Summary:

In this episode of College Conversations, host Jeff Sherrod is joined by Gregg Garner and Benjamin Reese. They engage about the impact of media usage for young people, and what power it has to inform one’s values. Media is not bad, but does have an impact on your spirituality. Gregg, Ben and Jeff discuss the evolution of media and the need for colleges to incorporate better media literacy into their curriculum.

[00:00:05.71] - Jeff Sherrod

Hey, everybody, and welcome back to College Conversations. I'm your host, Jeff Sherrod. I'm excited to welcome you guys to season three of College Conversations. Starting something new this season, talking about some of the topics that are maybe not just related to what's happening on college campuses, but what are really society at large is facing and how that might relate to students on college campuses. In this episode, we're talking about the use really the balancing of media usage and the effects of media on young people, and then also asking the question, what does it look like for Christians to engage media in a way that is healthy? In this episode, I'm joined by the president of the Institute for GOD Mr. Gregg Garner and Benjamin Reece. We spend a lot of time talking about one,  what are we talking about when we're talking about media? Because there's some conversation about here. And what we're trying to get after is specifically the kind of short form social media type activity that you would find on Instagram or TikTok, sometimes even YouTube, that pulls people into a value system that might be contrary to the kind of biblical value system that we have. And if we're not careful, we can get inundated and overcome by those kind of value systems. So we learned to say, like, it has to be more than just don't engage in social media or the kind of media that comes through those platforms, but instead, how do we discern them? Ben gives us some really helpful lens for how to think through every piece of media that comes out of, whether it's factual, what kind of value system that's there, what you're being sold, and these are helpful. In the end, what we're trying to get people to do is to recognize that you can't change your taste. And we'll talk about that in the episode. You can't change your taste by continuing to do the same thing. So if you're a young person here and you follow the national averages and you're listening to or watching eight hours of screen time a day, six hours of social media uses a day. If you're like the more than 40% of young people that are getting your news from TikTok, then I really think an episode like this is for you. I think you'll really appreciate some of the insights and the biblical takes that we're trying to give people to have a different mindset when it comes to engaging media. At the same time, there's also periods where you might just have to look at your media consumption and say, I'm taking a Break. This is not for me. I need to figure out a digital detox and try to consider what that's going to look like for this. I'm excited you guys are here. I very much appreciate this episode. I do think it's very timely. I hope you guys have a great time listening. Hey everyone, and welcome back to college conversation. Today I want to talk about media literacy. There has been a growing discussion about limiting kids access to media, particularly social media. Books like Jonathan Anxious Generation recently came out this year. And you know, he cites a growing body of evidence that says early exposure, you know, especially for exposure to younger people and social media, it's not that it's neutral. It has a lot of downsides and dangers. So while we hear a lot about like maybe limiting kids access to these kind of platforms, I think that there's also a surprisingly little amount of conversation about equipping them to navigate media wisely when they do engage. It seems like maybe the resolve is to say like, no, don't get involved in media, especially for young people. And I think that there's probably, we might even want to talk about that, like when should you do some fast and when should you get away from it? But at the same time, maybe just going beyond just boundaries. What does it mean for us to teach young people media literacy today? How can we help them to recognize not just factual errors in media, but also to discern the values and the messages that are embedded in the media that they consume? So maybe that's like the overarching kind of point that we're dealing with today. I know that this has been. Media consumption has been a major, I think, point in national discourse recently just because there's been some alarming studies that have come out about media consumption for young people. I think Ben even found some statistics related to just how much media gets consumed. What are we looking at, like, these.

[00:04:43.24] - Benjamin Reece

Days screen time is like eight hours for most, most people, college ages, screen time is around eight hours a day.

[00:04:50.00] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah. So this is like, you know, and I think. And it's fair, right? You're like saying like screen time is equivalent of a full time job for that a lot of people have. And so, yeah, I think that sometimes what ends up happening is like, all right, we just have to get media and screens out of. And maybe I'm conflating some terms here so we could probably talk through some of these.

[00:05:07.58] - Gregg Garner

Yeah, I definitely need help with terms like you started out with saying the negative impact on kids. So I want to know what age range you're talking about Ben gave the eight hour statistic related to college students. You're saying media, is it social media, is it all media? So that'd be helpful, right?

[00:05:24.08] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah. So I think that when, I guess I'm mostly talking about young people. Jonathan Haidt in Anxious Generation, he talks about there is like, there is a prime influence age between like 9 and 14 that people end up really shaping the values that they end up having for really the rest of their life. That's where they develop like their most base culture during this time. But you know, even, you know, he also cites studies too where it's like your brain's not developed until 25 and this is really up until that timeframe. This is all kind of a critical age. So maybe I don't have like the exact ages, but maybe we could just say young people.

[00:05:59.86] - Gregg Garner

Yeah, young people work.

[00:06:01.06] - Jeff Sherrod

And then I think that, you know, social media I think is interesting because when we traditionally think about social media, maybe I can just say the things that I think about are like, all right, talking about someone's learning how to like put on makeup and we're watching someone learn how to do that. But increasingly we're just kind of saying social media is media. You know, like, where's we? I think that that's we. Me, I'm saying this, saying this. I'm putting my fist out. No, I'm just kidding. Where, you know, maybe because it used to be. Maybe I'm saying used to be. I'm making some bold claims, but go with me on this.

[00:06:33.13] - Gregg Garner

Social media, if you're going to talk about used to be its early iterations, were talking about like Facebook and Twitter and none of that was put on your makeup. That was more like, hey, I went to this restaurant, here's a picture. Family reunion, here's some pictures.

[00:06:51.12] - Benjamin Reece

Right?

[00:06:51.54] - Gregg Garner

So it was like occasional updates. And then Twitter maybe in its early stages was just, I don't know, a lot of people turned into Confucius and were offering proverbial 140 character communications. But obviously all of that has evolved and changed. So I do think it would be important to note what kind of media specifically is being talked about. So for example, are we talking about a curated Smithsonian app that now my kid's going to jump on and learn about ancient Egypt for two hours? Is that what we're talking about on social media or are we talking about a skin influencer who is going to get my junior high kid to buy a retinol for their elasticity and skin? I don't know. If you guys know this, but I read recently that skinfluencers, as they're called.

[00:07:48.32] - Jeff Sherrod

I've never heard this term before.

[00:07:49.67] - Gregg Garner

That's, that's what they're called. Their, their target demographic is kids ages, I think, 10 to 14 years old.

[00:07:56.94] - Benjamin Reece

Yeah.

[00:07:57.35] - Jeff Sherrod

Wow.

[00:07:57.85] - Gregg Garner

And they're buying more products than I think anybody else, right?

[00:08:02.91] - Benjamin Reece

Yeah. I think when we're talking about media literacy, like, I think there's a few skills that are in play. One is the kind of the fact checking skill. Are people able to find out fake news with AI generated content? Do they have a filter now to discern whether it's AI generated or not? And then the second one would be the sort of the intentional skill of figuring out why somebody is doing what they're doing. So this isn't just a nice friendly makeup tutorial. This is an advertisement and the ability to conceptualize and have some precaution about, okay, what are they trying to sell me, why are they telling me this? That kind of thing. And then the other one is like the more value based checking, like what values are being insinuated in this communication and are they values that I want to hold and what is sort of the beliefs and attitudes that are being communicated to me? So those are kind of the three skills I think that are related to.

[00:08:58.99] - Gregg Garner

Okay, review them one more time with a quick snappy phrase for each one.

[00:09:03.09] - Benjamin Reece

Fact checking, fact check, Advertisement detection. Okay, everybody's selling something, you know, and then the sort of the value communication. So the values. So we talk a lot about limiting media usage, but how do we equip young people, college age students with the skills to engage with it in a way that's healthy or good?

[00:09:31.28] - Gregg Garner

Yeah, because there are upsides to the information that's available on media. For example, I've noticed that over the last decade, the musical ability of people in the developing world, Africa, Latin America, India, is incredibly enhanced as a result of YouTube. All these folks that are in the village, through their mobile network connection are now able to access tutorials on how to play certain instruments and they're getting accessibility to a variety of professional musicians. And the caliber of musical competency has increased leaps and bounds in the last 10 years. And I see it, and I attribute it to nothing other than these folks getting access to media music via the things like YouTube or Spotify. And it's made a drastic difference. I think at large, in the world at large, we're going to see more contributions to professional music from people all over the world as a result of that kind of Media, not just in terms of like individual artists, but I think even world renowned artists are going to start picking up talent from maybe we would consider them obscure places. Just because now to put to bring someone on the road with you from the United States is going to cost you 80 to 100k where you grab somebody who's incredibly amazing from India and they're going to be pumped to make that happen at maybe a quarter of the price or wherever the country is. So it's going to change the dynamic economy. But again, it's related to what kind of media. And in this case, I would put this under the banner of the educational type of media. But that's not what we're talking about here. Right, we're not.

[00:11:31.38] - Jeff Sherrod

And I think that's where we, we want to say, I think, you know, we're all educators, we want to say it's never really been a great form of education to say don't touch and then don't, you know, don't engage something and then by not engaging it, you're going to master it. It's almost always been like, let's figure out what are best case scenarios.

[00:11:49.35] - Gregg Garner

Yeah.

[00:11:49.72] - Jeff Sherrod

And then also figure out how you can engage in a safe way. Yeah. Because, you know, I think there is a ton of benefits. Like, you know, I'm a homeowner, I figure out how to fix my dryer last week.

[00:11:59.49] - Gregg Garner

Yeah.

[00:11:59.87] - Jeff Sherrod

By watching a YouTube video.

[00:12:01.64] - Gregg Garner

I mean, you could put in the model part.

[00:12:03.34] - Jeff Sherrod

That's what you do. It's like filter in your life. I was like, I would have never been able to.

[00:12:06.88] - Gregg Garner

I would have found Amazon link.

[00:12:08.37] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah, the whole thing.

[00:12:09.22] - Gregg Garner

The whole thing, yeah. So there's some helpful aspects, but that's again, not what we're talking about. No, no, we're talking about a kid logging on to YouTube and watching somebody play Fortnite for an hour.

[00:12:21.29] - Jeff Sherrod

Right, right. Yeah, yeah, I think we're talking about that. I think the term that I heard a speaker use recently, he was talking about an Instagram education where people are like, hey, I learned recently, like where'd you learn that? He's like, you know, he's like, everyone that says I learned something recently, they all learned it on Instagram. And you know, he was, he was just joking about the fact.

[00:12:38.54] - Gregg Garner

University.

[00:12:39.14] - Jeff Sherrod

Ig University. Yeah. It's like everybody is so confident about whatever comes across as like, did, you know? And then we just have like this thing that comes across where. So yeah, maybe, maybe. One question I have related to this is that media that used to try to either like tell the news or talk about values or trends in society was much. It was a longer form. You know, some decades ago, Right. People would pick up a newspaper or maybe watch 60 Minutes, which is. I think that's 60 Minutes, right? 60 Minutes.

[00:13:07.91] - Gregg Garner

It's still on. Yeah, still on, I think.

[00:13:09.62] - Benjamin Reece

And it is 60 minutes. It's not a misnomer, you know, so.

[00:13:14.07] - Jeff Sherrod

There was, there was some longer form media that maybe is helpful in picking up context, helping people to understand, like maybe some of the complexity with.

[00:13:22.45] - Gregg Garner

Well, I think so much of what you're talking about, though the contrast is really the difference between curation and aggregation. And I think most even media outlets in today's media world are just aggregating pieces of information, cutting it up into a communication and then likely having AI or something voiceover and pieced together some kind of message that is going to get them subscribers or likes because people are wanting to monetize through these types of channels. Where again, in contrast, you go back, like you think Washington Post. These guys are in it, a lot of them, because they felt like there was some kind of call, like there is some responsibility they had to curate information to check out its legitimacy, to fact check, to find out what values they're promoting. That's why you had different periodicals that promoted maybe conservatism or liberalism. Like they had their values in check. And also these guys, you couldn't pay them off. So there was no way to get one of these editors or publishers to put you in the front page with your great news because you.

[00:14:46.89] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah.

[00:14:47.24] - Gregg Garner

Paid them something. Where today's media, that's all everything is. So today it's just the aggregation and advertisements with agendas. Where back in the day it was the curation of information that people who had the sense of calling, felt responsible to truthfully convey. It's just a big difference now.

[00:15:10.21] - Jeff Sherrod

So do you think when you're, you know, whether you're talking to college students or maybe in your own kids, are you encouraging them to say, like, hey, if you're going to education, you know, here's this Smithsonian app and check out this. You know, like, I guess I'm trying to figure out, is this just like, is that now gone? And what do we do if. If it is, like, what's. What fills that.

[00:15:30.28] - Gregg Garner

I know for me, working with my kids, the. They know the Smithsonian app is there. They know that there's all kinds of better media that's educational for them. However, the social pressure for them to know the things that their little subcultures want them to know whether it's attached to how they can better play Fortnite or how they can better build a Minecraft world or even how they understand sports. They're watching these, these YouTubers who are just rewatching basketball games and thinking about conspiracies, about who's going to be traded to where. And they kind of want to be on the inside track of that information so that they can talk to their friends about it. So I do think that there is like in a very similar way, if you jump back to like the 80s when you had primetime television and people had to wait and tune in for that Thursday night episode. I don't know, let's go 90s on this friends, right? You know, the big wedding, Chandler, Monica are getting married kind of thing. Everybody's waiting for that moment and then the next day. That's the topic of conversation. And people don't want to be left out. Nobody wanted to be like, who's Monica?

[00:16:48.84] - Jeff Sherrod

Right.

[00:16:49.33] - Gregg Garner

Nobody want to do that. And I think in a similar way these kids are having to socially navigate their new little worlds and then also find some kind of common ground outside of themselves to discuss. So I really, I really do believe that there is a responsibility especially for the Christian community to produce content that is healthy for young people. However, it's coming against what feels like a juggernaut of.

[00:17:18.59] - Benjamin Reece

Right.

[00:17:19.00] - Gregg Garner

Of just, I don't know, I think the big push is just going to be agenda based, money making, kid crack candy media, you know, like and, and it's, it's going to be challenging. And the kid, because the kids can be pretty critical. They, they know the difference between like a good edit and a bad edit. Good soundtrack, bad sound. You know.

[00:17:45.20] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah, they've picked up like there's some discernment that they've picked up like, you know, they do know quality. Yeah, but maybe there's other discernment points that they're falling behind on. Like are they able to discern? Is someone just making this up or, you know, like

[00:18:03.00] - Gregg Garner

Sometimes I don't think they can, I don't think they can discern that.

[00:18:07.30] - Jeff Sherrod

I think Ben, you actually found people did some studies on like.

[00:18:10.15] - Benjamin Reece

Yeah, it's like college age students were given a piece of three pieces of news and they had to identify which one was false. And there was obvious signs. And I think it was like 93% failed. So it wasn't like the studies that.

[00:18:24.38] - Jeff Sherrod

They don't, people might trust. Like, no, but I have a good bs Detector, you know, I can. I can sniff it out. And more often than not, they can’t.

[00:18:34.06] - Benjamin Reece

They can't. Yeah.

[00:18:35.31] - Jeff Sherrod

So.

[00:18:36.24] - Benjamin Reece

And it seems. I mean, it seems like a necessary skill for people to be able to learn. And the Proverbs, like one of the. Not derogatory, but one of the negative terms attached to people without wisdom is a dupe. Somebody who's gullible.

[00:18:47.96] - Gregg Garner

Yeah.

[00:18:48.46] - Benjamin Reece

Who just falls into the traps laid for them. And there's a. There's a need to be more prudent in how they navigate the world for.

[00:18:59.00] - Gregg Garner

Social acceptance seems to drive a lot of this. Do you remember that there's a psychological study? It's, It's. It's kind of. I. It's. It's been used in a variety of settings. But effectively, you put a bunch of people in a room and you have a line on one side, and then you have three different lines on the other side of the screen. And you ask people which line is the same size as the control line Right now. You put in the room what they would call confederates. People who are on your team, who are planted and who are going to say the wrong answer. And so you can have people who are unaware that the experiment is happening with the confederates in the room. And they would believe it's typically. I think it's the number three line that matches the line. But then a person would. The confederate person would say number two, which is obviously much longer than the other line. But then it will sway everyone in the room. And I think it's like really high. It's over three quarters of people will go with what the social influence of the room determines to be the right answer. So they don't even think for themselves anymore. They don't even see that. It's obviously those two lines that match up. They'll just rethink what they see based upon the pressure they feel from the social group. And I think that is the real thing we're having to combat if we want to get young people's attention when it comes to media. Like, for example, before we started recording this new season, we talked about what kind of format can we do to really capture young people. And we just recognize that the nature of our show, to be able to factually communicate and effectively opine considering the various topics we're doing, puts us in a position where it feels like almost inherently it's unattractive to Gen Z, Gen Alpha, because it's not. You know, we. We'd be better off right now jumping in a car and having $1 and figuring out how we can ride around all day and expand our $1 into $3.

[00:21:13.26] - Jeff Sherrod

Right.

[00:21:13.85] - Gregg Garner

And at the end of the day, turn it into $30. We'd get more young people watching our show.

[00:21:21.07] - Benjamin Reece

Right.

[00:21:21.50] - Gregg Garner

Than, than what we're talking about right now. So. So we are really, again, com. Palette that's been developed in young people for what to them tastes good when it comes to media. So we know it's also in the Psalms, but it's in the prophets that the Lord is something that the poets wanted us to taste and see that the Lord was good, that we can develop an appetite for God. And there's just not a lot out there that's helping to transform the palette of desire that exists in young people. Especially when parents have found media to be the convenient babysitter.

[00:22:14.49] - Benjamin Reece

Right.

[00:22:14.92] - Gregg Garner

And I say that just as guilty as any other parent that there are times where you're trying to get stuff done and you're just like, yo, easiest thing, Disney, Netflix, whatever it is, get the kid on there. Next thing you know, they're playing Brawl stars and it's just, they're doing their thing and you're, you're feeling like it's, it's okay. And while it may be to some degree, as you noted earlier between 9 and 14, it is now to a great degree giving them that base culture. Or in the same way if you grew up in a household where you routinely had pasta, you're going to grow up and you're going to want pasta. You've now got that desire and that craving. Well, these kids are developing the same kind of palette for what it is that they're going to desire. And I think as Christian institutions and everybody going through a post secondary education who are going to be the think tanks behind how they shape their media presentation into the future, we've got to consider this demographic and figure out ways to bridge where their appetite is now and where they need to get in. The same way we want to get people from going from McDonald's to clean cooking at home. It's a challenge. Yeah, the kid, I mean, I saw recently that McDonald's came out with a chicken Big Mac. It was like a revelation. I have an allergy called Alpha Gal, so I'm allergic to mammalian meat product. So when I saw that there was a chicken Big Mac, I was like, I'm about ready to throw out all my ethics with respect to clean food and I'm going to eat this now. I resisted the temptation, but that's calling all the way back to my base culture. Because McDonald's was a treat when I was a kid, man, that was like the thing you got. After my mom and dad took us to the Christian bookstore after that, dude, we played the little toys in the corner. My mom sang her little accompaniment song in the tape deck room while my dad got a theological book. And then we went to McDonald's and I got a Big Mac. And I think that challenge is going to exist for us when it comes to media and young people moving into the future. It's just going to be. Even their own sense of boredom or where they find their threshold of boredom is not going to have the same criteria that the older generations would have in terms of what makes something interesting. And it's really tough because people usually work backwards. They work based upon the craving of the young people. So Gen Z wants this and this is how they want things communicated to them in the same way. Like if we attend to things like that, that's like going, well, my kid just wants to eat lollipops and their Halloween candy and they just want a healthy dose of Sonic at McDonald's every other day. Like if we just attend to that, we're going to create a crazy sick generation. And I think we have to help young people realize, look, guys, you're, you're, you're so, you're so intelligent, you have so much potential, you have so much capacity and it's being wasted and drained into these things. But you're not going to like the stuff right now that you need. So you need frequent contact with it to recognize the benefit of it. You need to develop some understanding about it. Taste and see the Lord is good, learn God's word, learn the things about the Lord and have a transformation of that desire and that palette. Create that base culture for the kids. But again, there's just, there's just not a lot out there for kids to consume along those lines. I mean, the last thing I know that really tried to push Christian values in a large media format was either VeggieTales or Bible Man. Both, I think, coming out of, out of Nashville.

[00:26:17.27] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah.

[00:26:17.79] - Gregg Garner

So I don't, I don't know which one came before the other. I think probably VeggieTales a little later, but I mean, gosh, that's it. Yeah, My seven year old, I introduced her to a show that I used to watch when I was a kid called SuperBook. Okay, and you remember SuperBook?

[00:26:32.59] - Benjamin Reece

I do.

[00:26:32.86] - Gregg Garner

It's about this robot that helps the kids travel back into the Bible times and the kids Learn the Bible stories by interacting with them in the past and helping them go through their problems or whatever. And India loved it, man. There's several episodes. But the. The. The animation quality, the sound quality, it's. It's from the 90s or maybe even 80s. You know, it's. It's a little rough.

[00:26:56.69] - Jeff Sherrod

The one called McGee and me, actually. But I try to watch them. It was probably a year ago. I was like, this is not good.

[00:27:03.17] - Gregg Garner

Yeah, dude. There was Odyssey.

[00:27:04.70] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah. Now Odyssey is good.

[00:27:06.11] - Gregg Garner

Yeah, yeah, Odyssey is great. But, I mean, even I. I tried to get them to listen, to go to sleep, to Salty, the singing songbook and all his different things, but we just. I don't. Maybe that stuff's out there. I don't know either. I just don't see it. It doesn't seem like it's pushed. And I know that Angel Studios, with what they tried to do with clean, pure flicks or that fell through. There were some lawsuits with all of that. Yeah. There's a bunch of problems with trying to promote safe media for young people, but that's moving towards the entertainment consideration. But I really think that's a lot of what these kids want. They just want to be entertained.

[00:27:51.07] - Jeff Sherrod

One of the things that. Cause I was hanging out with you when I was a kid, and one of the things that helped me was we would watch movies together and you would talk to her and be like. And I had came up with a whole new way of consuming. And we did the same thing with shows. But, like, at this point, like, are you gonna. Is it. Let's get together and I'll go through a TikTok feed and I'll talk to each one like, you know, what is it? Is that where it actually goes?

[00:28:14.48] - Gregg Garner

Remember Laurie had me do that recently.

[00:28:16.83] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah.

[00:28:17.32] - Gregg Garner

Looking at all these TikToks, and I doubt it was entertaining at all to watch me do it.

[00:28:22.21] - Jeff Sherrod

No, no, no.

[00:28:22.57] - Gregg Garner

Because most of the time I was just like, what is happening? Why is this. This is funny to some people, but this isn't. This doesn't seem funny at all. It just seems like it's another culture. It's just another culture where you have to develop a new palette to be able to enjoy what's being put in front of you. But this generation, that's their culture. That's what they want. That's what they have a craving for. So you can't help but think about Jesus highlighting that when it comes to the kind of frameworks that exist in our culture, what he's bringing is a new wine and you can't pour it into an old framework. If poured into that old wine skin then it'll burst. It won't work. So new wine has to be poured into a new wine skin. And I do think that when it comes to media, we have to be thinking about what framework we can make available to young people that would help them replace what craving they do have for some of these other media outlets that are just consuming them. Because so many people I bet of those eight hours are literally just going like this with Instagram just scrolling.

[00:29:40.52] - Jeff Sherrod

They're just doom scrolling.

[00:29:41.31] - Benjamin Reece

It's not directed at all, you know, not towards any purpose. Like they don't have a research question in mind, I assume. Yeah, most of the time.

[00:29:48.63] - Gregg Garner

And I know people have developed apps beyond like screen time time that iOS does, but different apps that help you to monitor your. So it's interesting that we've got these other third party companies that are now trying to help throttle back that desire and that craving. But it's still not answering the content question. It's saying you can still, what'd you call it? Dead end scrolling.

[00:30:17.93] - Jeff Sherrod

I've heard the kids call it doom scrolling.

[00:30:21.17] - Gregg Garner

All it's doing is limiting the time which you're doing, doing doom scrolling rather than presenting to us other options. And it's, it's one of those in the world not of it kind of things because we know that they're, they're probably, I haven't looked them up, but there's probably a dozen Christian versions to some of these social networks out there. But often for young people, that's not where they want to be. That's not where the content is a social thing.

[00:30:43.73] - Jeff Sherrod

They're going to go back tomorrow and talk about what with it.

[00:30:45.83] - Gregg Garner

Yeah, yeah. And so there is, there is a need there that has to be figured out. And I'm not sure just developing another Christian app or another Christian production company is going to do all of that. I really do think it has to be something that's addressed in our educational institutions. And I know I've been thinking about for a while, but even at the institute, I do believe we have to have some kind of value add in our curriculum related to media consumption. Like there's got, we've got to put something out there that helps our people that we're educating know that or probably initially we just have to expose them to certain things, help them to understand that this, this media thing that you watch here, we're going to watch it together now. We're going to show you that 90% of the things that were promoted when fact checked are wrong.

[00:31:38.29] - Benjamin Reece

Right.

[00:31:38.73] - Gregg Garner

How did you feel about that? Right. Like, we're going to have to create a course that maybe for our accrediting association or the USDE, they're going to be like, why would you give a course on that? That's, that's, we're not going to put that in general education will best make an elective or whatever. But I think for the sake of the future.

[00:31:57.74] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah that’s how it feels.

[00:31:58.00] - Gregg Garner

That's the health of our society. We, we need to create these types of things. And I think K through 12 schools need to put this into the curriculum as well. And I know for me, that's what I'm being inspired to do.

[00:32:10.02] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah.

[00:32:10.58] - Gregg Garner

Talking through this episode, just figuring out how to create that kind of education for our, our young people. Because the difference to curating is over for the most part.

[00:32:21.42] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah.

[00:32:21.77] - Gregg Garner

Yeah. It's just now aggregation and there's, there's no accountability. It's, it's become the same thing with music. Music now there's so much music out there. I actually remember when MySpace came out and people just started uploading their own songs. As soon as that happened, I just said, it's over, man. This is like they're. On the one hand, we're gonna, we're gonna be introduced to a lot more music at the same time. Like, we, we now have to become our own curators and we're gonna get decision paralysis based upon the amount of choices. So then we're gonna revert back to the quote unquote experts who are going to curate it for us. But those experts are gonna be the same kind of A and R people that were back in the day getting paid to put it all together. But, but now it, it's, it's, it's going to, it's. The whole process is going to feel different now. It's, it's going to work from the angle of how many views and likes and whatever can I get. And then now can I get a media company behind me to back me, to put me at the front of the line on the, the Apple release or the Spotify release and, and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, I think it's the same thing when it comes to video and movies. I watch these young kids, like probably, I'm saying young kids, but I'd say between the ages of 10 and 25 right now, and they would much rather watch like YouTube than one of these other network streaming like Paramount or Apple or, or whatever they'd rather watch YouTube. And they would rather watch something that they think is kind of like real life, like following someone around who's trying to get tickets into a concert and it's just cheaply edited. They'd rather watch that than something with actors who graduated from, like, NYU or whatever.

[00:34:15.42] - Jeff Sherrod

Million dollar. Millions of dollars in budget.

[00:34:17.59] - Gregg Garner

It's just. It's a shift.

[00:34:19.46] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah.

[00:34:20.07] - Gregg Garner

And I think the old guard wants to protect what they have. And so they're trying to figure out how to. How to do that. But then the young people who are really doing their best to figure out how to make those social connections through these what we now call just influencers and how they're being influenced by that. It's a lot.

[00:34:42.40] - Jeff Sherrod

It's a lot. Yeah. And there's a lot to say about this. I think that that's where you get into something like this when you're like, our curation is over. It's just aggregation. It feels like it's a much bigger problem than obviously we're going to be able to do in an hour of a conversation. But I think if you're listening to this and you're like, you're a prospective student, you're thinking about Bible college, at least to take the pause. I think that that's something that's helpful before you get on social media, at least to recognize. I think the things you brought up, Ben, are helpful. Like, all right, I might not. Everything I read might not be totally factually accurate. I might be getting sold something. And let me at least consider the values. Maybe if it's just we slow down a little bit and then recognize. And I think, Greg, your point about tasting and seeing that the Lord, you know, like there's developing a different. A different appetite.

[00:35:26.36] - Gregg Garner

Yeah.

[00:35:26.94] - Jeff Sherrod

And that's not going to come just through. I'm gonna. I'm gonna go to Bible college. Or I mean, I miss. Let me not say it that way. It's not going to come just through one day. If I just keep on doing the same thing. I will. My desires will eventually change.

[00:35:40.05] - Gregg Garner

Right.

[00:35:40.34] - Jeff Sherrod

You're going to have to do something.

[00:35:41.55] - Gregg Garner

Yeah. If we were to, like, give some pragmatic steps to consideration. I think if you're a young person listening to this, watching this. Yeah. You might want to implement the biblical practice of fasting and to just extract yourself from all of that noise and give it a good, like a Jesus timeline, like a good 40 days.

[00:36:01.48] - Benjamin Reece

Right.

[00:36:01.84] - Gregg Garner

And just get off all your social media Networks, stop watching YouTube 40 days, replace it with healthy things, and then see where you're at at the end of that 40 days, see much clairvoyance you have in your thoughts. See how your speech changes, how your relationship with the Lord improves. I think that's just like a really good start. Like just detoxing from all of that noise because when you're in it, you sometimes don't even know how you're animated by it. It's when you're. You're pulled out.

[00:36:34.11] - Jeff Sherrod

Yeah, that's. That's a great point. That's a great point. Well, I appreciate you guys hanging out today and talking about this topic. Until next week, we'll see you guys then. Thanks for joining us on College Conversations. Hope you guys enjoyed the show. As always. It means the world to us. When you, like, subscribe, you tell your friends and your loved ones about this show. If you haven't yet, head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and subscribe to it. You'll be notified anytime a new episode comes out. Also, head over to YouTube and subscribe to our channel. Let other people know about the work that we're doing. As always, let us know about any comments that you have, things that you want to talk about, things that you appreciate. We really do appreciate hearing from the audience. Until next time, we'll see you guys on College Conversations.