 I have seen people boycott, leave social media and Facebook for years. And it always saddens me when I see it for a couple of reasons. One is that I am usually correct in guessing that they will be back and they usually do come back. But even if they don't come back, the social media platform loses something, loses a valuable voice, loses a meaningful contributor. And basically, and the other reason why it's so sad is because that person who leaves social media is essentially deplatforming themselves. They're canceling themselves because social media at this time is the main place for society's attention it's how culture, how people communicate with each other. Right, we don't write, we don't rarely mail physical letters anymore. We don't call people up randomly anymore. Maybe a few of you still do that. And a lot of people don't even check their email messages on a regular basis but they still check social media regularly. Now, here's the thing. Some of you might think that I'm tone deaf to be talking about this right now because Facebook is currently going through one of their toughest periods of PR in their history. A lot of hate for Facebook right now. There are major news organizations that have combined together to basically take down Facebook because of the Facebook whistleblowers Facebook is Instagram is bad for teenage girls. Facebook is bad for democracy. Facebook is terrible for privacy. I get it. It's cool to hate on Facebook. Let's just be honest with you. It's socially acceptable right now not to be doing what I'm doing. It's socially cool and you're smarter. You're more ethical right now. If you say Facebook is evil, if you use Facebook, you're reluctantly doing it. It's cool to do all that right now. But here's the thing. It doesn't matter. Let's just be perfectly honest. I'm gonna just, you leave social media. What kind of a difference does that make? Okay, let's talk this through, okay? You leave social media. You think you're making a splash for, and then you make a splash for like three weeks and then we forget about you. Oh, so and so left social media. Wow, so brave, so bold. They're gonna try to build their business. And by the way, I'm speaking to most of you who are business self-employed or small business owners. You're shooting yourself in the foot if you leave social media. So okay, oh my God, you're so brave. You're so ethical. You're so principled and you leave social media. And then we praise you on social media for a couple of days, a couple of weeks at most. And then we forget about you. And then what? And then you're probably gonna come back in like three months, six months because you realize you've shot yourself in the foot or that you, how are you gonna build your business without social media? Please somebody tell me below how are you going to build your business without social media? Yeah, sure, you can. Of course you can build your, oh, you're gonna get, you're gonna email. You're gonna go back to email. What are you gonna do? Text messages? What are you gonna do? You're gonna email your friends to please refer you some business. You're gonna email your friends, your newest article. You know, by not being on social media you also have less incentive to write. You have less incentive to make content, right? So what are you gonna do now? You're gonna rely on your email newsletter. Oh, George, email newsletter is the only way we really reliably reaching our audience, is that right? Yeah, I've heard that ever since 2009 when I started my business. Build your email list. Okay, folks, that's really old school knowledge. Let me explain why that's outdated. Okay, so email lists building used to be cool and really important from 2009 to I would say probably mid 2010s. It was still a cool thing to talk about email list building and how important that was. And then people started noticing, oh, people don't even check their emails much anymore or they got overrun with email newsletter to subscribe to. And of course, email softwares like Gmail and everything they're now placing email newsletters in different promotions folders, updates folders, spam folder. And so email became less and less reliable over time as a way to keep in touch with people. But also here's the thing, I have an email newsletter too. Of course I do. It's just like everybody who says, oh, I build my business from word of mouth. Word of mouth is the most important channel for marketing. You don't know what you're talking about. Everybody has word of mouth. Are you kidding me? Everybody has word of mouth. I have word of mouth too. Except my word of mouth is greatly amplified because of social media, because what's the easiest way for you to spread the word about me by sharing my content, by even simply the fact that you like this video, your word of mouth making it more likely that some of your friends are seeing this video right now. But if you liked it, if you comment on it, you make it a little bit even more likely that some of your friends see it. If you share it, obviously you make that even more likely. So word of mouth as the main way of building business is such, it's not, it's unwise marketing advice because everybody gets word of mouth. That's baseline for every single business in the world. Even somebody with no audience, at least their family member, their friends are trying to tell other people about their business. Word of mouth is normal. It's just that with social media, word of mouth is amplified a hundred times, a thousand times. It's so much easier. An email list is normal too. Everyone has, everyone who does any kind of marketing has some kind of email list. Some of you don't, I know, because you realize you could actually build a business without email lists. Why? Well, I have a whole other video about that, but email list is one of multiple channels that would be wise for you to be reaching your audience. Some of you are subscribed to my email newsletter, of course, but you also see me on social media. And that's, that means I am more top of mind for you because you see me in these multiple places. So the person who is leading social media, they seem really brave, principled and cool for like three weeks. And then we forget about them. Sadly, I mean, I wanna remember them. I wanna think about them. I wanna refer them business, but I don't remember them because I don't see them on social media on a regular basis anymore. They're deplatforming themselves. It's silly. George, George, you haven't gotten to the fact that Facebook is evil. It's bad for democracy. It's bad for privacy. And it's bad Instagram and Facebook are bad for kids. All right, let's talk about that, shall we? Okay. So if you're going to say that Facebook is bad and evil, then why is it that they frequently feature articles that say that they're bad and evil? Let me show you, I mean, I just for the past couple of weeks especially since Facebook has been so bad in the news lately, for the past couple of weeks, I have been noticing articles because I serve Facebook news just like many of you do. And for the past couple of weeks every time I log on to Facebook, news item, the menu on my phone, it's telling me how bad Facebook is. Okay, let me, that's just one screenshot. Let me give you another screenshot. I was like, I was genuinely shocked. I was like, I'm like, wow, Facebook isn't censoring the articles about them being evil. So what does that mean? Either they're stupid and they're not on top of it or they are simply giving the people what they want. Because I am interested in Facebook news. Of course I am because Facebook is such a big part of my marketing channels. I'm really curious what's going on with the company and the PR that's happening. So I tend to click on news articles regarding Facebook, the company. And so Facebook knows that. And so Facebook is now giving me articles all the time. As part of, I haven't even clicked through to the news section and they're already showing, showcasing to me why Mark Zuckerberg is evil and why Facebook is terrible for society. Let me show you another example. This is the top of when I clicked through to the Facebook news, okay, tool. This was the top article. It's an unflattering picture of Mark Zuckerberg and talking about how terrible Facebook is. Okay, I could show you example after example, but let me move on here. So Facebook and social media, let's be really clear what social media, how they win. How are they getting society's attention? How are they so addicting? You know why? Well, let me ask you, why is junk food addicting? Why is, why are video games addicting? Because they give you what you want. So whose responsibility is it when you get addicted? Are you gonna just blame it on everybody else? Are you gonna blame it on big tech that you're addicted to big tech that you can't stop scrolling? Sure, of course big tech has some responsibility, but so do you. Who has more responsibility in the case when you are addicted to social, when anybody is addicted to social? Now, when kids are addicted to social media and their self-esteem is being shaped by Instagram likes and Instagram images, whose fault is it? Well, kids, you can't blame them. Their brains are not developed yet to make wise decisions. So what about their parents then? Some parents prohibit their kids from using social media. Some parents have that kind of relationship with their kids where their kids, you know, well, I'm not, I'm not gonna say that, you know, of course some kids are harder to parent than other kids, but still I think the parents have a big responsibility when kids become addicted to anything. Do you let your kids get addicted to drugs, hard drugs? Any drugs really? Do you let your kids get addicted to video games? Do you let your kids get addicted to film the blank junk food? Do you let them just eat whatever ice cream and junk food that they want? Probably not, right? You're very careful about that. So why aren't you more careful about how they're using their technology? I'm not blaming you. I'm just saying that, you know, by the way, same thing with yourself. If you are letting yourself get addicted to anything, then perhaps you have a responsibility and an opportunity to parent yourself a little better. Now, social media, do they have, do they have the government intercept policy on them to, you know, be more censoring of certain information, misinformation, disinformation to prevent, you know, kids from getting addicted and prevent us from getting addicted and protect our privacy and all that? Probably. Now, if you are going to boycott social media and not share that information on social media, guess who wins? Actually, nobody wins because social media loses you as a customer and society loses you as a voice on social media because that's where society is reading everything. But George, George, be everyone's leaving Facebook though. Didn't you know that? I hear all my friends are leaving Facebook. Oh, really? Is that right? Okay, well, let's take a look, okay? Let's take a look at this. You think everyone's leaving Facebook and let me go ahead and show you the actual data. Do you care about data? I hope you do. Let me show it to you. Facebook worldwide usage. Just Google it. Go to Google, search this yourself. Facebook worldwide usage and let's click on stat, I don't know how to pronounce it, statista, which is a well-known respected source of data. Okay, all right, let's look at this. Do you see everyone leaving social media? That's ridiculous to say that, come on. Are people leaving social media? No, they're not. Now, when did the major Facebook scandals begin? Late 2015 through 2016, part of 2017, Cambridge analytical scandals were happening around this time. So let me just zoom in at this time to see if anyone left social media. Did social media slow, did Facebook usage slow down? No, it kept growing during the Cambridge analytical scandals. Look at this, kept growing from 1.2 billion in the Q1 of 2014 all the way, Q2, 2.23 billion. Okay, all right, now let's reset the zoom. And what about now these days? Now we've only got data up to second quarter, but look at now, of course, pandemic is gonna help social media, but look at this, social media, Facebook usage has now almost 3 billion internet users worldwide, which is basically most internet users because there's 4.3 billion internet users worldwide and most of them use Facebook at least once a month. The fact, I'm gonna guess that you use Facebook at least once a month, okay? So most of you, anyway. Now, so let's couple things. One, I still haven't talked about how Facebook is evil for democracy. Come on, okay. Do you have any thought leaders, activists, politicians you admire? Most of you who are hating on Facebook, there are two camps hating on Facebook. The left and the right basically, okay. Both liberals and conservatives hate Facebook, but they all use it. Everybody uses it, but everyone it's so cool to talk about Facebook badly, okay? So the liberals say that Facebook isn't censoring enough of the conservatives. The conservatives hate Facebook because Facebook is censoring them. The far left is hate Facebook because Facebook censors some of the language around whiteness and racial justice and privilege and all that stuff. Facebook censors some of that because whatever. Facebook also censors the far right in terms of vaccines and all that stuff, all that talk. So everyone it's cool to hate on Facebook. And yet there are still people who champion racial justice, who champion vaccine hesitancy. They're still on Facebook when they learn how to use different language to talk about it because I actually have friends on both sides and I know that they use different language to talk about these things effectively on Facebook, despite the censorship. And then of course there are plenty of people on both sides who say Facebook is not censoring enough because it's bad for, you know, by not censoring enough information, Facebook is bad for democracy, let's talk about this. Okay, are you going to help that cause by leaving Facebook or the alternative, you stay on Facebook, you learn to use it with good boundaries. We haven't even talked on that, but I'll talk about that later. You can either leave Facebook or you can stay on Facebook, learn self-control and use it with good boundaries and therefore benefit your business hugely for the long term, okay? And even for the short term. So you can either leave and have your voice be lost or you can stay and champion the causes that you care about and of course champion your business. What's going to be your choice? Please don't tell me you're going to leave Facebook. It is an irrational and please convince me why you're leaving Facebook. You're leaving Facebook for two reasons, political reasons because you haven't sat down and thought the people who are using Facebook that believe in my politics, how are they doing it to champion the cause? Let me look at what language they're using so we don't get censored. Let's do it. Let's continue championing the causes we believe in, okay? I think that's the real principle move. But you might say, well, I'm leaving Facebook as a principle move to not support Facebook. Your leaving is a drop in the bucket and it's going to make no difference. Well, my leaving encourages other people to leave, but yeah, all of you are going to come back. Most of you, I bet you. Let me, let's do a pinky bet that you're going to come back in three months, six months, or three years, whatever, but you're going to be back, okay? Because I see everybody leave. I've been on Facebook now since 2006. I've seen so many of my good friends leave, come back, leave, come back, principle, leave, and come back and shame, principle, leave, whatever. They realize that, oh my gosh, I can't champion my causes without why am I de-platforming myself? It doesn't make sense. It really doesn't make sense. Now, if you say, well, Facebook is backwards, then go on Facebook and talk about that. They're not going to censor you. Just like I showed you just earlier, scroll back in this video, Facebook allows mainstream media articles attacking them as front page news on Facebook. They're not going to censor you on that. They welcome it because they want, guess what they want. Let me just be really clear. Facebook gives you what you want. Facebook gives everybody what they want. So if you want news that hates on Facebook, they will show you news that hates on Facebook. If you want news that champion your political beliefs, they will show that to you. That's why it's bad for democracy. It splits up nations and whatever because it's giving people what they want. Whose fault is that? It's everybody's fault, I get it. But people are so disconnected from their own responsibility. I think it's just ridiculous. If you get, it's everybody's job to be mindful of what kinds of news articles they're clicking on social media, right? Why are we just outsourcing? Oh, they're feeding me this, they're feeding me that. You can choose something different on the menu. You go to the restaurant and the restaurant features this special and that special, you don't have to buy that. You can buy, they're featuring fried chicken and you could buy the salad. Yes, and guess what? The more you go to a restaurant, you buy the salad instead of the, assuming that's healthier for you, whatever. Okay, I'm just assuming salad is better for you than fried chicken. All right, you keep buying the salad, the restaurant is not gonna change their specials because the restaurant is gonna keep selling fried but social media is different. If you keep choosing the salad, social media is gonna show you the salad more often because the social media menu is individualized to you. The algorithm learns what you want and gives you more of it. That's why it's addictive. That's how it gets you to come back. And that's how, if you keep coming back, that's how they make money because then they could show you advertisements. And by the way, if you don't click on advertisements, they'll show you less of those advertisements. The ones that you engage with, I'm hoping if you see my Facebook ads, you probably engage with that in some way, they'll show you more of my ads. And you know my ads, I'm trying to do good in the society and bring authentic marketing, et cetera. So two reasons why people leave Facebook, you might be tempted to leave Facebook, well, I guess three reasons now again. One is political discontent. Don't leave for that reason. You should stay here and champion your cause. Any political leader or activist you think of, if they left Facebook, Facebook, your cause would be poorer on Facebook. People are still gonna use Facebook, like I showed you. People are still going to use Facebook. It's never gone down. It's continued to go up. It's the trend is gonna keep going because social media is really smart. They have all the data of how people engage and they're gonna keep making sure it's addictive. They're going to keep making sure it's addictive. Society is not gonna stop using it because you principle stance, you stop using it. That's ridiculous. They're gonna keep making it addictive for everybody. And then you're gonna slink back three to six months to three years later, right? Come on. So, if you don't like the politics, champion your politics on Facebook. If because you're stopping social media because you have boundaries issues, you can't stop scrolling. Who's, okay. You can't stop scrolling social media. So what do you do? You can either delete it from your phone or you can use it as a spiritual practice. Yeah, knowing that it's good for your business. What's the status stat? Social media is good for your business, okay? Number one. Number two is you can't stop scrolling. So why don't you learn every time before you use social media, set a timer for 10 minutes or three minutes. It's easy. Don't you have a timer with you at all times on your phone or on the internet, on Google, if you're using social media on your computer, just Google 10 minute timer real quick and it'll pull up, it'll pull up a 10 minute time. Try it. It'll pull up a 10 minute timer like let me show you real quick. If I use social media on my computer, I just first, the first thing I do is Google 10 minute timer. Okay, cool. All right, the timer has begun. Now let me go and use social media and when the timer stops, I stop. When the timer stops, you stop what you're doing, you get up, you stretch and then you move on with your day. Guess what you've just done? You've just practiced self-control and you've become a little bit more better at keeping boundaries with yourself. Isn't that a better practice than just leaving social media even though social media is good for your business? Okay, so one thing about, okay, you end the scroll. The other reason people leave social media due to boundaries is because they get pressure thinking, I don't want, I can't respond to all these notifications. That's also because you don't know how to use social media. Could please let me teach you how to use social media. You put your phone on do not disturb. My phone is constantly, my phone, I turn on do not disturb on my phone a long time ago and it's never come off. Yes, my phone is permanently on do not disturb. Now my phone is able to say do not disturb except for phone calls from mom or whatever. I'm able to set that. And you got to look it up on your phone. Your phone is able to do that too. You just got to look it up, okay? So put your phone permanently on do not disturb, okay? Except for calls from your spouse or certain important notifications that you want, and secondly, ignore the notifications. You got to learn to stop people pleasing so much on social media, right? Like that's also your opportunity. If you feel pressured by all the notifications it's because you don't realize that it's because of your people pleasing nature and you can learn how to practice not pleasing people so much and just 10 minutes on social media. I'm just gonna do 10 minutes and my focus is on just going through the important notifications and then after 10 minutes, whatever I can do, I stop and I just, I don't care about the rest. Yes, you're allowed to do that. You're allowed to not respond to my comments, my messages. Yes, I give you that permission and everybody gives you that permission too. Stop people pleasing. It's social media is good practice for your boundaries of tech addiction and it's good for your boundaries on people pleasing. Why would you remove that practice from your life, right? It's because you didn't realize that practice was available to you and now you do. And then the third reason why people leave social media is because it's cool to leave social media. It's just, you know, it's hate, Facebook is hated. People like me who are cringeworthy continue to promote social media and use social media. I don't care about being cringeworthy. I don't care about being uncool because I know it's good for business and I know it's good for causes that I champion. Messages that I think are worthwhile. And the main cause I champion is that good people like you have messages and presence that is worth seeing. That's the main cause I champion in social media. I want you to have the visibility that your message and your presence deserves. The people that could really benefit from what you do, they need you here on Facebook, on Instagram, on Twitter, on YouTube, whatever social media that you wanted, that are popular being demonized these days. And I've said so many times, oh, social media is good for business. George, can you show us what do you mean social media is good for business? Let me just give you a quick example, all right? Quick example, and I probably should stop the video once this timer ends. Social media is the easiest way to do market testing. And I thank Brigitte and Liesl and Julie for giving me permission to share these links with you all. So these are, they took my class on market research and I'm just gonna show you real quick this example. How else is it this easy to get feedback? Okay, Brigitte asked researching about what stops you from cooking at home, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then look, she's now able to reach out to all these people to say more. I mean, this all happened within a few days of her posting this. It's so much easier to do research. Liesl asked about, you know, sensitive introverts. And if you feel that, gosh, look at all this response, okay? Julie asked about dealing with grief, especially during holidays. You know, look at the responses she's getting, right? And I mean, and I'm sure lots of people emailed her or message her privately on social media because some people don't wanna talk about that. There is no easier way to get market research from the people that's in your audience than from using Facebook posts like this or Instagram posts, okay? Now, social media, last thing I'll say is this. Social media means news from the people that you care about, people and brands that you care about. Why would you not want to receive the news from the people and brands that you care about? It's because you don't know how to use social, you go on social media and you're still following a bunch of people and brands that you don't care about. So why don't you stop following them? Why don't you go to social and unfollow me if you want? I just want you to use social media correctly. You go to social media, you go to the feed and then if you see something you don't care about from somebody you don't care about, unfollow them. Just unfollow them. They won't know. You don't have to unfriend them. You can if you want. I unfriend people, I offend people all the time and whatever, I'm sorry, but I'm using social media, Facebook only for my clients and for my affiliates and I unfriend just about everybody else and some people have gone offended. All right, I don't care. I do care, but I'm sorry that you got offended. It's not my fault that you got offended because I don't use social media in the way that you want. So just unfollow. People won't know you unfollow them. Got it? So unfollow all the ones you don't care about and then you'll be left with the ones you do care about meaning you actually go to social media. It's a good experience because you actually want to see those things that uplift your life in some way. It allows you to stay in connection with the people and brands you care about. So please, I think this is enough and I think my timer has probably run out by this point. I have three more minutes left, but the bottom line is that I genuinely hope that you will buck the trend of cool people leading social media and be uncool like me and still use social media for. And knowing that the few cool people leading social media is not the majority of society who you could reach, right? There's still lots of cool people who stay. Most cool people are staying. A few of the cool people you hear about, that's the nature of the human mind is we hear about a few negative things and we remember them. Okay, George, I heard everybody is leading social media. No, no, you don't, you didn't hear that. You only heard a few people and your mind played trick on you thinking it's everybody. No, most of the cool people you know are staying on social media. The few cool people you kept in your mind because the negativity, a few negative things keep in the human mind. That's how our brains have evolved. Remember a few negativity for getting the mass positivity, right? So I say the cool people leading social media, I'm sorry for your business and for your visibility and the fact that I'm not gonna remember you as well. I'm sorry, I hope you'll come back. And for the rest of us who are willing to be uncool, okay, continue to use social media to champion your causes and to use it as a mindfulness practice for keeping boundaries to how much you scroll and for keeping boundaries on your people-pleasing activity. I hope this is helpful. I hope I've made a bit of a case for why you might wanna stay and be uncool like me. I find facetious because I actually think that this is the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do. It's the ethical thing to do. Yeah, please debate me. I don't get it. Who's of you saying it's unethical? I don't, genuinely don't get it. Your choice is to leave and not have your voice be heard. I don't get it. Okay, so stay and learn how to use it with boundaries and learn how to use it to be visible to the people who prefer you business. So I hope this helps. I look forward to your comments and your questions and I wish you well. Take care.