Hi! Welcome back, everyone. I’m your host, Sarah Southwell, founder of GroWise Be Well, a holistic and inspirational lifestyle company for families of all shapes and sizes. GroWise Be Well, empowering you.

Season 2, Episode 9, “Claim Your Freedom From Social Media”

Podcast Transcript

[0:00:25.0] SS: Hi, everyone. It’s Sarah from GroWise Be Well. I hope everyone is having a fantastic day. Thank you for tuning in again. If you have missed any of the previous podcasts, please go to our website at gwbw.com and check them out, because I think you’ll really enjoy them. You may not know it, but we just launched our website about a week and a half ago. It has been fantastic. The response has been amazing. We are so thrilled. Thank you everyone who has signed up for an account and started filling their toolboxes, and thank you for everyone who signed up for the newsletter and a big thank you out to anyone who replied to any of the emails we sent out about the launch.

Today I really want to go back over again, I know I’ve mentioned it previously, but I think it’s really important to just keep saying it over and over again, why GroWise Be Well does not use social media. We don’t use any form of social media. I take that back, okay. I’m a bit of a liar on that. I have set up LinkedIn accounts for the business and for myself personally, trying to connect with masters of the modalities and people who can help get the word about GroWise Be Well out to other people. I’ve wanted to find some way to have a ripple effect with communication.

We don’t buy ads. We don’t advertise in any way on social media. We do have a Facebook page but we say very clearly on there that we don’t do social media, so we may make a post every once in a while. I mean, once every year to announce something really major, like the launch of the website. We ask them to please email us or go to the website and contact us through there now. Now, we can talk to the world directly.

We don’t use social media. It has been the never-ending topic here at GroWise Be Well. When it comes to launching a business, how do you launch a business today and not use social media? Well, I got to tell you. I still haven’t completely figured it out. I don’t really know how you do it. We are going to figure it out and we’re going to be very successful at not using social media, because that’s my intention. I will make that manifest and it will be wonderful for everyone. But it is this misnomer that I cannot wait to prove wrong that you can’t run a business, and you can’t launch a business, and you can’t have a life without using social media.

I have seen what social media can do to people. I have seen the addiction firsthand. I’ve had friends who have that device glued to their hand as if they were born with it as part of their appendage, become enraged over a complete stranger’s comments and become obsessed with having to reply to every single person that says, “Congratulations,”or “Thumbs-up” or “Little heart love it” symbol. Social media is a disease. It is killing us. People can argue until they are blue and flat passed out on the floor with me about the benefits of social media, and I will stand there firmly and tell them I completely disagree that there is any benefit to social media.

What is social media for? Social media, supposedly, is this way to connect with people, but aren’t all of us so busy that we have a hard time connecting with people that are right across the driveway, or right across the street, or right across the hall? Shouldn’t those be the people that we take time out of our day to spend time with them, to connect with them? They are our immediate influencers. They are the ones that we see day in, day out. We’re not taking the time to be truly human anymore. I think we sometimes fantasize about the idea of being more robotic and getting it all done, “I can make dinner and socialize on social media and feel good about connecting with people while I’m doing something else.” I mean, “Let’s multitask because we’ve got a microchip in our brain that helps us become extremely robotic and get it all done.” Well, we don’t and God, I hope we never will.

I mean, I’ve heard good things about this Elon Musk chip that he’s proposing to put in the brain to help people who have debilitating paralysis be able to move those limbs again. Because what it is, is it’s a severing of communication between that limb and the brain. It’s overwriting that gap. Okay, I’ve heard great things about that, but we don’t need to be more connected to our devices. People are dying from depression, from anxiety, from panic disorder. People are looking at other people’s lives and thinking that somehow they’ve made all the wrong choices because somebody else’s life looks so good, and theirs is messy, and disheveled, and sloppy and sometimes just not so awesome.

But every time you open up a social media app, you see somebody has a life that is like just peaches and cream. I mean, everything goes their way because every post is like, “Oh my gosh! It’s right out of a magazine.” That causes depression. That causes anxiety. We have these social media apps where teams are sending selfies of themselves, putting them out there, and they want to see if they can get like a thousand likes on their latest photo of themselves. If they don’t, they cut themselves, or they somehow flog themselves psychologically for sure, sometimes physically, for not being enough. So GroWise Be Well does not do social media.

I ask all of you to please consider not doing social media. There is nothing wrong with the way we were doing things. Why can’t you just send the pictures from your vacation to someone in an email? Why do you have to post them for everyone to see? People from high school, people from that book club you were in 10 years ago. I mean, are you doing it because you want to show off? Is it an ego thing? Do you really think you’re going to have valuable friends from a device? Friends and loved ones are people that are around you and in your life. They know that your life can be messy and they love you. They know that their life is messy and you love them, because they see it firsthand and you see it firsthand and they’re there for you when you’re down.

How many of these people that you are connected with on social media would literally show up at your door and be there for you if you really needed something? I think they honestly would assume that someone else has got that. Someone else is taking care of you. Because I mean, you’re just social media friends. I mean, you haven’t actually seen each other in like 10 years. You can’t possibly be expected to show up and actually help them out with something. Can you?

I’m going to beg almost for you all to please reevaluate your relationship with social media. I am going to run this business without social media. I am going to run this without catering to the logarithms that are dividing our country in so many ways, our world. I’m going to do it without the likes. I’m going to do it without the thumbs up. I’m going to do it without social media. I don’t use social media. I never have. Thankfully. I don’t know why, whether I was — I don’t know, not interested enough, maybe I’m more of an introvert than I think, but I honestly never needed that outside approval.

I don’t need that thumbs up. I don’t need that like. I don’t need you to tell me that, “Oh, wow! That looks great.” I already know it looks great. I mean, I don’t mean to be like — I’m not fooling myself. Well, okay, I’m kind of fooling myself, and I hope you are too. Because you don’t need the likes, you don’t need the thumbs up, you don’t need that confirmation from anybody else that your life is amazing and that you have a job to do here on this planet at this time or else you wouldn’t be here. Put the device down, delete your social media apps, and I swear to you, your life will become so much better.

As I said, I don’t use social media so I have had this outside perspective of other people using this disease. They get taken down by it all the time. They get sick with it and they don’t recognize that it’s the device and the social media that’s causing sickness. I do my best not to preach. I’m seeming probably kind of preachy here today, but it’s because I honestly deeply love and care for all of you. We are all connected. We are all energetically connected. The more of you that are happy, and full of love and confidence, the higher the frequency of humanity goes and we feel great, and things go well and we’re joyful. Is it perfect? No.

Do I not do social media because I don’t have any friends? No. I can tell you right now though that my friends know me and they know what I did yesterday, and I didn’t post it. I recommend you try actually connecting with the people around you that you want to share something with. And pick up the phone and call somebody if you haven’t talked to them in 10 years. Don’t go back and forth on social media, it’s pointless, and it’s causing a tremendous amount of mental illness in our world.

I just want to remind you all why GroWise Be Well does not do social media and why I hope you don’t do social media. If you can, I mean, at least cut it back to one. But really, nobody’s life is perfect out there, by the way. If you’re going to stay on it and you’re going to keep doing it, at least know that everybody’s life is sloppy, and messy, and unpredictable, and unhappy sometimes and ugly sometimes. But then the beauty about humans is that we’ve got this capacity to rebound and be full of love and hope.

Please take everything you see on social media with a grain of salt. Please wait 10 minutes before you reply to anything. Go outside, take a walk, take some deep breaths. Try not to get sucked into the drama. Right? Don’t you have enough drama in your life? I mean, if you don’t, maybe go out there and become a foster parent, or donate your time at a homeless shelter, or I don’t know, go help somebody out. Because if you don’t have enough to do and that’s why you do social media, well, I can tell you right now, there’s plenty for you to be doing to help other people out. Try and find something to do to fill your time and put that device down.

All right. If you guys want to know the total story about social media and why I’m not the only one that doesn’t like it, actually I really dislike it, please check out a documentary called thesocialdilemma.com. We’ve got mention of it on our website as well, gwbw.com. We also posted our stance on social media on our website, so in case you didn’t get enough from this preachy podcast, please go and check us out. But just keep in mind that to be full of love and joy and personal empowerment means putting down the device and reconnecting with who you are and finding joy in everyday things that go on. All right. Take care everybody. Thank you for tuning in.

Thank you again for tuning in. If you’ve missed any of the previous podcasts or just want to listen to some of them over and over again, which I hope you do, please go to our website. They’re all there for you and so easy to listen to from that platform, www.gwbw.com. GroWise Be Well, empowering you to live your best life.