Hello, thanks for listening to this Darma podcast. I hope you consider that in accordance

with the Buddhist tradition all of my work as a teacher is offered without charge and supported

entirely by donations only. If you'd like to support work. You'll find a paypal button on

darmopunks NYC.com. So social media it's very easy to criticize social media from a number of perspectives.

Due to the harvesting of personal data, it's led to an erosion of one's privacy and also leads to a veritable barrage of targeted

marketing.

You know, every time you click on something on any social media app, it's tabulated and then that

in the future can lead to targeted marketing opportunities, but also it's intrusive and it also can take advantage of people's, those who struggle with shopping

disorders as well as it can prey on people who are lonely.

Due to the scale of platforms, Facebook especially, but also Twitter and Instagram and others,

there's been a proliferation as we know from the 2016 election of misinformation and outright propaganda.

And because propaganda and misinformation is not labeled as such, people can be fed all kinds of extremist views and can be misled into adopting positions that are very much not in their interest politically, socially, and otherwise.

The flood of information has also been associated with feelings of overwhelm,

cognitive overwhelm,

cognitive overwhelm, as well as just a sense of not being able to process

what information should be acted on.

It leads to market increases of apathy. But I'm not going to be talking about social media from a kind of sociologist's perspective. I'm going to be talking about it in the perspective of my

training which is background psychology. That's really what I'm most interested in. What is the implications of social media use on the

psyche? So first off, you don't have to be a follower of Marshall McLuhan who wrote that the

media is the message how we communicate how we connect how we get information determines or structures our perceptions of the world,

as well as has implications on the personality, but it's been noted by many that shifts from one style of connection, information, sharing, communication to another has vast influence

on the way we process and our personal experience.

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