 You're listening to the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Now, in today's episode, we talk about social media and how it may be killing your gains. That's right. Social media, a very powerful tool, might be causing you to not build the muscle you want or get the body you want or burn the body fat that you want. So in this episode, we talk about all the problems that social media might be causing you. And then we teach you how to develop behaviors or steps to create better behaviors and boundaries around social media for a healthier, more vibrant, meaningful life. Now, today's episode is brought to you by our sponsor PRX. They make the best home gym equipment you'll find anywhere. This stuff is commercial grade equipment for your house, but it's designed to maximize space. For example, they have a squat rack that folds into the wall. That's what we work out here with at Mind Pump Media Studio. It's gorgeous stuff, very, very sturdy, great quality. By the way, they have payment plans. You can actually get a home gym set up and then pay monthly like you're going to the gym. But of course, it's your gym. So you can work out naked and listen to whatever music you want with your PRX equipment. Now, because you get listening to Mind Pump, we get you 5% off all their equipment. All right, go check them out. Go to prxperformance.com forward slash Mind Pump. Use that code to Mind Pump to get 5% off. By the way, if you get anything that costs over $500, you get a free Maps Prime program. Speaking of programs, we only have four days left for our January promotion. This is our starter bundle. So this bundle includes multiple programs designed for those of you that are beginners or those of you that have taken a long break and want to get back into fitness. So this bundle includes Map Starter. This is where you start your programming. So start your workout there. That gives you about two to three months. Then you follow Maps and a ball. Then the muscle gains really start to kick in. The metabolism starts to kick in. This is when the fat loss really starts to happen. That program is about three months long. While you're doing this, you do Maps Prime to teach yourself how to prime your bodies before your workouts to minimize injury, maximize workout effectiveness and mobility so you can get better squats and deadlifts and overhead presses. So Prime is included. Then we also included the intuitive nutrition guide to help you with your diet. Now if you got all these programs individually at retail, it'd be over $340. But with the starter bundle promotion, again, that's ending in four days, you get all of it for $80. So $80 bucks gives you lifetime access to all the things that I mentioned. Go check it all out. Go to mapsjanuary.com. That's the word maps, M-A-P-S January.com. I have a topic that I want to bring up. One that we've talked about a lot, but I feel like what it was a couple of years ago when you guys used to tease me about talking about Irresistible all the time. I touted that book for a good solid year and a half. Did we figure out how to pronounce the last name? Alter. Alter. Yeah, I was saying Atler. I know. I was only going to say that. Yeah, it's Adam Alter. So anyways, we went on that kick for a while, then we sought out the opposing view, which was near I.L., which hopefully I'm pronouncing that correct, who he came on the show kind of blew all of our minds. And I felt like we eased up on the, you know, being so scared about tech. I feel like I've kind of come back full circle though with that, even after that conversation. I think initially he did such a good job of defending tech and then the Reminding me of the thank you for smoking. Totally. I was just going to say that, dude. I literally was going to go that direction. It reminds me of that movie. He was so good at arguing the defense of tech and comparing it to newspaper. You know, when newspaper came out, we thought that nobody would ever talk to each other again, then television was going to rot your brain. And I just think that there's, even though he brought up a lot of good points, there, where it is today, I just don't think we've ever, I don't think we've ever been there. I think it's better related to when we bring up the analogy of like highly processed foods to like regular food, right? I think that where we're at, it's more than the average person can control. Yes, if you can put boundaries in place and do these things. But if you don't even think about it and you just mindlessly go about your day and you're not realizing how much it's, I think it's affecting more than people realize. Well, I think what I mainly agreed in why it was such a compelling argument is because he brought it back to personal responsibility. And that's pretty much everything. But what was kind of neglected in that conversation was, you know, the immense draw towards this, you know, this compelling technology that does have addictive properties. If you're not managing your time with it and really, you know, checking what those behaviors look like. Yeah, I think you make a mistake if you paint social media as bad or good. It's an amoral thing. It doesn't, it's not good or bad. It's a tool. It's a very powerful tool. Look, I can make the argument that fire can also be very bad, probably responsible for, you know, countless deaths throughout all of human history, but also important discovery for us and an important tool. And social media is a very, very powerful and effective tool. Now, short of living in a society that's totally controlled, the cat is out of the bag. In other words, it's there. It's there forever. We're not getting rid of social media. The key is going to be in how to maximize the good and minimize the negative. And it does require a level of self-awareness. And this is the problem with new things, right? Like you brought up the analogy of processed foods. You know, that really, that started happening very quickly, especially around the 70s and 80s. It started to really ramp up in the 90s. And it was faster than we had the awareness to deal with. Now, today, they're far less parents, far fewer parents that give their kids a run of them, you know, just run of the mill with processed food. Now, when I was a kid, even in my household, my parents were both immigrants. My mom made homemade dinners every night, but we had access to processed foods whenever we wanted. And they weren't as aware of some of the issues that they, that they, I remember going trick-or-treating, for example, for Halloween. Most of my friends who have kids don't let their kids trick-or-treat, come home, and then just eat as much candy as they want. Now, I did that. Nobody told me have 10 pieces or five pieces and then save the rest. It was like, okay, go to your room. And then, you know, scarcity. It's like, let's get it in while we have it now. Yeah. So I think what, what, what we're dealing with with social media is a very, very, very powerful tool, very alluring as a result of how powerful it is, which means we need to bring awareness around it and develop some practices and healthy behaviors around it so that we can reap the benefits and mitigate or minimize a lot of the negatives. Now, social media, let's, let's talk about some of the positives, right? Obviously, this podcast and our business would not, it would not exist if it wasn't for new media. Social media is kind of under that umbrella. If we started a podcast 25 years ago, where we were going to dispel myths and fitness and talk about how the promises of the fitness industry, many of them are false and how it takes things like hard work and effort, nutrition, all that stuff, would have never gone off the floor. It would have never gone anywhere. Nobody, first of all, would have put us on their channel. Nobody would pay attention because, you know, corporate sponsors would have never put us on because you're not saying what we want you to say and whatever. This allows us to reach lots of people with our message. You know, media allows you to do that. Social media allows you to connect with people very, very easily. I can connect with family overseas that I normally would, you know, almost never talk to. I can see pictures. So we form bonds. I can find forums and groups that I can talk to and learn from. The information, the way it spreads information is like nothing we've ever experienced. So there's a lot of good there, but then there's a lot of negative. And I think we should bring it back to, of course, fitness and how the negatives affect people's health and fitness. Well, I'm glad you said that because I always feel, I always feel guilty for bashing the tool that has created our success, right? I mean, how hypocritical is it? It's something that, but I don't think it's so much. It can come off that way, right? It can come off like we're bashing or saying it's this, this evil bad thing. But like you said, it's not, it's not a bad or good thing. It's simply a tool. And it's one of those things that I think that many people right now, because we're still, we're still kind of in the early stages that just the level of awareness isn't there. I mean, I still catch myself doing this almost every day where the intent when I first go in to, you know, Instagram or Facebook or whatever or my email, the intent is right or pure. But really quickly, I can get distracted. I'm guilty of that daily. And I think if you're somebody who doesn't think that's a bad thing or doesn't, doesn't see how that can lead to other things, then you don't care. You don't really go, oh shit, I got sucked down the rabbit hole and that wasn't good or try and put boundaries up. You just go with the flow. And I think that's kind of where we're at right now is, is there's still a large part of the population that isn't aware of the behaviors that this can cause. And my biggest concern being in the health and fitness space, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is just the sedentary lifestyle that we're, we were already in heading into this, this tech generation and social media generation. And I find that it's only progressing that it's only making us more sedentary and talk about an even greater uphill battle we have for the health epidemic. Yeah. Well, now you're even more entertained sitting there. Well, that's the thing. There's a fantastic job figuring out how to entertain us and how to sort of fit that in between time when you're just kind of staring at the wall normally. When you're standing in line, when you're going to the bathroom, like you're doing mundane tasks and things, you know, that, that's almost, it gets to a point now where I'm like, freak out, where's my phone? Because I want to fill that space instead of just, you know, being okay with being bored for that second. Yeah. You know, it's there, there's no better example. I can think of, of how clear this, how powerful this tool is then with my own kids or just kids in general, just this generation of children, you know, when we were kids, going outside was, it was literally, there was no, there was no competition. Hey, do you want to sit here on the couch or would you like to go outside? Yeah, exactly. There was no, I mean, it was always go outside because sitting here in the house was super boring. There was nothing to do, but if I got up and went outside, there was a whole adventure and so many possibilities. So it's literally the opposite. So I'm going to challenge that a little bit, right? Because I do find that interesting and not completely true because television did exist. You know, we had television. I can't compare the two. Well, that's why I want to go, because I know Nir did, right? That's, he used that example of like television and newspaper and these other, there was always these things that we can. It is not and it's not and there's not an infinite amount of entertainment and distraction. I mean, look, I tell you what, you, you, you talk to the average 10 year old today and when they get in trouble, do their parents send them to their room or their parents say, turn off your electronics, go outside. They complete opposite of what happened to us when we were kids. Right. And look, I, I can't blame them. If I was a kid today, I would be way, I would way more want to sit and be on social media and reading things and watching YouTube and watching videos and playing video games, then going outside and trying to figure out what's going on. So it's, it's definitely made being sedentary far more alluring and entertaining. Whereas before beating sedentary, you know, could be boring for people. You know, I'm just going to sit here. I got nothing to do. I don't know. I might as well get up. Well, and how about when you're watching television, right? So going back to my argument, like you're watching television, you're at the mercy of the network, whatever comes next, right? Like I remember as kids, like you had that two or three hour window of cartoons, then it switches over to boring ass adult program. Yeah. By, by the time. And so you had to know like Friday at this time was the only time you're going to see that show. And I mean, Netflix, another example of like how they've totally like interrupted that entire thing and just allowed you to binge for as long as you possibly want. Dude, I remember as a kid, uh, Saturday morning cartoons, this was when this was really the only time, uh, entertainment was dedicated to children. And I remember I'd watch my, the cartoons and then I would see the train for soul train. Come on. That meant that the cartoons were over because that was the next show. It's over. Yeah. Things had like endings. Yeah. Same thing with video games. Like I was tripping out on this the other day because I was going back and doing some nostalgic Nintendo and playing some Mario and you know, like the physics and everything, it was like very, uh, you know, simple, uh, graphics and whatnot, but it's like, it was really challenging and you had to work really hard to pass levels. And the games now are just catered to hanging out with your friends and just cruising around and creating things. And it's like fully immersive and there's no end to it. Yeah. So what this does is it can make you much more sedentary or at least encourage you to be sedentary. Um, and so this is a problem of course, uh, you know, they compare being sedentary to smoking cigarettes or having diabetes. That's how big of a health risk it is to not move most of the day. Um, here's, here's another thing that I think social media can in a negative way can, uh, can cause, especially in our space. And I see this more now than I ever did. I've been in fitness professionally for over 20 years. I've trained people and ran gyms and the body image issues, uh, that I'm starting to see now are, are becoming much more mainstream than they were when I was younger. Now, when I was younger, you know, before social media, you still had magazines, you still had music videos. So you still had these things that were kind of putting these images out that were showing, you know, girls in particular, but boys as well, that this is what you're supposed to look like. And they were these kind of unhealthy body image images that they would portray, but you were only exposed to them so much, you know, you weren't immersed in them all the time. Well now, because, uh, social media again is so entertaining and so easy to get to that. A lot of these people, a lot of people are on there all the time. And this has, uh, serious ramifications in my opinion, because you're not just looking at a magazine for 30 minutes and seeing bodies that your body might not never look like, but you're seeing bodies like that, like crazy. And they seem more real because I can talk to them. They comment. There's so many of them. It seems in your brain starts to paint this picture that the average person looks like this, uh, which is totally not true. And so you get this unhealthy, you see more body image issues that are becoming a result of this. You start following somebody, you're really impressed. Like this is an ideal physique or this is somebody that I'm like looking up to. And then you get recommended right away to another person, another influencer. And then it just keeps like the, it seems like everybody looks like this and you know, you walk in the real world. Where are they? They're nowhere to be found. Well, and the most dangerous part to me about this is it's disguised in motivation, right? So, you know, kids see this or you're even adults and they, I follow this person for inspiration and they're, they, they're inspired by this body, not knowing anything about this person really, other than what they portray on social media, not knowing this person might have all kinds of mental issues, might have all kinds of eating disorders themselves. Right. And they, or if these photos are shot at one period of time and then dripped all year long and they really don't even keep their body that way, you don't know what leaked out a few years back was all these influencers that were doctoring photos to look a certain way and feel, you know, we got, I mean, there's over what, I think, I can't remember the last time I saw that app that allows you to change your face. Yeah, that had like, super easy because in the past, you know, Photoshop was available to like, it was very expensive and it was available to editors of top magazines. And now I mean, I could, I could get an app right now that'll let me change the way and we've normalized that, right? Like it's when I look at like my niece and nephew and, you know, their relationship with social media. It's like everybody owns that app. And it's like, it's okay, right? It's, it's, well, you know, as long as I don't change this, but I can lighten my skin up a little bit or I can brighten this or ankles here. Yes. So it's, we've normalized doing that. And I just don't think we realize the consequences of, you know, aspiring to be like these bodies or these people when it really is not normal. It just feels like it when your entire feed is filled up. That's right. If you see it all the time, then yes, your brain, whether you realize it or not starts to perceive it as normal. And then you start to compare yourself to this new normal and you can never compete with the normal that's presented on media on social media. So you get this kind of distorted image of what normal is and you start to get this bad body image and it can lead to body obsession now because now that is your value. This is what's good. This is what gets followers. This is what gets attention. I look nothing like this. I hate myself. I hate the way I look. And you see this really negative spiral going downhill. And the fitness space is now just getting inundated with this. I mean, if you look up the hashtags on Instagram, for example, around fitness and health, it's a lot of this kind of stuff. And so if you're, you know, 16 year old kid or, you know, 22 year old girl and you're like, you know, I want to get into fitness. I'm going to start following these pages on Instagram. You know, not realizing you're going down a rabbit hole and it can cause some serious issues. It also, you get a lot of these bad advice from a lot of these people. I mean, it's, it's okay, fitness, the fitness industry has always been filled with bad information. It's just as long as I can remember, you'd read the articles and magazines and stuff and be like, Oh man, once you start to figure things out and learn things, especially when you become educated in health and fitness, you start to realize a lot of it is just to, to market supplements or to push some product. And it's just false and it's fake. Well, boy, the social media allow that to explode. Now you have someone who's got a hundred thousand followers. So he's got that authority or she's got that authority because almost so many followers and this person's giving out advice on nutrition and exercise and this person has no business training or coaching anybody. They might have figured it out for themselves and who knows how they got there. There's a lot of unhealthy ways to get to that point, but they definitely don't have what it takes to advise other people. Well, most of them have just hacked the algorithm. They've figured out whether what, what Instagram or YouTube, how it promotes you or what people are clicking on and looking at, whether that be, and we know that sex sells. So, you know, images of your body half naked or booty pics, like these types of things are attracting people. And then like you saying, Sal, then it's all of a sudden giving these people authority that have no business giving this advice out. Meanwhile, you have the, the educators that are putting out really good information, but it's so dry, right? It's so dry. It's not sexy. And so they are getting no, it's not popping up in anybody's feed. Like you have to actively go out and seek these people. And if you're, and if you don't know where to look, it's really tough to find this really good information. Instead, you're getting inundated with all these influencer type of people that have gotten famous because of the way they look or how they present themselves. I remember too, even seeing like some of these influencers, they got so big because they do a show and they show their body and their transformation through all this. And then they were actually just approached by so many people that wanted to do exactly what they're doing and have them, give them the formula and I'll pay you all this money for this. And this is what the demand was there. And so it's, you know, it's one of those things is a tempting thing, even if you're not educated completely in health and fitness, it's like, well, the opportunity is there. So maybe I'm just going to take advantage of it. Well, I felt, I mean, I got early on when I first turned on Instagram, what, seven years or eight years ago, you know, I was in this predicament. Like I knew that ultimately I wanted to build this e-commerce business that I didn't know exactly what it was looked like. I had no idea about you guys yet that it was going to turn into this, but I just couldn't get any traction or getting one to listen to me if I wasn't showing my body. If I wasn't showing, look at me, look at me, look what I can do with my body. And so, you know, it's a, it's a challenge. It's very challenging if you're a coach or someone who's trying to get attention. It's even more challenging if you're a consumer, how to, you know, decipher what's good information and what's bad information. Now, lucky for us, you know, I was presenting a lot of counter information during that time. We all got together. We eventually did the podcast, the little bit of following I had was able to get us started and get some traction. But, you know, I was in that weird place of, man, how do I do this? How do I get this good information out without having to present it this way? And sometimes you, it's like you can't, you can't get into the algorithm. You can't get seen by anybody because it's so inundated with so many of these influencers that are putting all these pictures out just to get this information. Meanwhile, 90% of the content that they're putting out is terrible information. It is. And here there's a dangerous aspect to it too, which is where you might have a bad idea and in the real world, it would, you'd be very, very hard pressed to find another person with that bad idea or let alone 10. But when you get an internet land, all of a sudden you get a flat earth movement, for example, like all of a sudden all these people found each other. And then you start to get people who believe that the earth is flat. Or if you think that, you know, eating a particular diet, like, hey, I just ate a potato every day for 40 days and I lost 30 pounds. And then you might be able to find some, and you develop this kind of gossip echo chambers of anecdotes that, you know, you go into them and you see 30 people saying the same thing. And you think, well, this must actually work. It's not dangerous. Must be true. Yeah, it must be true. I know they said that this thing is dangerous. I know I've heard this before, but look, I got 30 people right here saying it's totally fine and nobody had any negative side effects. So I think I'm going to listen to them. So it just, it just flourishes online. And so this becomes a big problem, especially in the fitness space. I've seen so much crap come out of the fitness social media space in recent years. And it's because of that. It's because somebody puts out bad information and then one person says, it worked for me. And then another. Yeah, I still can't believe waste trainers made their way back. It's like a clear example of that. It's a phenomenal example. Here's the other thing. You know, this kind of media, remember, this is a marketplace and what they're competing for is your attention. And the way that they get your attention is by making their product more and more engaging. There's another word for that. It's called addictive. Right. So these social media platforms and apps are extremely addictive. Now, does this mean that they're bad? No, just be aware of their addictive properties so that you can maybe set up some barriers to prevent yourself from abusing them or using them for too long. Well, this is the part where I feel like this is where it relates so much to process foods. Right. I mean, we all admit that we utilize processed foods almost on a daily basis in our own lives, even though we talk about the dangers of them all the time. And so I feel like it's the same thing. It's like, it's a kind of a necessary evil, right? You're not going to probably build a business today and not use social media. You're probably going to have to do it, but at the same time being aware of the addictive properties of it and that it's been engineered to get you addicted to it. Well, there's just a few examples of that, right? Like when you know you have a package coming to your house, like you get excited about that, right? Like they figured out how to do that with like your inbox and showing a number that pops up and, you know, somebody wants to chat right now or, you know, it's just very compelling. Like it's something that you feel. And so like that's a really hard thing to just be like, oh, well, I'll just, you know, get to that later. Well, to give you an example, to use the processed food, I'm very aware of how addictive processed food can be. So I don't have it in the house, right? Cause if I have a full-sized bag of chips, for me, potato chips is the worst. If I have it in my house, I know it ends up happening to me. I end up eating it and I eat it more and more and, you know, until I eat the whole damn bag. So I just don't have it in the house because I'm aware of its addictive properties. Something else is starting to pop up. And you said this earlier, Adam, I thought you're totally on point. We're seeing more and more kids have issues with sleep and sleeping disorders more than ever before. You've heard the term sleep like a baby or sleep like a kid. Well, kids normally should be able to sleep very well. Sleep issues didn't usually pop up until people became adults, but now we're starting to see it happen in kids. And they think it's connected to social media, media and electronics because, you know, if you're up at night, you're on your phone, your iPad or whatever, and it does such a good job, not just with the blue light that's shining your face, but it's ability to keep you engaged and stimulated that you end up getting poor sleep. And poor sleep is, you know, it's like poor diet or not being active. It's terrible for your health. You're not going to build muscle or burn body fat or improve your fitness if your sleep is really bad. Yeah, I really wonder how many parents are actually monitoring how much they allow kids to actually take the phone into their bedroom. Because you know, as a young teenage boy or girl, even if my mom or dad said, hey, son, when you go to bed, no more phone. You know, you're going to lay in bed and you're going to, yeah, good luck. It's right. I'm going to lay in bed. I'm going to, I'm going to sit on my phone till probably midnight or one in the morning. So I wonder how many parents right now, do you guys do anything? Do you guys keep it out of the room? Is there rules? Or what's, how does that work? When they go to bed, they put their, they have to put it outside the room. Okay. Yeah. And there's like a dresser that I have them keep it on. Yeah, just keep it upstairs. They have no access. Now, do you guys know if that's common practice with your other friends that have kids, do you guys, have you ever asked that? I, I, I know, um, like Jessica's niece and nephew just have, they just have it in their room. Yeah. So they'll stay outside. That's what I, the few people that I know that have kids at the age that have phones, they kind of have full reign. I mean, I've seen the parents like razz them if we're all sitting in the living room like socializing and they're like, glue their phone like, Hey, you know, tell me, put your phone away or whatever. But I never heard them have like rules or boundaries or say you can't take it in. I do it for myself. I keep my phone charged downstairs when I'm, when I go upstairs and I usually go upstairs into the bedroom these days around eight or eight 30 because we have the babies so we're going up or setting up whatever. I'm not going to sleep at that time, but that's the time we go up in our room. My phone is charged downstairs. It's not with me. Well, that's, we've made a good, we've made the case for why, uh, you know, these things to be, you know, hurting your progress with health and fitness and how it can be addictive. And so now I think we should talk about some of the, maybe the practices that we've all put in place, whether with ourselves or with our families and give people some takeaways to, to solve that. And the, the first one that comes to mind is like what you're alluding to right now is just setting the timeframe and boundaries of like, yes, how long I can be on it or use it. And so, and I know that when I'm, when I'm good about this, I'm, I'm really good about sticking to that when I'm bad and go, I'll get around to it. I, I break all the rules, right? So I end up going, okay, you know, for me, we, we kind of finish podcasting, doing our thing here about three o'clock or so we're done. I say, okay, from three to five, that is my time to answer my, my emails, respond to my DMs, do any sort of social posts or anything that I need to for the business. And then by five, I'm done. I'm hard. It's a hard stop and I need to be home. Now, sometimes I'm earlier, if I can, if I get it done in an hour's time, that's great. But I allot that like two hour window to get that done. And then I shut it down after that. Now, is truth be told, is there times where I pick it back up at seven or eight or six o'clock? Absolutely. And those are the times I get sucked in. I've already broke that first rule of allowing myself to have the bag of chips in the house. And I've already had 12, why not 20? Why not have to be, oh, fuck it. I'm just going to finish the bag. That's kind of how it feels like. Yeah. No, I think setting time limits is a very smart way to prevent yourself from abusing social media. And there's a couple of ways to do it. You could do the, I'm only going to be on it for this much time during the day. Or I think what you said, Adam, is a better approach. That's what I do is where I say, at this time, I don't use it anymore at all. And I'm off of it. Or I only check it at this time and I'm off. And I think that's a smart way to do it because, look, it's like the old, believe it or not, and I'm not advocating for this, but believe it or not, one of the more successful diets out there was when people would say, I'm not going to eat past 6pm. And people thought, Oh, it's the time. It's the magic of the, you know, I'm not eating late. And that's why no, the reality is when people stop eating at 6pm, they just stopped eating garbage because a lot of the garbage that they was sneaks in, it was at the end of the, at the end of the day when they're watching TV or before bed. So setting time limits is a very black and white, simple way to do it. All you have to do is stick to that, right? You just have to stick to that one rule to make the difference with that. You know that the iPhone now has this option. I don't know about the other phones, but I know iPhone has the ability to, you can set limits on all these things. You can lock you out. Yeah. You can set a thing on, on, on your iPhone and, and you say, okay, you know, 90 minutes a day is all I get. And it'll lock you out of, of that app once you hit that. So that's another way to do it. Now per, for me, I've tried that, by the way, I've tried the locking out thing and I just, it doesn't work as well for me. Yeah. Cause now you're like, I want to get in there. Exactly. Then you just put the passcode in. And it's just like, all I find myself doing is putting the passcode in all time and unlocking it, where I do better of just, just like with my workouts. I know that my workout time is set for this time. I'm most likely to get the workout time if I allot that time for it. The same thing goes for social media. If I know that I'm trying to stay off of it outside of this window, that's my time in that window. That window goes, I'm done. I do much better with that. And it's not going to magically just work out right away, like putting these, like boundaries in place and these parameters. Like you got to, you can't punish yourself either. I know for me, for instance, like just even like having my phone in the car with me as I'm driving, cause I have a longer commute, you know, I have a tendency to then want to look and check and see like, you know, who's messaging me, what that noise was. You know, it took a long time for me to actually be able to put my phone and then, you know, hands off and like put restrictions on it. So I wasn't getting myself in trouble. I mean, I got a ticket and I'm like, I can't believe I've gotten to the level where a cop saw me on my phone and it's just like, it just happened. Well, you just alluded to the second one that I think is definitely helped me out. And honestly, I kind of fell into it by chance because of the growth of Mind Pump. You know, before we were even talking about this conversation, the early years of starting the business, you know, when we started to kind of really grow the audience, it got so ridiculous that my phone battery would die from all the notifications all day from all the different platforms coming in. And so I shut it off for those reasons. I didn't shut it off because I think I needed to be less addicted to it. But what I saw as a result of that was, oh, wow, I'm less likely to be checking the inbox of Facebook, checking the LinkedIn ad, checking in this, because it got so overwhelming, I just shut all notifications off. So I don't get any of those alerts. I think that's the key because what you just alluded to, Justin, like, man, you hear that ding, you know, and it's like, Oh, was that the message? Was it that message I'm waiting for? You need to turn off. I don't think there's very, very few cases where it's smart to have notifications. I mean, imagine this, you're, you're trying to reduce your sugar intake. You've got an issue with candy, but every 30, 40 minutes, you're friend, yeah, your friend knocks on the door and says, Hey, you want a candy bar? Yeah, it's like a house with fresh baked cookies just comes right past your nose. Like how successful, but it's right in front of your face. You sure you don't want this? Okay, I'll walk. Your favorite candy is half off today. I'll be back in 30 minutes. Okay. I'll see you in about 30 minutes. So super, super challenging, super difficult. So if you're trying to set good boundaries around social media, turn off your notifications. It makes no sense to hear your phone go off. It just makes you want to check to see what's on that phone. It makes you want to check to see who said what to you. And again, it's not that important. You can keep the stuff that's important on like your phone. You're, you know, if someone calls you or texts you, maybe if that's important, but everything else, you don't need to check your Instagram likes, you know, every, as soon as it comes in, that just gets you to engage and that's by the way why they did it. They put those in there because they know it'll make you visit the app more often. And then when you go and check the like, what do you do? You check the like, and then you go and you go to the page. Well, it's even a step further. I mean, the algorithm like with Instagram is designed around that same thing with YouTube, right? So that's why so many YouTube people and Instagram people talk about turning your notifications on and then they do giveaways in the first like 30 minutes of a post. So which sucks people writing because I'm like, Oh man, this is my favorite influencer. He tells me I turn on the notification because he's going to give away some free gear within that first 30 minutes. So I want to be one of those first people to do that. And they do that. The, and the reason why the influencers do that because it promotes their, their post and it's more likely to be found on the explorer page. So it's in their best interest to encourage you to turn the notifications on. You're tempted to do it because you might have a chance to win something for free. And so it's this monster of like, Oh man, I should turn this off because I shouldn't be aware, but oh, then I'm going to miss out on this. It's pretty funny. Now here's another one that you can do. And this one I, you know, I experiment with and I need to be more consistent with this because when I do it, it's very effective and that's to keep my phone in a designated space. So if I'm at home, I keep it on the counter in the kitchen. So what, what does that do? Well, that means that I have to get up, walk over to it and actually check it. I have to get up and move to if I have, if they want to check it. And what that does, it creates a barrier. It gives me enough time and space to prevent myself from, you know, from just reacting from being impulsive, right? So same strategy when I give people with nutrition, I say, look, if you want a cookie, then you have to drive to the grocery store to buy one cookie. Don't have it in your house. And usually what happens, sometimes I'll get up to check my phone, but sometimes I don't feel like getting up or, ah, you know what? I should actually be on my phone less because now I have that break, right? I have that barrier, which allows me to become, become more aware of my usage. Of all the things, this one helps me the most. So when I do it, right? So there's been times when I don't, but like a perfect coming home from work day looks like for me. Like I've done my, my two-hour limit, right? Finished off work with getting everything I need to get done from that. I walk in the door. The first thing I do is I wash my hands down the downstairs bathroom. I walk upstairs where my son always is at, walk over to him, pick him up, give him a big old hug and kiss and say hi to him in Katrina. Then I go, one more flight of stairs, go straight to my bedroom, plug my phone into where my nightstand is at and then walk away from it and go back downstairs where we're at all the rest of the night. When I do that, I'm rock solid. Like it's- It's out of your face. It's gone. I've done what I needed to work, right? Because I've accomplished what I, I need it for because it's a necessary evil for this business. Like it is probably for a lot of people. So I've accomplished what I need to for business-wise. Now the only thing is just pure temptation of me wanting to scroll or respond to somebody or follow up on something. And so if I can get it out of sight, take it upstairs. I can't hear any notifications. I don't see anything. I don't, it's, I don't see it. It's not, and like you said, Sal, it's like, it's so far away that even if I go like, oh, you know what? I wonder if so-and-so got back to me on my email from that email sent earlier this morning. It's like, it's all the way upstairs. Fuck it. I'll just- Go, go, gadget on. I'll check it tomorrow. Unless it's really important, in which case you just walk upstairs. Right, 100%. Yeah, absolutely. Now the next one, this one I do with my kids, which are scheduled breaks. And I'll let them know ahead of time, hey, you guys, 15 more minutes and then we're going to be off electronics for the next two hours. I think this is important to have scheduled breaks to let yourself know if you're really deep in the social media addiction thing or really, really, you know, if you don't have any very good boundaries with social media, rather than, you know, maybe doing all the other stuff, maybe just scheduled breaks. This might be a good place to start. Say, okay, rather than saying I'm putting my phone away and not going on it or doing all this other stuff, I know from 7 to 9 p.m. is a break. So any other time I can use the phone, but there's two hours that I definitely won't be on social media. This might be a good place to start, I think, for my people. I think that this is a really good place to start. And I wouldn't have thought it would be that great of a place until last-I was-I was born in my last year. It was a couple years ago. Back when Enzo used to work for us. So we had a high school intern that was working for us for a little over a year. Shout out to Enzo. I know he listens to the show. Love that kid. And he was-I loved it too, because he was the young generation, right, that was able to keep us in touch with what was going on at his age level and really, really smart kid. And we talked about this way back when. And I remember him telling me that like he had never even thought to try and create these boundaries or take breaks from it. And he said that he had severe anxiety after 10 minutes of not having his phone connected to him. Which is very common amongst a lot of these kids growing up not knowing any different. And I think that there is a little bit of a difference there in terms of generations with, you know, not having that growing up with that and then seeing it, you know, how things, how we've interacted before this versus not even knowing what that looks like. It is very scary for them to just put it away. Well, that's what. So this is what really originally got me so scared about it was because I did grow up without it. I mean, it wasn't until, I mean, my mid 20s before like my space. And then it wasn't until like almost 30 did I even turn on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, any of those things. So I spent most of my life without it and realized how hard it was for me to break some of these habits and to say no to it. So imagine being somebody. That's all you know. That's all you know. You were the minute. All your friends are there. Yeah. The minute you were interested in even having a phone, you may have gotten one at God knows what age. And then that's just been a part of your life. It's become like a limb on your body. So yeah, of course, no wonder it's straight. But I mean, it to me, I was like, that was what scared me was I was realized, oh, wow, this is such a pool for myself. And it's not like it's something that I ever had it had in my life before. Wow. If it's that hard for me, I can't imagine somebody who's grown up with this being just normal for them to do that, how difficult it must be. Yeah. And the next one I think is very important. And I think this one is allows you to kind of choose how you're influenced to choose the kind of content that you see. And that is to only follow people or pages who provide you with true value. And you have to ask yourself that question. Is this really providing me good, healthy value? And if the answer is yes, go ahead and follow it. If the answer is no, and I hate to say this, but most of the time it's no, you just don't follow. You know who's really good at this is my wife. She's exceptional at this. She'll follow a handful of pages, and it's only the ones that she finds the most value. Everything else, she just unfollows it. She's like, if I really want to see it, I'll look it up later on. Otherwise, it doesn't belong in my news feed. It doesn't belong in my face all the time because I notice it doesn't really bring me real good, healthy value. Yeah. I think it's a healthy practice to just come back and assess like what you've been taking in, what your input is, and go through all that. And really like, you know, you take the time to evaluate each one of them, like what that actually is adding to your life. It's not adding anything in terms of, you know, something of value. Then just get rid of it. It's cleaning house. It's like spring cleaning. But I think it's a practice that people have to consider doing constantly because it changes. When's the last time you guys have done that? Have you guys gone through and just cleaned it out? No, I haven't. I haven't. And I'm due for that. It feels really good. I'm well overdue for that. I think I'm following like 2,000 people, right? There's not even 2,000 people I talk to on a regular basis. So what the fuck am I doing following all right? So Just follow me and Justin. That's it. That's totally cool. I don't even know if I follow you guys. I'm tired of hearing your shit anyway. So yeah, I need to do this. Like this is something that, you know, take our own advice and go through and actually clean up all that. So I haven't had a chance to go through that doing a long time. I'm pretty good about following the other stuff too, of not getting sucked in as much. And so I know that that would just be one more step that I think that would help that from happening that way, even if I am caught up with going through my feed and reading stuff, the content that I'm reading. And I think that's kind of partnered with this, right? Pay attention to even the way algorithms are designed, like what you like and comment and you engage with, you get more of. So be cognizant of that. If you are trying to stay with positive information, things that are growth minded, things that help you out, well, do your best to only like that stuff and be careful of all the other things that you're liking or commenting on because these machines don't know who you are or what's your best interest. They just know what your behaviors are. And so a lot of times, the stuff that you're getting in your feed is just a reflection of what you're constantly I did that way better on Facebook than Instagram. On Facebook, a long time ago, I went through and just was just very harshly cut all these people that I really didn't need to be friends with on Facebook. It wasn't important. And what I did is I belong to a lot of groups on top for topics that I'm interested in. There's groups on science in the brain, neurobiology, some economic forums that I belong to. And so then that becomes my newsfeed. Instagram, I'm not nearly, I haven't gone through and cleaned it out in a while. And I think it's time to do that because, again, the people that you follow, the people you give your attention to, they're the ones that start to influence you. And again, all these things that we're talking about are really just modifications to help your behavior, to encourage you to gain more of the positives from social media and less of the negatives. Because it is a powerful, effective tool, and it can provide you a lot of value. You just have to use it the right way. You know, this also reminds me, I feel like I should address this because I get asked this still a lot for people that just come into Mind Pump. This is kind of the where the creation or the beginning for squat and scroll was for me. It was like, okay, if I'm going to be on social media and scrolling through my feed, can I get down and work on my mobility at the same time? So improve my squat depth, my ankle mobility, my hip mobility. And so that's kind of something that I also did. And I see other people doing things similar like that, where it's like, okay, if I'm going to sit on my phone and look at these things, can I do it and be productive with something that's actually positive in my life at the same time? And so that is kind of where the origin of it, how it started was with me going, okay, if I'm going to be scrolling on my feed, I should be at least practicing it in my deep squat that I'm trying to get better at. Look, Mind Pump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come find us on YouTube, Mind Pump podcast. Also, look, we have a lot of free guides that you can learn a lot of things about. You can learn how to have a better squat. You can learn routines to develop your arms or your back or your shoulders. Even guides for personal trainers to help you become more successful. You can find them all, and they're totally free. They cost nothing at MindPumpFree.com. Hey, that's only for the private forum.