The five-part seminar starts with a deep look at the dangers and benefits of the Christian life. Then dives deeper into the latest scientific findings on the impact of social media on the family and society. The Internet is here to stay and in many ways is a great tool. Learn how to discern and evaluate its use properly so it is a blessing in our life and not a curse.

Michigan Camp Meeting 2018: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

<p>The five-part seminar starts with a deep look at the dangers and benefits of the Christian life. Then dives deeper into the latest scientific findings on the impact of social media on the family and society. The Internet is here to stay and in many ways is a great tool. Learn how to discern and evaluate its use properly so it is a blessing in our life and not a curse.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Christian Berdahl

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 1

This week we're going to be talking about specifically our digital life.

Our digital life is something now that impacts pretty much everybody, especially in Western civilization.

And as we look at technology and how it's evolved constantly, and when I look at it myself in my own lifetime, there was none of this really available when I was a kid.

I'm only 49 years old, and The amount of change in just my life has been extraordinary, but it has progressed more in the last 5 years than it has in the last 50.

When you see what's going on technologically in this world, it's mind boggling.

Even the most tech savvy people are running to try to keep up.

50 years ago, or even just 25 years ago, everything that we did was infused with human touch, with some human being being involved.

It's instantaneous and increasingly human free.

We are doing more and more with isolation from human beings.

We have websites and apps to do our online shopping on.

We have robotic assembly lines and self-driving cars.

In fact, just earlier this year, Nissan reported that it plans to launch its own self-driving taxi services in Japan very soon.

So before you know it, you're not even going to talk to a taxi cab driver.

Our technology is expanding and growing at an alarming rate.

There are robots that now are companion robots.

We're gonna look into some of these things this week where people are now having relationships with robots.

There's artificial intelligence with these robots and they will have communication and conversation with you.

And friends, you can do everything with your robot now It's unbelievable and Unfortunately virtual reality is taking over like crazy Virtual reality is when you're not living in this tangible reality but you're in an online reality to where unfortunately what we've discovered through scientific research and experimentation is the line is now becoming blurred between what is real and what is virtual.

So there's no question that technology or tech is Doing an amazing amount for us and indeed it needs to I mean there's there are advantages to having robots do some things Over even the human touch, but what I wanted to find out was what is it?

Not just doing for us, but what is it doing to us?

What could this technology be doing to us, to our brains, to our creativity, and in our relationships?

Most of us just can't seem to disconnect.

Can anybody relate to what I'm talking about?

So there's only 3 of us that can't disconnect.

Has anybody struggled with disconnecting?

Almost all of us if we were to be honest with ourselves, it seems like we just don't know how to power down anymore.

And when we're out in public, all you have to do is look around, and you'll see everybody's face is like this.

In fact, yesterday, as I was coming, last night, I was coming through the airport, I was in Denver and in Denver Airport they have these long moving sidewalks and along a really long 1 on the side were people sitting in in their chairs waiting for their flights and I should have taken out my phone and videotaped it.

Everybody except for 1 guy with a book, everybody was on a device from children to old people to young people to business people to different nationalities, it didn't matter.

Everybody, they were on their little screens on their phones, they were on their iPods, they were actually on their tablets, they were on their computers.

Today, the average person checks their smartphone, listen to this, 150 plus times a day.

I don't check mine that much, so that means somebody's probably checking theirs maybe 2 or 300 times a day.

So as we go through this seminar this week, ask the question, could this be a challenge in my life?

It is a blessing and we're going to look at that, but can it be a challenge?

In fact, is being addicted to technology even a real thing?

Is it actually something that science and researchers have discovered?

Is living in a digital age changing us for the better or worse?

So these are some of the questions we're going to look at.

What effect is social media having on our society today?

And since the web gives us access to endless information, good or bad, what impact does this have on our memory?

What impact does it have on our attention spans?

And so these are just a few of the questions we will look at, we will answer over the next 5 days together.

So let's start this message at the beginning of it.

Let's just look at some general information about where the internet came from.

So let's look at the internet in general.

And as we talk about this subject, I want you to be thinking about how this fits into our preparation for eternity.

And I want you to ask the question, what can this do to help me be as a witness to the world?

Is this a blessing in my life or is it a distraction in my life?

Now, some of you might have been here 2 years ago when I presented the distraction dilemma, our music seminar.

What the Lord has laid on our hearts and that 12-hour seminar has revolutionized some people's lives and churches lives and even conference lives when they come back to a sacred worship service for God.

The question I have is what are we doing to this temple?

Maybe through our media, maybe through social media, through the internet and the searching and the things that are popping up on our screens.

But friends, my question is, Are we going to take any action?

And I think we'll take action when we're informed.

And that's what this seminar will be about.

We're going to present the information and you with prayer start to pray and ask God, Lord what modifications might I need to make in my digital life.

And that distraction dilemma seminar started off as that music seminar.

What we discovered is there's a lot more, many more topics that we need to speak on.

So what we're going to do is we're going to put this social media seminar, we're going to record it later in September and we're going to make it part of the Distraction Dilemma series and then we're going to get into gaming, we're going to get into pornography and not get into pornography but you know what I'm saying We'll talk about these subjects.

So this is our digital life seminar and it's the second installment in our distraction dilemma series.

So to begin we're going to take a quick look at how this all started.

In 1969, the ARPANET was started by the US government.

Wouldn't you know it, the government started it all, right?

Computers at Stanford and UCLA connected for the first time.

In effect, they were the first hosts on what would 1 day become the Internet.

So the Internet was originally developed as a way of communicating between researchers who were far away from 1 another.

So they developed a way, we need to learn how to exchange some information.

Now is exchanging information a bad thing?

That's what I'm in the business to do, is exchange spiritual information that can help souls.

So to begin with, frankly, computers could only transfer files within a short distance where there was some sort of tangible connection.

And then they came up with this way to where computers could, on this ARPANET, could communicate with 1 another, and it started this whole new revolutionary way of communication.

In the 1970s the first ARPANET directory, this is crazy, was published.

So this directory, which was 1 inch thick, had all the descriptions of every host computer on the network.

So in 1970, by the 1970, 1 year it was 1 inch thick of all the computers on this ARPANET.

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 2

Gracious Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you for this time that we can come and reason together.

I pray that you would bless us with understanding as we look into the scientific research and all of the studies that have been done on what happens to our minds while we're on tech.

Lord, I ask that you would bless us with the Holy Spirit now in Jesus' name, amen.

Of course, that's the original source of power is always go to God first, right?

Yesterday we looked at a short history of how the internet became.

We discovered a majority of people on this planet are on the internet daily.

1 third of all internet searches are sadly for pornography.

80% of every photo on the internet, the billions of photos, 80% of them are of naked women.

1 in 4 United States teens who regularly log on to the internet receive unwanted sexual solicitations.

Our children are being targeted by over half a million sexual pedophiles online every day.

So we, as parents, grandparents, and adults who are working with youth, and if we happen to be a child of God, need to be careful with what we allow our eyes to behold on the internet and our search parameters we put in those Google search engines.

We also learn that the statistics and problems apply not only to the youth but to all of us.

They're almost identical Except for the sexual solicitation that's higher for females and males in the group of 13 to 17 So today's message we're going to continue on with the internet infection part 2.

And today we're going to be talking specifically about what can happen to the human brain with an overdose of technology.

Yesterday we looked at all the statistics to show conclusively that everybody is online just about and many people actually are addicted.

Let's start with a very powerful National Geographic documentary hosted by Katie Couric.

Now Katie Couric, in case you don't know, is a veteran American journalist in a program entitled America Inside Out.

They recently aired an episode about your brain on tech because she was concerned and is.

Katie shares in the show about her own fears of being addicted to her smartphone and decided to put her brain to the test.

She, along with self-proclaimed tech addict, Steve Aoki, went to California State University, Dominguez Hills to meet with some of the world's top experts on tech addiction.

Steve is a DJ, a producer, and a social media celebrity.

He's 1 of the most connected people on the planet, with almost 23 million followers on social media, and some time posts hundreds of times a day.

He's also obsessed with the human brain, and has a foundation committed to studying it.

So in a conversation between Katie and Steve, she asked the question, well actually she says, Katie, it's not an overstatement to say technology is your life, Steve.

Not only on the production, creation, and performance side, he says, but also connecting with all my fans on social media.

It's all technology Katie do you worry about what do you worry?

Steve, I'm always worried about my brain.

Our brains are the most precious gift, I believe, that God has given us, Because after all, without the brain, there's no you.

And this is how we, especially as Christians, should feel about our brains.

No matter if you're in your 60s like Katie or in your 30s like Steve.

If you're a teenager anywhere in between, above or below these ages, our brains indeed are the most precious things we have.

Katie goes on to say, you know that ad, this is a brain on drugs?

She says, we're going to find out what our brain looks like on tech.

So at CSU, the research professors of psychology, Mark Carrier, Larry Rosen, and chair and professor of communications, Nancy Cheever, on people's addiction to technology, particularly smartphones and social media, continues to attract media attention.

Cheever and Carrier, they perform experiments that tested Couric's and Aoki's brains when distracted by their smartphones.

Later, Couric sat down with Rosen to discuss the impact of this kind of increased technology.

The first experiment was to measure physiological arousal of how smartphones affect our anxiety level.

And as Katie and Steve watched a video a computer tracked their heart rate and perspiration Unbeknownst to them they arranged to have someone occasionally text them at Every ding of that text the blue line on the monitor screen spiked.

It indicated fluctuations in their anxiety, caused partly by the release of our stress hormone known as cortisol.

Steve said, I kept telling my brain, block the phone out, block it out, so he could concentrate.

Katie was worried, all right, who's trying to reach me?

Did my daughter need me or does 1 of my producers need me?

And so every time the phone just simply dinged, even though it wasn't in their hand, it was just right there and they could see it and they could hear it.

Every time it dinged, they were releasing cortisol.

It's the brain is now stressed when we cannot answer our phones.

Our brains are changing and you'll see that as we progress today.

Cheever explained what's happening is when the phone goes off, you start obsessing about it.

If we're in this constant state of anxiety for a long period of time, it can have effects like sleep disorders, depression, and it can result in adrenal overload.

Did you know this is what's happening to us with our phones and all these texts, all these dings, all these notifications?

I didn't realize it until my wife and I began studying this out.

By the time you get to the end of the day, you are wiped out.

I'm still eating well, I'm drinking my water, I'm getting rest, but I'm just wiped out because all day long, and your brain goes, and it stresses out.

And then people get stressed with you if you don't answer them right away.

He said, unfortunately, you feel like you can have that adrenaline load, you literally feel fatigued like you just ran a marathon, but you didn't.

Katie had multiple peaks where the subsequent ones were greater.

So as she's sitting there watching this video and they keep texting her and her phone's just bing, bing, or zzz.

Every subsequent ding, her line, that blue line went higher and higher.

She was getting more and more anxious because she was not able to answer it.

So his tactic of telling his brain to block it out, it actually was helpful.

The problem is most of us don't make that hard decision.

When my wife and I this afternoon were going over the last bit of slides here and just looking at the content and the flow of it and changing certain things, we put our phones in the other room turned on airplane mode.

Because even if they're in your site, It causes stress.

We closed our email application, so all those notifications don't keep popping up on your screen.

It was wonderful how much I could concentrate.

Cheever told Katie, if just hearing your phone is causing this type of reaction, then try putting your phone away for a couple of hours a day.

And some people would say, I could never.

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 3

Yesterday we discovered that the internet and many apps are addicting.

And they're finding that there is an addiction problem with these apps and with the internet and the devices that we have overall.

We learned that doctors and scientists recommend we take time away from the phone, the computer and other digital devices by implementing a tech-free time every day.

For a minimum of 2 hours, More than that or longer than that, more frequently than just once a day or a longer period of time, they've shown have even greater benefits.

It's a good time to just let your mind reset and of course engage in work or whatever you have to, or take a walk, read a book, do something other than something dealing with tech.

We've learned yesterday that technology is literally physiologically rewiring our brain and in a way that is not productive.

And they're finding that it's actually quite counterproductive.

We're starting to get involved in this this tendency, overarching tendency, to want instant gratification all the time with everything.

Even like we said yesterday, when you send a text, if they don't reply to you right away, you're starting to get anxious, cortisol gets released, why haven't they answered my text yet?

So we're training our children up in a society where it's instant gratification.

And the reality is, as a Christian, as a human being, just in general, instant gratification has usually only brought on problems.

It's when we're methodical, we plan things out, we save for that vacation or for that mission trip, whatever it may be, when we deny self, it's actually far more productive.

The problem is we're training up not only the older generation, but especially the digital natives.

We're training them up in instant gratification.

We've also found that the overuse of the internet by teenagers is causing atrophy of the gray matter of the brain.

It's actually causing shrinkage in the brain, which leads to concentration and memory problems.

Now, don't be fooled into thinking that we're not having the same problem with adult brains because we are.

Because friends, the youth's brains are still developing, especially when they're young.

I mean, they say from the time of from 2 to 3 years old all the way to 17 or 19 for males, the brain is still developing.

So when the brain is that tender in the developmental stage, this is when it's most susceptible.

But it doesn't mean that we're not susceptible.

There is a loss of communication between the higher brain and the base brain.

Unfortunately, many of these tricks and things that they use to hack our brains are there to merely manipulate us.

And unfortunately, the way that the internet works and the way that these apps work, eventually there's that rewiring again.

In fact, communication between the executive branch of the brain, that frontal moral lobe, and the other provinces of the brain is hindered.

In fact, sometimes they even say it's gone, it's toast.

So the challenge we have is if we're not able to keep the lower passions, the other provinces of the brain in check by a frontal moral lobe, and that connection is being hampered, the more we engage in this digital world in excess, the more challenges we're going to have.

Eventually, sociologists are afraid that this next generation may not even have a moral compass.

Because the connectivity to the moral compass is being hindered right now.

We also learned that Internet Addiction Disorder, or IAD, and there are various other forms of this disorder or different names for it, It ruins lives by causing neurological complications, psychological disturbances, and social problems.

So we looked at yesterday also that we're having not just these physiological complications and neurological complications, but now we're seeing, and we have seen for about the past 10, 15 years, we've seen sociological problems.

Young people, old people, whatever age, especially young people, are having problems learning how to communicate 1 with another.

The face-to-face communion is going to become a thing of the past if we're not careful.

And so this is why it's important to implement those no-tech times.

You know, my mother does something that works very well because we would be sitting at Thanksgiving dinner and my niece and nephew are texting each other who are sitting right next to each other.

I went, wait a minute, because all of a sudden I see her going like this and all of a sudden, errr, is that hers or his?

And my mom grabbed a basket and everybody put their phones in the basket.

Because frankly, everybody that we needed to know if there was an emergency or anything like that, they were already in the house, right?

So we put the phones, we turned them off, and you know what?

It was frustrating for a lot of the family for the first 25 minutes.

But then after that, it's almost like you go, oh man, you know what, I'm just free to enjoy my family.

And so that tech-free time is really powerful.

We also learned that the statistics and problems apply not only to the youth, but to all people online with these devices.

So when I say young people or students or children, It also means us because we're all children of God and we all share, like I said, the same brain.

Well, not the same brain, but the same type of brain.

So today, we're going to continue the Internet Infection Part 3.

We're going to dive into the brain hacking side of things.

I have a whole lot more planned but honestly I don't think we're gonna get through all the material.

My wife and I thought for sure we have about 6, 7 hours worth of material.

So we're, I'm editing as we're going through every day.

Now, if we have time, we'll get into a little bit of the gaming today as well.

Series

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 2

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 3

1h 14m

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 1

1h 14m

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection

Social Media Mayhem & the Internet Infection - Part 4

1h 13m

Tech Transformation Part 3

55m

Kickstarter Series '15-'16

Enhancing Emotional Intelligence

37m

Cross and Society

1. The Hyperlinked Life

51m

The Media Mind

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 4

1h 4m

Plenary

From Best to Worst

1h 1m

Seminar: Eye-witness the Light

Eye-witness the Light- Part 2

56m

The Media Mind

Reclaiming the Soul in the Digital Dark Age - Part 2

56m

Brain Studies

1h

Wholly Hollywood

47m

Sound Doctrine