All right, I want to do a news reaction here. Brief. It's an article that a Canadian listener of the show sent me. And I thought it had something positive in it about our, what we can do and what we are doing about some of the travails of social media and our culture.

So here's the article right here. Uh, it's written by Sierra add growl. It was a politician in Toronto and the, uh, the title of this article is Sierra aggro explains why she's embracing tech, but not Twitter in her run for public. Office. So there's a couple of things I wanted to point out.

And for those who are listening, the YouTube version of this segment actually will show you the article as I go through it. All right. So a couple of things I want to point out here, here's where the first big point is of the article. She says last week, I announced that I'm running for Toronto city council, the Parkdale high park.

So this is someone who is running for city council in a major city. And this was the big part of the announcement. And I'm quoting from the article here, but as a candidate and a counselor, so if elected, I will not be using Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, I deactivated my accounts this morning.

This is something that is very rare to see a political candidate announcing. I will not use social media during my campaign. I will not use social media once I'm elected. All right. So Sarah gives two main reasons why she dislikes these services. Let me just briefly summarize both number one, and I'm quoting here.

It is well-documented that social media has subjected people to intense vitriol and abuse with the highest levels of harassment and threats directed towards women, LGBTQ2 plus those who aren't white and people at all the intersection of these identities. All right. So vitriol and abuse. Number two. And again, I'm quoting is these platforms contribute to much wider harm, including radicalization, polarization, deteriorating mental health, the undermining of democratic beliefs and institutions.

All right. So those are two clear issues we've talked about before. These are harassment machines and they are causing all these negative psychological impacts, even beyond harassment. All right. So what do we have so far? A politician saying, I'm not going to use social media and giving two well-known, but very strong reasons for why not.

All right. Now we get to the part that gave me hope. I think this is very interesting. She says, this does not mean I'm not using technology. She goes on to talk about all the ways she will be using technology to connect with people. So they built out this fancy website.

And I'm quoting here that will make it easy for people to share information with their friends and neighbors on whatever platform they like. And I hope you will share this article too. I'll be engaging directly both online and off through the site, email, text, newsletter, virtual calls, face-to-face interactions, and events where we can actually talk to each other and not just tweet at each other.

This is the thing that I like. Sierra Agrell is making the observation that is true, but that is often missed in media discussions about social media and its ills, that social media does not equal the internet to say. I'm not going to use social media is not the same as saying I am not going to use the modern internet to connect with people, to hear from my constituents, to hear what their issues are, to know what's going on.

She is saying these tools are not the only way to do that. And in fact, there are pretty bad way to do that. I have all of these other existing tools, my website, email, text, newsletter, virtual calls, face-to-face interactions, and events. This I think is one of the most important moves we can make to get around some of the ills of social media, and that is to move away from the platforms, but then not just move away from the platforms, but to declare with confidence and embrace with confidence, digital alternatives, the internet was around before social media, the internet will be around after social media.

There's plenty of innovation out there. There's plenty of novel tools out there where the internet can help you, the democratic process and connection. So I like this. You can walk away from social media without walking away from technology. Sierra concludes by saying, I want to use technology, but in a way that builds connections and allows people to understand what I'm trying to do and why.

All right. So there we go. There is some positive vision of our future with social media. We can embrace technology without having to be clicking on those stupid icons and doing those little 240 character threads and emojis grown grown adults using emojis. Uh, this politician has it right. And I hope other people follow suit.

That was a good article. I should mention, if you want to send me things interesting at Cal Newport.com, that's where I got this particular article. I do like the links that people send me. Uh, if you have thoughts about the show, send those to Jesse at Cal Newport.com. He actually reads them.

Are they right? Yeah. Yeah. Do we get, do we get comments? Yeah, we do. Yeah. Some good ones.