#27 - Dr. Omri Gillath: The Rise of AI Romantic Chatbots and How Screen Time Impacts Our Brain

Yeah, well, you're officially live in the dining room studio, not the bedroom studio or the bathroom studio.

How does one begin there?

It's a good question.

Of close relationships and sexuality.

And I actually came in to grad school wanting to do more research about sexuality and close relationships.

And the way that it worked back in Israel was that you were accepted to the program, and they assigned you to a specific mentor.

And the mentor that they assigned me at the time was more interested in doing research on death and suicidality and stuff like that.

And I said, well, I mean, sure, Freud was talking about eros intentus and all that, but this is not the side that I want to focus on.

So it took a while and I started working with someone else, with Great Birnbaum, who eventually turned to be one of my advisors, and she was doing research on sexuality, which I like what she did, and we started kind of having talks and ideas, and I took some of her classes, and one thing led to the other.

And then eventually, my main advisor was Mario Mikulinser, who was doing a lot of work on attachment, and this is basically kind of how it got me into it, and I started working with him, and then I moved to work with one of his collaborators, he's my post-doc advisor, who's also doing work on attachment, and the rest is history.

The rest is history, and then the chapters begin turning and turning.

So you grew up in Israel?

Yeah, so I grew up in Israel, and I was there until I was about 30, and then I came to the US for a year to do a post-doc, and then one year turned to two, and two turned to three, and I'm still here.

Wow, Kansas, is that where you?

No, I came to California, actually, so I was doing a post-doc in UC Davis, and I really didn't think about it, I mean, so you're saying Kansas?

I mean, when I got the job, right, the offer, so in Kansas, most of my cohort in Davis was saying, oh my God, Kansas?

Yeah, don't do it, don't do it.

Right, why would you do that?

And I said, I mean, I don't know anything about Kansas, why would I care?

And I mean, I knew some of the people, you know, at the time, Dan Batson, for example, was here.

And what was growing up in Israel like?

And it was the normal, right?

I mean, I didn't grow up in two different places, right?

I grew up in one place, so I don't have a good comparison.

I see what kind of my kids went through.

So there's some things that are very different.

So for example, when I grew up, I basically went to, it was the same kids that later on became adults, you know, like adults from the daycare to kind of high school.

Whereas here, you know, I see my kids are changing the people that I go to school with every year.

So that was very different.

In Israel, everything is very close.

So you get to see family and extended family like a lot.

And whereas here, you know, my kids grew up with us, right?

You have friends as family, not some army.

To see the family, you need to fly 24 hours to get to the other side of the world.

So that's very different.

Also in Israel, right?

Obviously, you know, the language is different.

The culture is different.

It's a Mediterranean country.

It's a country at war.

Every 10 years or so, we have a new war.

A new war coming up.

So that's very different than living in the US.

Did you eat a lot of Mediterranean food?

Yeah, I mean, that was the only food.

I mean, Israel is kind of like the, it's an eclectic kitchen.

So we have a lot of Arabic food.

It's like hummus, falafel, stuff like that.

But there are also all kinds of influences from Europe, from South America.

So for example, you know, my son of my mom is from Germany.

My son of my dad is from Syria and very different types of food.

So you get a little bit of everything.

What do you think that impact is between the kids in Israel having the same class and the same people going from kindergarten to 12th grade versus a shifting classroom in the United States?

Do you think it damages ability to make relationships or is a lot harder because there's people constantly switching?

So I think that damaging or preventing is a strong word.

But I do think that there is something about the socialization processes in the US that are making you more, it's making it easier for you to move around, making it easier for you to be mobile.

And part of it is school where they basically, and we actually, we went to the teachers and the principal in my kid's school, first time that it happened, and said, what's going on?

Why are they being separated from their friends?

This doesn't make any sense.

And I said, no, this is how the system works, and this is to help kids that don't have friends to make new friends.

But what about the kids that already have friends and you're basically tearing them away from their networks?

And I said, well, they'll figure it out, right?

And I do think that they don't.

I think that if anything, it teaches you to have these very superficial, on the surface kind of relationships and to almost like be a bit more avoidant.

Yeah.

And like, you know that your year's gonna come to an end and you're gonna have to pick new friends.

So you build your relationships with that in mind.

It's like running a race and you know that you have three miles, so you need to, but after three miles, you're good.

So you can give everything you have, but then after that, it's done.

And I think that with that in our minds, we navigate our relationships differently whenever we see an end date.

Right, absolutely.

And I think that, I mean, end date can be good, right?

When you have a deadline at work, it's great, right?

I think that, you know, my student work better, people at work work better, that they have a deadline.

But in a relationship, if they has an expiration date on it, that changes your level of commitment.

And we talk about it, we call it, you know, relational disposability, that in a way people, especially those who moved a lot, tend to get into that and have this almost an attitude, which start with your attitude to your furniture and your, you know, the thing that you buy, your apartment, stuff like that.

Anything can be disposable and replaced.

And then you generalize that to how you look at your relationships.

So, you know, in our studies, we show that people that moved a lot tend to trade their friends, their close others, even their romantic partners is more disposable.

You mentioned that phrase, relational disposability.

And I would love to hear more about it, but particularly I know I came from an industry, healthcare IT, where you move a lot.

And if you want to get more pay, then you want to move to a different company.

And then after a couple of years, you want to take on a project certification.

Then you move to a different company and a different company.

And you get good money each time you move.

Yet what you recognize is that the network gets bigger.

Like on LinkedIn, imagine LinkedIn, everybody has this big network.

Yet the quantity is higher, but the actual depth between all those relationships is really shallow.

And it is so hard for people to build consistent community.

And I think there's a lot of breakthrough whenever people build community.

And that's some of the stuff that I nerd out on.

But let's go back historically with the journey of relational disposability.

When does it start?

Does it start with corporations, you think?

So I think some of it starts with corporations.

Some of it is about the organizational man, right?

So this is Wyatt, a sociologist back in the 50s, talking about how big companies, so imagine the Google and the Meta of today, thinking to themselves, okay, what can we do to make it easier on our managers?

And how do we help them move around and stuff like that?

So they're saying we can build the US in a way that would be easier for people to move.

So it doesn't matter where you wake up, right?

You're gonna have the Starbucks to get your coffee, the Target to get your groceries, school's gonna look the same, restaurant's gonna look the same, everything's gonna look the same.

So then it's so easy to move, right?

Wrong, because what's not moving with you are your friends.

So it's very common, as you said, in industry, in academia as well, right?

Once people are moving in the US it's very easy and acceptable to just kind of like severe the relationships and start fresh.

And again, you can say, well, if I had no relationships or bad relationships, that's great, but if you actually had relationships and you were moving away from the family and from your, let's say, your childhood friends and stuff, that's very hard.

And this is something that other scholars are going to notice before me.

So Kurt Levin, who was a Jewish psychologist who basically ran away from the Nazis back in 1930 something, came to the US.

And after a few years here, kind of like noticed that there are differences between Germany and the US right?

And he said the two main differences that he noticed were that it's much harder to make friends in Germany, right?

But once you penetrated this kind of like level of friendship, you'd go all the way in, right?

And not only your friendship would be deeper, it would also be what he called like multiplex.

So you'd have friends that you can do, you can play basketball with and go see a movie and have chats over books.

So you can do everything with them, right?

As opposed, for example, in the US where you have work friends that are, I need to do like both ends, right?

Work friends where, yeah, you're friends at work, but it's about it, right?

It's not that we're gonna start hanging out outside of work.

There's this TV show right now about this, I think elementary school, and one of the episodes is called Work Friends, where they trying to explain one of the people there, one of the guys there, what's the difference between friends, friends and work friends.

And he was like, what are you talking about?

I thought we were friends.

I said, yeah, yeah, we're friends, but we're work friends.

So again, it's very different, which again, Levine was saying that you can have people that you're only playing a game with them.

Maybe you just see them for basketball once a week, or maybe you see them at work, right?

And that's it.

And you're kind of like putting them in different compartments and each one of your friends or friend groups is not going to overlap with the other friends groups, right?

And again, Levine was kind of like shocked by that.

He said, this is so different, right?

It seems very easy to make new friends in the US, but the friendships are not going to be there for them when you need them because they're kind of superficial and shallow.

It's funny, every time that I talk about it with my students, I say, so how do you evaluate the depths of friendship?

Obviously, there are measures like self-reportage and stuff like that.

But it's kind of like the things that if you show up on your friend's doorstep with a dead body, don't ask any questions, they bring a shovel and say, where are we going?

So it's kind of, again, you judge your friends based on how they respond to a crisis.

And again, after Levine, many people looked at that and people kind of focused on how hard or easy it is to make the relationships.

In our studies, we look at how hard or easy it is to break the relationship, right?

And we see that it's, for some people, it's very easy, right?

So you can talk about people who are more avoidant, that are kind of like, don't like to get too intimate, too committed or stuff like that.

But in general, there are many things in our society because the US is so high on mobility, right?

You talked about one type of mobility, but you can think about other, like residential mobility and other types of that.

People move around a lot, not everyone.

Obviously, there are people that never left.

Lawrence, people, as you said, moving around is a must if they wanna move up.

And that leads to this state of mind where, okay, I know I'm gonna move next year, a couple of years from now, why should I get too close to these people and get my heart broken or something like that?

What do you think's the cost of that?

I think that one cost is loneliness.

I think that, and again, loneliness, right now we're talking about this loneliness pandemic, right?

It's like they were talking about the silent.

We have COVID that everyone is talking about, but at the same time, loneliness was...

And it started way before COVID, but I think COVID just pushed us over the cliff.

And now we're kind of like trying to figure out, okay, what do we do with this crisis?

And I think that because we were more loose in a way, right?

We're kind of like more flexible.

We can move around.

Everything is easy.

We're losing our ties and we're losing our support network.

And that's very hard on us.

Yeah, it is.

I was reading this book and it was talking about the difference between a weak tie and a strong tie.

Like an acquaintance and a friend that we know.

And it was really putting the emphasis on the power of weak ties and how through weak ties, you can get business opportunity and you can be connected to other people.

And it struck me because it was viewing the weak ties like the transactional and like, hey, there's a lot of transactional currency here.

If you want to break into this company, develop a lot of weak ties rather than like the deep friendship.

Right.

And I mean, there is a lot of conversations when you do social network research, right, about the difference between weak ties and strong ties.

And the, you know, Dunbar is talking about the different kinds of levels and how close people are.

So you have maybe one or two people that are super close and then five people that are close, but not that close.

And then 15 in the next level and 15 in the next one and 300, right?

And all of that is dictated by the size of our cortex and, you know, set by evolution and so on.

But the thing is that these are not interchangeable.

So having 300 weak ties is not the equivalent of having one or two strong ties.

And a lot of research in close relationships literature is showing that what you need are these meaningful close ties.

This is what is contributing to our mental health, to our physical health, to our longevity, to our happiness.

I mean, one of the studies that I like to cite is this Harvard Longitudinal Study, where they're looking at what are the main contributors to people's happiness.

And what they see is that close relationships, these unique, meaningful close relationships are the ones who are the most important for your happiness.

And their impact on your health is more than things like smoking, physical activity, you know, all that, right, and we tend to kind of ignore it.

Right, so it's like, sure, you know, people will make friends, you know, what's the big deal?

So you lost your partner, you'll just find a new one, right?

You know, don't worry about that, you know, it's so easy to do is the fact that less people having sex, less people having friends, and the levels of anxiety and depression and loneliness are just going up and up and up.

And this is despite, you know, new medications, new treatments, you know, all of this advances that we have.

I think obviously something is not working.

Yeah, something's not working.

This is something I've been reflecting on a lot.

And it makes me a bit nervous whenever I think about it and talk about it, because I want to help like equip.

One thing is just to have the conversation, right?

And you are such a great example of someone whose research illustrates why we should be thinking about this.

But one of the things I've been learning about loneliness is that we all talk about it or like we all deal with it, yet we don't really talk much about kind of a remedy.

And then it's tough because it's not necessarily one size fits all, right?

Like you have your reactive loneliness and your chronic loneliness.

And then like I'm not a clinician, so I don't have the clinical background.

So sometimes I get a little nervous talking about like, oh, all you need to do is just talk to people.

You know what I mean?

But I still feel compelled to discuss it and to figure it out.

Because I can tell, like you said, the rising depression and people feel anxious and lonely.

Like yesterday, I was meeting with a guy for breakfast and he had moved around, went to undergrad, then grad school, got one job in Atlanta, then moved to KU.

And now he has a cool job with the university.

And I was sitting down with him and I was talking to him and it was really cool.

But he said that he doesn't have any friends.

And it was just so interesting because this guy is like very accomplished and the work that he does was so impressive.

Like he was showing me, I was like, wow, I need to get you working on the podcast.

You know, I need to figure out how to tap into that.

But he's a Christian, so he's been going to different churches, but he hasn't found a church he likes.

And there was just these different things.

And every time I have a conversation like that, I wonder how many people are dealing with that same thing.

And my wager is that there's a decent amount of them.

So I'm always sitting there trying to think of, well, what's the best way for me to contribute in some way to remedy this?

Right.

I don't know if it's like, you know, the work of one person or, or, you know, so, so think about the difference between Europe and the U S as an example, right?

So in Europe, they have, you know, secretary of loneliness or however they, you know, call these legislators that they, they go to the conclusion that the state has to intervene and take care of it.

Because things are pretty bad.

And it's not that these things in Europe are worse than in the U S.

And right now Congress is talking about, you know, the need to deal with loneliness and they start kind of working on that.

But it's kind of like too late, too little almost.

And if you think about the divisiveness in our country, right, that's definitely contributing to our, you know, hard time of making friends.

And what you said about friends, you can also say about, you know, a romantic partner.

I can think about some of the people that I know that, as you said, are attractive, highly accomplished, you know, you know, there's nothing wrong about them.

And yet they don't have a partner, despite the fact that they want to, not everyone want to, but you definitely have people that are kind of going through life and really interested in having a relationship and maybe even had some relationships, but they never found the one that would stick in a way.

And you kind of wonder, okay, what's going on?

And you look at the numbers and the demographics, and there are less people, again, are getting into relationships.

And again, I'm not saying that there's necessarily something wrong about that, but we're seeing more of it.

And we're also seeing now more than ever before, more research, for example, in people who are asexual and are romantic.

So people that supposedly don't have the drive, don't have the desire.

And I'm saying supposedly because I don't think there is enough research at this point to make a decision there, but I mean, there definitely, this is their subjective experience.

And you kind of wonder, is that just something that we haven't noticed before?

It's kind of like with depression, right?

Are you saying suddenly there are higher numbers of depression is that because we didn't have the right diagnosis before, or is it that there are actually more people who are depressed right now?

And I think that there is a bit of both in there, but things are changing.

And I think you mentioned church, right?

So for example, less people go to church, less people do things together, right?

I was just seeing some friends for dinner last night, and they were talking about their group of friends who used to kind of like hang out and in person and do all kinds of stuff, nothing out of the ordinary, but they stopped with COVID and they're not back to where they used to be.

And this is something that you hear a lot, right?

It's like, in the academia, you see many people, myself included, that kind of stop going to conferences.

And I'm not there yet where I feel like, okay, I'm ready for it.

Often, we kind of like replace the in-person visits to visits that are on Zoom, right?

I mean, it's a weird world right now.

It's a weird and scary world to some extent.

And it's definitely harder if you're trying to navigate it alone.

So yeah, I think that we should all think about what can we do to make it easier.

And one of the things that I also find interesting is that we're not aware that other people want a relationship as much as we do.

And often people feel like they're lonely and they want friends and nobody else can understand them or nobody else would want to be their friends, where it's actually the contrary.

And people are not aware of how much others like them.

I mean, not just similar to them, but actually like them, right?

So I mean, often in the US we have these things where you say, hey, let's hang out sometime, right?

We should get a coffee or something.

And then people don't follow up.

Whereas in Europe, when you say that, they would follow up, right?

And let's open our calendars and make it happen.

And again, I think that we're letting it slide here and we're fine with that.

And I think, I mean, with everything that's happening out, but the workplace, I think that it was easier to make friends.

It was easier to make romantic relationships and stuff in the workplace.

True that we had more issues with sexual harassment and stuff like that, but I think that we kind of like lost the baby with the, you know, better water.

So in a way, when we put all of these regulations, one of the things that we lost is also our ability to make social contact in the one place that we spend most of our, you know, waking hours, which is the workplace.

Yeah, I have this group of people I play soccer with Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

And I was playing this morning.

It was, it's awesome.

It started just with myself.

And then I was like, I could get people here.

And lately I've been having this idea of entrepreneurship doesn't always have to be related to dollar signs.

It could also be related to people, like let's gather people, you know, and prior to this, this gathering didn't exist, but we spoke it to life.

And now we have like 15 different people, 20 different people gathering for soccer.

One of the people there approached me and they said, how do you think we can take this beyond the soccer field?

How do you think we can take it to where I get to learn a little bit more about this person who I'm playing against or who I'm guarding?

And I thought it was a really good question because like you said, we settle for, oh, hey, we have soccer.

You know what I mean?

Like, oh, that's great.

I didn't have soccer prior to this.

But what we don't recognize is that the people who were playing soccer with, who we may have juked out and we left them in the dust, we had one connection from soccer.

And then all of a sudden we get another connection, right?

But we never know how many connections there are until we go and we explore and we sit down and we ask questions.

So one of the things I've been trying to exemplify and model in that group is just being like, hey, what you got going on this weekend?

You know, and it's a simple thing, but it's taking that extra effort.

And when you look at it in like a net energy expenditure, it's really not that much energy to spend.

Oh, I disagree.

So I think that, I mean, so it might be very easy for you because you're, you know, an extrovert and you like talking obviously as you're doing here and you're approaching people out of the blue and asking them to come to your podcast and all that.

But for many people, that's super hard.

And, you know, I remember, you know, when I started my postdoc in UC Davis, right?

And one of the professors that were just in the office next to me, right?

I would used to, you know, I used to stop and say, hey, good morning, how are you doing?

And she said, you don't have to stop and say hi, you can just email me if you have something to ask.

And I was like, exactly.

Oh, wow.

Okay, and you know, I think that again, for many people, they might look at you and say, oh my God, why are you harassing me with your stupid questions about the weekend when we came here to play soccer and move on with our lives, right?

You're not my friend, right?

You're my soccer, you know, teammate or whatever.

And it's something that, you know, you're right, in an ideal world, I think that people would be, oh yeah, this is a great opportunity, right?

We should totally use it and talk about it.

But we're so afraid to be vulnerable and to get hurt and to be rejected that it's so much easier, you know, to just stay away.

And, you know, so some of my research is about the consumption of porn, right?

There is something about an artificial partner in this case, right?

So when you watch porn instead of trying to do, you know, have sex yourself, that is so much safer, right?

Obviously no race, no STDs, no rejection, no sweat, dust and tears, whatever, right?

You may get some malware.

Right, and it's what we're doing right now in the lab.

We're looking at, you know, for example, what would it mean or what would it feel like to have an AI as a partner, right?

And can it actually fulfill the hole in your soul, right?

Can it somehow help with loneliness?

Because, you know, we got to a point where we're saying, okay, so many people are trying to find a solution for that and they haven't, maybe there is a new way.

Right now, with CHED GPT, people are all over the place, right?

You can do anything with CHED GPT, right?

You can plan your diet.

You can write your essay for college.

You can, you know.

Make the outline for this podcast.

Absolutely, everything, right?

But can you actually, like in the movie Hair, right?

Can you have it as a partner that fulfill your needs, whether these are attachment needs, they need to belong, sexual needs, right?

And I mean, if you go online, you can find, you know, my aigirlfriend.com on my romanticai.com.

And so, I mean, so there are bazillion of those out there already.

And they seem to suggest, of course, right?

And it's so much easier, right?

Because you can sit at home on your computer or on your phone and have a relationship without the worry of they're not being available or not liking you or not wanting to have sex right now and so on.

So there is something very compelling and seductive in having an artificial partner that you develop and you design and you program, right?

So yeah, it's not authentic and maybe they don't really love you, but do you know ever if your partner actually loves you and what they do and where they go?

I'm kidding.

And people are willing to give up a lot for that.

So they would give up their privacy because who knows where your data goes and they are willing to give up real world relationships and time with friends and time with family, right?

And they'll probably pay for it.

Right?

And again, I mean, so when you look at, okay, so is that the solution or is that the next crisis waiting to happen?

And I mean, most of the research out there right now is about, okay, how can we use AI to better, you know, do some kind of, you know, industry, right?

And face recognition or identify diseases in the crop or, you know, so like here in Kansas, right?

You use satellites and you can, you can kind of skin the, you know, get millions of satellite images through AI and they would identify the field where the crop isn't growing well and stuff like that, right?

So yeah, obviously AI can do many good things, but at the same time, we're not asking the questions of, okay, what people are starting to shift to using AI as their psychologist, as their mentor, as their partner.

So do you, would you say that there's a fairly clear like association or correlation with rising rates of singleness and rising rates of people watching porn?

I think that there gotta be some overlap, right?

And I mean, it makes sense that people that don't have a partner and still have their sexual desire intact, you know, are getting it off by, you know, watching porn.

So there is some of that.

And maybe it's also, I mean, so again, this is potentially a correlation.

We don't know the causality is getting what you need from porn, and this is why you don't look for a partner.

You know, you don't invest in looking for a partner, or you don't make the effort.

Or is it because you don't have a partner, you end up watching more porn?

And then, you know, what we see from our studies is people don't just watch porn for one reason, right?

So you can still be in a relationship and watch porn as a way to, you know...

Escape, or like a dopamine release.

Right, or a way to kind of like, you know, learn a bit more about it, find new ideas.

You know, have a kind of like a foreplay with your partner.

So there are all kinds of things to do with porn, right?

Porn is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be.

Learn like videography tips.

How do you use lighting?

Exactly, exactly.

That's great.

Director, right?

How do you write a good convincing...

Director's cut.

Yeah.

How do you create a good convincing, compelling script with asexuality?

That's something that I've been kind of interested in too, because my thought about it is that my guess would be if you don't have, if you don't have a lot of, if you don't have something to some degree, then you don't want something, like you don't have the desire for it.

So like if people aren't, if they grow up and they aren't having sex, and maybe they go to porn, then they're getting a sexual release via porn, so then they may not feel a sexual attraction.

If you look for porn, that means that you are sexual.

So people who are asexual just have no interest, no porn, no nothing.

It's just something that they don't like.

Think about being colorblind.

You just don't see the colors.

Or think about not smelling, or some people cannot identify emotions.

So there's something about people who are asexual or people that don't feel romantic love.

They just don't have it as part of their needs.

So they might still need friends and they want the companionship and stuff like that.

But they, so, I mean, we usually think about, let's say you're married and these are sexist marriages.

And it's, oh my God, this sounds so bad.

And these people are probably so miserable.

And that doesn't have to be the case.

They can be super happy and find happiness in doing things together that are not sexual.

So I think that we should be, obviously, less judgmental about it.

But at the same time, kind of like wonder, okay, what's going on here, right?

Yeah, be curious about it.

So for me, this is just one more indication that things are changing, that there is some sort of a sociocultural shift.

And you can talk about technology as a part of it.

You can talk about our socialization as a part of it.

Even the political changes, right?

So I think to some extent, the way that people are identifying was the whole partisanship and divisiveness in the political realm is really making it hard for people to bridge the gap and stay friends with others who are not seeing eye to eye with them about politics.

Yeah, Annie, my wife, she was connecting with a political communication scholar who was looking at that people's ability to build relationships that go beyond partisanship.

And that's interesting because I feel like the older we get, particularly if you go through the university system, like higher ed and you go to grad school, then you will have...

I remember whenever I was in grad school, I would have professors who made their political stance is very evident.

Like I could tell, and they would talk about certain things and it bled through everything and...

Which is a big no-no.

In my mind too.

But...

No, I mean, the university tells you, you should not put your opinions out there.

Yeah, I agree.

But what it does is it also exemplifies to the grad students, like, hey, this person's like a really published professor and they got tenure, they got all that stuff.

So that's something I need to be doing, right?

And it can be really divisive.

Right.

And think about people who are married and one of them is, let's say, a Trump supporter and the other one isn't.

How does that work for you?

And because right now we're saying, it doesn't matter who you think, it's Biden or Trump or whatever, right?

Some people think this guy's a liar, a traitor, a spy, a child molester and so on.

It's very hard to agree and ignore and move on and maintain your relationship when you think, oh my God, this other person, my partner, is supporting this horrible, horrible person.

And it's like the saying, some of my best friends are whatever, Biden supporters or Trump supporters, right?

And people are looking at me and saying, oh my God, how can you have people from across the aisle who are supporting this thing?

And actually my son right now is doing his internship in DC and he's working in the Office of Bipartisan Civility, which their goal is to get things done across the aisle.

But we obviously don't have enough of that, right?

I mean, Biden to some extent was elected because his experience was doing things with people on the other side, but it's so hard to get it done, right?

And think about having, you know, whatever, Thanksgiving dinner and you know, you have this one relative who is super annoying and starting, you know, with these discussions.

And how do you navigate that, right?

How, you know, do you, do you just not show up?

Do you stop showing up for family events because you don't want to get into this political kind of like nightmare or, or do you kind of like say, okay, let's not talk about politics.

Can you not talk about politics?

You know, so it's.

You navigate that.

I would suggest to have some ground rules and say, look, we came here to celebrate whatever, Thanksgiving or Hanukkah, whatever, right?

Right.

And it's today.

And it's.

It can be.

It can't be just for you and let's just make it about that.

And not about whatever political, you know, attitudes you have, because we know where it's going to end.

Yeah.

And for some reason we can't seem to get to a solution.

I was in, I had a friend of mine who's also in DC, and he said one of the traits that he really wants to showcase is like intellectual openness, like being willing to explore other ideas.

And I as well am trying to do that too.

But one of the kind of predicaments I get in is like, well, I have some stances too.

So sometimes it can be hard, kind of hard when to know when to take a stance for me, because I enjoy hearing other people out so much.

But I think for most people, and sorry for jumping in there, it's actually they're more likely to make a stand and say, here's my opinion.

Rather than listening.

Right, and so humility is super important, right?

Even intellectual humility, right?

So to say, look, I don't have all the answers, right?

And one of the things is even as a professor is to kind of say to your student, I don't know, right?

It's a great question.

Let's figure it out together.

Or let me get back to you about that or something like that.

And I think that people would, again, because that's suggest some vulnerability, would not go down that road and just say, this is what I know, this is what happens.

And they're also getting the information from very different sources, right?

So some people get it from Fox News, other getting it from CNN, so their world view is very, very different.

There is no room for compromise and for some gray, it's all black and white.

And some people, what they'll say, I say some people, I fear that if someone were like, Chris, you had a conversation with Blink and they associate that with some type of endorsement or, yeah, like you shouldn't let that person talk about that thing.

But in my mind, I'm like, you know, I'll hear you out.

Like that doesn't mean that I'm endorsing you or that I'm approving of it.

So maybe, so for some reason it reminds me of, you know, again, they're good peoples on both sides, which I didn't like that saying at all.

Trump about the Nazis, right?

So he's saying they're good people on both sides and it's totally fine and you know, not all of them are bad.

And I disagree.

I think that Nazis, we should all agree that there are no good people there.

And yes, I might be biased as a Jew, but regardless, right, you know, we don't talk about, you know, pedophiles or child molesters as, oh yeah, they're good people and we should let them talk and you know, maybe come to your podcast and talk about, hey, any kids who want to hang out and get some candy?

So I think there's some things where you want to put clear boundaries to, you know, I know that in the US freedom of speech is right there.

We got to always give people, but no, I mean, hate speech, right, you know, racism, violence, right?

All of that is problematic and we tend to say, oh, these are just words, but words can lead to more aggression, more violence and more, you know, escalation and so on.

So when you're saying, oh yeah, I think it's a good idea to not accept the results of the election and show up at DC and take our, you know, rightful place and people end up doing it, probably connection between the two, right?

So you can't just say, oh, let people say whatever they want.

And it's also, I think that to some extent, by saying things like, you know, I don't need other people, right?

Or friends are super easy to make.

I can make, you're shaping your view and you're kind of following the words without actually thinking about the consequences.

It's like right now, you know, as a part of this research on AI, there is this survey going around in academia about whether or not we should stop research on AI, right?

Until we understand what's going on.

And a bunch of people talked about that, right?

And, you know, Elon Musk was one of them, Bill Gates, others, right?

And some people say, you know, we definitely should stop, right?

This is like, you know, the atom bomb, you know, Manhattan Project.

We don't know what's going on.

We're just developing it because we're in the middle of the war and if we don't do it now-

China will do it.

Right.

On the other hand, there are people saying, you know, if we go down that road, without putting some checks and balances, and we have this tendency as humans to like, you know, think about global warming, think about, you know, the nuclear war and stuff like that.

I mean, so we have this tendency to say, let's go forward, progress is important, technology is great, without thinking about the consequences.

And I think that we need to stop being kids about it and be more mature and responsible and say, no, wait, we need to think about how we're doing it.

You know, in a way Asimov was talking about it was his, you know, three rules, right?

So this is something that people thought about decades ago, and you know, maybe it's not about robots, about AIs, but it's the same thing.

We need to think about how do we make sure that we're not creating the next big disaster?

And what were the three rules?

That's a pop quiz, right?

So I mean, the first one was, you know, never heard a human being.

And you said Massimo?

Is that his name?

Asimov.

Asimov.

Isaac Asimov.

He was a science fiction.

And we can probably find the link for that.

But you know, number one is never, you know, heard a human being, right?

Yeah.

If you remember the movie I Robot was Will Smith, talking about not hurting other people, right?

And so the movie is all about that.

Can robots actually, you know, kill someone else?

They make a compelling case.

Right.

They may be able to, but the, so whenever we're talking about technology, I, when I think about it, I feel like the future is bleak whenever it comes to rising rates of loneliness and less people getting together and less people having more friends.

And I'm not saying that the future is bleak.

There's just moments in times where I feel that because I will see, like you said, AI girlfriends, right?

Or AI boyfriends or AI romantic partners.

And then we have the virtual reality porn.

And then we have internet streaming platforms like TikTok that can entertain us all the time.

So we don't really need to leave.

We have grocery drop-off.

We can do everything online.

And then Apple with their Pro Vision or Vision Pro, whatever, you know, with their spatial computing or spatial program, whatever word they use.

So it seems to be that we have more and more things that make life easier and frictionless, which results in less opportunity for people to be meeting.

Having a guest that you don't like, or meeting a person that smells bad, or going on a date with someone who turns out to be Glenn Close and tries to kill you and your bunny.

And so it's like, yeah, I mean, things can, I mean, this is what it means to be in the real world, as opposed to the metaverse.

Not that things cannot be horrible online, right?

I mean, look at internet trolls and look at talk backs on articles and stuff.

I don't know if you have, you know, on your podcast, the ability to, for people to respond, but I'm sure that every once in a while, you'd have someone that you'd-

I've gotten a couple one stars.

There you go.

So I mean, it's, you know, free world, right?

They should say whatever they want.

But I think that, yes, on the one hand, technology is amazing.

And I mean, you can have your podcast due to technology, right?

And we definitely see things happening like, you know, amazing advancement in medicine and, you know, new cures for cancer and all of these opportunities to, you know, like energy and so on.

But at the same time, you're right, that one of the risks is that if we're just doing these things without thinking about the implications, we're running the risk where we're gonna get more, you know, bad than good from it.

And it's also interesting for me that with technology, you know, sometimes the people who are engaged in developing it, right, which are usually engineers and so on, are not necessarily the people that are concerned about social relations and structure of society and so on.

And most companies where they have morality, but how many social psychologists we have, for example, working on trying to understand the implications of the metaverse or of the new VR and so on.

And yeah, as you said, I think that the, the goal is basically make money.

Yeah.

The goal is not necessary to make you happier.

Think about, let's take Twitter, because everyone is talking about that, right?

So it's, it's the way for them to get you to hook up is by annoying you, right?

If you, if you look at Twitter and get angry, right?

And the same goes with Facebook.

They have, they're strategizing how to get people to be angry and upset because this is what gets them to stay longer on the screen, right?

And, and talking about, I mean, again, Twitter can be great.

I mean, just, just today, I saw something on Twitter.

They were talking about this new article that shows a connection between more time on screens and damage to your default network in the brain, right?

Which again, there are all kinds of criticism about the paper and so on and so forth.

But this is interesting because it, it suggests that this network is what allows you to be more social, what allows you to hang out with people, which allows you to just, you know, chillax and not be worried all the time.

And because we are using the screens and hurting ourself in this way, this is what leads potentially to more depression, more anxiety, more loneliness and so on.

So, I mean, you, you can't engage, you know, think about that, right?

Think about what makes an athlete the superstar they are, right?

If you talk to someone like, you know, Messi, who's soon going to be in Miami and stuff like that, right?

They're talking about, there's the 10,000 hours rule, right?

You've got to spend 10,000 hours doing soccer or whatever, right?

And to become the next level.

So think about these kids who are spending 10,000 hours on the screen playing whatever games.

There gotta be some kind of an effect on them.

There has to be.

So what is that effect?

Do we know what's going to happen to them?

Is it happening to everyone the same way?

I mean, there is two big camps.

One of them is talking about the fact that it's definitely leading to more aggression, more violence, shooting in the real world.

And so virtual, this is just a way for people to get catharsis, to kind of cleanse themselves from the aggression and so on.

So again, without getting into the whole world of meta-analysis and how you figure it out in science, we need to be aware of that.

And we need to see that's happening, that people are not just kids, everyone is spending more time on screens, right?

On your phone, on TV, streaming, playing, listening to podcasts, what have you, right?

And some of these things can be great, right?

In the case of your podcast, or some of them can be horrible if you're getting more and more annoyed and getting messages that suggest more violence and more aggression and more hate.

So these things can be neutral or even positive, but there might be very negative.

It's hard because you had mentioned, there's criticisms about the paper, which makes sense because that's how it goes with a lot of research.

But then same thing with the depression and the loneliness or like that question you had proposed about depression.

Is it really rising rates of depression or is it now that we have a vocabulary and we've developed the scales?

And my thinking there is that we do have some good scales and we do have all that stuff, and we can use it, yet there's still some communities like the Amish community who seem to have less rates of depression.

We can't really tell what's going to happen when you're on a screen for 10,000 hours yet.

We have some hints.

We have some hints and we see, and it's mainly negative, unfortunately, right?

And everywhere you go, you'd see more people saying, you know, shut them down, just, just, you know, either don't don't give them at all or give them for a limited amount of time, especially with kids and when they're evolving or developing.

So I think we do know, but, but there's so many interest groups around, right?

So let's go into a even a more provocative, you're like, you know, let's talk about guns.

Right.

And so, I mean, there are discussion of why do we see so many mass shootings in the US right?

No one else in the world, nowhere else.

You talk about one difference between Israel and the US.

There are plenty of people with guns in Israel, right?

I mean, we all do, you know, military service and, you know, you have many people going around with their rifles and handguns because of their jobs and where they live and so on.

But you don't see as many mass shootings.

You know, whenever a mass shooting happens, you know, in a country, right, like, you know, Australia, right, people are shocked, you know, how, what is going on?

And, and, you know, there are all kinds of theories and people talk about mental health, but then what's the difference in mental health in the US and other places?

Apparently they're not that big differences.

And then you get into the political discussion of, you know, what is the Second Amendment?

Should we take the guns away?

In Australia, for example, at some point they made a decision and took all the guns away, right?

Now you don't have as many guns and you don't have almost any mass shootings, right?

Here, you know, on a given year, you have more mass shootings than days of the year.

And you know, we're all fine with that, right?

So you know, as a professor, I'm worried about, you know, a student coming in with a gun.

As a parent, I'm worried about my kids going to school and, you know, having a classmate being unhappy and shooting, so we're all living with the risk, and we're okay with that.

So again, these are the things that we're kind of like, we know that there are negative outcomes and yet we're not doing anything about them.

And same goes with the screen to some extent, right?

Not that I'm comparing, you know, mass shootings and screens, but yeah, we are aware of the negative implications and yet we're there and we're not doing anything about them, which is mind blowing.

Yeah, it is mind blowing and you hear people say, I'd love to see, or nobody's going to take my guns from me, you know, and that is totally like a stereotype and I'm being a character here, but that idea of no one's going to come in and take my guns and I'm imagining someone being like, no one's taking my screens from me, you know, like I'm having my screen time regardless.

I mean, people are talking about internet and screen as a human right, right?

You got to have access to internet, right, right, because it's information, right?

And it's in its freedom and it's it's, you know, but but I think that that again, you know, especially as a parent, you kind of think about, okay, on the one hand, I want to be connected socially to their friends and a phone is a way to do it.

On the other hand, if they're doing it too much and are basically, you know, doing what we call the passive engagement, you know, they're just kind of like surfing surfing through the information that's that was shown many times to be a bad thing.

And I think that if you, you know, like what you're doing, right, if you're playing soccer with other people, if you meet people, you know, on your podcast and so on, you're definitely getting a chance to do it.

But if all you do is just hang out online and have a second life as your main life, yeah, right, then we have a problem.

Second life is your main life, right?

Hey, oh, we got to put that as a little phrase up here, second life is main life.

And that is, I used to play, ever since I started working on this podcast, I've played a lot less video games just because, yeah.

And like my screen consumption is fairly high right now because I'm trying to figure out how to market the podcast with social media and video editing and then distribution and publication.

So I can't really afford any more screen time, but I used to play this basketball game NBA 2K.

Did you ever play that game?

A little bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you get to do my career and from, you get to build your guy and pick, right?

Like I'm, it's funny.

My ID says I'm six foot.

I don't know.

I must've been wearing big shoes or something, but I'm like five, ten point seven, five.

Like if I, I got these walking shoes that I wear and I may be six foot with them on because I got these big soles on them.

But what I did was like in the basketball game, I'd make my guy and he'd be, you know, a six, six point guard and 90 90% three point shooter and all this stuff.

And I would be traveling for work and I'd be really looking forward to going home and working on my basketball guy.

Right.

And like, because you start and you pick your, I picked OU because I'm from Oklahoma.

Right.

So I'm playing and I would, right.

OU sucks.

Right.

I'm playing.

I tried to make it to the national championship and then you get drafted and you get very little minutes and it goes to mimic what a rookie would do.

And you don't make it.

Unless you're Christian Brown and then you get plenty of minutes.

And then you want a national championship.

Shout out to him.

But the more time you put in, the better you get.

And it's funny because I would really look forward to playing because after a point, you just start whooping everybody.

And it's really fun.

It's funny to me how we've developed different.

I'm trying to think of a good concept here, but different worlds for us to be experts in.

Right.

You're becoming a different persona, right?

In a way.

And that's what Second Life provided people, right?

They were able to be a demon or a warlord or a princess, right?

And you can be all that.

You can be as tall as you want, as buffed as you want, as smart as you want.

And this is what is so nice about the virtual world, right?

You can do whatever you want.

But I mean, we know that you can get addicted.

We know that people can die while being addicted to video games.

So that's what's shown.

And we definitely know the negative implications of that.

So yeah, I mean, there are different goals, different needs, different interests.

And this is what I'm saying that, for example, you and I talked before about Replica, right?

As an example of this AI friend.

And the people behind Replica now are basically selling it, right?

So it started as a freebie kind of like for everyone, and you can download and have a friend or replicate a friend that doesn't exist anymore.

And now we can basically create this like kind of like, you know, a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a sexual partner, what have you.

And all they care about is how much money they're going to make out of it.

And people are fine with that, and they're doing it.

And they tell this friend all their secrets and anxieties and obsessions without stopping for a second and thinking about, okay, where do the data go from here?

Who saves it?

Who uses it?

You know, for what?

And same goes when you when you, you know, I mean, right now we're talking and our phones are listening to us, right?

And, you know, Google or Facebook or whatever is going to use it to, you know, if I'm going to mention the word Hawaii, we're going to get, you know, ads about Hawaii from now until, you know.

So it's, it's just part of, of the world that we live in.

And we need to be aware of it.

And I think our role as, as educators and as media person and so on is to make sure that people are aware and they know what the consequences are.

Yeah, because a lot of it is going to be up to the individual for their effort and their action.

It's just like with sedentary lifestyles, right?

We used to be in a place to where we had to work a lot harder for our food, so we got a lot more exercise.

We had to walk further to get to places.

We didn't have cars.

We got more exercise.

But now we have GrubHub and we have those Tempur-Pedic beds that will lift up so we don't have to get out of bed.

And then we have all these different things.

So the system, the larger system of technological advancement and building up infrastructure, it gave us all of this.

So now, in order for us to stay in shape, in order for us to be physically fit, it feels like we have to do so much.

Like, oh man, I have to go to the gym every day.

I got to get 30 minutes of activity every day.

Because historically, we didn't have to think about it because we had to.

Right.

Right.

And that's the same idea with this idea of social fitness, or this idea of being able to build relationships with the life and community.

Historically, we had to talk to people a bunch.

We had, we didn't have...

We lived in a tribe or a clan, and we have extended family all the time around us.

60 to 70 people because there was predators, and there was natural disasters and other ill-intent clans.

And then we get to the point where we're reducing so much friction that now we are so used to a lack of ambiguity, like we want to know what's going to happen.

And one of the principles of human interaction like this is that it's unpredictable.

Right.

And I'm in a way, I know that it's not going to sound popular, but I'm going to say it anyhow.

When did we get so soft?

When did we, what was the change that led us to this point where one word can kill us or blow our mind?

So I think that we are giving up on that.

And where it's so much easier, as you said, to be on your bed and play your video game and never see anyone, maybe except the guy who brings the food.

You haven't even at the door.

Exactly.

And this is horrible.

And I'm having these conversations with my kids.

And I keep telling my son, for example, you are right now at the time where it's going to be the easiest for you to find a partner.

And he said, Dad, stop pushing pressure on me.

I'll be fine.

Don't worry about it.

You know, and I said, I just I want you to know, right, because I see the statistics and yeah, you're just an N of one.

And but you need to know that once you get into the workplace, right, things are going to be harder.

And once you go over a certain age, they're going to be even harder than that.

And I see people around me who never got a chance to have this amazing thing that we called relationship because they missed the train or they I got to, you know, I got to get can be bothered was going out tonight because it's so, you know, I'd rather just see porn or something like that.

So it's and I think that, you know, again, you know, I think I mentioned it before, even in the workplace today, you know, if you say the wrong word, they can just so you talked about, you know, we talked about tenure at the beginning, right?

It's meaningless, right?

And if you're, you know, we used to, you know, be able to talk about things in class that, you know, think about, you know, CRT, right?

And I think it's a race theory.

If you, if you talk about that, it can be out, right?

It almost feels like we're living in different parallel universes, right?

The multiverse, right?

Where one side of society is engaging in all of this kind of like one type of behavior, attitude, emotions, and so on.

The other side is totally disconnected and doing something completely different, right?

And it, at least for me, it feels like it didn't used to be like that.

And again, this separation, it's at the individual level, the family level, right?

I mean, you asked me at the beginning, what's the difference between living in Israel and in the US?

For me, one of the biggest things is the distance from family.

So when I live in Israel, I used to see my grandparents and obviously my parents, like, you know, at least once a week, right?

It doesn't matter.

I mean, Israel is so small that you can bike from one side of it to the other in a weekend, right?

You know, in a matter of no time, you can get across it.

So my son moved to California and I get to see him like once or twice a year, and it's breaking my heart, right?

It's like, I don't want that.

I raised him for 18 years.

He became not just my son, but kind of like my best friend, right?

We talk about falling in love with our kids.

This is the experience that you have.

And as a parent, it's a separation process that is healthy in a way, right?

You want your kids to move on and get education and get a job and find their own partner and move on.

But at the same time, I don't want to be able to see them like once a year on Thanksgiving dinner with the annoying uncle, right?

So it's something that some of it is geographical, some of it is cultural.

And a lot of it is about our decision and how we kind of like what we are willing to do with it.

Yeah, it is.

You mentioned with your son, you said, this is going to be the easiest time life stage wise to find a romantic partner just because he's in college, right?

And what's that research look like?

Is it college age after people graduate and they go to?

So it's a U shape basically, right?

It's easier when you're young.

It's easier when you're very old.

After you're done in here, this is like when we're at 40s and 50s, right?

This is when we're kind of like at the highlight of our careers.

We're focusing on getting the next promotion or whatever.

And we don't care about friends here, right?

We don't care about, you know, and so if let's say you, your kids left, you know, your empty nesters and maybe you switch jobs or maybe you go to divorce, something like that, you're all alone.

And this is why guys, especially white men, are more likely to commit suicide right around that age.

So, I mean, these things don't happen out of the blue, right?

You need to think about how these things are connected and why, because from some reason it either it's easier for women, it's more acceptable for women.

They're working harder on that, right?

They're much more social and connected than guys.

And guys, you know, tend to focus on on the work, tend to focus on, you know, even in sports, right?

You know, it's like, yeah, I'm going to show how good of a soccer player I am.

I'm not going to hang out with you and ask questions.

How was your weekend?

Does the loneliness research illustrate that men are more affected or?

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And the research, the sad part of it is, is that, you know, if you think about end of life research, women are much more likely to survive the death of their husbands than the other way around.

So whatever you do, go first.

Women are much.

They have much better chances of surviving, right?

So in my case, for example, both of my grandmas, right?

So one, one of my grand dads died when he was 50.

The other one went and died when he was 70.

My grandmas died when they were 90 something, right?

At 98 or something like that.

That Mediterranean food.

Yeah.

Well, it didn't work for the guys, right?

So it's something that we see was more women than men.

And also, again, I told you about the suicide rates.

This is much more likely to happen to men than to women.

So guys are supposed to be strong and macho and like all the Yellowstone guys, Kevin Costner kind of thing.

But we suck at dealing with what life throws at us because we don't know how to deal with our emotions and we don't know how to reach out and ask for help.

So what you said, it's so easy to kind of like just ask a question.

Hey, how was big plans for the weekend or how was your weekend?

So now most guys would just like, I got you.

I'll ask the question for you.

Right.

It's like, it's like, you know, if you watch Ted Lasso, which is a great show about, you know, many connections to Kansas, it's like Roy, right?

You don't talk about your emotions like just grunt about it, right?

Yeah, the thing he does.

And then final, final little question here.

But we talked a lot about kind of identifying and observing how technology is not exactly helping us make friendships and how we're spending a lot more time on our screens and a lot more time into technology.

And the loneliness research is looking worse and all that jazz.

It's not the most encouraging.

So what is there to do about it for the individual?

Right.

So I think, as I said, part of it is about being aware and knowing what are the consequences and knowing that if you're going to keep on engaging with Facebook and Twitter and drinking from the fire hose, right?

It's going to impact you and not in a good way.

And yeah, as you said, it can get you some more connections and maybe your next gig and who knows what.

Sure, sure.

But you're paying a price there.

So you're selling your soul to the devil in a way and the price is not worth it.

So I think that putting down your phone, right?

Going back to the tradition of having family dinners without phones, just talking to each other.

If you can have it every day, maybe have it on a Friday night or whatever, right?

Once a week, get together.

And I think that fine activities that would allow you to do that.

So it might be hard when you're playing soccer to actually have a conversation because you're running around all the time.

But for biking, for example, when I do biking, you have a couple hours where you can talk about anything and everything.

So you get to know people very well.

Again, that doesn't promise that all of you are going to turn friends, but it definitely has the potential.

So put yourself out there.

Doing that and giving up on screen time is a good way to start.

I love that.

If FC Miami plays Sporting KC, then maybe you and I are going to go watch it.

You got it.

You got it.

Watch Messi.

Right.

I'd hate for Sporting Kansas City to get beat, but if it was at the hands of Messi going in there and taking it all apart, I would love to watch that destruction.

But shout out to Sporting Kansas City.

I love you all, but there's Messi.

So you have a lab at KU.

You have a whole bunch of stuff that I'm gonna put in the show notes and then all of your research is out there.

So people can, I imagine there's gonna be people who are interested in what you're doing because what you've said piqued their interest.

So they want to follow up on that.

So I'll be sure to put all of that in there.

But other than that, thank you for being here.

You're a blast.

My pleasure.

Yeah.

It's so cool whenever you have people who do research, but then they can also like talk and laugh about it.

That is not the case all the time.

So.

Sure.

Yeah.

Sure.

And you know, the other side of it, and I know that you want to be done with it, but you know, we were just talking about it with my friends, Steve Ilari yesterday, about tweeting about your research, right?

So you're taking this article and making it into a tweet, right?

You can have, you know, a few tweets or a longer tweet, but still it's taking your entire work and turning into a sentence that basically trying to get a bunch of likes.

So I see it as, you know, yes, you can get things faster and out there to many more people than, you know, there is a, there is a sad statistics that, you know, many articles out there never read or read by, you know, five people, which is-

Your colleagues.

Three, no, three reviewers yourself and your mom.

Oh, not even colleagues.

But it's like, and technology, by the way, allows you to see all that.

So I can see for each one of my articles, how many people read it, how many people have cited it, how many, you know, blogs brought up and so on.

But it's, again, I think that it's a very different experience.

And you said, you know, there are different ways.

So, you know, I have a book about it, Todd.

There's something very coming and taking a book to bed and on your, you know, temperpatic, whatever, you know, adjustable mattress.

I don't got one, but I think they're cool.

I do, and they're great.

Oh, look at you.

You can read a book and enjoy it, which I try to do, you know, every night before going to bed.

But again, think about, you know, being a smarter consumer, right?

And how you get things also matters, not just what you get.

And you mentioned active and passive engagement with social media, which I think is one thing we should mention because you referred to passive, like scrolling, and then active being...

Engage and putting yourself out there, right?

I mean, the problem with being passive is that you are basically engaged in a lot of social comparison, and social comparison can be really bad for you.

Just what we talked about, right?

How many people read my paper as opposed to how many people read someone else's paper, right?

How many likes they got on Twitter as opposed to how many likes I got.

It's endless.

And if all your being and living is about how many likes you get, there is a problem there.

Yeah, and you're going to have a bad life, you know?

But being a conscious consumer, being more active with your social media use and not being as passive, don't just scroll for hours.

If you're there, be there for a purpose.

And then being aware of the effects of technology and reading the research, watching the TED Talk, the 20 minute TED Talk where you call your audience Grinch.

That was awesome.

One guy, one guy.

Yeah, you call an audience member Grinch, which is really good.

So we will talk more.

Thank you for being here and we will see you next time, folks.