AI Social Media Brain Atrophy: Destroying Human Capacity to Think w/ Rob Smith

➡ The text discusses the impact of digital technology on younger generations, the importance of liver health, and the role of social media influencers in today’s society. It highlights the need for regular liver detoxification due to the toxins we encounter daily. The text also introduces Rob Smith, a gay black Republican who uses his large social media following to help businesses and entrepreneurs. Lastly, it emphasizes the potential dangers of social media addiction, especially for children, and the need for real, meaningful conversations online.
➡ A successful Columbia graduate, who is a black, gay, and former Democrat, shares his unique journey in the conservative media world. He started his career seven years ago, before it was trendy to leave the Democrats, and faced criticism from both sides. Despite his success, he sometimes feels isolated as he doesn’t fully align with either party. He also discusses his experience with Turning Point USA, a conservative student group, and how it challenged the liberal-leaning atmosphere on college campuses.
➡ The speaker discusses their experiences in the media industry, highlighting the tendency for media to create heroes and villains, often targeting straight white Republican males. They share their personal experiences of being targeted and suppressed due to their content and views. They also discuss their time working with Turning Point USA, a conservative organization, and their interactions with various figures in the political world. The speaker emphasizes the importance of free speech and criticizes the power and control of social media companies, suggesting that these platforms can be dangerous due to their influence and algorithms.
➡ The text discusses the negative impact of early exposure to social media and technology on children’s critical thinking and social skills. It also highlights the effectiveness of Relief Band, a device that helps alleviate nausea. The text further explores the digital divide between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, with wealthier children often having better social skills due to their exposure to adult conversations. Lastly, it touches on the mental health issues associated with being ‘unpersoned’ or erased from social media platforms, especially for those who rely on it for their livelihood.
➡ The text discusses the impact of social media on young people, highlighting how it can lead to addiction and mental health issues. It also mentions the role of influencers and commentators in perpetuating these problems due to the nature of social media algorithms. The text suggests that more nuanced and authentic conversations are needed, rather than the divisive content often promoted on these platforms. Lastly, it touches on the challenges faced by those who try to promote unity and understanding in a digital landscape that rewards controversy and division.
➡ The text discusses the importance of personal growth and protecting our mental health, especially for children, in the digital age. It emphasizes reducing time spent on social media and phones. It also introduces Rob Smith, who can be found on various social platforms and has written a book available on Amazon about his life as a black, gay Republican. The possibility of a future book is also mentioned.

Sam Sa It’s a huge problem. And you know, there was a point that I think somebody on, on X made about Charlie Kirk’s assassin, the man that assassinated Charlie Kirk. And they were, they said that this person was 22 years old. And so that generation, they are digital natives. They don’t know like you and I. I’m just going to assume that we’re both millennials here. I’m older, but yeah, I’m a generation X, but yeah, I was going to assume like millennial or older or you know, just around the same age. Right. But what I’m saying, the point that I’m making is that we know of a time before all of this and your average 21 year old does not.

And you go out to restaurants and I’m sure you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. Where either you’ve got a family at the restaurant table and the kid is staring at a phone. Are you struggling with bloating, fatigue, skin issues, weight gain? Well, almost everybody’s struggling from weight gain, but rashes and just generally feel like crap. One of the things that could be happening is your liver might not be operating properly. I’ve had many doctors on and healthcare professionals talking about why it’s so important to detox. But your liver is a very key part of that. This is what your liver does.

It filters and detoxifies. It removes toxins, drugs, alcohol and metallic waste from the blood. It processes carbohydrates, fats and proteins. It, it makes bile to digest and absorb fats and fat soluble vitamins. It stores fat soluble vitamins for later use. That’s important. It helps break down cholesterol and metabolize hormones. There’s so many things that your liver does from helping you detox to helping you get the vitamins into your body. If your liver is overburdened from trying to process all the toxins which we are getting bombarded with, you are likely seeing a lot of these issues. It is a really good idea to be detoxing your liver on a regular basis.

And I have a really good detox product called Ultra Liver. If you are interested in trying it, go to tryultraliver.com again try ultraliver.com Sarah welcome to business Game changers. I’m Sarah Westall. I have Rob Smith coming to the program. He’s a gay black Republican and he’s proud of it. And I usually don’t like to even say what somebody is right, who cares what they are. But that’s how he, he is. That’s what he is. And he likes to talk about it because. And he’s not a afraid of it because it is so it is out of the stereotype of who you are.

And so I love that it makes people feel uncomfortable. But he also has a business helping businesses and entrepreneurs on how to use social media and he has over 2 million followers on all his different platforms and he helps people move in that direction. And we talk about how it can be used to build your business not just as this influencer bs, but actually as a means of marketing and how to do that, but how to do it in a healthy way. We’re going to talk about that as well because we have a lot of health issues with social media which we dive into especially when it comes to kids and how social media can actually entropy your brain.

It’s, it’ll with kids, your, their brains just don’t develop. And even with adults though, you can get very addicted and so your chemical and brain patterns get addicted just like you would a drug to social media. And how do we stop that process? And for kids who don’t have any, you know, adult wisdom, they don’t have any experience, how is that affecting them? So we dive into all of that. And he also worked with Charlie Kirk at Turning Point usa. We talk about his time there as well. But I want to remind you, please go to my substack.

That’s my newsletter letter. Sarawestall.substack.com subscribe to me there. Sarah westall.substack.com Also give this show a thumbs up and if you are listening to this on audio, please give it a good review. Give it a five star review, help my show get seen on these platforms and not get buried. I really appreciate that. These are the kind of conversations that I think think are necessary, these nuanced conversations where we talk like freaking real people actually have real conversations like real people. So much of what you’re having online is just bombastic, smearing everybody all over the place or these head or repeating things that aren’t true and not diving into it and it’s just awful.

And I know, I know you guys are sensing it too because it’s just so obnoxious and it’s in your face. It’s it. I think we’re maturing though. I do. I’m starting to see us get over that edge of and we’re starting to mature which is thank God that’s what we need anyways. Okay. Sarah Westall substack.com okay, let’s get into this wonderful conversation with Rob Smith. Hi, Rob, welcome to the program. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. You have an interesting background. Please tell everybody what it is that you do. Okay, so I’m a political commentator, a conservative media influencer.

Conservative political influencer. And I also work with some nonprofits and medium sized businesses in terms of helping them build their own social media platform. So a lot. So the idea of a political influence, it’s such kind of like a new thing. I kind of have to explain it and even in politics. So I create content for social media. I have about 2 million followers across all my social media platforms, from TikTok to Facebook to multiple Instagram accounts. I’m probably going to relaunch a podcast in a couple of months. I do a little bit of consulting, like I said, in teaching people how to use digital media for their own things, particularly people in the political space in D.C.

and for some of, you know, for some of your listeners or for some of the people out there, be the first time they’ve ever heard the term influencer, but it certainly will not be the last because it’s definitely becoming a thing in American politics. Well, what do you think? Because our kids in our country want. I, I’m one of those that don’t think kids should try to be an influencer. I think, you know, China, the kids all want to be scientists, engineers, astronauts. Here they all want to be influencers. What would you say to that? I mean, that’s what you do.

There’s a place for it though, right? I mean it’s, it’s a. Go ahead. Okay, so it depends because I know exactly where you’re going with that. And here’s the thing. I think that, you know, a lot of kids wanting to say that they want to be influencers nowadays, I think that they kind of glamorize whatever it is that they think it is. Micro as a political influencer is quite different from somebody who like creates content, going to restaurants or does the fashion thing, et cetera. But what I will say in its defense is that there’s a real business model to it.

And I think that if there’s somebody in school that actually has an entrepreneurial spirit, probably going the social media influencer route may be the best for them. And because, and this is what I tell some of my clients as well, is that every single person, no matter what it is that you do, you’re going to be benefited from becoming an influencer in whatever niche you’re in. There are therapists that get More business for their therapy business from having a social media following. There’s people that are in restaurants. It’s a type of marketing, right? It’s totally a type of marketing.

And I think that people kind of, like, misunderstand it, because when you hear influencer, you just. You just think of, like, you know, some botched plastic surgery chick, you know, taking a selfie, posting on Instagram. Well, I taught a class, believe it or not. I used to teach at the University of Minnesota at the Carlson School, and I taught a segment on doing. Because I’ve been doing this for a while, on using podcasts to help promote your business. And back then, the. The kid. The. The whole culture has changed. Back then, they all. It was nerdy.

Back then, they didn’t think it was cool, so had to. We were talking about how you could utilize this medium as a form of marketing to help your business. Now it’s gone the other direction where it’s cool. And they’ve lost sight. A lot of people have lost sight of what the whole. Where the meat’s at. Yeah, I think they have. And you know what’s interesting about this entire thing is, so I have a graduate degree from Columbia University in journalism, right? So I have my master’s in broadcast journalism. So I studied the media industry, and I worked in the media industry.

You know, after I served in the military, I worked in the mainstream traditional media industry. And it was very old school. Like, I got my master’s about a decade ago, and it was very interesting. I was walking through New York, and one of the little J school, the journalism school kids kind of, like, comes up to me, and they’re. They’re on assignment, right? Like, they’re doing a little interview, and I’m like, oh, my God. I graduated Columbia a decade ago, and I did a little interview. I was very nice to her, but I asked her, I said, well, okay, what are you studying? And she says, yeah, I’m studying journalism.

But, you know, there are these concentrations, so they’re actually. Now they have a podcasting and digital media concentration. Okay. That they didn’t have when I was there a decade ago. So hopefully now this cub journalist can learn this side of the industry, because 10 years ago, when I was there, this was not there. And I remain to this day, even though, you know, Columbia will have nothing to do with me because I’m conservative. I’m still the most successful graduate in my class of 10 years ago, particularly because I dove headfirst into the digital media world. Well.

And I think I Was the first one probably at the school to do what I was doing. Right. I probably really legitimately was. But, you know, the same thing. They don’t anybody who steps up. But you, you are unique. You are a very different voice in this conservative media. And how would you say that you’re different? Well, you know, there’s. There’s a couple aspects of my identity that are different that kind of make me one on one. I’m a black guy, I’m a gay guy. I used to be a Democrat. Like, I was. I was into the whole liberal thing.

I did a little bit of liberal activism that I still believe in, by the way, when I was on the left, particularly since I’m a veteran, I fought for the rights of gay and lesbian soldiers to be able to serve openly in the military. And that is a right that we now have. And I stand by that. I would do that again. So those are things that make me very difficult. And I would guess the conservative media, political space, the Republican space, whatever you want to call it. I was very ahead of the curve on all of this because I started doing this about seven years ago.

It has become kind of trendy to say, oh, I’ve left the Democrats, they’re so crazy. I’m conservative now. Maga, maga, maga. But it wasn’t trendy when I started doing it seven years ago. And in fact, I took a lot of crap for it on both sides of the aisle. And yep, even to this day with, you know, I’m fairly successful in this space. But even to this day, I still feel like I’m kind of on my own and doing my own thing because. Because I don’t align with conservatives and Republicans on every single thing. I don’t align with Democrats on anything nowadays.

But there are some times when I find myself to the left of Republicans, for sure. Well, and it’s hard because I think that’s where many of us are at, right. Democrats have lost their mind, but we also aren’t quite 100% aligned with everything I say. I’m more libertarian leaning, but I’m not a hardcore libertarian either. But I think there’s a lot more independents now who are just saying, I don’t know if I like anything 100%, but that doesn’t make sense where half the country would all agree on anything anyways, right? No, I don’t think it does.

And I think that here’s the problem. A lot of people are kind of toeing the independent line right now because, of course, liberals, they’ve Just gone completely insane. And then there’s some people that think that all the Republicans and conservatives are too extreme, which I disagree. I think that the only thing they’re seeing right now is Republicans in power actually using it, which is why a lot of people are flipping out, because we are very much used to seeing Democrats in power. Absolutely use every bit that they have. But it somehow makes people uncomfortable when Republicans use power, which I find very interesting about this moment that we’re in right now.

But also, look, at the end of the day, you have to stand for something and you have to have some kind of fundamental beliefs. Because if you don’t have fundamental beliefs that you’re not wavering on, then you’re Ana Navarro or you’re a Tara Sett Meyer or you’re one of these people that were alleged conservatives their entire careers. And then all of a sudden Trump comes in and they just, oh, my God, I can’t take this. This is so outrageous. I am just going to go back on every single thing that I ever believed because this person is so outrageous and unacceptable.

Right? Yeah. They’ve lost their minds, too. The. They haven’t lost their minds. They are chasing a check, and they were going where that check leads them. Okay. And it definitely led them all away from their values, which I don’t want to be that person either. Well, I think you’re losing your mind if you’re just chasing a check, but okay. You also were pretty heavily involved with Turning Point usa. I was, yeah. Turning Point USA basically launched my career in conservative media and politics. I came out as a conservative via social media and all of that stuff in 2018.

And in 2019, I became a contributor, as matter of fact, the first contributor for Turning Point usa. And I stayed there for three years before I just kind of moved on to do some other things. And, you know, what I will say about that experience is that it was absolutely incredible. And again, what Turning Point has accomplished has been amazing. And what they’re doing again at this point in our history right now seems obvious, but it was not obvious five, six years ago. It was not obvious when I was there. It was just something that was on its way up.

And it was something that people were starting to come to terms with in terms of actually having a Republican and conservative leaning student group on campus. And I would go do speeches at a lot of these campuses across the country. Still do intermittently. But what struck me is that most student organizations on college campuses are just liberal leaning. God knows the LGBT org is always far left to communist. The black student organizations are always liberal. They have, climate organizations have all these things. But Turning Point would be the single sole organization on that college campus that was even slightly right leaning and the entire university would just lose it, which was the point of them being there.

It was the point of the entire impetus of the organization in and of itself. So it was an incredible experience. It was definitely a wild era. Yes, well, and they, they tend to frame anything that’s on the right only in the social context, only in the sense of you’re racist and bigoted. They don’t look at broader concepts of freedom, independence, how you work around the world on an international stage. And they always boil it down to real simple ideas. It seems like. Well, I mean they, you know, they do that because the easiest way for the left to control who they control, which is overwhelmingly African Americans, the LGBT women, et cetera, et cetera.

Like when you look at the left coalition, that’s what it is. And so in order to maintain control of that population and to stop them from looking at things in a different way, then you have to make things very simple and very black and white Republicans, racist Republicans, sexist Republicans, homophobic. And you kind of just repeat that over and over and over and over and over again and people will really start believing it. And so when I would do these college, these college speaking tours and these college speaking events and I would go up there and I’d be like, okay, look, you know, I’m the black gay guy and I believe this, I’m going to tell you exactly why I believe this.

And you would kind of like see their eyes light up a little bit. You would kind of see this kernel of knowledge start being formed there. And generally when I would do it, they would just, they would go follow myself on social media and then you would kind of see them be awakened by all the content. Whether they agree with it or not, they’re seeing things from the perspective of somebody that is not the traditional straight, white Christian Republican. And they can see things from different points of view. Well now do you think, because I feel this myself, that I am heavily targeted because I don’t come across as an extreme right wing person? I actually could really, you know, I can relate to women across and people, men, women, everybody across the aisle.

And I think that makes me a target. Do you feel that way as well? Okay, so I feel slightly different about this. I don’t feel targeted. I feel, I guess, kind of ignored sometimes. And I’ll explain that a little bit more because you’re like, oh, this guy has 2 million followers. How’s he being ignored? This is what I think when. And I look at things through the lens of media because that’s what I do. That’s what, that’s what puts food on my plate. It’s just the only thing I’m a true expert in, right, is media. And so media likes to have heroes and villains.

And for so long it has been so easy to villainize the sort of traditional, typical straight white Republican male that those are the people that are going to get the most attention because that makes them the easier villain. Where when you’re engaging with somebody like me and my content, the conversations are always going to be a little bit more nuanced. The conversations cannot be black and white because I just literally don’t have the life experience that these other people have. My life experience is more nuanced and how I came to this space is more nuanced than I was just born into this and this was always my life.

It just is not like that. So it’s a little bit ignored, but it’s definitely targeted for ridicule. I’ve had, you know, experiences in my career in which I’ve been a target of like, I’ve been a target of anti gay hatred from people on the far right and sort of when that moment happened and yeah, when that moment happened and that went viral and everything. Here comes the tolerant, inclusive liberal saying, oh man, like we really wish we would have killed them. Yeah, yeah, See, and that’s the. So okay, my, my experience has been I’m, I’m ignored.

Right, that’s, that’s a big one. But they also target you from a silencing. You haven’t had a lot of suppression. I’ve had a ton of suppression. So I think it’s a twofold thing where I’m suppressed and ignored. So because, and you’re probably more of a threat than I am. Maybe not. Maybe I, you know, I have a high tech background, big tech background. But your experience. So I just find this was really fascinating. I love talking to people that actually get people thinking and, and if you make people uncomfortable, great, you know, because you’re a good person, that’s great.

But okay, you had some experience or a lot of experience with Turning Point. You worked for him for three years. When you’re inside the organization, you know, they’re being characterized as this extreme far right organization that’s misogynistic, that is anti gay, that is just, you know, how would you, what would you say when you hear that? You know, it’s so insane sometimes when I think about my life and I think about the people that I’ve had actual experiences with and a lot of the people, and you can, you can go down the line from Charlie Kirk to Matt Gaetz to pretty much everybody in Trump world.

I think the only Trump that I haven’t met is Ivanka. And so you have these interpersonal experiences with people that are demonized and I mean, just called the craziest things, you know, on earth by, by liberals and Democrats who obviously their point is to demonize them, to delegitimize them. So I’ve always found it very strange and very odd that my interpersonal experiences with all of these people totally did not match the caricature of them that was being pushed by Democrats or the left of the mainstream media, whatever you want to call it. My experience with people in the organization is, look, these are God loving, God fearing, America loving young people that really, truly, honestly, the vast majority of people that are working for that organization are truly trying to make a difference.

These kids, these young people work very hard to put on these events. What they put on in Phoenix for Charlie’s memorial was incredible to have put together in such a small amount of time. And so to even be around, I don’t want to say to be around the less bold face name people, just the regular everyday people that are working to make an organization like Turning Point usa, you know, to, to keep the wheel spinning around. To see, you know, these people characterize as like fringe right wing extremists is, is kind of insane to me because that’s not who the literally 95% of the people in this space that I’ve interacted with are now are there like outside of the Turning Point organization, like in the conservative media movement, in the conservative movement, whatever you want to call it, are there people that are way to the right of me? Absolutely.

Those people just exist. And honestly, you talk about having a big tech background and being suppressed and all that stuff. Those fringes are going to exist in a free and open Internet, right? In a free and open social media space. And it’s our job as consumers and people that are engaging to decide what we will and will not engage with. I think, I don’t think it’s the job of the tech companies to decide who we will or will not engage with. I agree because I think there’s been too much authoritarian behavior and especially just with Jim Jordan’s information that came out yesterday, we know that the Biden Administration was behind people like me being taken off platforms.

And that. That’s just not that that erodes civilization itself. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I haven’t had. Okay, I haven’t had the experience of being super suppressed that I can only imagine I was getting so little traction on Twitter that I just. I’d left Twitter for a couple of years right between, I would say, 2020 and 2023. I came back in when Elon took it over and I. And I noticed like a stage spike in my reach and my following and all that stuff. But that stuff had been going on for a really long time. And I think that I was not suppressed because I really did stay away from the COVID talk because there was just so much stuff going on out there at that point in time.

Like, I didn’t know what was real or what was fake, so I just stayed away from it. But even now with, you know, YouTube and basically Google saying that, oh, anybody that was kicked off of YouTube, you know, for, you know, whatever violations that they were kicking people off for a couple of years ago are now going to be reinstated. I think that that’s a interesting step, but I think that we’re heading into a period again in which, you know, these platforms, commitment to free speech, it will be tested again. It’ll just next time. I agree with you.

And I don’t even trust that they’re going to let everybody back in for those reasons, because I don’t think so either. I think that’s a. That’s BS Because I think that they’ll do. Is their category like me, I’m cyberbullying. There is no way I’m cyber bullying. Or if there is, give me an example of it. Because I can give you a thousand examples of people who are way worse than I am. Right. Because I am not that. And so I totally don’t trust them when it comes to. I think it has. They’re just going to recharacterize what it is that they don’t like.

Mm, yeah, I think they will. And honestly, it just. Oh, it really makes you think about these social media companies and how deeply powerful they are. I mean, and I don’t think that I truly understood it. You know, there was a moment in my career where like, you know, I was working with Turning Point USA and I was doing a lot of TV and I was doing all that stuff. I stepped back from politics. So when I moved. When I stepped back from Turning Point, I stepped back from politics for like two years because it was overwhelming.

It was just like a lot. And I really had to decide whether this is something that I wanted to continue to do with my life. But while I wasn’t in politics and politics, I was still consulting on social media. I was still like running some of my other pages, like at Facebook, pace of pages and all that stuff. And so I really learned truly the ins and outs of dealing with social media, even beyond just being an influencer, content creator, whatever you want to call it. And I was like, holy crap. It’s kind of like how Tim Cook and Mark Zuckerberg and all these people like don’t send their.

They send their kids to the tech free schools. Because I was like. And I remember looking at that these people know something that we don’t about social media. And the deeper I got into it and now that I’m back into politics and doing it even more and running more stuff, I’m like, man, this stuff is. Oh man. I think dangerous is a strong word, but algorithms control a lot of things. Well, I would say that I was asked, I spoke at an event, Team America event last weekend and there was a person there that’s working with the school systems on bringing in AI and what to do and stuff.

And she asked my opinion on that. And I told them, you know, where, when do you think it’s right for kids to start learning AI? And I said, I, I mean, kids need to learn computers, maybe computer lab or something, but I would wait even until high school, maybe junior high school before they really. Because your brain atrophies if you’re not forced to critically think. And then you add in algorithm algorithms with social media and now it’s really dangerous. Right? But the danger with these kids is not developing people that can critically think anymore. That’s a problem.

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I’m older, but yeah, I’m a Generation X, but thank you. Well, yeah, I was gonna assume like millennial or older or, you know, just around the same age. Right. But what I’m saying, the point that I’m making is that we know of a time before all of this and your average 21 year old does not. And you go out to restaurants and I’m sure you’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. Where either you’ve got a family at the restaurant table and the kid is staring at a phone, or you’ve got a kid in a stroller two, three years old, already staring at the phone.

And since I work in this and since I do this, I have my own phone addiction and social media addiction issues that I try to work through in terms of setting time limitations and not being there on the weekends and stuff like that. And I try to do that because it’s my work. And I know that it’s not a good thing to be addicted to all this stuff, but we’ve got a generation of younger people coming up that are hopelessly addicted to these things. And back to the point, with AI, I would prefer, like, honestly, I would rather the kids not be on social at all or doing any of this stuff until high school because I feel like they’re starting to lose social skills.

Have you ever talked to a Zoomer. A Gen Z year that literally cannot look you in the eye in person. Well, I saw that when I was raising my kids. My kids went to a Christian private school. Yeah. And they. And I liked it because there was, it was just a really good school in the area. And they learned how to interact, they could speak to adults, they could have conversations. But I noticed that and I coached a lot. I coached for like 15 years. And I coached a lot of public school kids and things. And a lot of the kids that were coming out of the public schools were not able to have basic conversations with adults.

They don’t teach that. And it’s almost a lost art. And that it was, you know, the kids I coached, I would work really hard to develop that in them. And I think their parents appreciated it. But, you know, just hard to have good relationships with all of the kids and get them to talk to you and think. But it’s just not taught. No, it’s not. And you know what? I don’t know if that’s something that is taught as opposed to something that a lot of young people are going to get through. Having parents, the environment, through the social networks.

So I got to tell you. And we don’t really have to have an economics or class conversation or anything like that. But what I will say is this. I got into politics about seven, eight years ago and I grew up very working class. I went to the military. You know, the first person in my family to get a bachelor’s degree, let alone my master’s, let alone do all of these other things. But, you know, getting in politics and you know, going to Mar a Lago and being at like billionaire donor events and stuff like that, it was really the first time that ever been around true wealth.

And what I noticed is that when you’re around true wealth, the kids are always around. Right. And not in an annoying way. They’re around soaking up adult conversation. They’re being integrated into the conversation. They are knowing how to deal with adults, to have real honest to God conversations. And then I think to my working class upbringing where get out of the room, grown folks are talking, go to the kids table, don’t be around us. And it was just. When I put those two things together, it’s just so different. It is. I think you, you raise kids with a different eye.

Because I know that my daughter, my daughter got a little bit different experience than my son because my daughter got to. Was living with us when we went through a lot of the suppression and the takedown and the, you know, part of the COVID and things, but both of them got to hear me have conversations on a, on a globe on very important issues that were affecting everywhere around the country and the world. And they saw things from a different perspective and it gave, it gave them a maturity that a lot of kids don’t get to have unless they’re exposed to it.

That’s right. And it’s a maturity that a lot of our kids are not getting nowadays, and particularly not in public schools. And look, I’m a public school kid and I can, we can have a, do an entire podcast episode of the deficiency of the public school system right now. But back to the conversation about social media and AI and all of this stuff I do. It’s. I think that we are creating another two tier system in which we have children of the wealthy, the well connected, whatever you want to call it, that are growing up and being raised to be able to look people in the eye, to be able to have conversations, shake the hand, body language, all of that stuff.

And then we are having lower class kids being raised to stare at their phones and to not be able to express themselves and to become hopelessly addicted to social media and all of this other stuff. And you know, one thing that I’ve realized in building my platform, I started thinking about my career personally in a different way when I realized that, oh my God, like, this really is forever. This really is. You kind of just wake up every day. You do the podcast, you do the content, you do the news hits, you do the speeches, you do whatever.

And it just builds and builds and builds because these platforms are never going away. This is just how we live now. It is how we live. And it’s for me, when I spent eight years building and then I overnight that I was taken off, that was really hard. It’s a. There’s some mental health issues that a lot of us have to deal with being erased unpersoned. So that is a scary notion that the big tech has that kind of power over people. I got to feel that and experience that. You know, it’s like your life is taken from you, right? Yeah.

Especially when you do it for a living. When you do it for a living. And the scary part is it gave me a different sense of how these kids, how that’s their life as well, you know, like it becomes their life, integrates into it. I don’t think that’s healthy because I know how when I do it for a living, I’m sharing things I haven’t shared yet. Just about My own mental health with this. When you do this for a living and they take, take they unperson you like that. It’s like they rip your soul from you or something.

You can’t function. But imagine as a kid, that’s their whole life, right? It gave me a different perspective at how kids. I know that’s unhealthy. Like you just said, we are on them. We have to do this for a job. So we are on it all the time. And so I am structuring my life a little bit different so that I can have planned times up. Kids are so mentally integrated. It’s even their brain structure is the way the brain fires is mentally connected to these things. So separating them from this is tragic for them. And we have to understand that their brain is actually being.

I know this sounds crazy, but it’s true. And I think the science is backing this. Their brain is being connected to this ecosystem. Just we’re addicted. You said it’s addiction. It is a real addiction. Oh no, it is. And you don’t sound crazy for saying that at all. The sciences behind it, the neural pathways with too much phone time and too much screen time and too much social media and all that stuff, it affects all of this stuff that’s going on up here. And this is what I will say I was doing some work with, I have some social media companies as clients.

I’m not going to say which one, but I was doing work with one of the social media companies in terms of like child safety and protection online. And the thing that really strikes me is I’m sure that we had experiences in high school that were unpleasant that you want to forget. Like I was bullied in high school and there were a couple of incidents on all that. But sometimes I’m on X and the feed will feed me. Like high school age kids like fighting, you know. And so. And I’m just like, this is crazy. I do not want to watch this.

Really disturbing. But I’m thinking about these young kids and that moment where they’re being physically attacked or whatever, going all over the Internet and it’s almost at this point they can’t escape it. Because if I’m in high school and I’m being bullied, like I just go home, right? It’s over. But it’s never over for these kids nowadays. Well, Eric Meader, who is a young, he’s in his mid-20s, he’s putting a whole class together to how to deal with social media for young people. When he was on social media, the fights he was being fed nothing but violence in his feeds and.

Yeah. And that his group, because they kind of got into this violent mode. That’s all they were getting in their feeds and it was creating this, this. They were. He was really depressed. He tells this whole story. But I also had a father on John Anthony, whose son was in this suicide pact on Discord and he took his life. And they, and there was a bunch of kids, they think that were related all to this suicide pact who took their lives around the same time. These are, these are growing problems that we’re just starting to figure out.

I didn’t grow up with social media. You didn’t grow up. And so the adults that are running the world right now did not grow up with this. Yeah. So we’re. These younger people grew up with it. They have a perspective that we need to listen to. They do. And honestly, and I think back to just sort of kind of like being a teen and just going through those awkward teen years and maybe there was some bullying and maybe there was latchkey kid stuff and all that stuff, and thank God there was no social. Who knows? I know what rabbit holes I would have fallen into on social media with all the time that I was spending alone and with, you know, just being my weird teenage self and like having hormones all the place and like all that stuff.

Like, who knows, right? So it’s, it’s really, really scary. And I think that as a society, we in this whole media ecosystem and even myself being a political influencer commentator, you know, I just, I hate, like, you hate to think that you’re a part of the problem, but you kind of are because these platforms don’t necessarily reward subtlety and nuance. I know, I know. I agree with you so much. Keep going on that. That’s exactly the problem. Well, no, it is, because it’s like, okay, if I’m a political commentator and I have spicy hot takes and I’m never mean, but I’m direct and I know that my brand is being spicy and direct.

So if I’m against legal immigration, I’m going to tell you exactly why. And I’m not going to beat around the bush about it because this is, is social media. And I have to give you this point in 62 to 90 seconds because you’re already going to be on to the next thing. Right? And I know that I’m feeding into this algorithm, I’m feeding into people that already agree with me, et cetera, et cetera, how much am I a part of this problem? And how much of this industry is kind of like a part of this problem as well.

And look, maybe at a certain point, you know, people can have more nuanced conversations and. But to be given a platform, to have that kind of conversation is, is very rare in this day and age. It’s very rare to get that opportunity. So what you’re left with is the social media and digital media platforms that reward the most incendiary hot take you can think of. That’s right. That’s exactly right. And I have this theory that people who are a little bit less, you know, who are more unifying, that you’re, you’re even more ignored. I mean, and I think that’s right.

It’s, it is. Especially if you are a female or you’re a black person or if you’re a gay person. I think, and maybe I’m a conspiracy theorist here, but I think it’s almost on purpose. They do not want us to unify. They don’t want you to reach out to black people in the Democratic Party or gay people because you are a problem for them. You are a problem. Oh, yeah. And this is what I, this is what I’ve always said to that effect, because I’ll have some clients that maybe they’re doing entrepreneurship or maybe they’re doing fitness, and they’re like, oh my God, like, I’m gonna get into politics.

I want to do what you do. And I’m like, bro, you don’t. You don’t. Because this is the thing. You are more likely to get a soft c. Conservative leaning message across via your fitness content. That is completely apolitical in terms of you’re not saying Democrat or Republican or Trump or Biden or whoever. But once you start going political, and this is what I’ve discovered, and I’ve kind of had to come to terms with this and own it, like, once you start going political, you are in that box. And I think it’s. And I told you earlier, sort of like I’m in between, sort of like negotiating a new podcast deal for myself.

And I shied away from the podcast format before because I was like, man, I don’t know if I can keep up. If I can just keep up this level of intensity that I can put in my short, short form in a podcast. But now I’m like, no, if I do a podcast, then I can really broaden things out and I can really give some things some nuance. And so I can really talk for 7 to 10 minutes as opposed to 62 to 90 seconds. That’s right. And that’s better, I think. And I think that’s where my sweet spot is, and is, how do we have these more intelligent people are.

People are hungry for intelligent conversations. They really are. And for authentic, truthful ones that aren’t full of crap. They’re tired of getting told. They’re tired of being lied to. They’re tired of people who are not authentic. So. And that’s good, I think. Yeah, and it is. And I think that what I’ve noticed, too, as we see this space is always sort of like melding and going different ways and et cetera. What I’ve seen is people become, to your point, more hungry for a nuanced conversation. But it seems like people that are purposefully going to the extremes are starting to turn people off.

That’s right. Because I feel like if you have a platform, and I’ve seen this even with people that are on the right side of the aisle that I wouldn’t necessarily like, I would not categorize them as far right or any more to the right of me. Like, that’s not what it’s about. But if you’re going to have this platform and you’re just going to lob bombs over and over and over again, this is all you’re doing. It becomes too much for the audience to take in when it comes from a place of anger and also when there’s not a hint of humor or nuance to what you’re doing.

That’s right. People want authentic. That’s what it is. It’s all about. Come on. It’s not this. It’s not that they know it doesn’t relate to what their own experiences are and how they want to be as a human being. And so they’re just. I think we’re maturing. I think it’s the result of people being in this space and maturing and figuring it out. And so I think that’s a good thing. It’s just we’re still in the middle of it, and our kids don’t have the luxury of being an adult. And so I think our focus needs to be on making sure we protect our kids from their mind atrophying and being messed up, honestly, 100%.

And also the adults as well. I need to be spending far less time on social and far less time looking at my phone than I do right now. So this is a great conversation because it’s making me realize how much work I need to do on myself just even being in this space. Well, you are awesome. Where can people find you? And you’re somebody they should follow. Thank you so much. Oh, so you can find me on on X Robsmith Online, Instagram @RobSmith Online and Facebook @RobSmith Online and TikTok OB Smith Online. And if you’re interested in my life story, any of your listeners, you can buy my book on Amazon.

It’s called Always a soldier, Service, sacrifice and coming out as America’s favorite black gay Republican, you can find that on Amazon. And I don’t know, maybe there will be another book in the future. I don’t know. Books are tough and I have to figure out if I want to kind of like get on that horse again. Yeah, I know. I understand. Thank you so much for joining the program. You’re a pleasure to talk to. No, thanks so much for having me. That was really great. Sa Sam.
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