HSAY 015 - Mark Lindheimer | Social Media and Fear Quote: "and just remember you can be more social." Transcript: Hello everybody this is Marki Lindheimer your host and welcome to podcast episode number 15.  I'm just leaving a meeting and heading back to my office that I'd share some thoughts about social media and fear. It's been something I've been thinking about for a while. If you spend any time on Facebook or Twitter especially and you look at the trending topics or you look at the news of the day there's always, almost always a polarity to the discussion around a particular topic. It could be political, it could be social, it could be whatever and you know there's always an opinion, everyone has an opinion and in some cases those opinions can be very strong and strident and you know aggressive on both sides of the Issue. It occurred to me that in many cases these types of attacks that result in this discussion that goes on, especially on controversial issues, can be difficult for people to grasp and I was wondering where did these  attacks come from, where do does this anger and aggressiveness come from and you know really it really always, almost always comes from a place of fear and fear is a powerful motivator. It drives action and behavior and social media is a great place for, or not so great place for, fear to be displayed in a very aggressive way and we've just gone through an election, I’ve talked about this a little bit, very divisive, very polarizing. The candidates were really difficult to accept on either side of the of the aisle and you know the discussion around those candidates was very aggressive and attacking and and angry in many cases depending on who you're supporting. You  know really i think a lot of that comes from fear. Fear comes from the information that's available and how we consume the information and there's a term called confirmation bias. So in many ways we might be looking for information that confirms our bias that we have, a certain belief about a person or a candidate or a topic or some thing that triggers something within us and then we go about that action of whatever it is and i'm talking about social media. If you search on just about any topic out there other than the innocuous MCM's or WCWS, it's really know, and even that can can lead to some pretty aggressive discussion. But i think it all comes back to fear, I think fear is something that is so powerful and I think that also I believe that our media and our social media platforms as a result allow people to express that fear and sometimes it's not a constructive way.  Sometimes it's very negative and disrespectful and truly awful. So I'm glad that social media platforms are available to us for having these discussions. I understand that people are going to have different opinions. I recognize that that the that fear is going to drive people in certain ways and I think it's really important to know that you do have control about what you consume. You do have control on social media about what you can just consume, you don't have to follow certain people, you don't have to search certain search topics, you don't have to engage in things that are upsetting and might trigger some fear and action that might result and I think it's important to practice that. I think you can use that same approach, my wife and I decided many years ago to turn off the news. We don't watch the news, we don't participate in that and because it was frankly upsetting it caused fear and I believe that's what it's designed to do. So to have the belief that I can have much less fearful existence if I cut out some of these things that caused me fear, that make me upset, that you know might cause me to lash out in in social media is a great awareness . I think if more people understood that they could be more at peace with today's world, to look more inward to different solutions, to be able to to deal with you know the fear that might come up for whatever reason and to use those filters. I always joke that i have a short distance between my my brain in my mouth and that I've actually been able to exercise a filter when it comes to some of the things that I might respond to, react to, that might trigger something in me based on what I've seen in the news or in social media and I've been able to use that filter in terms of choosing not to consume certain information. Whether its  news or blogs or talk radio or anything along those lines or even certain segments of the social media were all the the Twittersphere and Facebook and even Instagram. So I believe that  we have an opportunity on this podcast to educate people and to share ideas and to make suggestions. That's really my goal is to is to make suggestions through people's experience, people I interview and through my experience to help people come up with solutions in social media so that we become more social and we really can become more social and there are different techniques and tools that we can use and apply. What i'm talking about today, filtering out the news, the noise, the negative messages and becoming much more happy as a result, At least that's been my experience so that's what I wanted to share today. if you like to podcast please go to iTunes and give us a rating of 5 stars, we love comments and that certainly helps us and our following. You can find us on the Stitcher and Spreaker and also on Google Play some of our content is up on soundcloud but haven't quite set that up completely yet but you can find us in a lot of different ways. i'll be launching a website in the near future and i'll keep you posted on that. So I’m glad I got to talk about fear, glad I got to express a little bit about what I've been thinking and I do appreciate all of you listening and just remember, you can be more social, so thanks everybody Connect: I hope you enjoyed and found value on this episode of The How Social Are You Podcast please feel free to share it on social media with your followers. You can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spreaker and Google Play. Your ratings and comments on iTunes are greatly appreciated. If you have questions about The How Social Are You Podcast or would like to be interviewed you can tweet or direct message me on GAB the new People First / Free Speech Social Network https://gab.ai/ at @ML as well as on Twitter @mlindheimer or on Instagram @mlindheimer and lastly on Facebook melindheimer and you can also email me at mlindheimer@gmail.com.