Episode 33: Social Media

Today, Donielle and Khrystyna talk about their social media preferences and habits. They discuss which platforms they use most, the kind of content they enjoy, and their thoughts on pros and cons of social media. 

Show Notes

Transcript

D           Welcome to Coffee and Conversation for ESL Listening. I'm Donielle. 

K            And I'm Khrystyna, so grab a cup and join the conversation. 

D           Good morning, Khrystyna. We are here for a morning recording. 

K            I know that doesn't happen often. It's kinda nice. 

D           No. So we for real have our morning coffee with us trying to get us through. 

K            Yes, I just finished my second cup today already. Ooh. I don't know if it's a good thing or not. 

D           Well, I'm on my first cup, but I think I get up later than you do. No, I know I get up later than you do. 

K            You you - yes. You do. 

D           It's so funny because everybody that I know, it seems like they're early birds. I guess you could say they're morning people.  

K            Early risers. 

D           Early risers. Yeah. Morning people. I am definitely not. And I always thought, you know, as I get a little bit older, I'll probably start getting out of that thing where I want to stay up all night and sleep late. No, I still like the night. 

K            You know, I didn't used to be a morning person. I always liked to stay up late and sleep in a little bit in the morning. But you know, life will do this to you. So I don't have a choice now. I have to get up early, you know, get ready for work and all that. And then when I had a kid, you had to get up early. Now I have to get up even earlier because of the dog, because she wants to go out. But you know what the worst thing is? When you actually have a chance to sleep in like on Saturdays or Sundays or days off - I can't - I wake up at 5 o 'clock and I can't go back to sleep

D           Ugh, that's horrible. Ugh. 

K            I know. And I can't always even take a nap midday. Gosh, I sound like an 80 year old. my Gosh. I do love naps. 

D           You know, I've never been good at naps. Although yesterday, I told you a little bit about was a very stressful day and I came home and I just sat down on the couch and I was out. 

K            You crashed. 

D           …after just a few minutes, I crashed on the couch and I woke up and I was still tired and I did some stuff. I came back and, sat down on the couch just to watch TV, fell asleep again, and then had no trouble going to sleep at night. So I have lots of sleep on my side, but I'm still tired. 

K            Well, because, you know, sometimes emotional stress is harder than physical.  

D           Yes, for sure, for sure. But today's a new day. All right, so what are we talking about today? Kind of a topic I think that everybody can relate to, and that is social media. 

K            Oh. That's a good one. 

D           Yeah, you know, I don't know about you, but I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with social media. I mean, I feel like it's great for so many things, but just like everything else in life, it seems like people have a way of taking a good thing and just making it garbage. 

K            Yes, I agree with you; same opinion. I mean, there's so many positive things to it, but you're right. I feel like people just took it to a whole different level in certain aspects and then turn it into garbage that in some cases is dangerous for people. 

D           Yeah, definitely. It's like that expression, “this is why we can't have nice things”. Because people always got to be “people-ing” out there, know, doing something crazy.  

K            Yep, yep. 

D           But that's our life now. We have to deal with it, the good and the bad, right? So, well you know, you and I are old enough to remember that there was life before social media, right? 

K            Sadly, we do. Well, no, you know what? I'll take that back. It's not sadly, it is actually nice to be able to know what it was like before and what it's like now, because that's part of evolution. It's part of development, right? It's part of change. And sometimes I feel like for my son, who is 10, he will never know what it was like before. There will be other things that evolve and, you know, like artificial intelligence and all that other stuff that - who knows if we'll get to the end of it in our lifetime. 

D           I know right. Yeah, that's another, and that's a whole other topic, but since you brought up AI, my goodness, I mean, who would have thought that we would have the ability to do all this stuff at just a couple clicks of the keyboard and you can have a ton of information, things written out. I, you know, just to get off the topic, just for a hot second, I have some students and I suggest to them sometimes, use AI as a tool to help you. You can do a lot of stuff with AI to help you, think about sentence structure that’s correct. To practice writing something and you can get it to fix it. You can see where your errors are. The options I think are unlimited. What's the word - options are endless, something like that. [note: the expression I was trying to think of was: the possibilities are endless] 

K            But the flip side of that, or the other side of that, is that AI is developing and growing so fast that we as humans, we're not ready for it. Again, using it properly or intended purpose of it is great. But again, people, there's always somebody who's going to turn it into a negative. 

D           Oh yeah. And you can already see it happening. But anyway, this is not about AI.  

K            No, it's not. 

D           This is about social media. We, we digress always. That's okay. So, you know, I was thinking about this as we were preparing for the topic and I was trying to remember, what did I do to waste time? You know, I remember, okay. So if you ever go somewhere like you've got to be sitting in the doctor's office or you're waiting, I don't know. You probably don't do that over there, but here parents have to wait in the car line for their kid to pick them up. And so they're just sitting there. So you're in a situation like that and you're just bored and you're like, well, let me just grab my phone and see what's happening on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, right? You know, such a great time killer. What did we do before that? 

K            Um, magazines. 

D           Ah…I don't think so. I don’t know that we had a magazine at the ready. 

K            I do remember. Well, maybe not like in a school pickup line, but like in the doctor's office, they always had magazines there or newspapers or something. And now you don't see that anymore. Very rarely you see a doctor's office that has a stack of magazines. But I remember sitting reading magazines or a newspaper, listening to music. Like if you're, just sitting and waiting. Usually, you just listen to music or [the] radio in the car. 

D           Yeah. Yeah, that's true. What I think I had to do before is plan. You know, if I knew I was going to be someplace where I'd be waiting, I would say, okay, let me bring a book. My go-to was always the puzzle books. Oh I even have one right here, right on my desk. Woohoo! 

K            Look at that! 

 D          Puzzle books. Yeah, so I would always have to plan and have something ready to go. Now you can just grab your phone and find something to do. 

K            Right. I mean, if anything, it's just so much more convenient. And I do remember, you know, like if you are going on a road trip or some sort of a long drive or even a plane, you always make sure you pack a book with you. And nowadays, you don't have to because it's all available in electronic version. So…on your phone. 

D           Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Really it is. But the other thing we use that for, not just killing time, although I think we do, we kill time and we waste time. Just to be clear on this, killing time is when you have some amount of time where you're waiting for something and you're just trying to pass the time quickly. So you need to kill the time. Wasting time of course is when you could be doing something more useful, but you are not. And I think we do both of those in equal measure, maybe a little uneven, I don't know. But anyway, other than that, we also keep in touch with people, friends, you know, that maybe we wouldn't even have communication with anymore. You know, maybe someone you went to college with or something, and you can kind of see what they're up to. 

K            Yeah, well, like you said, there's a lot of positive things about social media. And I don't know, do you remember why or the first time you got on Facebook or Instagram? Do you remember? 

D           Yeah, I kind of do about Facebook. That's a little bit vague. I think I was working in a law office at the time and there was a law student that was working with us and I saw her always, you know, she was supposed to be working, but you know, already the wasting time came in and I would always see her with this Facebook page open, and I said, what is that? And then I think I started getting invitations or something, you know, people who know my email address or something, it connects and you know, Facebook's always been really good about that, trying to grab you in. And so I was like, all right, let's see what this is all about. I remember though, when you didn't even have Facebook and I was like, what, girl? 

K            I did not have Facebook for a long time. I was pretty resistant to it. And that was part of it because I was afraid that I'm just going to get sucked into it and I'll be spending all my time on Facebook. So, I resisted and resisted. and I remember you were like, oh come on, let's get on Facebook. We can friend each other and this and that.  

D           You’re like, no. 

K            Nope, not doing it. But you know why I finally decided to do it. My old college friend, either messaged me or something through, not through Facebook, but like maybe email or something like that, and said that they moved somewhere and they bought a house and I wanted to see their house so badly because they posted pictures and stuff that I finally created a Facebook account. How crazy, but you know, it was actually a good idea because I feel like I was able to keep in touch with friends from college, from school that I don't think I would have had any connection with. So that was nice. I mean, like I said, there is a positive thing about it, but then, the whole wasting time came in. 

D           Yeah, but it's good though too. You can learn about so many different things, events that are happening around you. I know a lot of times I learned from Facebook or… the other good thing is if you're trying to learn something, there's almost always some kind of a group out there. Like for example, I use Canva a lot. It's the design software. I think it's pretty famous now. I just heard their prices are going way, way up, but yeah, I'm not surprised though, because they've got so many crazy new features. But anyway, so yeah, I've found a couple of Canva tutorial groups and I've learned stuff. Same thing, you know, if you're learning a language, they've got groups out there for that, you know, where you can get tips or, you know, learn phrases, just like as you're scrolling through, you just kind of pick up a phrase here or there. 

K            Well, speaking about groups, I think that's such a good idea that started on social media, especially on Facebook, because I used that when we were traveling to another country where I'd never been to. And I would like the group so I can be part of it and kind of watch what people who already traveled to that country or live there… And I learned so many tips. And so every time now, if we go to another country, another city, I was like: I'm going to look for a group for travelers for this one because useful information. 

D           Exactly. did the same thing too. Last year I did that, I think for the first time when I went to Boston. And then this year when I went to New Orleans - of course I know New Orleans quite well, but there's always stuff to learn, new things or things you haven't discovered yet. So yeah, it's really helpful for that. Definitely. The other big one is Instagram and I'm just starting like how many years later getting on the Instagram bandwagon, and I said no, I was like you, said no, no, no, no. I’ve got enough social media, I don't like it, it's a pain, but I only do that for my business. Yeah, it's annoying. It's too much. There's too many different platforms. 

K            Yes, there are too many and I am just trying to stay with one thing. So I am not on Instagram. I am not on Twitter or anything like that. I tried TikTok a little bit because it was through my job. We tried to do TikTok for our department, but TikTok is really… like talking about wasting your time. Oh, it sucks you in so badly. And it's one thing after another and you just can't stop until you literally turn off your phone. So I don't want to do that because even through Facebook, you have TikTok things come through. I think that's more than enough. I have a coworker who is a TikTok fanatic. So every day, she's like, I saw this thing on TikTok. Did you see this thing on TikTok? I'm like, no, no. 

D           Yeah, I want no part of it either. And, you know, there's all these really weird trends and challenges and stuff that are coming up that especially like the middle schools are getting…I'm sure your son comes back with weird stuff that he heard from somebody who does TikTok. 

K            So he…well, he's not allowed to do any of that yet. All right, he doesn't have a phone. No, he does not. Not yet, at least.  

D           Oh, good for you! 

K            But right now the big thing I feel like for kids is the YouTube.  

D           Oh, really?  

K            Oh, yes. There's all these YouTube videos. 

D           Bigger than TikTok? 

K            For kids like his age, yes. Yeah. It's all about YouTube, YouTube channels, the gaming, because besides playing things, they watch gamers play games. At first I thought it was like, this is the craziest thing. That's boring. Why would you watch this guy play a video game? And then he goes, well, you watch baseball, or some other sport; you're not playing it, I’m like, oh man; well yeah, that was a good point. 

D           You can't really argue that point. That's pretty good. 

K            No, that's the thing. But a lot of stuff, it's all the YouTube, they want to have their YouTube channels. So, my son has his little YouTube channel where he just records videos of doing things or whatever. I was like, oh my gosh. So I think TikTok is more of junior high, high school kids.  

D           Okay. Hmm. I didn't know that. Actually. So I have to ask you this because I think this came from YouTube. Is he into the skibidi toilet thing?  

K            No, he actually is not. 

D           Oh thank goodness. You dodged a bullet. 

K            No, he doesn't like it, so I am so happy about it, but you know, all these YouTube, all this TikTok, all that stuff, all of that brings new vocabulary into our house because you know, now kids have all these different words that make absolutely no sense. There's no connection to the meaning, but this is what it is. This is the new lingo. 

D           Mm-hmm. Yeah. They're really into it, especially this generation. So we need to throw this out here too, real quick. For anybody who lives in the US and you've got kids that are in school and you hear them coming back with all kinds of weird things, it's not that you suddenly are not able to speak English as well. It's just that it's a completely different vocabulary. Even most of us don't get it, you know. So. 

K            And it's interesting also because some of the words used to… like there were some words that he said, yeah, this means that. And my husband who grew up in the United States and he was like, well, actually they used to use this word for this meaning a long, long time ago. It's like, so maybe some things are kind of coming back through that new lingo. Who knows? But the thing is, because there’s so much on social media that is so easy to access, my husband and I are trying to keep our son away from it for as long as possible. 

D           Well, all the luck to you on that because it's tough out there. 

K            It is, it is tough and it's just, you hear all these terrifying stories. How kids get under the influence of all of these things on social media and you know, the sad stuff that happens after that. So, we're trying to prevent it as long as possible, but I don't know how long we’ll be able to keep him away from it. Cause you know, yeah. 

D           Yeah, it's unavoidable at some point. Yeah. So, okay, well, what would you say you do mostly with social media? Like, what do you use it for? 

K            So like I said, mainly Facebook, I try to kind of stay, you know, just in one thing, reading just what's going on. The biggest thing for me always, and there was a reason behind it to get on social media so I can keep in touch with friends and people I know. So just kind of scrolling through and seeing what's going on, but then also all the groups that I like and then they post their stuff. So, you know, in the past couple of years, a lot of what social media actually helped me was with the war in Ukraine. ‘Cause now in the news and all that, you don't hear as much about it, but you definitely hear on social media. And because I liked certain groups, certain media outlets from Ukraine, I get more information. So that helps me. But also, you know, keep in touch with my family, like my cousins and my brother and my childhood friends. That's always good. But, you know, like interests. I love plants, I love gardening, and I love travel and, you know, books and all that stuff. and baking. I have so many posts, like with cooking and baking, all that stuff. 

D           And, you know, this leads into this a little bit too, because the problem, I mean, it's good, but it's bad at the same time - is that say for example, recipes will come, ‘cause you know, the algorithm, it knows you. You click on one thing and suddenly your feed is flooded with similar things. And so if I look at one recipe, then there's millions that come after that. And then I'm like, that looks pretty good. So I save that and I'm like, that looks pretty good. And the next thing you know, for days, all I get are recipes. So I have to be like, okay, I have to make a conscious decision. Don't click. Don't even slow down on any of these. 

K            It's kind of funny, my husband and I were joking the other day, because if you look at my feed, it's all like recipes, plants, travel. And then when you look at my husband's feed, it's like motorcycles, Dungeons and Dragons, and superheroes. 

D           So this is your husband, not a kid, right? 

K            Well, you would think, right? I mean, luckily there's motorcycles in there, so you kind of can tell it's a grown man somehow, somewhere. 

D           Well, you know, sometimes it's a fine line, you know. 

K            Well, it depends on the day. I feel like if my son had Facebook, right now his feed would be flooded with transformers. The kid is obsessed with transformers and it's all he wants to talk about. So what about you? What is your feed usually? What would you say? 

D           Well, I'm sure this comes as no surprise to you, but a whole bunch of cats. Cats nonstop, you know, and food, definitely the food, language stuff, definitely English language, Spanish language. Yeah, tips and tricks. But again, you know, if you click on any of those things that come up as an ad, then you're just bombarded with similar stuff. And I really, find myself sometimes I'm scrolling and I'm like, ooh, that looks kind of cool. And I'm like, nope, keep scrolling, keep scrolling. Don't even, don't even slow down on it because then it's just going to be nonstop. And it's a little bit excessive. 

K            So what, for example, you know how sometimes they always have like video reels and all that? Like what are the videos that your algorithm always shows up for you there? 

D           You know, for some reason it shows a lot of fashion things and I don't even care about that, which is really strange. I must have somewhere down the line clicked on something, but actually they're kind of cool in a way though. So maybe, maybe it does know me because what they do a lot of the times is they'll show like a lady with a scarf and shows all different ways like to make a blouse out of it or to wear it. And I'm like, that's really cool. And I think to myself, could I do that? But I'm pretty slow-witted when it comes to these kinds of things. I have to see like 10 times before I'm like, okay, so you loop it that way and you turn it that way, you know? So yeah, that's probably what happened is I watched a couple of those and now it's endless. 

K            I suddenly started getting a lot of dog and puppy videos. I get a lot of that because I love watching those. But I started getting like French bakeries like all these patisseries and all these pastry chefs making croissants and all that stuff and I'm like, I don't remember watching any videos about that. I mean, I do talk about croissants because I like croissants. 

D           Well, there is the problem -  as you know - because it does and they've not even denied this. They listen to you, which is so creepy. 

K            Yeah, yeah. Or sometimes, you know how you shop online, right? Let's say you shop for shoes or something like that. And then the next day I open up my Facebook and there's a bunch of shoe ads. A bunch of shoe stores. I'm like, hmm, somebody checking on what I was doing yesterday? 

D           Oh yeaah, you really feel like you're being spied on. You kind of are. 

K            Well, I mean, that's part of that artificial intelligence, yeah? 

D           Yeah, it's only going to get worse from here. This is taking a dark turn. 

K            Bum bum bum [dramatic tone for effect]

D           But you know what, related to that, I have a note here about something that's related to what you just talked about, is the problem when you click on something, it starts learning what you like and what you don't like. But then the problem is, this causes what we call an echo chamber when it comes to opinions and ideas. And that means it shows you groups and people and things that all have similar ideas as you, which can be a little dangerous. Like for example, those people who have maybe a crazy wild conspiracy theory and all they've got to do is click on one thing or search for one thing and they're in deep and it starts feeling like your whole world believes that crazy conspiracy theory. 

K            Right, and I notice usually it gets worse during election time. And that's the scary part about social media because people don't know what’s true and what's not. So they will just read something on social media. It’s like, so and so posted this, so that must be true. 

D           Yeah, well, it's worse than that. Most of them don't want to know the truth. They want to just be in that echo chamber and hear what crazy thing they want to believe. But we will get out of this dark topic. 

K            Well, we do need to educate our listeners about dangers of social media. 

D           Yeah, it's true. can be, you know, you know, fact check. That's it. That's all I say, you know, because there have been a lot of times that I'll see something that would resonate with me. I'm like, yeah, well, that sounds like a thing that crazy person would do. And then I'm like, wait a minute, let's before I start getting too deep in this, let me go take a little check. Most of the time that crazy thing is true, but sometimes it's not. And you're like, okay. Let's not share that because I don't like to be sharing things that are just wrong. I mean, just because it sounds funny. No, come on. 

K            Do you ever comment on posts and stuff? 

D           Like the crazy ones or just in general? You know, I really don't that's a good question. I really don't very often unless it's a specific group about a specific thing that I know everybody there is going to be on board with because people get really nasty. I mean when you're hiding behind that keyboard and you're anonymous… that anonymity seems to give people license to just do… just be nasty. And I just don't understand it. Don't like it. So I usually just kind of lurk and think of a comment in my mind and then just keep scrolling. 

K            Well, and that's one of the things that people were saying that with the social media, people became a lot more brave to say these things, to post, you know, comment that they wouldn't usually say them out loud to somebody. But because you don't see the person and you just start, you know, writing all these nasty things and crazy things. 

D           Yeah, that's a really unfortunate aspect. I really, I like to keep things positive and I just don't want to feed into negativity. So, I just keep scrolling. You know, and that's a valid option. If you don't like something you see on social media, you can keep scrolling. And a lot of people just don't understand that. Well, oh my goodness, we're coming up on time again, as always. It happens so quickly ‘cause it's fun having conversations with you. Let's say… so we talked about a lot of cons, so I won't… I'll kind of skip over that; we won’t…no, there is one other thing that I wanted to say, and this leads to an interesting expression. So I read somewhere a story that…and I meant to look at the number and I don't remember what it is, but there was a survey done and a very large percentage of people admitted to not being honest when they post on social media pictures of vacations or things that they're doing. Like they lie about how great it was, how much fun they had, even the weather. And yeah, because you just want to put out your best – oh, I'm having a great time, right? And this leads to FOMO. You ever feel FOMO means fear of missing out when you see someone's posts and you're like, man, they're having a good time, you know? 

K            I don't think I've ever had FOMO.  

D           I always have FOMO. I mean, not maybe not for people's social media posts necessarily, but I'm like, man, that sounds fun. I want to be doing that. ‘Cause you know, I don't like sitting around at home. I'm not that kind of person. I want to be doing something fun. So yeah. 

K            Well, I mean if we're talking in that context and yes, I have FOMO all the time but like for posts and all that I’m usually like, yeah cool looks like they're having a good time. But you know, now that you think of it, never, I really never thought of it. That people always… like if they post pictures from their vacation or trip or something like that, it's always cool stuff. Nobody talks about bad things that might have happened or some unexpected, you know, things. That's true. That's true. FOMO, I like that. But you know, here's another thing. I am all about dangers of social media today. You know how they say, if you are going on a trip, do not post your pictures until you're back home for safety reasons.  

D           Yeah. It seems crazy because you think, well, you know, only the people on my Facebook account, they're all my friends, you know, they're not going to do anything. But man, things on the internet, it's… you don't know where it can go. And anybody who is tenacious enough -it means they are really determined and work to get something - they can figure out you who you are, where you live. So yeah, you don't want to do that. 

K            Yeah, I'm going to be safe. 

D           I really don't take pictures very well on vacation. I'm really bad about that. I kind of rely on the people who I'm with. I'm like, okay, well, I'll just take your pictures later on. Thanks very much. 

K            Wow, so I'm the opposite. I always take pictures on vacations. That's why I'm never in those pictures. 

D           Yeah, I'm never in the picture, well, I try not to be in the pictures because I don't like the way I come out in pictures. I'm always making some weird face. It's just amazing. Even people who know me well, they're like, yeah, it's true. You know, if you catch a candid moment of me, I'm always like with my mouth open and like my eye twisted over here somewhere. 

K            You're like my son. Because we barely have any decent family pictures from a vacation or a trip because every picture we have, my husband and I will be smiling and our son will be making weird faces.  

D           Only thing is mine isn't intentional. I just happen to be caught mid-sentence or something. Even sometimes when we're recording here and if the video freezes, it's always like,  

K            Usually the most flattering pictures when the video freezes. 

D           Exactly, exactly. That's why I'm glad this doesn't have a video component to it. Alright. Well, any final words of wisdom about social media? Any precautions? Any thoughts? 

K            I mean, it can be fun. It is a useful tool. But you just, as with everything, you have to be very careful. You know, how you use it, what you do, what you read, the information, you pay attention to it. 

D           Exactly. That sounds good to me. All right. Well, this was fun. It was nice talking to you in the morning for a change. 

K            When there is daylight outside. 

D           Yeah, yeah, sunshine coming in, cool. All right. Well, until next time, here's to good coffee, good vibes, and great conversations. Cheers. 

K            Cheers.