How Social Media Attacks Your Attention Span

Stuff They Don't Want You To Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.3 • 10.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What's the longest amount of time you've spent away from social media? For many of us, the answer is "not long." Across the planet, billions of people are caught in an endless cycle of posting, reposting, commenting, liking, and reacting to a constant stream of ephemera -- a never-ending barrage of news, updates, hot takes, memes and viral videos inundating our brains with one shiny thing after another. Most people consider these pursuits harmless... but, as Ben, Matt and Noel discover in tonight's episode, a growing number of experts are concerned that this continual short-form theatre may have serious consequences for the human brain. Tune in to learn more about how the age of social media may be affecting your brain in dangerous, often-unacknowledged, and lasting ways.

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
0:06.9	You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know.
0:12.1	A production of IHeart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
0:27.0	My name is Noel. They called me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Andrew
0:32.3	the Triforge Howard. Most importantly, you are you. You are here. That makes this, the stuff they don't want you to know. Shout out to whatever social media app you're on right now. If you're in a chat, tell them you're listening to our show. You know what I mean? Why don't weaponize it?
0:48.8	Oh, man, you might as well. It's already weaponized against us. Yeah. Might as well turn the tables, flip the script.
0:54.6	Yes, yes.
0:55.5	Just so, we were talking about this just a little bit off air, a question.
1:01.4	I've been asking a lot of people recently.
1:03.8	What is the longest you have gone without checking your phone?
1:10.6	No more than a day.
1:12.3	I mean, a day is nearly impossible.
1:14.4	I fully copped offline to being an absolute phone junkie.
1:18.8	And I've had to initiate some kind of self-imposed phone restrictions,
1:24.0	like keeping it charging in a different room while I do things around the house or work on
1:28.3	projects, but I'm absolutely addicted to the damn thing. Yeah, we're going to talk about an author
1:34.7	Johann Hari who did a little experiment with that whole thing. But when I think about
1:40.7	vacations I've taken with my son or my family, those are the times I've put
1:46.5	it away the most, but I am still constantly checking for work stuff, checking for conversations
1:52.3	in a text thread, checking social media performance of a video, all that stuff. And shout out to
1:59.5	Hari. Grace Land doesn't make it easier either. I remember.
2:04.6	I think we're talking about the same article there too. For a lot of us, or I should answer this as well,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.