Would Social Media Warning Labels Help Addicts? Kids? EP34

Episode 34 Transcript

Welcome back to the Marketing Combat Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Kubbernus, and with me is always the incredibly hatted, glaceted, bearded, platted Jason Donnelly. Hey, what's up, man? How's it going? That's me. I love, that's the perfect introduction right there. Hatted, glaceted, bearded. If that's how we do it from here on, I'm good. I'm super excited.

There is a new chat around social media these days, and I'm gonna start by saying I think it's ridiculous and then dive into the actual chat. The question is are warning labels on social media the answer to social media addiction to helping kids get off?

social media, kinda like the way they put warning labels on cigarettes. And here it is. Here's the end all reason that this doesn't make any sense. This is a quote off the top of my head from Dennis Leary, his standup from a while back. He said, talking about cigarettes, that you could make the packs black, put a skull on the front, and call them cancer, and people would be lined up around the block. People are addicted to the thing. If you...

put anything. Everybody knows cigarettes are bad. Everybody knows social media is bad. We talk about it constantly across every news platform on the planet, including the platforms themselves. No, there's a warning label is not going to say to anyone at any age like, I wonder if I should scroll this for hours on end because I'm enjoying myself or I shouldn't do it because there's a thing at the beginning that says, hey, you might be addicted to social media. So no, I'm going to make this short and sweet. I don't think any warning labels on

Almost anything work unless it's like some weird thing that you just have no idea like you're not educated enough or just something like a chemical like don't use this chemical it'll burn your skin like cuz you don't know but social media cigarettes alcohol any of the warning labels that they're trying to like put on everything it doesn't make any sense to me everybody knows that it's not good for you it's a waste of time it's a waste of energy it's a waste of money and it's gonna make the experience garbage one more one more side comment

If you all saw Ready Player One, Ready Player Two, whichever one it's supposed to be called, when they're talking about putting ads everywhere and like 80 % of your screen is covered in ads, that's what I feel that they're gonna do with social media. So eventually it's just gonna be 50 % of your screen on your phone or your laptop or your iPad or whatever is like a black bar that says social media is addictive or social media causes.

boredom. don't know, whatever the thing is, I think it's going to make the entire experience horrible. I think it's not going to work and I don't think it's a good idea. Chris, tell me why I'm wrong. You are absolutely wrong. I always start like that. I love it. You're absolutely wrong. You're incredibly wrong. You know, I'm going to start off by first agreeing with you and then disagreeing with you. I agree that warning labels in itself probably are not going to help that much, but there's a knock on effect of this and there's a

cultural change that happens. So what I'm going to talk about, okay, so I'm going to tackle this from a kind of a comparison standpoint. So cigarettes, the warning labels on cigarettes have changed the experience of cigarettes. The colorful packaging, addictive qualities of also like holding that pack and, and, know, seeing your brand and being attached to that brand have diminished, right? So Marble used to have a certain look and like, and, and cigarettes were attractive from that standpoint. And then

Joke. Labels came in. like, so they had nice designs and and packaging matters. Like we're in marketing, we're in advertising. We understand that good packaging actually does contribute to additional purchases. I found this out when buying cigars in Canada a few months ago, because in Europe here and also in other places, it doesn't carry, it only carries a warning symbol on like the big packs or like the boxes. It doesn't have it on the labels. What they did is they actually, you know, when you go into the cigar shop,

they have blank labels. So you can't see the fancy ornate labels that the cigar manufacturers have made. And it actually prevented me from buying more and actually developing an emotional attachment to that cigar because I'm like, I don't know which one this is and what is it. And I had a little bit of a hard time managing that. The same goes for social media. If they're putting warning labels on it, it diminishes the experience, which is the point. If you want to reduce the addiction, if you want to reduce the...

the great experience, the dopamine hit, the connection, the brand connection, the emotional connection that you get with that product, with that experience, then that's a good step. Reducing that, putting a big warning label on it. So that's where I think that'll work. The second point is that actually, you're assuming here that most people know that social media is addictive, that most people know social media is bad for you. They do not. Kids do not. A lot of parents do not. As a father myself, a lot of my kids' friends.

Parents are just very open. They're letting their kids on Snapchat, on Instagram at very young ages, and they're not seeing the warning signs. You and I know, you and I have been up on the reports. You and I are seeing the effects of it. We're seeing, we're very entrenched in it. And the thing is, is that a lot of parents, specifically Gen Xers or even Boomers that are having kids kind of late, they don't understand this medium. They don't understand the content that's on there. They themselves are not spending any time on social because they're old school.

So they don't see these things like we do. So they don't necessarily understand that. And I think if social media came with a warning label, then they would start to go, what is that? Why is that? is that true? Does it actually cause that mental health issue? Is there actual like...

bad content on social? Is there actual like people trying to lure my kids into sex slave trade here? Is there actual like, is there bad actors on social that are doing this? Like are there ways to bypass the tools? Like, so just the education of the consumer will in itself have a knock on effect of.

Okay, maybe this needs to be regulated. Maybe this isn't as good for us as we thought. Maybe I should hold back and let my kids go on social when they're 16, 18, something like that versus 12 or 10 or 11. I think that absolutely a warning label would help. It would get people to open their eyes a little bit, maybe change the culture a bit, maybe have...

maybe have debates, know, like it will open up a discussion even within certain groups of people that probably never discuss whether or not social media is bad, whether or not Snapchat for an 11 year old is a good idea. And I would like those conversations because they're not being had. And it's very hard to bridge those conversations or have those conversations with parents that are not as educated as you in it. And actually have a good dialogue about why we shouldn't necessarily allow this because pure pressure is a motherfucker. And if your 11 year old is

you know, in a class where everybody else has Snapchat, everyone else has Instagram. It's very hard to argue for why that kid shouldn't have it. And if we had more parents that were a little bit more aware because of the warning labels, we would have a better time and easier time of mitigating the risks here of this platform, of this social media world, because of the, just simply the awareness. And that's what I think the labels can do. And that's, I actually kind of advocate for it. Well, I think that was a beautiful rebuttal.

and I would love to hear everybody who's listening. What you think? Do you think that warning labels on social media are a complete waste of time? Or, Chris's incredible point, do you think that social media labels that say that it's scary and bad for you will help society, help kids, help parents understand what's going on? Tell us in the comments, give us a rating, and we'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for listening, see you guys.