Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - The Parasocial Socials

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00:00:30.000 Quick warning before we start this episode, today we are going to be talking about mental health and various mental health disorders and also a little bit of suicide and suicidal ideation.

00:00:43.120 If this is something that could be a trigger for you, we want you to take care of yourself.

00:00:46.620 come a little closer let's talk about how difficult it is to live with an anxiety disorder

00:01:01.860 here's some tips for showering on a very hard day there's a tool called rebalance with mindfulness

00:01:08.480 which i find really helpful and this is about helping you to accept your feelings i've spent

00:01:16.060 the last month living inside mental health Instagram. I've been affirmed. I've been

00:01:24.580 diagnosed. Set a finger down if you have trust issues. Put a finger down. Put a finger down,

00:01:29.700 emotionally unstable, and nobody knows. According to one TikTok quiz, I may be depressed, anxious,

00:01:38.000 and borderline. I'm trying a lot. Even more types of OCD.

00:01:43.740 Hey guys, I'm Bipolar Bobby and this is Northy.

00:01:48.360 According to another, I just need to add more protein to my diet.

00:01:55.820 I've been given recommendations for so many drugs that I've never even heard of.

00:02:01.200 But the ones I have heard of, Zoloft, don't worry, already on that one.

00:02:05.720 Take my pill in a half a day, boom, love, love me some Zoloft. 0.92

00:02:09.440 But I've also been given recommendations for Xanax, Klonopin, some kind of horse tranquilizers, which sound fucking great.

00:02:18.560 Probiotics, prebiotics, camel milk, and Valium.

00:02:23.280 Sometimes when we fight our feelings, when we...

00:02:25.460 What are the most common signs? You may have complex PTSD.

00:02:28.520 Nice symptoms, ADHD, and trauma share.

00:02:31.080 And it's my difficulty in life forever since I've made a video.

00:02:34.220 How much my OCD costs?

00:02:36.280 OCD has devastated me financially.

00:02:39.440 spending all this time on mental health instagram and tiktok accounts

00:02:45.980 i've got to tell you something i've never felt worse

00:02:51.740 and i'm not the only one i am not at all alone in feeling terrible after consuming lots and

00:03:00.180 lots of content on mental health instagram and tiktok i'm generally not in favor i feel like

00:03:07.520 there is a line that they kind of, like, if there's a tightrope of 50% good, 50%

00:03:13.640 can do public harm, I feel like mental health influencers kind of thread that line and lean

00:03:19.300 towards the harm side or the potential for harm. That's Erin Jones. She's a former trauma counselor 0.93

00:03:26.280 and a psychologist. When I put out a call on my Instagram for which mental health influencers I

00:03:32.140 should be following and who I should be talking to for this episode, there were a handful of people

00:03:36.900 that expressed concern about the general existence of mental health social media.

00:03:43.460 Her DM really stood out to me.

00:03:45.780 I did an experiment where I went and I looked at the people that I really liked.

00:03:49.660 There's one person that I just love, and this person was a psychiatrist.

00:03:53.060 And she was just talking about depression and trauma education and mental health education,

00:03:58.960 which is great.

00:03:59.620 I think education is great.

00:04:00.680 But after just looking at 10 to 20 TikToks of her describing the depression cycle and the spiral, I started to feel really bad. And I was like, why does this make me feel so bad?

00:04:14.600 And I realized I was re-experiencing some depression that I've been going through this past year, and I had no one to talk to about it. It was one-sided.

00:04:23.500 it was just me staring at a screen and I could just keep going and looking and looking and

00:04:28.520 looking for more answers. But I don't think, well, I know I wouldn't have found them there,

00:04:32.900 but I don't know if most people know that. And I think that that is dangerous because,

00:04:39.760 you know, I actually talked to one woman who didn't want to come on the show, but she told me,

00:04:44.320 she read so much from one mental health influencer that she was like, oh, I'm definitely bipolar.

00:04:49.660 and then her friend had pills that are prescribed for when you're bipolar but she's like the friend

00:04:56.140 was like I'm not bipolar but I can't use these pills do you want these pills and this woman got

00:05:00.680 so sick but I feel like that is happening but more than we think right people are self-diagnosing

00:05:08.460 and then getting themselves into dangerous situations which makes me very very nervous 0.96

00:05:13.580 yeah it's a public safety issue right yeah I really am on the fucking fence because I'm like 0.59

00:05:19.660 I think it's wonderful that people also have something to make them just feel a little bit 0.69

00:05:23.000 better, especially moms, because we're not, I don't think postpartum depression and trauma is

00:05:28.180 not treated at all seriously. So there is a sense of community, but then there is also a line because

00:05:34.520 so many people, so many people are not licensed therapists too, that are giving. Right, right.

00:05:39.460 Or their license was revoked and now they're a mental health influencer.

00:05:42.260 so here's the conundrum we don't have adequate mental health care in this country 0.96

00:05:51.380 we don't it's a fucked up terrible system but the stuff that we turn to online might be even 0.80

00:05:59.040 more worrisome even more dangerous at times than we even know but some of it is good and some of 0.82

00:06:06.700 it is helpful. There just has to be a way to figure out what is what. There also has to be

00:06:13.740 a way that we can feel better. We're going to try to figure all of this out, together.

00:06:20.780 I'm Jo Piazza, and you're under the influence.

00:06:29.580 Episode 5, The Parasocial Socials. 0.97

00:06:36.700 okay therapists in philadelphia that take insurance this is a popular fucking google search 0.85

00:06:49.420 so i've been trying for a while now to find a therapist who takes my insurance 0.93

00:06:58.320 here in philadelphia

00:06:59.660 Most of it just involves a lot of phone calls, a lot of pressing one to talk to someone and

00:07:17.960 then getting an answering machine and then never getting called back.

00:07:20.920 And that's not even how I've had to deal with my insurance company to find out what exactly the hell they even cover, if they're going to cover anything.

00:07:33.700 I don't know. I don't know.

00:07:39.980 So for now, all I've got is mental health Instagram.

00:07:48.180 But I'm getting more and more wary of it.

00:07:50.920 We learned last week that this is nothing new.

00:07:54.560 People have been getting help from media since the beginning of the media,

00:07:58.000 from books, from TV hosts, from people on the radio,

00:08:01.220 and all of these have worked with varying degrees of success.

00:08:06.260 Social media is just the 21st century iteration of that.

00:08:11.280 But as I talk to more and more people about this,

00:08:13.960 I'm starting to realize that there's just new issues with this kind of mental health advice.

00:08:19.460 giving out mental health advice on social media on a device that lives in your pocket all the time

00:08:25.620 that changes things but what exactly is it changing what exactly is the difference

00:08:32.540 the way that i've perceived mental health influencers is folks who may have a license

00:08:40.900 may have accreditation but maybe not and maybe the not is their draw who mass espouse

00:08:48.160 mental health advice in digestible nuggets online. 0.81

00:08:53.760 That's Amanda Montel.

00:08:55.500 She's an author and a linguist,

00:08:57.220 and she has this great podcast called Sounds Like a Cult,

00:09:00.400 where she breaks down common groups in our society

00:09:02.720 that are probably a cult.

00:09:05.740 She recently did an episode on mental health influencers,

00:09:09.280 which is why I gave her a call.

00:09:11.680 Now, it is nice to know that it's not just me seeing this.

00:09:14.940 I really like validation.

00:09:16.360 And frankly, you know what? Validation is what's driving so much of our desire to seek out this sort of content. We want reassurance that what we're feeling and seeing and how messed up our brains feel all the time, that it's not just us. We want a shared experience. And Amanda Montel found so much of this in her own reporting on mental health influencers.

00:09:43.020 Some of these people end up having a net positive effect.

00:09:46.660 They spread awareness.

00:09:48.800 They destigmatize mental health.

00:09:51.160 But of course, like everything else on the internet, this can go wrong very, very quickly.

00:09:58.940 So there are some mental health influencers who are sort of capitalizing on the conspiratorial

00:10:07.260 proclivities of our culture right now and can intentionally or unintentionally take advantage

00:10:13.120 of someone's desire to want to heal themselves without an expensive therapist or without

00:10:20.200 pharmaceuticals because the pharmaceutical industry can be exploitative and there are

00:10:25.140 problems with it. So there are people who see this very valid problem and then use the dark

00:10:33.800 magic of the algorithm to push people down rabbit holes into potentially much more dangerous

00:10:39.400 QAnon level territory. But yeah, I've seen people totally disown their families, go off 1.00

00:10:44.360 their medication. I spoke to someone whose brother attempted suicide because of the negative effects

00:10:49.440 of the ideas that he was learning from one mental health influencer in particular. So

00:10:52.640 it can get really dark. Okay. Okay. I'm going to slow us down here. This does not always go

00:11:01.900 into life-threatening territory, but it is a definite possibility. So we do need to back up

00:11:09.860 and talk a little bit about how people can even get to the point where they will just blindly

00:11:15.280 follow whatever their mental health influencer of choice tells them to do, even if deep down they

00:11:21.140 know that this is not the right path to go down. And what I'm learning is that this has to do with

00:11:27.840 the way that we relate to influencers in general. Mental health creators today have a much more

00:11:33.640 direct and intimate pipeline to their audiences than advice givers have ever had before. That veil

00:11:40.300 between creator and consumer, between advice giver and advice taker, those are the terms that I'm

00:11:48.380 using, is incredibly thin and with social media practically non-existent. That can make things

00:11:54.880 very confusing on both ends. People, I think, forget that they know a lot about me, so they

00:12:05.220 feel connected to me, but I don't know them really at all. That's Amanda White. We have two Amandas

00:12:12.320 on this show. This Amanda is a clinical psychologist and a therapist who runs the Therapy for Women 1.00

00:12:17.700 Center here in Philly. Amanda White has nearly half a million Instagram followers who regularly 0.77

00:12:22.780 read her content on mental health, sobriety, working through shame, practicing self-compassion,

00:12:29.360 and reparenting yourself. It's worth noting here that just looking at Amanda White's account

00:12:35.900 feels comforting. That it's beautiful. Lots of soft hues, millennial pink. It's just lovely.

00:12:45.640 Now, Amanda is very smart, and she also sees both sides of the Instagram mental health quandary.

00:12:51.240 On one hand, woo-fucking-hoo, that we are finally talking about this in a real and unfiltered and often helpful way.

00:12:59.780 I feel like millennials specifically, they've kind of been dubbed the therapy generation and have done a lot of work to destigmatize therapy. 0.88

00:13:09.940 We're finally talking about mental health.

00:13:12.420 I mean, the pandemic completely blew the lid off with finally everyone, like I think really a lot of stigma going away with that.

00:13:20.180 but I think it was there before too. On the other hand, this cannot be our only form of therapy.

00:13:28.920 It's unregulated. People can say they're a licensed professional or a therapist and no

00:13:34.540 one is really checking up on that. There's, I think, a big overstep sometimes with coaches.

00:13:40.100 Some coaches are fantastic, but some coaches can think that they're therapists and they can

00:13:46.020 not totally know where that line is, which can be frustrating.

00:13:51.400 Instagram is just not a place that's designed to filter out bad advice.

00:13:55.140 It's not.

00:13:56.100 In fact, a lot of times the algorithm gives you the absolute worst advice.

00:14:01.480 I think, though, the biggest thing is that social media is not,

00:14:06.200 even though it feels very targeted to you because it's, you know, with the algorithm,

00:14:10.720 it shows us what we want to see.

00:14:12.060 it's not always targeted to what you need to see or what's best. So it's interesting being

00:14:19.000 a therapist in person and then also on Instagram because I say things on Instagram that I might

00:14:25.840 never bring up or talk about with a client individually because it's just not relevant

00:14:32.060 to what they're going through or not helpful. But I don't know who's on the other side of

00:14:38.520 receiving my content on Instagram. So I try to make it general, but also, you know, give as many

00:14:44.660 PSAs and disclosures as I possibly can. But inadvertently, you will see content that is

00:14:50.960 not meant for you. And sometimes you don't know that it's not meant for you. You don't know that

00:14:56.700 it's not meant for you, but you get sucked in anyway, because there is a human that is on the

00:15:02.060 other side of that screen, drawing you in and making you feel seen. They get you the same way

00:15:08.280 that horoscopes and psychics get you. Amanda, even though she's a very, very good person,

00:15:14.960 is actually one of those people that draws me in. I started following Amanda for research because a

00:15:20.780 lot of you recommended her to me. But now I find myself really looking forward to her posts.

00:15:27.420 I do. She's got great advice. She is completely relatable. And that relatability can be a problem.

00:15:36.620 It could be a problem because sometimes she also feels like a friend, a friend who is

00:15:42.500 a lot smarter than you and who has read different books than you have.

00:15:46.440 But that intimacy is part of the problem because her followers, me included, sometimes feel

00:15:54.340 like we sort of know her.

00:15:56.960 I think it's why we have even more of a responsibility because if I'm thinking about this from a

00:16:02.140 therapeutic perspective, one of the most important things of therapy is we acknowledge that there's a

00:16:07.500 power differential. It has to be hard because I also think that when someone feels so knowledgeable

00:16:14.240 as you are genuinely knowledgeable, but you're also so personable on Instagram that people must

00:16:22.260 feel like they've developed a friendship with you. And so it has to be hard to not be able to

00:16:28.540 to help everyone to help every single person out there it is it's i mean i think it'll be

00:16:33.420 really interesting over the years as we probably learn more about parasocial relationships

00:16:38.180 parasocial relationships

00:16:45.360 yeah if you're a regular around the interwebs like me then you've heard the word parasocial

00:16:52.540 thrown around a lot by now parasocial interaction is hey guys welcome back to the channel whether

00:16:57.640 someone's talking about John Mulaney or their favorite influencer. And see, when I hear

00:17:05.940 parasocial relationships, I usually just nod my head and I pretend that I know what it means.

00:17:12.960 Same way that I pretend I've watched Citizen Kane. Told Roger Ebert that once. But I haven't.

00:17:19.380 Never seen it. Rosebud. Anyway, the truth is, I don't know exactly what parasocial means.

00:17:26.300 and we're going to figure it out after the break.

00:17:45.480 One of the things that makes influencers so successful

00:17:48.480 is that you can very easily relate to them.

00:17:52.180 It's completely different from your relationship

00:17:54.660 with an actual therapist that you see in person.

00:17:57.660 My therapists in the past have been completely unrelatable.

00:18:02.860 They wanted me to know nothing about their lives outside the office.

00:18:06.940 It's as if they didn't exist outside the office

00:18:09.900 to an extent that I once asked my couple's therapist

00:18:13.080 where he got his beautiful postmodern lamp and couch 0.99

00:18:16.460 and he just looked at me as if I'd asked him what he names his penis. 0.99

00:18:20.780 I still don't know where that lamp came from. 0.96

00:18:22.640 so real life therapists seem to want you to know as little as possible about their lives

00:18:29.520 but influencers influencers share a lot about their lives we see them not just on a couch

00:18:37.260 we see them talking about themselves and their stories and that's the linchpin of the influencing

00:18:43.560 industrial complex we have an intimate connection with influencers and that is playing off this

00:18:50.660 little nugget of human nature that is just dying, dying to connect with people, even if they aren't

00:18:57.140 people we know in real life. And that's the crux of a parasocial relationship. But even though it's

00:19:03.560 really heightened in the world of influencing, it's not unique to influencing. Not at all.

00:19:09.140 Goes back some ways. Celebrity comes with an interesting and weird relationship with people,

00:19:20.180 right? That's Angele Cristant. I'm an assistant professor of communication at Stanford. I was 0.69

00:19:26.140 trained as a sociologist and I study how people use and make sense of algorithmic technologies.

00:19:33.900 She is here to once again tell us that none of this is anything new. Social media didn't create

00:19:39.540 parasocial relationships. As human beings, we are naturally inclined to seek connection and to

00:19:45.360 imagine things about people we like and respect, even if we've never met them in person.

00:19:50.180 on the one hand, because you are famous, people recognize you and project all kinds of feelings

00:19:57.700 onto you, right? And so that's like very much, for example, what Rousseau was talking about

00:20:03.200 already in the 18th century. Yeah. Okay. Angel is going to bring this back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau

00:20:09.440 and how he used to say that so many of his fans of his philosophy felt like they knew him.

00:20:15.640 People think they know a guy named Rousseau. That guy is not me. I have nothing to do with me, right? It's like, I'm Jean-Jacques. This Rousseau guy is like someone else. That's just not me.

00:20:27.460 This idea goes all the way back to the beginning of the printing press and the rise of the celebrity

00:20:33.200 philosopher in the 18th and 19th centuries. These were men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau,

00:20:39.260 that is my French accent, and Voltaire, the one-name wonder, the Madonna of his time.

00:20:45.440 We call them philosophers, but isn't philosophy just pretentious self-help?

00:20:50.520 hmm something to think about so as more and more people were reading the work of rousseau

00:20:59.220 and voltaire they hung on their every word and they made heroes of these guys and they started

00:21:05.320 guiding their own lives by these teachings and as they were following them they also built up

00:21:11.440 whole identities around these men based just off their words and not who they actually were

00:21:17.020 And this reflection, the more famous you get, the more this reflection is kind of distorted, right? It's this kind of like distorted, like funny house type of mirror. And that's very much something that's been around since the 18th century. And I think that you could even say since the invention of mass media, right?

00:21:36.980 So in the 18th century, it was book printing. And the fact that, you know, the books of Voltaire and Rousseau were typically kind of circulating very widely, much in a much more wider ways than any of the previous kind of famous people, you know, writing and images had been circulating.

00:21:55.520 So that very much has to do with mass media.

00:21:58.140 Then you had kind of a next step in this kind of rise of like mass fame and mass celebrity with printed newspapers.

00:22:06.540 Then another one with radio, then another one with television.

00:22:10.600 Television.

00:22:12.120 Television in the way that it gave birth to a new kind of celebrity who came directly into your home.

00:22:17.840 Very intimate, very, very intimate is how we come to the term parasocial.

00:22:22.580 Parasocial was officially coined

00:22:26.980 by the sociologists Donald Horton

00:22:29.140 and Richard Wohl in 1956

00:22:31.320 and it referred to the relationship

00:22:33.340 between an audience

00:22:34.580 and television stars

00:22:36.140 they identified

00:22:37.820 a kind of psychological relationship

00:22:40.660 experienced by members of an audience

00:22:43.060 in their mediated encounters

00:22:44.480 with certain performers in the mass media

00:22:47.200 particularly on television

00:22:49.240 and now today

00:22:50.860 this one-sided relationship completely extends to how audience members often feel about social

00:22:56.640 media personalities and influencers. Boom. And of course, that includes mental health influencers

00:23:03.240 like Amanda White. Members of Amanda's audience can often feel like they truly

00:23:09.260 know her, that they might even be friends with her. Yeah, I think there's so much potential for

00:23:16.200 these types of relationships in the modern environment, and especially in the modern

00:23:20.200 consumer environment. We're talking about Instagram and social media. There's huge

00:23:24.500 incentives on behalf of influencers to build their following. And that entails sort of a

00:23:29.900 letting in of their followers and their fans sort of into their lives to a large extent.

00:23:35.520 That's Dr. Matt Johnson.

00:23:37.160 I am a professor and researcher focusing specifically on the intersection between

00:23:42.780 neuroscience and marketing.

00:23:44.600 And do influencers have an incentive to kind of cultivate these parasocial relationships? Because we know that engagement, so the more someone likes you on the platform, boosts the algorithm, all of those things. So aren't they kind of looking to cultivate these kinds of relationships?

00:24:01.820 They are. They are. It seems that they are. At least, I think parasocial relationships can be sort of an unintended secondary consequence of other incentives that influencers have to build massive followings and to generate sort of a sense of connection with them and to generate the sense of influence they have over their followers and their fans.

00:24:22.680 Influencing basically thrives off parasocial relationships.

00:24:27.500 It's how influencers reel you in. 0.99

00:24:29.840 And it's why branded posts and selling you shit work so well on social media. 0.98

00:24:35.420 Influencers feel like our friends and they integrate themselves into a lot of different aspects of our lives. 0.98

00:24:41.400 Every single emotional pull from an influencer is just a big part of the social media money-making machine.

00:24:48.440 Are there any dangers in any of this?

00:24:50.440 well there certainly have been instances where parasocial relationships do compel the individual

00:24:56.660 and does motivate the individual to actually reach out to the person and then i think when

00:25:01.500 mental health becomes involved it just sort of pours gasoline onto that dynamic um because really

00:25:07.760 when it comes to mental health the influence of themselves they're burying their soul and they're

00:25:12.380 becoming vulnerable but more and more as certain mental health topics have become desigmatized and

00:25:17.720 there's incentive for influencers to gain followers and vulnerability can be a great

00:25:22.920 tool to do that. This can sort of trigger these, these very sort of warm feelings with fans. And

00:25:28.240 this, I think can, can sort of spur sort of a broader range and sort of a deeper iteration

00:25:34.540 of these types of parasocial relationships. You posted a tweet that I found very chilling

00:25:39.360 where you said, deprived of actual human connection, the mind develops a relationship

00:25:45.300 with itself. Yeah, that is sort of how I've come to think about it, that we do have a,

00:25:51.460 just again, sort of a genuine need to connect with our fellow humans. And that's just

00:25:55.680 really, really crucial to the human condition. And there is sort of an analogy there when it

00:26:01.680 comes to deprivation, when it comes to other human needs, other physiological needs. So we

00:26:06.260 know that, you know, when you're hungry, and you don't have caloric intake, your body will

00:26:11.240 effectively start eating itself to a certain extent your stomach sort of turns inwards and

00:26:15.980 it's same with our social needs so we have this social cognition we have this ability to simulate

00:26:20.400 the process of other person's inner experience and when you are deprived of actual social input

00:26:26.940 social cognition sort of turns inwards on itself and it can I think be easy to be drawn into people

00:26:36.340 that will promise you openness and vulnerability

00:26:39.220 and mental health assistance

00:26:41.880 when maybe they're not sort of the best suited

00:26:43.760 to be able to delegate that type of advice.

00:26:47.440 In the past year or so, both Facebook and Twitter,

00:26:50.700 after a ton of hullabaloo,

00:26:52.760 have finally started warning people

00:26:54.660 when misinformation might creep into their feeds.

00:26:57.500 Information about vaccines, political speech,

00:27:00.320 and maybe, just maybe,

00:27:02.740 they need to think about adding a warning

00:27:04.600 for mental health too.

00:27:07.300 Because what we found out is that there are real legal ramifications here,

00:27:12.000 and they can destroy the lives of both audiences and influencers.

00:27:17.200 It's a quagmire.

00:27:18.820 A muddy, muddy, never-ending story, kind of quicksandy,

00:27:22.900 that horse is not getting out of that quicksand, quagmire.

00:27:26.600 And we're going into it after the break.

00:27:30.600 Atreyu!

00:27:36.340 all right so we've determined that influencers viewers their consumers their audience are very

00:27:50.940 susceptible to developing parasocial relationships with them it is a vulnerable place to be in

00:27:56.840 but there is also a vulnerability for the creator for the mental health influencer

00:28:03.640 And that goes back to what we talked about with Delilah on the last episode, that there

00:28:08.360 is such a huge responsibility for all creators and all advice givers to think about what

00:28:13.540 they're putting out there and how that will impact people.

00:28:16.480 And something very interesting that I found out during this reporting is that creators

00:28:20.200 could actually get into legal trouble if they overstep the boundaries of their position.

00:28:26.040 Here's Amanda White again.

00:28:27.300 because essentially social media has blown up so much and technically the American Psychological

00:28:35.120 Association, which is kind of like the board that governs therapists, it hasn't really caught up with

00:28:40.660 social media ethics totally. So it's very strange with the ethics with that, where if someone is

00:28:48.120 saying they're suicidal or something like that, if I respond to them, someone could sue me and say

00:28:54.460 that I developed a relationship with them

00:28:58.140 and I was their therapist and I could be liable.

00:29:01.760 So if someone reaches out saying anything related to that,

00:29:07.660 I don't respond and I have a highlight in my feed

00:29:14.100 with different numbers and things like that to call

00:29:16.820 and I'll do kind of a disclaimer every once in a while.

00:29:19.980 But yeah, those are ones that I don't respond to

00:29:22.260 because ethically it's just not appropriate

00:29:24.460 or safe for me to respond.

00:29:27.000 So that's when I just say, you know,

00:29:28.660 like your story deserves to be heard

00:29:30.740 by someone who can listen fully

00:29:32.960 and like can really walk you through this.

00:29:36.240 And that can't be me,

00:29:37.320 but you know, here are some resources.

00:29:40.360 And that is frustrating.

00:29:41.560 It's frustrating and hard and sad

00:29:44.500 because Amanda became a therapist

00:29:46.720 and specifically a therapist 0.99

00:29:48.440 who does share things on social media

00:29:50.440 because she wants to help people.

00:29:52.980 She truly cares about people

00:29:54.700 and she recognizes this problem

00:29:57.700 and the fact that two things are true here.

00:29:59.840 That Instagram can be dangerous for mental health

00:30:01.900 and also helpful for mental health.

00:30:05.360 It takes work.

00:30:06.780 There's no easy fix.

00:30:09.240 So what's the answer?

00:30:11.580 We all know that self-help and pseudo-psychology

00:30:14.640 have found their way into every single medium

00:30:17.180 since the beginning of media.

00:30:19.220 It's not going anywhere.

00:30:21.740 But I think if I've learned anything reporting this podcast,

00:30:25.540 the first step is just to be aware of it.

00:30:29.100 To think about what we're consuming and who is making it 0.99

00:30:32.360 and to do a little bit of research to have some goddamn agency 0.89

00:30:35.840 and to find out who the people are behind these accounts. 0.97

00:30:40.700 Don't just blindly accept it.

00:30:42.780 And then on the flip side,

00:30:44.980 I think that creators have a very, very real responsibility about what they're putting out

00:30:50.740 there. This is not therapy. This is not a substitute for therapy. This is just some

00:30:57.100 information online. That's Chrissy Powers. Chrissy has been both an influencer and a therapist for

00:31:03.980 the past 10 years. She's an OG lifestyle blogger. She's been doing this for a real long time,

00:31:10.060 before the gram. But she's also a licensed marriage and family therapist. Her license number

00:31:16.760 is on her website, which I appreciate. Because frankly, we shouldn't be afraid of asking people

00:31:22.300 to show us their credentials when they're giving advice to people who could be really, really

00:31:27.000 vulnerable. I talked to Chrissy for a while about trying to figure out an answer to the fact that

00:31:33.060 people are hungry for mental health advice, that they're desperate for it, and also the fact that

00:31:38.140 there's absolutely no limits or boundaries or rules about it. Is the way to kind of negotiate

00:31:47.920 those two things being true to say, you should follow people who are saying exactly that,

00:31:54.920 that this is not therapy. These are some guidelines. This is some information. But

00:32:00.660 if you need help, please get the help you need in person. Yeah, exactly. That these people aren't

00:32:08.080 trying to persuade you away from actually seeing a professional. And that, you know,

00:32:16.380 maybe it's like just the information that you see online that gets you curious about it.

00:32:22.820 I mean, I love it for the fact that it's destigmatizing mental health,

00:32:26.580 and that it's helping people just see like, I'm not alone in this. And this is okay, wow,

00:32:32.180 this is normal. I think it definitely has a wonderful place on the internet. But then also,

00:32:37.620 So you can't just stay there.

00:32:39.000 You got to go get the help.

00:32:40.140 You got to know that this person is not your therapist.

00:32:43.900 It's like all of the things I think on social media that it's a great place to share information

00:32:50.580 and stories and to feel less alone.

00:32:52.940 But you've got to you've got to make the boundaries you've and you've got to know you just have

00:32:57.260 to be really aware of what you're consuming.

00:33:00.380 100%.

00:33:00.780 And in the beginning of Instagram, none of us were.

00:33:03.980 We were just like, oh, my gosh, this is so fun.

00:33:05.980 And I get to see, you know, who, you know, my neighbor, what my neighbor's doing.

00:33:10.140 And then all of a sudden it was like, oh, wow, I can follow people I don't know.

00:33:13.640 And I can, oh, I have like a window into their lives.

00:33:16.700 And then none of us were questioning, is this actually good for me?

00:33:24.740 See how this slippery slope came about?

00:33:27.760 None of us questioned it.

00:33:29.460 And then we did start questioning it.

00:33:31.140 And then we're like, but I like it.

00:33:32.740 As we've been saying all along, there are great things about mental health Instagram.

00:33:39.660 I love following Amanda White.

00:33:41.440 I'm going to keep following her. 0.72

00:33:43.040 I might try to hang out with her in real life too.

00:33:46.300 But it can't be our only form of therapy.

00:33:48.680 And we as consumers have to be in control of how we strike that balance.

00:33:53.000 Don't use social media for all of your answers or your therapy.

00:33:56.760 Approach it all with curiosity and skepticism.

00:34:00.600 Enjoy what is good.

00:34:02.080 Throw away what is bad.

00:34:03.640 But definitely, definitely go into the real world when you need actual help.

00:34:12.400 If we've proven one thing in this episode, it's that it is definitely dangerous to consume

00:34:17.280 all of this in a bubble by yourself.

00:34:18.900 And it is so vital to surround yourself with real people to give you real perspectives.

00:34:25.100 I personally can't take the virtual world anymore.

00:34:27.980 and maybe, maybe, just maybe

00:34:30.500 I've been going a little crazy

00:34:32.260 because I've been trying to process this all by myself.

00:34:36.540 Just typing away.

00:34:39.360 And when I get to this place, this crazy place,

00:34:42.240 that's when I like to call up the Glynnis.

00:34:44.680 The Glynnis.

00:34:48.400 All right, so where does this leave you, Jill?

00:34:50.860 Like, how are you feeling

00:34:51.680 after all these different conversations?

00:34:53.020 This is kind of an intense episode

00:34:56.360 and also so fascinating.

00:34:57.980 No, it is. I don't want to be on mental health Instagram. I don't really want to look at it anymore. I really liked talking to Amanda White, actually. And she's a therapist who's here in Philly.

00:35:15.600 and i'm hoping it's not too weird to cross to cross some kind of line now some parasocial line

00:35:23.100 to be like oh okay you're here maybe maybe you have appointments maybe maybe i just used this

00:35:27.900 podcast to get myself a therapist and if that worked amazing but i'll also bet that you know

00:35:34.700 i don't know if she takes my insurance it's so funny when i think because i've only known my

00:35:38.640 therapist on a screen and i was your therapist you're there wait a second back up a second your

00:35:43.160 therapist is virtual, right? Well, because when I started with her, it was still under pandemic

00:35:48.680 rules, which are shifting. And so I've only been with her now a month or so, but I was thinking

00:35:54.300 the other day, would it be strange to meet her in person now? Because our dynamic is very much

00:36:00.340 virtual on a screen. I don't know how tall she is. I don't know what she looks like from the

00:36:05.040 neck down. I don't know any of her body language. It's almost like having a pen pal or like, 0.95

00:36:09.760 like when you've go on a first date with someone you've been texting with, you're like,

00:36:12.960 I've made myself vulnerable to you, but it felt safe through a screen and now to meet you in

00:36:17.880 person. And so I think that's also a weird dynamic that's been established here. It's also strange.

00:36:23.380 I just keep thinking about something Matt Johnson said when he said that when you're deprived of

00:36:29.080 actual human connection, the mind develops a relationship with itself. And that was, it gave

00:36:36.480 me chills and it terrified me. And I guess where I'm at, the big conclusion that I've come to right

00:36:42.480 now is I want more real humans in my life and less screams. And that's what's going to help

00:36:49.800 my mental health. You know, you came here, Glynis and I saw each other in real life under terrible

00:36:55.080 circumstances. My son was in the hospital with a concussion and Glynis got on a train and came here

00:37:02.760 because she's the greatest friend in the whole world. But just your physical presence that

00:37:09.260 helped me that saved me right right and I want more of that I'm craving more of that more real

00:37:17.220 people in real life and less people on Instagram and less even friends on my screens I think the

00:37:24.200 answer for me is putting down my phone for now which is where we ended last season

00:37:32.720 but I don't I mean this ties into mental health because when you go to therapy because you're in

00:37:41.660 these cycles of behavior you can't break right and it's interesting to me that in seeking therapy

00:37:46.440 the solution for seeking therapy online is to get offline like we're all we all know the answer we

00:37:52.940 all want to get off our phones and yet in order to help us cope with this we're drawn back into

00:37:58.280 our phones like we're seeing this replay over and over and over again then maybe they are the answer

00:38:03.520 is that there is no answer no i think the answer is we need to regulate use of this the same way

00:38:08.340 we do cigarettes and drugs but i i suspect we're a long ways away from that oh yes my solution for

00:38:14.420 right now is more more more real people in in the real world i can't get off totally i can't i have

00:38:20.400 to use it for work but i know for a fact my mental health will improve the more time i spend with

00:38:26.380 real humans in the real world yes agreed so you want to get on a train today and come see me

00:38:32.540 i will soon okay that was a weirdly fun weekend despite the terrible um oh god it was it was

00:38:41.040 terrible and we were you and i were stuck in a children's hospital with a concussed four-year-old

00:38:45.760 and yet the three of us did manage to bring joy into that room charlie did a bunch of puzzles like

00:38:52.300 we had, we had, that was, and that's, and that's my village. The name of the first mental health

00:38:56.540 episode was, where's my village? And the truth is you're my village and I want my village to be with

00:39:03.600 me in the real world. Yes. Agreed. Goodbye, everyone. We solved the problems of the world

00:39:12.480 right there. See you in the real world. See you in the real world. See you there.

00:39:16.400 okay okay so we didn't solve all the world's problems but i think we solved a little problem

00:39:25.620 i might not have a therapist who takes my insurance yet but what i have learned is that

00:39:32.720 seeing and talking to the people that i love that i care about that care about me

00:39:37.000 helps my mental health more than instagram

00:39:39.360 him. For now. At the beginning of this episode, we asked, how are we all going to feel better?

00:39:48.540 And the answer, at least for me, is to connect in real life. Go to the beach with your friends,

00:39:54.660 take a train to visit the people who don't live close to you, call a friend, text a friend,

00:40:00.720 show up at a friend's house like Kimmy Gibbler and just say, hey, can you have a coffee on your

00:40:06.740 stoop with me, or hey, can I hold your screaming child while you take a shower? We've got to go 0.62

00:40:12.480 back out into the real world. We've got to turn off that thing in our pocket. Our mental health

00:40:17.440 depends on it. But, but, but, we're not putting it down forever. No. There's still things that

00:40:27.540 are useful on that device. And next week, we're going to talk about a place on Instagram that is

00:40:33.020 so complicated and so thorny, but also so necessary because there's not nearly enough

00:40:40.100 support out there for women going through it. We're talking about fertility Instagram, my friends.

00:40:46.280 There are infertility influencers out there. And at the time, most of them were not physicians.

00:40:52.920 And the large majority were actually patients sharing their own stories and sharing what was

00:40:57.540 happening in their lives and kind of creating like a community. I don't think I would have

00:41:01.680 gotten pregnant if it wasn't for Instagram. One of the things that boggles my mind is, you know,

00:41:06.960 we talk about as a society how much work needs to be done on destigmatizing infertility and

00:41:12.260 pregnancy loss. If we can't share that to social media, which is where we all sort of live now,

00:41:19.280 how are we going to do that?

00:41:23.880 Take care of yourselves.

00:41:31.680 Under the Influence is hosted and reported by me, Joe Piazza.

00:41:39.900 Our senior producer is Emily Marinoff.

00:41:42.360 Glynis McNichol is our editor.

00:41:44.360 Abu Zafar is our producer.

00:41:45.920 We got additional production help from Aaron Peterson,

00:41:48.980 and our associate producer is Lauren Phillip.

00:41:51.780 Sound design and mixing from Jackie Huntington.

00:41:54.880 Our theme was composed by Jessica Kreinchich.

00:41:57.240 Additional music by Jessica Kreinchich and Jackie Huntington.

00:42:00.620 Anna Stumpf is our consulting producer, and we are executive produced by me, Joe, and Nikki Ator.

Under the Influence (with Jo Piazza) - March 17, 2022

The Parasocial Socials

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