Who Will Answer the Mother of All Questions as Anti-Social Facebook Faces Reality Check?

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere…” Elie Wiesel

Well, well, well … the chickens have finally come home to roost and the fox is trapped and documented.

To open the door, it took a conscientious whistleblower, Frances Haugen, a data scientist with a computer engineering degree and a Harvard MBA who wanted to work against misinformation because she had lost a friend to online conspiracy theories on Facebook.

She released tens of thousands of pages of internal research and documents to lawyers and SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) replete with evidence that Facebook was aware of several problems caused by its apps like Instagram with its “toxic” effect on teen girls.

In a Senate subcommittee hearing she testified, “I believe that Facebook’s products harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy … the company’s leadership knows how to make Facebook and Instagram safer but won’t make the necessary changes because they have put their astronomical profits before people.”

And so, the battle will continue perhaps for years as offense lawyers battle defense lawyers to urge the government to regulate this Social Media giant. And so, many debates will roll out between adults, some elderly with lesser experience, as they discuss “human trafficking” or “domestic servitude” or freedom of hate speech or responsibilities to shareholders.

But who will listen to the most vulnerable victims, the subset of teen girls with life-long scars, the future of mothers-to-be?

For many years now, the saddest part, is how Adolescent Brain research has statistically confirmed the negative hyperbolic media influence on the developing brain prone to cooperative peer pressure and likeability factors. Over and over we heard the statement that logical thinking processes don’t mature until the early twenties and yet here the innocent children were making adult orientated decisions to please the corporate algorithms, mostly for male views.

Now there is only more tragic verification how Facebook’s antisocial promotions really were meant to antagonize and polarize to get more reactions for clicks. It is deeply disturbing that especially our teen girls have grown up in this environment as cell phone addicts with their sense of social rites of passage and a productive healthy self forever modified to fit a false narrative.

I wonder how their lost development and maturity will be addressed by the legal teams since the psychological damage has now perpetuated for two decades since the advent of the cellphone and Selfie worship.

Will the legal teams get around to discuss how to remediate these teen social media struggles when time cannot be reversed?

Will they try to find answers or solutions to these dilemmas:

...how lack of primer definitions about power and features of social media meant more exposure to bad choices

…how ideal body images mandated breast, lip and butt enhancements by pressure and profiteers

…how a self-infatuated mother may treat her selfie children or may not want motherhood at all

…how beauty, influencers or mob mentality rule teen girls on Instagram, Fan Fiction and YouTube videos

…how does social media affect education or e-learning with 5 problems

…how the norms of culture itself have been transformed by clicks or tweets with music, literature, politics, and science where self-inflation not public good rules the day.

The Biggest Mother of all Questions

Which young woman will testify about how her timeline has been radicalized by Facebook’s manipulation on behalf of her sisterhood?

How will she describe how her young brain was targeted and modulated by anger, anxiety, depression, and emotions so she couldn’t sleep or do well in school?

How will she account for the stew of neurochemicals like dopamine, adrenaline, and cortisol which controlled her behavior to be “liked” or hated or consider suicide as an alternative (30 % possibility)?

How can she explain her addiction to this powerful neural feedback loop that exploited her feelings of weakness to belong to society’s expectations on her personal screen?

Consider how challenging it will be to now disconnect from this learned behavior, so often based on fraud, to reclaim her life and her children’s attitudes to believe in positive self-esteem and connections that celebrate unity and true cultural achievement.

In fact, the general question for everyone is how to become more self-aware knowing that Facebook’s successful conclusion was that angry content is what people want because that is what WE respond to.

Facebook will continue to be a mega-giant on a planetary scale far beyond messaging or sharing photos at whatever age. Its platforms are critical for doing business, virtual learning, politics, medical emergencies and much more. When Facebook was shut down for 6 hours, the world took a deep breath not to panic.

Facebook is 17 years old, started on Feb. 2004. As it comes of age to realize the energy growth of being one of the first pioneers, it will also cull its mistakes and regroup its priorities for positive connections with or without regulations.

Until then it will be our individual responsibility to watch our actions and protect our children especially teen girls.

Annemarie Berukoff

Thank you for reading. Your comments are always welcome.

You can join Medium to support me and 1000’s of writers like me.

Index for Timely Tale for Teen Girls Struggles, Regrets ands Survival on Social Media with a Superpower Tool

The Tragedy of Teen Girls Blindsided and Dumb to Social Media Alarm Bells But What Can We Do?

Podcast Interview Answer # 2: What is the value of Nature’s Bio-systems from the Value of an Earthworm and a Bee?

Podcast Interview Answer # 2: What is the Value of Nature’s Bio-systems from the Value of an Earthworm and a Bee?

“And when you don’t understand how webs connect; or how roots make leaves; or how the food web is many links that can’t be broken;  when you lack empathy for the most ordinary creature, the worm or the bee, you become disconnected and pay the price one way of another, too often with disorder and disease.” 

 Excerpt from Ecological Succession of Birchum Birch

The main value of Nature's bio-system is CHANGE. Parts are always connecting, moving and adapting. The cycle of birth, growth, maturity, death, and rebirth is nature’s way through seasons of growth and dormancy. It is never about instant delivery or gratification.

A benefactor is defined as “someone or something that provides help, an advantage or a benefit without expecting something in return.” When looking at all powerful Nature, two benefactors stand out without which, Nature would play a losing game … the earthworms and the bees. Their functions and values to Nature’s bio-system must be respected as the roles of real heroes. 

The cycles of Nature’s ecosystem works in four integrated parts: 1. nonliving factors (sun, water, air) 2. Plants (photosynthesis) 3. Consumers (animals and humans) 4. Decomposers or Recyclers

Nature's decomposition begins with dead organic plant matter decaying or breaking down into its original elements such as nitrogen, sulfur, calcium,  potassium, iron and more.  These minerals can then be absorbed by root hairs to continue growth of new branches, buds, leaves and flowers.

Decomposition depends on a host of microorganisms, bacteria, fungi and protozoa to partially eat and soften the leaves so that other soil mites and insects like the sow bugs, silverfish or daddy long legs can continue to digest and release the minerals.

Here is where the earthworm earns his championship role in fertile decomposition!

• swallows large quantities of soil, mixes it with mucus as it passes through his gut to extrude as a casting at the end. His burrow may have two entrances and several vertical and horizontal tunnels.
• makes castings that are rich in phosphorous, nitrogen,  iron, sulfur, calcium, nitrogen, and potassium for roots' absorption 
• helps to loosen and aerates soil with oxygen, improves water storage and drainage, and helps stronger roots to access deeper nutrients through his tunnels

In fact, earthworms lose as much as a fifth of their body weight producing casts every day so they need moist soils to replenish themselves.

So, here is how the earthworm connects to the life cycle of a plant and a bee.

The seed, containing the embryo, has germinated and sprouted, grown into a plant with flowers needed for its fruit development in order to produce more seeds. The flowers in their radiant, aromatic beauty have one biological function to reproduce by uniting sperms (pollen grains from male anther) with eggs (female stigma). When fertilization happens, seeds can be produced within a fruit or vegetable body whose function is to protect the seeds inside until seed dispersal.

The best flower pollinators or fertilizers are the bees who spend most of their lives collecting pollen (source of protein) or nectar (energy source) to feed their offspring. In fact, during one foraging trip, a single honeybee can visit between 50 to 100 flowers; and to create one pound of honey, the bees must visit two million flowers.

Recently, there have been many reports about the declining population of honeybees.  If honeybees disappear, then flowers cannot be pollinated or fertilized, and will not produce fruit or bear seed for future generations. The lack of fresh fruit and vegetables would be devastating to humans.

Earth's bio-systems are based on synergy which means working together with different parts to make a creation or value of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. 

Without connections, Nature will fail with poor dirt, no earthworms, no flowers and no bees.

Perhaps, it's time to give a voice to Nature's heroes. Perhaps, it's the right time to share a tree's perspective about family, community and environment ... to listen to his joys, sorrows and hopes. 

Introducing Ecological Succession of Birchum Birch

....a love story for all ages who value family, community and environment with Nature.

Questions and comments are always welcome if you appreciate and worry about Nature.

Annemarie

amarie10@gmail.com

1 833 471 4661 (please note a time to return a call)

https://helpfulmindsteamforchanges.com

PS: Note blog for other podcast questions and answers.

Jeeg explained, “The earthworm is amazing with all the work he can do to make sure that humus is well ventilated and nutrient rich. He breathes through his skin. He has five hearts with top and bottom nerve fibers. Did you know he secretes calcium and has a gizzard that can digest leaves and minerals?  He is mostly all gut, all rings with the widest band near the front. If he is split in two, new rings will regrow.  He loves to humus which passes through his gut.

Fortunately, he can mate with another earthworm who lays eggs inside a cocoon which hatch in about three weeks as teeny tiny wormlets smaller than pins.”

Excerpt: Ecological Succession of Birchum Birch

earthworm's casting

Why Write a Story About a Birch Tree with Feelings about Family, Community and Environment

Why Write a Story about a Birch Tree with Feelings about Family, Community and Environment

Our mother earth is teaching us a lesson in universal responsibility. This blue planet is a delightful habitat. Its life is our life; its future, our future. Indeed, the earth acts like a mother to us all; as her children, we are dependent on her. In the face of the global problems we are going through it is important that we must all work together...Dalai Lama  April 2020

Animals don’t talk but that doesn’t mean that they don’t have voices or feelings. Trees don’t communicate but it doesn’t mean they don’t belong to their community and environment.  

In fact, a tree is a perfect member of a community that shows that  a body is an assembly of species and relationships, never self-contained. A tree can teach that we are an ecosystem in our own rights. Nature starts with a single cell growing to more complexity where each part has a purpose. We can best survive as a whole society if we believe in diversity and cooperation.

This birch tree is called Birchum who interacts with the weather, his humus, his seeds and leaves and helps his community in good times and bad with both shelter and food. He overcomes his insecurities with the help of a tree Dryad who as the essence of knowledge explains how his personal organization helps to contribute to his environment.  

Through many experiences he learns about the value of home, cooperation, and Nature’s most important Law that everything is connected. He takes pride in his unique Self in his special space as well as belonging to a forest legacy. He understands love as “moving together to help each other be better.” 

Within Nature’s cycles and plant succession, his time also reflects new beginnings followed by endings which become new beginnings.

However, with his People encounter, he realizes how big Ego and short-term thinking can impact a community’s lifetime, but that Nature can recover given a chance. With his Dryad they discuss giant food webs from primary nature’s perspective to people’s secondary processes in Mega Plants and Mega Malls, along with manufactured seeds, that try to alter the essence of life on Earth. 

A loud clarion call is heard throughout the story that the Universe is not outside you … 

“what’s good for each of us is good for all of us; 

what hurts one of us, hurts all of us.”

Like a web, the moral spins out that a solitary birch tree can represent the essential connections between our healthy Planet and balancing Self through cycles, cooperation, unity and appreciation of the wonder of Nature because once gone it can’t be replaced.

This e-book is available next week for download plus Kindle.

This week you can ask questions or share some thoughts about what you would say if you were a tree.  

Sincerely,

Annemarie Berukoff

Helpfulmindstreamforchanges.com

PS: "It's unbelievable that sometimes it takes great imagination to see how we are all connected..."  excerpt: The Ecological Succession of Birchum Birch

...a love story for all ages who care about family, community, environment and Nature

Debate Time: Does a Teenager Waste Time on Social Media Without this Important Mindset?

Debate Time: Does a Teenager Waste Time on Social 

Media Without this Important Mindset? 

“In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.” 

Marge Kennedy...he Single Parent Family

Recently, a group of us parents had a debate:

How many hours does my teen daughter use her cell phone?

Is she wasting or spending time on social media?

One parent did not like the idea that her daughter was wasting time on the internet and preferred to call it spending time. “It’s a kinder way of putting it to avoid bad feelings,” she said.

I’ve always believed in the Big Picture scenario and divided a piece of paper into two columns for brainstorming. One heading said Wasting Time; the second heading said Spending Time. The implication with spending anything was that there was some kind of return on investment.

There was considerable debate where to put some ideas. See if you would agree.

Wasting Time

Scrolling Instagram, texting, posting Snapchat pictures, checking celebrity gossip, playing
video games, message Facebook friends, tweets, dressing up and make-up, dating sites, webcam shows, Netflix  

Spending Time

Write a story or poem, learn to dance, play an instrument, homework, help neighbors, physical sports, try a new recipe, prepare supper, have dinner with family, visit old relatives, animal rescue shelter, relax in the park, talk on the phone, knit a gift

      

The point I wanted to make is that teenagers might not feel there is a difference with how time is managed without a stronger mindset to value time itself. They may not realize that time is their most precious commodity, always moving forward, never backward and once spent it cannot be replayed.

"It's a strange paradox of time, it can only be managed in a very small time frame 

called today, and today can sometimes be sparked by a tinier matter of choice."

Teen Girl Faces Time in the Sand.

In my opinion, some of the most important lessons for every teen girl should be about time management, how to make good choices and respect her one and only timeline.  

Two main reasons:

ONE: It will help parents to encourage their teen daughters to monitor their own daily and weekly time schedules with an inbuilt importance versus nagging. See blog Parents’ Solutions to Wasting Time by Teenagers on Social Media and More about Mindset

TWO: It will help teen girls on a personal, internal basis to appreciate more this amazing overture of time from overarching infinity to precise moment of making a choice.

Perhaps, it’s rather sad to say that as an elder, time can finally be appreciated after a long lifeline when remaining time is shorter and even more precious. However, from a reverse engineering viewpoint, it’s also why it is so important to make sure that teen girls don’t waste their time but learn to use it competently to actualize their abilities and interests.

Therefore, to become competent in any subject matter requires an educated mindset with a set of lessons that move from point A to point B from What I Don’t Know about Time to What I Understand More about Time.  Most importantly, this new mindset is a personal realization to start replacing the conditioned drive to stay plugged into the cellphone for hours at a time.  

This is the reason why at the end of this story, there are several lesson plans for teen girls to practice different components of time: 

Show some Love for your Brain

Real Time Connections to my True Self

My Timeline and Rites of Passage

My Calendar of Time Experience

Practice making Smart Choices  

Practice difference of Choice, Decision and Habit

Compare Screen Time vs Real Time

Design personal Time Mantra - artistic

At this point, developing a strong positive mindset may be an interesting theory but what if it works because there is no other common denominator that applies to all teenagers?

 What if, teen girls may discover that time is as valuable, if not, more valuable than social media? It would be a mind-breaking revelation and transformation.

It’s your turn to join the debate: What do you think?

Do teen girls waste time or spend time on their cellphones?  

Can a stronger mindset about value of Time help to make smarter choices?

Questions and comments are important and always appreciated.

Annemarie Berukoff
amarie10@gmail.com
833 471 4661

"In fact, let me take a step back. People have a limit of 24 hours a day. We assume that the noise in our head is in the head of other people like us. But there has never been a society which is so overloaded with noises, sights, and egos through the use of Smart phones and the internet.

So, we think what others want us to think; make quick choices others want us to make, which turn into habits at the end controlled by others. And habits, like well used runways, in the brain, are the hardest chains to break once built. Like I read once, we become carbon copies of present culture. The younger ones are the most vulnerable trying to copy in the wink of an eye.

Remember a choice is not a decision. It is only the spark that begins a decision through multiple steps which may result in forming habits, but that is another discussion."

Ebook Excerpt: Teen Girl Faces Time in the Sand