Today’s podcasts explores dealing with problems, and proposes a simple (partial) solution to one of the biggest problems we face in our modern world.

tldr; a recent meta study of dozens of scientific studies on the correlation between social media use and depression reveals a strong correlation. Since we’re not about to abandon social media, let’s find ways to use it as a force for good, including posting the “Please Review Me” image as your profile image (or just post it to your account) and invite friends to share some of the reasons you’re appreciated. If you don’t feel like doing that, then you probably should.

Welcome back to the University of Life. Today we’re going to be talking about solving problems and hopefully give you a brand new attitude toward about toward them – more productive, more fun I would say. As well as, I’m going to give you an invitation for something to do to help to help solve one of our biggest national problems that is growing, it seems like exponentially. I’ll start with a problem story which happened yesterday. A woman hiked up into the nearby mountains and then came sledding down, hit a bump, which turned into a jump, and when she landed, she broke her leg. Obviously this is a problem. With some problems, one of the favorite reactions people have is to just ignore them and hope they’ll go away. For some problems, that works alright, but usually that just makes you more stressed out, and if you’d actually address it and deal with it, you’d not only get the relief, but you’d get some sense of accomplishment. And on that note, I want to share a quote for you which I hope will change your perspective on problems and the way you address them. This is from Joshua J Marine, and he says, “Challenges are what make life interesting, and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” So think back on some of your problems and ask yourself whether this is true, and if it’s not, is it just because it never occurred to you to think this way? I remember late one night when I was in college and we were over at a friends for a Christmas party, and me and my friend Dallen were the last to leave, and I was going to give him a ride home. My car wouldn’t start (I later realized it was just because it had a loose battery connection) but had to push start it. It was cold, well below zero, and it just snowed and the roads were really slick, so it was hard to get the car going by pushing it, and then there were just little tiny three-foot stretches where a truck had salted and melted the snow, and we’d have to get the tire right there and hop in and pop the clutch and see if we could make it work. It hurt my lungs to breathe in the cold, and I said, “Oh, man, this sucks!” And then Dallen said something that completely changed my attitude, and it made me regret that I had not thought of it first. He said, “No way, this is fun!” like it was a little adventure. He had that Joshua J Marine mentality of challenges making life interesting, and I instantly realized “Yeah, you’re right,” and I appreciated that. You can often choose your attitude – sometimes easier said than done but it certainly can help. Now let me tell you about this great big National problem I mentioned that we’re going to try and do something about, and add some meaning to our life. Let me tell you something that happened this week that really brought this to the top of mind. A couple things, actually. The first one is that I watched a movie (I’ll put a link to it in the video description), Mrs. Smith goes to Paris, and it was so sweet. It’s about a sweet old lady who is sometimes too kind, and these people generally respond really well to her, and it was nice to watch, and my main reaction to this was “This was obviously not written recently, not in the last couple decades, because the world in general isn’t that sweet anymore. “There are a lot of good people, a lot of really good people, very sweet, but it’s not what you really see out there. We’re so cynical in comparison, and sure enough, this is a remake of something made decades earlier. I really enjoyed it, but it made me aware that I miss that world. Of course the world was never really as good as Mayberry, either, but it was a lot less cynical, and I miss that part. One of the major problems with our cynical world is of course is depression. Last September, a study came out that revealed that almost 10 percent of American adults are depressed. Depression of course is a very serious illness, and one of the things it leads to is at least thoughts of suicide. And there’s another study for 2022 which reveals that over 4.5% of adults have had serious suicidal thoughts. That’s over half a million person increase over the previous year’s data set. So it’s it’s a really serious problem. We’ve made big strides as far as destigmatizing it. For example, we don’t look down on someone if they’re depressed, and most people have become smart enough to not just say, “Get over over it! It’s not a big deal. I’ve had worse,” and other non-helpful answers like that. A lot of that is because so many more people have experienced it themselves. It’s tough, but even though it’s such a big problem and we lose about as many people to suicide every year as we do to breast cancer, for example, but breast cancer gets 100 times the funding annually that depression does. I’m not speaking ill of that. they’ve done a fabulous job of going out and getting people to donate, but let’s do something about depression as well. You don’t even have to donate money for this, this is a much more organic solution. Let me mention one more thing before I tell you this solution that I’m going to invite you, request that you participate in, and this is a study I read this week. It’s actually a meta study. If you’re interested in these kinds of things, you may have read some of the studies that say for example depression in teen girls started skyrocketing skyrocketing after 2012. A lot of people had an intuitive sense that it’s probably because of Instagram, but they did these studies, and a lot of the studies would say, “There’s actually a very small correlation between time spent on Instagram and levels of depression.” Then other studies came out and said, “No, there’s pretty darn significant correlation, that is definitely a problem.” Well this meta study looked at them all, and it made this realization, it said, “Look all these studies that show a low correlation – they’re all checking in one week later.” Like “Hey kids, stop using, or reduce your Instagram time, and next week we’ll see if you’re any happier.” Well, next week they’re not very much happier, but that’s a pretty quick turnaround expectation to have! For one thing, you’re feeling like you’re really out of the loop of all your friends. For two, you still have that addiction, and for three, you probably have not replaced some of your social media time with actual face-to-face interactions with people – which is really healthy for the human brain. So no wonder it showed a low correlation whereas all these other studies which looked at a month later or so, they showed a strong correlation. So this meta study came out and it says this is definitely correlated. I mentioned this on my social media, and I pointed out that it’s not realistic to expect people to ditch social media – we’d never go backwards from something that we like that much. Though it would be wise, if you spend a lot of time there, it definitely would be wise for you to reduce that time and go have some face-to-face interaction, but I pointed out that a much more practical solution is to instead strengthen some of the weaknesses that these studies expose, or that social media use exposes. That’s a lot of what the University of Life is about, like I’m working hard to finish up this book Find Your Depth in a Shallow World, whose aim is to help you understand yourself so much more deeply and broadly, and build a foundation of self-esteem much wider than your most recent selfie, and how many people like it, and say “your so pretty!” so that when tough things happen, you’ve got that foundation to lean on, and it doesn’t rattle you nearly as much, and you can feel more solid. But what I’m going to ask you to do today is participate in this new program – the University of Life “Build People Up” project. I’ll to tell you one way to do that, and in my next podcast, I’ve got another way you can do it, which you should like – these are positive things! Although this one might be a little bit scary for some of you. Let’s talk about why. The way it works is if you’re on UofLIFE.com, or on one of its social media accounts, you’ve got this image in front of you, and it says Please Review Me, and then it has instructions. Instructions for you: download this image then upload it as your profile image (to make it easy to find). That’s the optimal, though you don’t have to do it that way. You can just post it, or you can post it on your friends’ wall and then react. And then instructions for your friends says Please write all the kind things that you often think about me but rarely get a chance to say. So this is a way to take the social media we’re going to use anyway. You might close your account and tell all your friends “I’m off Facebook! I’m off insta!” for a while, but chances are you’re going to be back eventually. We take it and we turn it into something more positive. If you’re not yet convinced, then I want you to reflect for a minute on some of the nicest things people have ever said to you, and think about how much you appreciate hearing those words. Earlier this week, something lead my train of thought to this topic, and I thought of a dozen things that people have said that really built me up, and I really appreciate them. I don’t want to brag about all of them, but I’ll tell you one of them for an example. My friend Lora Jean once said, “You’re not afraid of anything, and if you are you run toward it!” Sadly that was not completely true – I sure wish it was, I can think of several things that would have turned out so much better if it was, but it it also gave me something to work toward. Anyway, I really appreciated that, and I thought of several other complimentary things people said, and years later, decades later, I still remember those sometimes, and I appreciate the way that it builds me up. So what I’m going to ask you to do is to be brave enough to post this image on your social media, and invite people to say some nice things about you, and then hopefully they’ll post it as well and please do the same for them. It is a little bit risky, right? Because what if nobody answers? What if people say negative things? “Three stars!” “Her toes look funny.” We sometimes worry about that kind of stuff, but I’m going to ask you to be vulnerable enough to do that anyway. If you want real connection with people (which is another book I’m working on) you can’t have it – it can’t happen – unless you open up and be vulnerable, and be real, and show the real you, even the risky parts, because if you just stay safe, then you don’t give anyone a chance to prove that they’re really on your side. You just make it too easy for them, and it’s not convincing, and it doesn’t build that – the most beautiful, strong connections available to you. All right, there’s today’s soapbox. I hope you see the crucial nature of this problem, and remember two things – number one: problems need solutions, and number two: as you seek solutions and take action on them, it adds meaning and satisfaction and purpose to your life, and can make you feel better and make everything more rewarding. So do it. Here’s one really good, super easy way, and you’ll probably get a lot of compliments. I feel the same way about it, I’m totally hesitant to do this, but since I’m asking you to, I commit that I will do it anyway, and I think I’ll have a good experience from it. And that’s it. Thanks for listening, as always. I look forward to seeing you, or being heard, on the next upcoming podcast in which I’ve got another strong suggestion. This is something I’ve felt strongly about for a long time, so I’m excited to make this suggestion, this proposal, and get people more people involved with it. It’s really easy, it’s really rewarding, and soon I’ll have that one out, and you can do that one as well. I’ll see you next time, and in the meantime, continue becoming your best self and living your best life, and let’s make this world a better place for everyone.