduit for certain lessons. I went through something that way and you don't have to because I'm willing to share my lessons. And so my dad and my experience with him and the tragedy really put me on the path and his values that continue to live through me are really fundamental to what I'm doing. Yeah, I agree with you that I think so many people today are wearing or hiding behind a mask. I call it the mask of pretense disgu disguising themselves from who they truly are. And I released an episode with a personal branding expert and a New York Times best selling author named Rory Vaden. And as we were talking about personal branding, he said one of the things that inhibits people from becoming as successful as they could with their brand is that they hide behind

this pretense of someone who isn't them and he said your whole personal brand is based on your character and when you're showing something to the world that is not inherently you you're displaying a completely different set of values, a completely set different set of character traits than who is in your body, which he said completely inhibits you from breaking out and having this core, I guess you could say, an impact that you want to have, because you're serving yourself instead of serving others by not genuinely being yourself. And in the book, you write that you yourself, and you've mentioned this as you were just talking, as you were in your 20s, you were unaware of how the digital world and social

media affected your sense of self-worth, your friendships, and real life decisions. Can you explain maybe in some more details, giving the backdrop I just put there? Why that's the case and why you feel so many other people are having the same exact experience? Yeah, I think a lot of times there ends up being a disconnection between what we think the world wants to see from us, who we think the world wants us to be and who we actually are. One of the examples I kind of come to mind is when I was at JP Morgan, I remember I had a mentor at a different bank, very senior leader who would help me.

I came from a research bench, I was a research chemist and I went to JP Morgan, so very different environments. And I remember taking my first review to her, and we were sat down in Midtown, and she read it over breakfast and she said, I said, these people don't like you. And I was like, wow, okay, give me the feedback. Why don't you think they like me? And she was like, it's clear to me in this review that you're just not being

yourself. You're trying to be somebody else that you're not. And it's really showing up as an authentic and they're reading you. it's really showing up as an authentic, and they're reading you. It was really interesting, because it was in that moment, I almost needed permission to be myself as opposed to being so fixated on what I thought people wanted me to be. And also when you add the layers of being a tall black woman

in this very white, male environment, I thought I had to play a role. And so after that, I was like, you know what, I'm just going to be myself. If they like it, they take it, they don't then whatever. And my reviews from then just lost a shelf. They were very glowing, so to speak. And so I think that we have this concept of who we think people want us to be. But then there's also what social media has done is it has democratized the concept of a personal brand. When we first started using it, it was about connection. It was like, Hey, let me post on your wall.

Hey, did you see that football game? Whatever it is. But then we started to use it as a way to showcase our accomplishments. And then we got feedback from the different people we were connected to, or people that followed us on what things resonated with them. And so I talk about even in the book where people in this kind of girl boss era, people loved the content. And when I say loves, I'm measuring that by how much engagement,

how many likes, how many shares I was getting. They loved the fact that I was in 30 and a 30 tech entrepreneurs, this top level woman raising venture capital, all those things, right? But that was such a fraction of who I was. But if I dared post about something else, like my dog or a fishing trip I did that day that was super fun, that got little engagement. Because people were like, no, we know her as the tech boss,

the tech girl. And so I think for me, for a long time, what I did is I fed into that. I was like, Oh, I get these likes over here when I post this type of stuff. That validation, that feels good. So I'm going to continue to post that. But then what ends up being posted is just such a subset of who I am. Right. And so again, I think that social media provides really powerful feedback loops that literally interact and alter your dopamine levels in your brain to give you feedback on what people accept you as.

And then what we do is we then double down on that. And so I think that some of those examples are ones where there was just a disconnection between who I really was and the breadth of me to how I was showing up in the world, whether that was in person or even digitally. Yeah, I think that's a great way to think about things. And I was recently interviewing Robin Sharma. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he wrote the 5 a.m. club. I was talking to him about his latest book, The Everyday Hero Manifesto. And we were talking about the power of focus and the impact of distraction. And he said something pretty profound. He said, we all have a choice. We can change the world or plan our phones, but we can't do both. And you were talking about the

like button that it's the most toxic feature that we have on the internet today. And thinking about what I just said about Robyn's quote, can you link those two as to why is this driving toxic city not only in our lives, but in our careers as well? Yeah, because the like button is a very powerful form of external validation, not the best form of external validation, but it's one that we register. And it's not just one that we register, it's one that other people can see as well. And so when I say the like button

is the most toxic feature of the internet, it's because what happens is that as humans, we have been conditioned very much unlike the normal human experience where we interact with a handful of people every day. We've been conditioned to try to analyze the feedback that we're getting from thousands of people a day. I've posted things on Twitter in the last week

if you look at the analytics, that have been seen by hundreds of thousands of people. And that's another thing too. We see the analytics of what people are posting, what we're posting, and what's being engaged with. And so what the like has done really is that beyond the external validation, it's actually created whole entire markets, right? When you create a market like the influencer market, people drive towards that.

That becomes the goal, right? And so when you think about even some of the trending topics or dances and things like, for instance, like the Nike will marinate a chicken on TikTok where the FDA had had to come and say hey guys do not marinate your chicken and Nike will it is dangerous. And so but you know why that went viral because of the velocity of likes. And so I think that it's toxic from an external validation standpoint because it allows us to be addicted to a validation that's not healthy for us because we cannot forget that the most important validation comes from ourselves.

It's up to us to abandon this echo chamber of perfectionism. And so I think that, again, humans can only process this certain amount of information every single day. And so what happens is that the internet moves towards, moves everybody to the middle of what, hey, walk this path, this is what we're familiar with, and this is who you should be in the world, and this is what we are going to reward in the form of a like. And what that does is that creates a bunch of conformity and just diminishes people's creativity and their uniqueness. Again, like for example, I am a Caribbean girl, I'm a country girl, I love to fish,

I love to do like a ton of things on the skydiver, but the things that we're getting the likes were just the, hey, you are a badass tech entrepreneur. And I tapped into that in a way that was unhealthy for me. And so just down the back up, like button, very toxic. I'm not saying that I'm not a social media abolitionist, but I do think that we should elevate our awareness around how social media makes us feel and how it changes our behaviors. Today, I post whatever I want to post regardless of how many likes I think it's going to get. And I'm sorry, if you haven't seen me fishing before and you don't know that's part of my life and you're like, oh, what

is she doing? I've never seen that. That's cool too. Don't like it. Keep it moving. What I've done is I disconnected my the validation of myself from the validation that people and strangers on the internet give me in the form of likes. Yeah, a lot of what you're bringing up reminds me of the research of Dr. Jonah Berger and he was on the podcast and he has a great book called Catalyst. You brought up. Don't marinate your chicken and night. He brought up the whole hide-hot challenge, but either one, it has this

viral effect, as you're saying, when people start liking it, that the algorithms pick it up, and all of a sudden it just gets magnified. People thinking that it's the cool thing to do, and this catalyst goes off. And that leads me to this question. We want products to be engaging. The counterargument would be, well, there's a difference between engaging and addictive. When does something transform from engaging to addictive? For example, what do you think has been the tipping point when it comes to social media? Yeah, so I think that the differentiation between engaging and addictive is really about escapism. When you are addicted to something, you engage with it to escape, right?

So for example, my friends who are the most depressed at any given point are the ones on social media the most depressed at any given point are the ones on social media the most and I can always tell because They're liking more stuff. They're sending me more DMs and they're like, hey, look at this look at that But this is how they escape their world, right? It's almost like comfort food in a way But when something is engaging let's take an app like Spotify Well, Spotify is very engaging when I'm really ready to listen to music and to get some thump and beats.

I turn on Spotify and I have a really good time. But if I'm sitting here sad or stressed out and looking for an escape as a mechanism, Spotify's not the place I go. And so I think that's where I see the line is drawn. Are you using this to escape your life into waste time? And there's an avoidance component as well. Of 61% of adults in America report

very frequent feelings of loneliness according to SIGNA. And the reality is that ties into diminished friendships, right, and that ties into the fact that back in the day, we used to have a handful of friends, but then social media has led us to believe that we have hundreds of friends. And so I think that, again,

dialing it back up, that what am I doing if I wanna escape or kill time and things like that? That's where addiction comes in. If you are waking up in the morning and the first thing you do is check your social media or the last thing you do before your head hits the pillow at night is check your social media, that's an addiction. The average millennial has nine social media accounts

and people are spending between three and a half and four hours on social media each day. So when you add eight hours of sleep and eight hours of work, people are spending a third of their waking hours on social media. Where does that leave time for genuine connection, spending time with your family, cooking, cleaning, all the things that you have to do every day. It's the data, but it's also the way in which we use it,

what draws us to it that dictates, is it engaging or dictating? Yeah, it's interesting, this pandemic or epidemic, if you want to call it that, of loneliness is something that we've covered a lot here on the podcast. And I have an upcoming episode with Juliet Hunt, Lentsted, who's a scientist at Bring Him Young in one of the foremost experts on this topic. And it's interesting. There have been a couple of megastudies that have been done. One went from a 20-year period and it just ended in 2021 that looked at over 133 different countries and territories and it found that

over 33% of the world's population in those areas experienced loneliness. And ARP recently did some surveys on it and found 46% of adult Americans experienced loneliness. And then as I was further researching it, Statistica did their own study that showed that Brazil was the most lonely place on Earth with over 56% of the population. But what's interesting is if you look at the rise of depression, anxiety, loneliness, the biggest place that it's happening is in adolescents, and in some cases under the age of 18, and it's difficult for them to track that

because most of the studies that are's difficult for them to track that because most of the studies that are out there require someone to be an adult for them to measure them. So the studies are showing that it's been that 18, 24-year-old population were both of my kids set, but it's actually getting younger and younger because of the consequences that people are living their lives, I think, in the cyber world instead of the physical world. There was actually a really interesting study that I can send you. It was in 2019 from you, Penn, that said they were studying the impact of social media in adolescence, the average age of a user in the study was 12 years old.

And it resulted that adolescence in the study was 12 years old. And it resulted that adolescents in the study had unrealistic expectations about what they should look like, what they should own, and what they should have achieved, and it's resulted in unprecedented levels of anxiety in our adolescence. And so there is data starting to emerge, but you're right. It's a little bit nascent compared to other research categories. Yeah, well, that's the question. Why is it that we often find ourselves in control of our lives in the physical world, but not in the digital world? I think that in the physical world, there's a lot of intentional decisions.

There's not that much stuff that we do passively, for example, having conversation with somebody sitting down, looking people in the eye, deciding to walk down the block, to go to dinner and grab my favorite crab legs, deciding to go have a conversation with my dormant. These are all very intentional decisions that require our presence. But when you look at the digital world and some of those alternatives, that allows us to escape in a way that doesn't require any intentionality. I always tell people, curate your feeds too,

because the algorithm pushes what they know will keep you on the platform, not was healthy for your brain. And I always say, like, I love me a crispy cream donut, but if I sit and eat four crispy creams in one sitting, I'm not going to feel good. And so when you think about what you're scrolling on social media, you're doing it so passively, you're consuming so much, but doesn't make you feel good. How does make you feel when you're done with that? And a lot of times, I know that's the barometer for I need to switch up what I'm looking at. And so I think that there's a level of intentionality in the real

world that doesn't necessarily exist in the ability to just scroll social media. And it was really funny because I was in France last summer. It's one of my favorite countries. So I go every year and I was walking down the Shambh Delaise and I was just observing people. I had no air positive. I was just people watching. And nobody had their go now. Everybody was engaged, talking, laughing, et cetera. And I was in Union Square in New York the next week,

walking by a bunch of restaurants with outdoor seating. Everybody had their phone out on the table like, oh, let me show you this thing until she made it. Oh, let me show. And so again, the ability to be present is something that requires effort, but the ability to be not present and just passively engage in a habit. It is an escapism mechanism that we've developed. And I think it's really important for people to understand what are some of the passive habits that we've developed because we have to kill some of those that don't serve us.

Yeah, well, I'm glad you took it in this direction because the whole purpose of this podcast is to teach people, how do you live an intentional life, which is one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on the show. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, but there's a professor at University of California Irvine named Gloria Mark, who's got a great book out now called Attention Span that I think you would love, but she's been studying attention and multitasking for two decades now. And she has found that the state of interruption has gone from shifting our focus every three minutes in the early 2000s to today shifting it every 47 seconds. And I wanted to ask based on your observations and building squad, what's the consequence of constant interruption? And why do most people unknowingly give things

around them permission to shift their awareness? We live in this area of hyperconnectedness. And I also blame the professional world a little bit because if you look at 1960s, compared to the 1980s, compared to 2000 and now, you'll see that with the advancement of technology, it's been just expected that we do a lot more very in the short period of time that compared to 40 years ago.

And even when I was working in corporate America, I was rewarded for getting stuff done as quickly as possible. I was rewarded for responding to that email from that senior executive at 1 a.m. and then 5 a.m. Right? And so we actually in real life have created these cycles that are perpetuated. And so when you think about what social media has done, and that's okay.

We can talk about workload and managing and balancing, and people have lives that they have to live in order in addition to being a working professional. When we think about social media and the concept of friendship, that doesn't scale in the way that some of these tech, technology advances have allowed work to scale. And so in the book, I talk about the fact that friendship requires unconditional presence. It requires unconditional support. It requires trust, right? I can't scale that.

Dumb bar dictates that, yes, we can have 150 menu for relationships. We can really only have five close friends. And so when you think about the fact that in Facebook, even just the language, when I got on Facebook and college in 2005, just the language, oh, except the friend request, because that person was in my differential equations class, they're my friend. No, they're not my friend. Social media has in part devalued what the concept of friendship is,

and it's taken these kind of massive technological advances and the mechanisms around that and try to apply it inadvertently, essentially, to human connection. And it just does not work like that. And so the hyper-connectedness is really, say, that's a very toxic trade as well. I think part of it, like I said, we get rewarded for being quick responders and all that's up in the

workplace. But it also psychologically triggers two things that triggers fear of missing out. And it triggers our need for like validation. But here's the thing. Also, just engenders are great deal of anxiety. I'm not going to lie to you. I have had all notifications turned off on my phone. I don't need to get phone calls at this point like unless you're like my mom. You usually like I cannot call you my phone is on silent my phone doesn't ring my phone has never ringed in like the last five years because I just needed that separation and I cannot be hyper connected. And so I think that kind of, telling it back up, one of the things that we've learned from squad is that those are media. The model, the media part is a function of the fact that they have to sell you ads. We always say when you're not the product, when you're not buying the product, you are the product, right? And so they're selling your eyes and

your attention. So their desire is to keep you on the platform for as long as possible to drive notifications to get you to tap into the platform. Like Facebook was notorious with this, that first notification of, hey, Becky suit tags you in a photo, but they won't show you what the photo was. So they made you go back to Facebook

because you like, do I look in an photo? Or in to others have liked your post. And so a lot of these tap into our like I said, our knee-tribalundation, our FOMO, but it's one of the things that we're realizing with squad is that we don't have any of that. The only things that you're going to see or when your friends send you messages

or when your friends make a post. The venture capital industry is fighting me on this right now because they're like, if you want your app to be successful, the people have to be on it all day every day. But I refuse to manipulate people in their attention to draw them in for something that's not feeding their soul. And I think that there's a better way to do things.

And when you're connecting with your friends in a genuine way, that's a joyful place to be. And so I'm put on a mission up against some of the Silicon Valley investors who back some of these other social apps of trying to convince them that hey, in order to be successful, the person doesn't need to be on the app 20 hours a day out of 24, you see what I'm saying. And so the hyperconnectedness is really toxic and it drives a lot of bad behavior. Well, I mean, if you think about the whole business strategy that's behind Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, probably even Twittic Talk. I mean, it's all based on individualistic behaviors, because they're not going to monetize it as much if they have group behaviors as if they do individualistic, because as you're pointing out, that keeps you much more glued

to having to get constant updates. And one of the things I heard you talk about on another podcast was the 199 rule. And I was hoping maybe you could discuss that because as I heard you say it, the premise I think really holds true. Yeah, Bradley Horowitz was an early employee and believe it, Yahoo! We didn't go to MIT at the same time, but he's a fellow MIT grad, so I've come across

him in a number of ways. But they found out in early social media days, which actually, same ratio, who's true now, is that there's this 190 rule of users and their engagement behavior. And that dictates that 1% of social media users are the content creators. They're the ones that are posting. They're the really cool things, the funny things. They're the ones that actually have the energy

and I guess we're involved to make posts frequently. And then you have the 9%. The 9% of people are what we call light engages. They may share repost, comment here and there, but they're not creating a lot of content. But then you have 90% of social media users who are lurkers. And what they do is they just scroll. They see, they don't tap, they just scroll on by. And I think this a really interesting model. My parents will tell you,

like this was an annoying trait of me when I was a kid, but I think as an adult, it's been helpful. I always think about like, does this make sense? And if you have 90% of people that aren't actually participating in a system, is that system? Can that system be said to be successful? I'll always joking I say, if the IRS said, hey 90% of you guys do not have to participate in this tax system. Hello, sign me. And so I think that really telling because social media was really, I do believe Mark and the guys, they really did intend for it to be a connection platform.

But what's what it's morphed into is a consumption platform. So instead of seeing certain things, a certain times of day on the TV, etc. is just constant is endless. And the one thing I will say is that we talked about friendships in social media, time wrote this amazing article about the impact of teens in social media. And one of the drivers of anxiety in the teens is excessive news. You're consistently getting fed all of this information on social media.

So think about watching scene and like all the time, getting updates on everything all the time. When I was growing up, when I was a child, the news came on a few times a day. Like it was like when I was like getting ready in the morning for school, the news would be on or if I go to my grandma's house after school, the news might be on for like an hour,

but it wasn't this constant source of information. So when you think about the lurkers, it's a little bit of a dangerous place to be because all they're doing is consuming all this news that's going on in the world, which we know for the last several years has been Khoai Talkfuck, and then they're also consuming the perfected highlight rules of other people that they'll again never laugh in the same room with. And so they're, and then they end up comparing their real whole lives to the curated lives of other people. And so the 190 rule is such a flaw of what the social media ecosystem is

because it doesn't encourage participation and connection. It's really. It's position social media is just a consumption platform. And we have to and we don't have enough intentionality as a people as a whole about what we're consuming. When and why. Well, this leads me to interesting discussion point that I wanted to have with you. And last year I had on Jason Fyfer, who's the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur,

and he and I got to talking about digital distraction and addiction. And during our talk, he mentioned that our cultural conversations about tech addiction aren't based on any accrued upon definition of addiction. Everyone, it seems, has different definitions of it. And what was interesting is he believes that technology is not addictive, and much of what we were experiencing today is similar to what people in the 1700s called Reading Mania. And then in the 1800s, it was about people constantly being obsessed with their wristwatches. Then in the early 1900s, it was radio technology, then TVs, then computers. And the question that kept coming up is, where any of these things that I just mentioned, actual addictions.

And Jason found that what we're doing is actually called patchalizing normal behavior, meaning are these products designed to be engaging, of course, we want netflix or amazon prime to keep making those interesting shows, that's the purpose. So what is the cost of making these things engaging? The price of progress is impacting people learning new skills, behaviors, moderate our relationships, all the things that we're trying to become. Do you agree with that premise is what I wanted to ask you? Yeah, and I know Jason, by the way, we've had some fabulous conversations,

but I have to disagree with Jason on this one. Because there's a lot of psychology that has gone into the mechanisms of social media. Let's first take the algorithm. Social media used to present our feed in reverse chronological order. That means the most recent polls from our friends or anyone we were following, we would see first, all the way down to the latest post.

Five to six years ago, they figured out a more powerful way to make the posts more enticing to keep us on the platform. And that was changing the feed from chronological to algorithmic. And what that does is it waits every single item in your post, right? So if I see a post with my friend and it says, hashed the freedom to choose, and I like that,

I'm going to start seeing more content that's like the freedom to choose. When I talk about, when we talk about addiction, right, there is very well-known and well-published data on Facebook, where they would actually, anytime you react it to something with the angry button, it would have a five times the input to your algorithm. So let's say for instance, something that I got angry about was the overturning of Ruby Wade, right. But I also know that Facebook does these things, right. I also know that Facebook does these things, right? But if I had that happen like five years ago and I was just responding angry, what happens is that they continue to beat me that.

They beat me that because it keeps me hooked, it keeps me connected. Oh, and it ignites my emotions. And so I do think that there's a lot of intentionality and psychology around the way that they've created this addiction. And then on top of that, it's not just the angry emoji, John. It's also, let's take, for example,

the use of highly emotional words. So if I use words, for example, on Facebook, that say, I'm enraged, or I'm really upset by, or I can't believe, then they showed me all the content that's associated with that as well. And so I think that again the combination of that with the fact that we have really built up so much passive behavior around our social media use, I do think that those combinations do make up addiction. So again, respect Jason, he's the homie,

but I disagree with him here. Yeah, it does appear that our distraction is being paid for by these companies, by these algorithms. And it is definitely affecting how we're able to control our behaviors, especially if you're a youngster. And this is how you're able to control our behaviors, especially if you're a youngster, and this is how you're growing up. Whereas my generation, we didn't grow up with this. So I think there's a completely different gap

between the generations, such as yours and my kids, and what I faced when I grew up. So it is interesting how it's having this rapid amount of consequences on, but basically how they're functioning, what brings them happiness and how they're looking for validation, which is the area I wanted to go in next.

And I love that you and I both have a huge passion for Dr. Bernet Brown. And I'm gonna read this passage from your book, because I thought it was a really profound one. But you said validation and invalidation are the foundation to how we feel about ourselves. And that is because we now live our lives in perfectionism, echo chambers. And you write that where there is perfectionism, there's also shame, which Dr. Renee Brown shared in the power of vulnerability. And she goes on to add that perfectionism is not healthy striving. It's not let me be my best self. It's not striving to be your best. It's a thought

process that says, if I work perfect, live perfect, look perfect, and do it all perfectly, I can avoid or minimize shame, blame, judgment, and criticism. And I wanted to ask you, why, because we're all striving for perfectionism, and I think digital media is driving a lot of that, how is that impacting the way that we feel we need to be validated, and really changing our behaviors around it. Yeah, so quite frankly, the world we words perfectionism. And even socially, we talked about the digital world versus kind of the in the human world. Socially, the we were worth perfectionism as well. So I'm sure you've had a conversation with different people,

hey, how are you? I'm great, how's it going? But what if I said, actually, I'm not in a really great place today. I'm feeling really misunderstood by the world and I'm just kind of my head these days. I've actually been very honest with people some days when they asked me that question

and have gotten the craziest looks because they're looking for that perfect answer of, I'm great. And social media is the same way, except it's intensified because we are getting responses and feedback from dozens, hundreds, and thousands of people anytime we engage. I think perfectionism and the striving for it, we have to create, and one thing too, is that there's this kind of notion of cancel culture where you don't want to make a mistake because people are going to bounce on you online and articles are going to be written about you and people are like, oh, this person's sexist, or racist, or anti-immigrant, or whatever the case is. And I think it boils down to the lack of grace

that we have for ourselves and for others. And the advancements in the digital age, and I talk about this in the book, have actually kind of distributed that, right? So instead of just living our lives and understanding the data that comes to us through living our lives, we're seeing all these curated lives and pictures, snapshots of people's lives online.

So that feeds into, hey, yes, I knew I was rewarded like in elementary school, I got the most goals stars all the time. And I'm like, great, perfect. I remember in my third grade class, I was the first person to learn all the time staples to 12. And my teacher took me to Ben and Jerry's perfect. But we took those real world experiences, those real life experiences.

If you came in second, third or 10th place, it wasn't really that big of a deal. But now when we have high schoolers who are sitting at a computer, anxiously, everybody's behind them. And they're like, I'm opening my letter to get in the Harvard, opening my letter to get in the Yale. And they get in and they're like, perfect. And that's the type of stuff to perpetuate it. But if they had gotten into, I don't know,

let's call it a community college in Montana, which I think is a perfectly fine journey for a lot of people, that's not rewarded. And there's a lot of shame around that. And so I think Brunei Brown hit it on the head. We strive for this perfectionism to avoid feeling bad and feeling inadequate, which results in us feeling shame. And so I think it's something that, again, it existed in real life, but it's been exacerbated by our social media use and the stories and the content that travels the quickest around various corners of the internet.

And so very complicated, but again, I think it's enough talking about this in the book. It's about raising awareness and understanding. What are you participating in versus not because there's some things some behaviors behaviors that just don't participate in anymore. Well, we spent the greater part of this hour talking about how we're letting social media impact who we are authentically are. And I thought the best way to end today's interview is to ask you how have you changed, how you live your life off screen? And what is your recommendation for the listeners,

for how they can change theirs as well? I would say it's a few things. One is that I invest very intentionally in my friendships. I actually say I date my friends, and it doesn't mean it's romantic. I have a friend who is like six months pregnant right now and she's just like going through it. So I worked with her husband to get her catered lunch one day

and to get her massage. And it's one of those things where like we just love each other so much and the love that I have for my friends. I grow that. I think relationships take nurture, they take watering and because of the instant gratification of today's world, a lot of people don't realize that it takes that investment. Another thing is that I actually focus on censoring my joy. One thing we haven't talked about is the fact that I'm a pro skydiver and I train every two weeks or so and I love skydiving. Skydiving is where I get my meditative space and I am completely tapped out from the world. I'm not concerned with what's going on, what notification did I miss. And I think that kind of leaves me to my last point, which is that I've created boundaries around what works for me

and not connected to what I want to be connected to. So I don't wake up with my phone. I don't go to sleep with my phone. Why? Because I need to be at peace when I go to sleep. I need to be really grounded when I wake up. And so I have that kind of level of disconnection from my phone. And then I also, I think that joke about this sometimes, I'm like,

the more we, if this is true for you, which it is for my 90% of people, that you're not delivering babies and you're not an emergency room-found physician, I don't know, you just don't really need to be on your phone like that. And so I think that those are some of the things that I've done, investment of like the my rural relationships. I had a friend that I talked to recently. I said, I don't like hanging out with you anymore because every time I hang out with you,

all you're doing is on your phone. And I don't like any attention. You so that placentering your joy and then living a lifestyle that is not so tied to your phone. I don't need, sometimes I'll be half the day. I'm like, I don't even know where my phone is. Well, I would point the listeners to an episode I did with Dr. Sarah Medneck, who's one of the foremost experts in the world on sleep,

and the impact of devices on your sleep. So if you want to hear more about that, you can read more in Ices book, but you can also tune in to that episode with Dr. Sarah Mednaq as well. Well, I did want to let you know that one of the best parachute areas in the whole country is here in Tampa Bay. And when you come and visit, you need to go to Zyfer Springs and check out their world-renowned jump zone. Yeah, it's a really good DC. I was actually supposed to be there a few weekends ago,

but the winds were exceptionally high that weekend. So I didn't come down. Well, well, I wanted to thank you so much for coming on the show. I wanted to tell the audience that I have heard from a friend of mine that your book is already an Amazon number one best seller. So congratulations on that. Thank you.

But I highly encourage the audience to give this a read and congratulations on it and wish you the best of success as you promote this and take it out to the world. Thank you, John. I really appreciate this conversation. Well, hey, last question. Where is the best place for people to get to know you if they want to learn more about you? I would say my website isawatson.com, ISAWATSIN, and from there you can find, when I am on social, my links to socials, but I'm ISAD Watson everywhere, but my website people can contact me directly, probably the easiest, most central place. Okay, well, great. Well, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Isah Watson. And I wanted to thank Isah, Bella Bella books and Christine White for the honor and privilege of having her on the show. Links to all things Isah will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com. Please use the links in our show notes. If you purchase any of the books and the guests that we feature here on the show, all proceeds go to supporting the show.

Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Videos are on YouTube at PassionStruck Clips and also our main channel at John R. Miles. I'm on LinkedIn. You can also find me on Instagram or Twitter at John R. Miles. And I post daily doses of inspiration that go well above and beyond the podcast. So please go check me out socially if we want to connect.

You're about to hear a preview of the PassionStrike podcast interview that I did with a special guest, Lori Gottlieb, who is a psychotherapist and New York Times best-selling author of maybe you should talk to someone, which is being adapted for TV with even Lungoria. In addition to Lori's clinical practice, she writes the Atlantic weekly, dear therapist, column, and contributes regularly to the New York Times. I think we need to learn how to listen.

And most of us really care about the people who are coming to us when they want to talk to us about something. But often, we don't ask them, how can I be helpful right now? How can I be here for you right now? And if you just were to ask that, you would actually be able to give them exactly what they want. But instead, what we do is we make all kinds of assumptions like, I better fix this for them, I better make them happy or whatever it is. And maybe they just want to hug, maybe they just want to vent, maybe they just want to watch a show with you, maybe they just want to take a walk with you, but just ask instead of jumping to the conclusion of, oh this is the way that they are coming to me for help. Just say, how can I help you? Or three words, tell me more, tell me more. The fee for this show is that you share it with family and friends when you find something useful or interesting.

If you know someone who's dealing with digital addiction, then definitely share this show with those that you love. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share this show. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, live live passion struck.