Valuetainment - October 12, 2020


Addicted to your phone？ Reaction to “The Social Dilemma” Documentary


Episode Stats

Length

9 minutes

Words per Minute

221.67815

Word Count

2,007

Sentence Count

147


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 So recently I watched this documentary called Social Dilemma, which is about getting addicted
00:00:04.300 to your phone, getting addicted to all these apps. And they had all these different executives from
00:00:08.920 Twitter and the person who created the like button and Facebook and Pinterest. And they
00:00:13.300 were all talking about, oh my gosh, I'm addicted to my email. I'm addicted to Facebook. I'm addicted
00:00:17.900 to this and you got to be careful. And they did a phenomenal job portraying these three guys that
00:00:24.560 are behind. And this one kid that the mom creates a bed and says, if you can keep your phone away for
00:00:31.160 one week and you don't touch it, I'm going to go out there and buy you a brand new phone because you
00:00:35.040 broke it. So the son puts it over there and they lock it and the daughter couldn't do it. She breaks
00:00:40.120 it, takes the phone out because she has to look at what's going on for the phone. So one day he's
00:00:43.620 okay without the phone. Second day he's okay without the phone. The third day he sees a girl saying
00:00:48.280 something that he likes. Then he looks at the phone, takes it. He can't last for one week. He lasts for
00:00:52.720 two days. And the whole messaging is, we got to be careful to not let our kids get addicted to
00:00:57.900 phones. And then at the end, they make all these recommendations what to do at what age, what is
00:01:01.700 you give them the phones. You shouldn't start till 16. Very, very good documentary for anybody and
00:01:07.020 everybody to watch. Having said that, when I watched the documentary, to me, it was kind of like, um,
00:01:13.580 you have to be careful because these social media platforms don't care who you are. So you can do a
00:01:19.640 search for, you know, a certain search for climate change on the West coast because they're mostly
00:01:25.700 liberal and so climate change is real. It's the biggest threat to the world. And then you can do
00:01:31.680 climate change in Midwest with a lot of conservatives. Climate change is a hoax because that's what you
00:01:36.220 want to hear. And you can do climate change in East coast because it's a lot of liberals. Climate
00:01:40.400 change is real. And so they're manipulating their audience, right? And they shouldn't be doing all this
00:01:44.640 other stuff, et cetera, et cetera. Fine. Um, I'm with that just so everybody knows, you know,
00:01:50.120 what my position is when it comes down to, you know, Twitter and censoring and you can't say this
00:01:55.120 and you can't say this and YouTube and Google and all this stuff. They're independent businesses.
00:01:58.920 I spoke, spoke to my very good friends, Prager, Dennis and Sue, and they went through Sue and YouTube
00:02:04.400 because of Prager university. And I saw what happened with them and how, yes, you have freedom of speech
00:02:08.580 from America, but not necessarily companies that can do whatever they want to do with you. Uh, if they want
00:02:12.800 to censor you or not, but you can't work as a platform because, so it's very complex. Long story short,
00:02:18.680 they can censor if they want to, and they're doing it right. However, let's talk about this.
00:02:24.080 Isn't the whole purpose of any business for you to get addicted to their product?
00:02:30.680 Let me ask that question one more time. Isn't the purpose of any business for you to get addicted
00:02:37.260 to their product? What do you mean by that, Pat? I can't stand fantasy football because fantasy
00:02:45.960 football, I have friends who spend 30 hours a week on fantasy football. My draft, my guy's injured.
00:02:54.560 Oh my God, let me get on this side. The whole purpose of fantasy football is for you to get
00:02:57.960 addicted to it. Just so you know, that's the business model. I got friends here in the office
00:03:02.220 for 10 years. I ran a sales office without ever having any coffee machines. You know why? Weird
00:03:07.600 reason. It's my weird, you know, quirk or whatever you want to call it. I don't like stains on carpets.
00:03:13.000 So I never had a coffee in my coffee, in my sales office. 10 years. We had our guys would stand
00:03:18.180 outside to drink the coffee machine, but I got guys on my sales organization, 17,000 people in our
00:03:23.200 company are insurance agents drinking coffee. Some drink four or five, six a day. Some go to Starbucks two,
00:03:30.000 three times a day. Great job to Starbucks for creating a market and getting people to be addicted
00:03:34.880 to coffee. It's addicting, ain't it? Okay. Cigarettes, Philip Morris, what do they do?
00:03:40.620 They created a business model and put something in the nicotine for you to get addicted to it.
00:03:44.780 Look what kind of an empire they created. They even created a movie about it and they created guys
00:03:48.840 going around getting people to say, it's not a big deal if you smoke cigarettes, it's not going to kill
00:03:51.800 you. And you have to finally put that sign on the side. Smoking cigarettes can kill you from cancer,
00:03:56.000 but the business model is for you to get addicted to what? Cigarettes. What does McDonald's do?
00:04:01.040 What do you think Ronald McDonald was about? You think it was for adults or you think it's built
00:04:05.260 for kids to get addicted to say, mom, dad, I want to go to McDonald's. Why? Because Ronald McDonald's
00:04:11.380 going to be there. What's the happy meal about to get you and I to go there? No, it's to get people
00:04:15.500 to get addicted to go there because of kids. What's a radio's business model for you to get addicted
00:04:20.800 to it so you can listen to 24 seven so you can sell more advertising. What's TV's business model
00:04:25.560 for you to get addicted to a TV show? So for that 23 minutes that you're watching,
00:04:29.280 they get seven minutes of advertising. Those seven minutes, they can convert you to buy whatever
00:04:32.840 the product may be. Philip Morris, a drug, a new this or a new car, whatever it is to get your
00:04:38.680 attention. What's the business model of any sports? To create a leader's bulletin with a lot of stats
00:04:43.360 and brackets and a lot of competition and fights and controversy and media for you to watch sports.
00:04:48.000 How much do you consume sports? ESPN, Fox, all this other stuff. Just so everybody knows that
00:04:53.900 they're watching this. The social dilemma documentary is right. But here's the point.
00:04:59.320 It's not on the producer of how they create the product. This whole thing is about marketing. Yes,
00:05:06.320 they're using algorithms, all this other stuff. But it's very easy to say, well, it's dangerous.
00:05:11.280 We got to be careful with our kids. Yeah, I don't I don't disagree. But that's the responsibility
00:05:15.920 of a parent on the set of standards they create for their kids. That's not the responsibility
00:05:20.900 of the product creator. I don't blame Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. I produce it on the
00:05:26.660 person that's allowing their kids to get addicted to it. I'm going to sit there and blame the other
00:05:30.340 guys. How long have drugs and alcohol been around? There was a time I drank a bottle of tequila
00:05:34.740 every week when I was in the army. Every week I was drinking tequila every week for two years
00:05:40.960 straight when I was in the army. I partied every single week. And what I do? Boom. Tequila. Hey,
00:05:45.080 what's up? Contest. Who can drink the most? All this crazy stuff you do when you're in the army.
00:05:49.280 If you've been a military, you kind of know what I'm talking about. It's on the consumer.
00:05:54.440 See, I want to I want to fix this. If I can fix this, then I can be careful about having an
00:05:59.000 addictive personality because I have one. I don't want to get addicted to a lot of new
00:06:02.840 things. I got to control this. It's a great documentary can make you think about a lot
00:06:07.060 of other stuff. Kids. Hey, dad, can I watch the phone? No. Everybody else is doing it.
00:06:14.140 I'm not everybody else. Oh, I wish somebody else was my daddy. You want to go to live in this
00:06:18.920 house? Go ahead. No, I was just kidding. Okay, cool. You're a bit David. Let's figure
00:06:22.860 this thing out. You want to play some Legos? Let's play some Legos. You want to go ride
00:06:27.000 a bike together? Let's go ride a bike together. You want to go swim? Let's go swim. You want
00:06:29.620 to play basketball? Let's go play basketball. What do you want to do? Let's go watch a movie.
00:06:32.380 Let's go watch a movie. No problem. We got to control ourselves from getting addicted to a
00:06:36.860 lot of these other things. That is on us. So as much as I love the documentary that's
00:06:41.720 being out there, if you allow this to get you addicted to it, that's on you. It's the job
00:06:48.800 of a smartphone to do that. It's the job of an app to do that. It's the job of Facebook
00:06:53.400 to do that. It's the job of Twitter to do that. It's the job of Instagram to do that.
00:06:57.980 We can't blame the drug. We can't blame the drug dealer. We have to look at there and look
00:07:05.640 at the user. Drug dealers are going to be around forever. Were you ever approached by drugs?
00:07:10.100 I was approached by it all the time. Spending more time talking to our kids and to ourselves
00:07:16.180 about what things we get addicted to and spend less time trying to blame these other
00:07:19.900 guys. Yes, they need to be held accountable. Yes, Facebook, Amazon, all these guys need
00:07:22.680 to be held accountable on certain things they're doing. Selling our info on the back end. Those
00:07:27.060 things, privacy, yes, 100%. We have to be able to do that kind of stuff. But we can't just
00:07:32.120 point fingers at companies saying they're addicting. Every business model is built for you to somehow
00:07:37.880 get addicted to it. And those who are very successful, guess what? They did a better job than
00:07:42.140 everybody else. All the major channels in America that are killing it, they're the best channels.
00:07:46.140 All the major networks, they're the best channels because they got people to get addicted to
00:07:48.980 their news. Having said that, rather than spending time blaming all the things that people are
00:07:54.020 getting addicted to, why not work on better strategies to make sure you and I don't get
00:07:58.040 addicted to it? Spend time talking to your kids about it, your spouse about it, your family
00:08:02.040 about it, the people in your office about it, and see what happens. And if you got a business
00:08:05.680 model or company you're running that other people aren't addicted to, maybe you got
00:08:10.180 to do something about making your business a little bit more addicting. Maybe you got
00:08:14.220 to do something about people wanting your product more than just once. That is a business
00:08:18.340 model. So maybe this is a crazy message you don't want to hear and it gets you to think
00:08:22.020 about a whole different way, but there's going to be more addicting products that are going
00:08:26.160 to come for a long time. This is never going to stop. So now, get a sheet of paper out and
00:08:34.280 write that on a sheet of paper. What are some addictions you have that no one else knows
00:08:38.040 about? Games? Video games? Porn? You know, Twitter? Facebook? YouTube? What is it? Fantasy
00:08:44.780 football? What is it? How much is it taking away from you? What can you do to minimize
00:08:48.880 it? And if you put that time elsewhere, what will it do for you? Having said that, I want
00:08:53.180 to give you a throwback video from five years ago titled, 16 Time Wasters. If you've never
00:08:57.220 seen that, click over here to go watch that video. And on top of that, have a great week,
00:09:02.320 everybody. Bye-bye.