Social Media 01: Wake Up Transcript
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Emily: Well, hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Risen Motherhood. I'm Emily Jensen, and my co-host and sister-in-law, Laura Wifler, will be joining me in just a few minutes. We are so glad you're joining us for another mini-series. For this one, we are going to be talking all about social media. This is something that probably almost every single one of you is engaged with in some way, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube. There's so many options for being on social media these days. Most of us are just using it all the time without really thinking about it.
Of course, here at Risen Motherhood, we use social media, we like social media, and we think that it has a lot of benefits, not only for connecting with other people but for spreading truth and the good news of Jesus Christ. But we also know that social media has some tough things and some things that we need to really wake up and think about more critically.
That's what we're going to be discussing in this mini-series. We are going to be covering the gamut—everything from how social media is affecting our brains and our habits to how we should be thinking about posting about our kids online, what it looks like to take in content even when it frustrates us, how to create content thoughtfully online and use whatever our presence or our platform is with wisdom. We are also going to be talking about influencers and what that means for our motherhood. Finally, if you stick with us to the end, you're going to hear about how we can be faithful with our motherhood in a social media world.
We hope that you will join us in thinking about your own social media habits. In order to do that, we created a tool called “Wake Up! A Social Media Workbook.” In that workbook, you can actually follow us one episode at a time. You'll listen to the episode and then you will read a Bible verse or two, think about that, pray, and answer some thoughtful questions about your own social media habits and how you might apply some of these gospel truths in your own lives.
One thing we've observed is that social media really varies on personal application. However the Lord leads you, we hope that at the end of this series, the way that you're engaging with it, as a mom in your everyday life, has just changed and you're using it more redemptively, or, if the Lord leads you, that you're even taking a break.
Emily: You can grab that workbook at risenmotherhood.com/socialmedia. Just sign up for our email list and you'll get that download straight to your inbox.
Speaking of social media, one of the fun things that we are doing there is talking about church history. We are doing a great church history resource for the R|M Read. Then we're also sharing about lives of women who have been faithful in different periods throughout Christian history. We hope that you are enjoying that content and that you'll check out our resource page there for more information. Alright, let's jump into the conversation and talk all about social media.
Laura: Em, we're talking about the big topic.
Emily: The big topic, finally.
Laura: Finally. This is a culmination of many, many years of Emily’s and my conversations. We are talking about social media, and I could not be more excited.
Emily: I know, we have had hours and hours and hours of conversation about this topic, looking at it from every angle. We have talked to other friends about it. We've read books about this topic. It's not to say we're experts at all, but maybe just that we're fascinated with it. We see it impacting our lives. We see it impacting our community's life at Risen Motherhood and we are just going, "Hey, we need to start to understand this and figure out what we're going to do about it."
Laura: Yes. Emily and I are old enough to remember days without social media. Some of you younger moms who are listening may be like, "I don't know life before social media," but we do, and we have watched how it has changed us. Even within our motherhood years, I would say, there's been like 10-ish years where we've seen the growth of social media, the impact of social media, and how moms—us included—we spend a lot of time on social media, and we go there to learn how to mom. We go there for feeding tips, we go there for medicine help, for hey, how am I going to select a school? We go look and see what a mom influencer is doing. We go there for our gift guides. It really has permeated almost every area of motherhood.
Emily: Totally. Even from a creation side as moms, we're going there to share about our motherhood, to share about what recipe we're using, or what mom hack we're using to get our kiddo to go down for a nap. It's kind of a both/and—where we're going there to get all of our information on what to do, and then we're going there to show everybody what we're doing and hopefully get some affirmation and some comradery. Even simple, good things like wanting to show grandparents what the kids are up to. All of that is happening on social media, but it may be affecting us, I think, in ways that we're not always aware of.
Laura: Absolutely. We want to probably make it clear upfront. If you don't know (perhaps you only listen to the show), we run social media at Risen Motherhood. We are very appreciative and grateful for it. We both have personal platforms. We are not anti-social media, but we also want to be really thoughtful about this conversation and really honest about some of the changes that social media is bringing. At times, we might sound like we're a little hard on it, but ultimately what we want to do is help both ourselves and all of you in our community to learn how to swim in the water.
We're going to be talking about things like social media addiction. That's the topic of today's show. We're going to talk about boundaries and identity and how we hold people accountable online. We're going to talk about influencers and being a creator or what it looks like to consume that information.
We're going to talk about kids. That's going to be a really—maybe nerve-wracking one a little bit—but just a fun one to talk through. How do we think about posting pictures of our kids online? There are a lot of topics ahead. We hope that you will stay tuned through the whole series because even if you're not on social, we think that these shows will matter because social media really has not only permeated those moms' lives who are on and have a presence on social, but as you'll see in the ways that we discuss it, we actually think it's affecting mom culture at large.
Emily: It is definitely affecting our purchasing habits. It's affecting our decisions and mom trends. This is really for everyone. Like Laura's saying, even just to be aware of—maybe you're not on social media a ton, but you've got several friends that are— of how to have conversations with them, how to engage them on this topic.
Today we want to back up a few steps and zoom out and go big picture and say, what is social media? Where did this come from? Who created it? What is it doing to our brains? Really start by asking those questions, because sometimes we just download the app, and you get into it, and we never think where did this come from? What's the purpose of this? Who's behind this? Such really important questions to ask.
Laura: There's been a lot of research coming out on this in the past two years or so. If you've seen The Social Dilemma that was on Netflix—it was really popular—it’s definitely a conversation that people are starting to have. We think it's really important for us to start here because it feels like you can't really engage with social media, well, unless you're doing what Emily's saying—really understanding what is the point and purpose, not just for you, but for overall culture at large and for the businesses and everything like that.
For us, it was really helpful to wake up to this reality and to recognize—so I might be having these intentions and these expectations for social, but in reality, it's a lot different on the other end of the screen. It reminds me of the book, The Silver Chair—we love Lewis forever and always—where Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill— they went to this castle. They were actually directed to go to this castle, and it was a home for giants. They were told, "Okay, get out of the rain, get out of the cold. You can get warm. You can be dry. You can get rest, snugly beds"—all that stuff.
They went in there expecting that. At first, it was really great. It met those expectations, but over time, what they found out is that actually the giant king and giant queen were planning to kill and eat them for their annual autumn feast. They were going to be like, I don't know, human tacos or something like that. Was it something like that?
Emily: I can’t remember. [Laughter]
Laura: I want to say it was like man tacos or something like that. Anyway, the point is: that's often how we approach social media. We feel like, "Hey, I'm going to hop on here," and we have a really great time and it's really fun and it's exciting. We think it's wonderful and it's going to welcome us with these open arms. The reality is that it'll eat you alive if you don't start paying attention. With social media, we can't run out of the castle, we can't escape necessarily, so we need to know what we are fighting in order to protect ourselves and learn to swim in the water.
Emily: We're going to go over some of the ways that it could eat us, and one of those ways is with addiction. As we just jump into this topic, of course, we want to say we are not experts on addiction. We are not medical doctors. We're not licensed counselors. As we discuss this topic, we're talking about it very much in broad terms, in general terms. Certainly, if you are facing addiction in a more significant, profound, life-altering way, we would encourage you to get some help from a professional or tell a friend and reach out. We just wanted to say that before we dive in.
I think one of the things Laura's talking about of just being a little bit deceived is thinking, when they were in the castle, they're having their comforts met, they're having their stomach filled. They're getting a bed to sleep in. I remember they'd been like super, super cold in the rain—
Laura: —They were in the rain and walking a long way—
Emily: —Yes. I think similarly, we experienced that with social media, even in our brain chemistry. It does give us the hit of good feeling that we want in life and so that initial sensation with social media is, "Ooh, this is good. This feels good. This meets my needs." Maybe we could start there and talk a little bit about that hit.
Laura: Well, I think what's interesting is that it's not just philosophizing anymore. That scientists—secular scientists—have really said, yes, social media is addictive and this is a very real thing. We're using addiction in a broad term. Of course, you can be probably extremely addicted to social media, just like you could be extremely addicted to a lot of things, but there's also for most of us, probably most of you listening, like a mild level of addiction that we're all experiencing because of the dopamine hits that are given when we engage in social media.
There's this work coming out of Stanford by Dr. Anna Lembke. You'll have to read her book if you want a lot more on this stuff. It is secular research, but basically what they've noted is that pleasure and pain are in the same area of the brain. They work like a teeter-totter, and it always wants to be in balance, which just means that, when you get a dopamine hit on one side, the pleasure side, then on the other side, the pain side, it has to tip back in order for your brain to balance.
This would explain why, when I eat Fritos (because I love Fritos), I always want more. They taste really good, and I love them. Then I want more and more and more because what happens is I get a small dopamine hit when I eat this food. I experience some pleasure. Then after that, I stopped eating them and I think, oh, I'm experiencing this withdrawal or this feeling of “I want more of that.”
That's exactly what's happening when we engage in social media. I think two things that are important to note is that the more frequently that that dopamine hit comes, the faster that it tips, the more pleasure we feel. Likes, comments, and new, fresh things in our feeds and DMs and things like that—we'll start enjoying it more and more—
Emily: —Which is interesting because we've all gotten more into the TikTok thing where it's like video, swipe, video, swipe, which is even more—
Laura: —Faster—
Emily: —intense and faster than the squares. Okay, keep going.
Laura: Yes, no, that's a good point, but yet, you're going to experience a harder fall on the other side of things, which means you're craving it more and you're wanting it more. The other thing to note is that you start to develop a tolerance when there's repeated exposure to the same stimulus. You literally need like a harder hit, if you will, in order to experience the same amount of pleasure as before.
When you first got on social media, perhaps like 10 likes, you were like, "Woohoo, I feel awesome," and it was amazing. Then the next thing is you want 100 at least. That's why you hear from Instagram influencers—you always want more, there's never enough followers. You think, “If I get to 10,000, I'll be fine. If I get to 25,000, I'll be fine.” They've all come back and said, "No, you're just always reaching for that next level."
That is both human nature—I think there's a whole gospel component to that—but also, scientifically, they're saying—actually your brain is saying—I need a harder hit because I have developed a tolerance to that lower level of dopamine.
Emily: Oh, I forgot to tell you about this article that I read. I screenshotted it and I never sent it to you. I didn't read the whole thing, but it was essentially about one of the girls that has the highest following on TikTok—which I know nothing about, just to be clear. [Laughter]
Laura: —We’re really bad at TikTok. We don’t do it.
Emily: But I started reading because, essentially the title of the article was that she was quoted as saying she basically feels like she's in prison and it's horrible. At the very top, right, where you've got the most followers, the highest engagement, you're just insanely popular—I think she has like 125 million followers—her perception and feeling about this is that it's horrible.
I just think that's a lesson for us all in this climbing, climbing, climbing, more, more, more, whether it's addiction or whether it's just thinking that we're going to find our worth and our value and our affirmation in being at the top of social media or the most liked or the most influential. Hey, we already know from the Bible that we cannot get there, but here's somebody who's on top of their game and they're saying, “No this is bad. This is not what I thought.”
Laura: Yes, anyone that I've talked to who has huge followings and huge engagement reports very similar things—that it feels like it runs you and owns you and it's not fun. It's a constant fight. That's a really good, anecdote story there. I think that it's important to note that social media—we go back to the science with the dopamine. What's really interesting is—I want to share this quote from Sean Parker. He's one of the inventors of Facebook and he talks about how they specifically built these apps, Instagram and Facebook, to play into this reality of how dopamine works in our brain.
He basically said, "The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' That means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever."
Then he goes on to say it's a "social-validation feedback loop, exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators—it's me, it's Mark, it's Kevin on Instagram—all of these people understood this consciously and we did it anyway." Dun. Dun. Dun.
Emily: I know. This should be, I think, a gut check. You and I, a couple of years ago when we recorded one of our first shows on social media—I think it was a light bulb moment for both of us when we went, "You know what? These apps are actually not created so that we could see what our friends' kids are up to or show our favorite products just for fun," or whatever benign thing it is that we go to social media for. These were not altruistic people.
I don't want to sound like they're horrible people, but they were not coming with this altruistic, "Oh, let's just create this fun, little community for everybody so we can connect the world." This is a business. These are people who were creating this with the intention of us spending as much time as possible, hopefully getting addicted, not clicking out of the app, and not only that, but buying things. This is really about money and advertisement and getting our data.
When you realize that that's the intention of it—that's why it's free, because they can get you in and then make money another way—it makes you think about social media a little bit different. I don't think that negates all of the good things that we're using it for. I think as we go on in this series, we're going to talk about how we could use it redemptively and how we don't have to get sucked into that side of it. It's good to know—somebody quoted right here straight up that the point was to addict you. The point was to sell you something. It was not just so you would have some recreational fun and see what your friends are up to.
Laura: Well and I read some stat later on, after all this stuff came out—I want to say about two years ago, when Social Dilemma came out and things like that—and how a lot of people were in a massive uproar about it. At the end of the day, very few people changed behaviors. I thought that was really interesting. We now know this. We have this knowledge and yet we still love to be on social. My guess is because of the addictive qualities.
That's where we're saying—there are actually a lot of addictive things in life that are socially acceptable, social media being one of them. Food is that way. Exercise can be that way. We're not necessarily saying, "Hey, get off of it. You need to totally run away from it." We are saying we have to learn how to use it with wisdom. I have to wonder if perhaps we had some gospel undergirding, maybe that would help change behaviors more than just understanding the science. Let's get into the gospel.
Emily: Amen. I think with good things like this, it's often just exposing a deep God-given desire that we have that is good. One of those things is that we desire pleasure, we desire joy, we desire community. We want those good feeling dopamine hits. God designed our brain that way but it's important for us to remember that only God can meet our deepest desire for pleasure and for joy.
One way I was thinking about this recently is I was talking to a kiddo who was thinking about upward and downward comparison. He was telling me about toys or money or something and he thought, "Well, if I could just get to the top that would stop the comparison cycle because I would have enough and I would stop wanting stuff." He's telling me this dead serious. He's like, "Yes. I think if I could get the biggest house in the world, I'd be happy. Why wouldn't I be happy?" It was just interesting because we started talking about the fact that our desire for pleasure and more is like a bottomless pit. No matter how much you get it, you're just going to keep going and going and going.
No matter how many new Lego sets you get, what do you think is going to happen four days later after you built it? He's like, "Well, I'm going to get bored and want another one." It's like, yes. Even if you own the most Legos in the world, you would not be happy. We really need to counteract that with something that's equally infinite. God is the only one who is infinitely interesting, infinitely wonderful and powerful and loving. In that way, he matches our incessant desire for more—more joy, more pleasure, more wonder. We can always learn about him and enjoy him more.
Of course, John Piper is probably the predominant voice on this topic with Christian hedonism, but I love this quote from him. He says, "God is a supreme source of satisfaction for the human soul." Mic drop, that's it. God is our supreme source of satisfaction. The feelings we get from social media are not bad, but those are not ultimately going to fill us.
Laura: Yes. I think that anyone who's been a Christian for very long will tell you that—overall, not perfectly—but the more time that you do spend with Christ, the more of him you want. Like that praying begets praying, Bible reading begets Bible reading philosophy. You start to crave more of his Word, his presence, his way of thinking, his holiness, his goodness.
To go back to that Sean Parker quote, he says he's exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. That's true, but this vulnerability doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing because I think in a way Christ fills that. He is all goodness. He is all love. He is all joy, peace, kindness, holiness—all of those things. There's nothing bad about God. We were designed, ultimately—if you think about in the garden—that all of those things, all of that vulnerability would be fulfilled because we would be walking with God and enjoying full relationship with Him.
Now this is marred on this earth. This isn't perfect and so that's why we go through seasons of doubt or seasons of feeling like perhaps God has withdrawn his presence. He hasn't, but it can feel like that. That's because we're here in the middle of things. We're in the already but not yet. We have to pay attention to those desires and recognize when we are trying to fill that void up with other things and not with Christ. I think that helps explain maybe some of the tension there, if we're not feeling like, "Oh God, you are everything. You are my supreme thing that I want to be filled up with." It's how we were designed, but we have to fight that with our sinful human nature.
Emily: So true. Another thing that comes to mind with social media is that we're almost always looking for some type of identity there, either because we've created an identity with our profile and we're trying to show people a version of ourselves, or even authentically trying to be ourselves online, or we are online searching for, hey, who should I be? I'm looking for information about what it means to be a good mom or what it means to be a successful businesswoman or whatever that looks like.
There is an identity question there, and it's important for us to remember that Christ gives us our identity and approval. We don't have to seek it elsewhere. Of course, God created us to live in community and so we are going to want that affirmation and validation, but it's harmful when we elevate that need for affirmation and identity and approval from others or just information about how we should be living above what God says about us and who we are in Christ.
Laura: Just to build on that. I think that Christ shows us what we should be paying attention to and focusing on. We're going to talk about this more in future shows, but ultimately, God in his Word sets our priorities, defines what good work is, defines what faithfulness is. We don't want to let social media or the moms that we follow online start dictating, hey, this is what you need to purchase. This is what you need to focus on. This is who you need to be. We have to be careful about how we are filtering and discerning all the things that we're taking in.
None of this is going to be simple. None of this is going to be super easy, especially post-fall. We have the Holy Spirit in us, helping us, but it's going to be something that is a proactive thing that we need to do and that we have to pay attention to. Let's talk about what that would look like, Em.
Emily: There's a lot of steps that we could take, but one thing we just want to propose or ask is, hey, do we need to take a break to see how this is affecting us? I think sometimes we don't know because we maybe downloaded the Instagram app on day one when it was available to us, and we just don't even remember life without that. What if we were to take a break and step back? What might we observe about how it's affecting us?
I think one thing we may not realize is that the reason perhaps why we are anxious and stressed and tired and overwhelmed could be for a lot of reasons or could be partially due to our social media use and partially due to the way that's affecting our brain and our heart. It's not probably a magic pill, but we may be surprised if we were to take a 30-day break, which is actually a research-based timeframe to reset some of these chemicals in your brain. What if we were to take a 30-day break and see, okay, was it that I was anxious and tired, so I got on social media, or am I anxious and tired because I was on social media? There may be an overlap, but it's a good thing to discover.
Laura: Yes. I want to build on that a little bit because in some of the reading that I've been doing, when a psychologist has someone come into them and say, "Hey, I'm depressed and so now, all I do is I play video games. That's all that I do and I'm totally addicted. I do that because I'm depressed," she would actually say, "I wonder if it's the reverse? You're playing all of these video games and now they're affecting the way that you feel and they're causing this depression."
In her treatment plans, she will actually say, "Okay, take a 30-day fast." Like Emily was saying, 30 days is scientifically proven as ways to both make and break habits. She would say, "Tell me how you feel after that."
It doesn't always work. Again, we are not doctors. We're not recommending this is going to necessarily change anyone's life or for you to even engage in this. What is really, really interesting is that more often than not, people will come back and say, "I stopped engaging in my addictive behavior and now I no longer feel these feelings of anxiousness or of depression." What Emily is saying here, I think, is really important.
Even for me, so I will be honest and say in general, I don't really think of myself as having an addiction to social media. I can stay off Instagram for a day or two. I might think about it, but I'm not like, "I want to go over there." After doing some of the research and even diving in deeper as we prep for these shows, I thought, "Boy, I really should take 30 days." By the time the show comes out, I will be on a social media break because I'm doing it during the month of October.
I will tell you—I don't necessarily feel like I need this. I am not seeing bad behaviors in my life. I have them in other areas. Emily knows, I've confessed those to her, but I want to do it because I see this research value of saying, hey, sometimes we don't know how something is affecting us until we remove it from our lives.
I have talked to several friends who have taken these breaks and have said, "You are just going to love it. You are going to be so excited. I know you don't feel excited now, but you will be excited." I think that that is something that, even if you don't necessarily think "Oh, I'm addicted" or "I don't have a public platform, so who cares?" or whatever, I think it would be worth trying. I'm just encouraging this R|M community to join me.
Emily: Just to relate that to maybe our Bible reading habits or our interest in the preaching on Sunday or ability to sit and pray, I think one thing that we hear a lot from our community—and I will just say I've struggled with—is, "Hey, I'm really struggling to focus or "I really don't feel content in this" or "I go to church on Sunday and man, the sermon. I'm trying to stay focused. I'm trying to engage. I'm trying to get a takeaway, but I can't pay attention to it or it's not really filling me."
I think there is another discussion to be had here about our appetites. Appetites, certainly, can be something that are in our stomach, but it’s also just a general term for what our hearts and our minds crave and get used to.
I cannot remember who told me this or where it came from and so I'm sorry. I really tried to look it up online and find it. Somebody quoted to me something like, "Exposure breeds appetite," or "exposure begets appetite." The concept of that is just that the more that we consume something, the more we learn to crave and only be satisfied by that thing.
I think that when we are spending a lot of time on social media and we're spending a lot of time scrolling and our brain is getting used to a diet of reels and stories and squares and microblogs and people who are mad about the latest thing and whatever, we are losing or dulling our appetite for the deep, long things of the Lord. The things where we have to mine for the treasure, where we have to wait to see what God is going to do in our heart with that verse or the prayer that may take months to be answered.
We have no tolerance, no appetite for that because it has been dulled by the quick hits of get mad, share it, buy it, consume it, like it. I think that's just a good question for those of us who are saying, "I want to experience more of God's presence. I want my prayer life to grow. I want to get back to where the Word of God is exciting to me." Perhaps then we need to make some adjustments in our social media habits.
Laura: I think that is a really good word. In that vein, we actually have a workbook coming out. It's called "Wake Up! A Social Media Workbook." Essentially, it's a free download, so if you sign up for our emails, you're going to get that right to your inbox. We want to walk through with you, throughout this series, different questions based on each of the podcast episodes. Today's questions were really focused on what we're talking about here of, hey, what is your style with social media, and how do you think it's affecting you?
It's just an inventory for you to think critically through your social media use. Again, we're going to be talking about all sorts of topics, but it is designed for you to do one section each week. You'll just work along with us as we do the podcast. We're hopeful that all throughout this you will be able to be really honest about how your engagement is with social media.
I know for me, that's one of the reasons I'm going to take this fast. I feel like I can be honest and logical. Perhaps I don't really know at the end of the day. We're hopeful that by even encouraging you to work through these things with the group or with your husband, maybe even working through some of these questions, it will help you as well to feel like you can reassess social media and what its place is in your life.
Emily: Absolutely, because I think one of our heartbeats with this series is that we would all stop and ask, "What is for my longest good?" We want to be faithful moms. We want to be moms who are filling up our own hearts and our own lives with the joy of the Lord and then women who are pouring that into the next generation. What choices are going to last? What choices are going to really be consistent with that over the longest period of time? Is it that check we're going to do on social media and the quick hit? Is there something better and longer that we can invest our time in?