Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify is specially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand. Marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups online in person, and on the go. Shopify is made for

entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup.

The cost of isolation culture and the loneliness epidemic.

Welcome to the frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity,

and live a rich in your life.

Here are your host, Jen and Jill.

Hey, Frugal Friends. My name's Jen. My name's Jill. Hey, frugal friends. My name's Jen.

My name's Jill.

And social media promises connection, but more and more we are realizing that it's just making us feel lonelier.

And we've definitely felt this. We can scroll on our phones for sometimes hours, just looking for some of the funny videos or things that make us feel like we are finding belonging or connection. But at the end of it, we put our phones down and we kind of feel devoid of that connection. It's like all of a sudden we look up and we realize, oh, they weren't

real people here sitting with me. Yeah. So that's what we're going to talk about in this video,

not just the importance of human connection, but how that lack of human connection is affecting

us financially. And at the end, we're going to talk about what this looks

like for the future and some of the things that we learned firsthand about AI when we were in

New York City recently. But first, this episode is brought to you by parasycial relationships.

The people we feel we know because we watch their social media and YouTube videos.

The people we know intimate details about because they've selectively let us know those details.

The people we feel entitled to because they share the highlight reel of their lives with us, and they have

no clue who we are. These parasocial relationships don't just superficially need a deep need we all

have, but they can be manipulated. Influencers can curate this emotional response to gain trust that

they haven't earned so they can more easily sell us stuff. And that's why it is so important to

have a spending plan, some kind of accountability. It is not a rule, but it is a guide. And if you don't want to pay

...