Want to send us a message? Join Phoebe and Ed as they escape to the mountains for a candid discussion on the impact of social media on both regular and Swinger lives. This episode explores the addictive nature of social media, its effects on mental health, and how it shapes our self-esteem and body image. They also share personal stories and practical tips for a healthier balance, including alternatives for a more fulfilling swinging experience.Key Topics:The addictive nature of social media and dopamine releaseAnxiety, depression, and physical health issues linked to social mediaThe role of social media in the Swinger communitySeeking validation and its impact on self-esteemThe FOMO phenomenon and its effects on social interactionsReal-life connections vs. social media interactionsPractical tips for reducing social media usageNotable Moments:[00:45] Introduction by Phoebe and Ed[03:20] Effects of social media on mental health[07:10] Dopamine and addiction in social media[12:30] Validation and self-esteem issues[18:00] Personal anecdotes on body image[22:50] The downside of FOMO[27:30] Alternatives for better swinging experiences Support the showWant More?👀 Watch on YouTube: YouTube ShowFull video versions and interactive live episodes!Bonus episodes, exclusive content, and 🌶️Extras: https://www.patreon.com/SwingerUniversity 🛳️🎉Looking for lifestyle events in your area? T4P is the go-to directory for clubs, parties, and resort events. Browse now at Ticket4Play.com Custom SU T-shirts and gear: Our Amazon StoreSwingerLinks.com - live schedule, special offers*, and our 🌶️links!Our Website - Leave us a message, articles, and sexy products3 Ways to get your question on our show:RECORD it on our website at: https://swingeruniversity.com/contact/EMAIL a recorded voice note to: [email protected]: (916) 538-0482 and leave a voicemail.* We get a commission if you decide to purchase through our links, at no cost to you.
Transcript
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You finally got invited because you had fomo but can men walk around with her depending on the party because it's kind of addictive it actually has some of those downsides that addiction has hi everyone i'm phoebe and i'm ed and this is swinger university but we are not in the studio. We are up in the mountains. Oh, and we're being attacked by flies, so this should be quite interesting. Real nature happening right now. Today we are talking about social media, the effects of it on your regular life and your swinger life, and how do you get around all that?
And maybe some alternatives for better swinging experiences when it comes to a biting fly. He was huge. It comes to a... He'll get to see i have a spider web on my lip and egg get bit in real life that'll be great looking forward to it the upside of social media is that your brain releases dopamine which is great makes you feel good super energetic The downside social media, though, is that there are case studies which show that there's an increase in anxiety and depression and even physical ailments. Correct. I remember when I was really stressed, I had severe stomach issues.
I went to the doctor and they couldn't figure out what it was. And they said, are you stressed out? And I go, no, I'm not stressed out. And then a few days later I realized, yeah, I'm really stressed out. So I resolved that pain went away. It's a real thing. So let's talk about dopamine a little bit. I like dopamine. What is it and how does it work? It's linked to pleasurable activities, social interaction, food, sex, right? So as we interact with each other, as we interact with other swingers, as we interact with social media, we get that dopamine release.
That feel-good hormone gets released into our brain. Our brain says, yes, I'll have some more. There's still another upside. Triggers, reward center. Getting comments on your sexy pics becomes addictive. Why? Because every time that happens, it releases dopamine and your body goes, okay, I want more of that. Which means that you have to do the thing that you did in order to get that release. So keep doing that thing. Yeah. Like Titty Tuesday, Wednesday hump day, man meet Monday. Each day of the week typically elicits a fun, sexy pic in your swinger chats. Right. And let's be specific.
This isn't just, I'm going to use the word Twitter. This isn't just Instagram. This is any kind of social media interaction. So it can be your Telegram groups. It can be your chat groups. It could be that forum on Reddit that you post on on a regular basis. discord. Yeah, it's getting that feedback from other people that's triggering this response. The downside of this is because it's kind of addictive, it actually has some of those downsides that addiction has. I must post until I get the comment. And what also happens is without that affirmation, you end up feeling down.
You end up feeling left out. Maybe you get a sense of FOMO. If you're not posting and everyone else is posting, then you feel like you have to start posting. It's kind of a catch 22. There's another aspect of this, which is comparing yourself with others. So Instagram is notorious for this. And a lot of the studies have been on teenagers and how their self-esteem is basically weighed entirely on social media and influencers and whether or not they're doing things. And I think we've all fallen victim to this to a certain degree. Let's start with some upsides before we get into the downsides.
One, it can help you boost your body image and self-esteem. If you're getting those positive comments when you post your pictures, the downside though, if you're not getting the positive comments or you feel like you're not good enough, as an example, you're not getting as many likes or as followers as people who are in the same genre as you or in the same group as you, if you're in a big telegram group and you post all the time and nobody comments on your stuff, you start to feel pretty bad because you're not getting the same response that other people are getting. Seeking validation?
Part of the posting process, there's a little alliteration for us, you're really seeking validation. So by posting, you're hoping that that picture, that lifestyle snippet, that thing that you're doing, other people will recognize as being cool or hip or sexy. Your self-worth becomes based entirely on whether you're being validated by other people, which is kind of unfortunate and in many respects very shallow. And not a really good evaluation of your self-worth because maybe somebody didn't see the post and that's why you didn't get the comments.
To base your entire self-worth on that is kind of risky. I agree. A lot of people will get plastic surgery to fit in, conform. We all love plastic surgery. We all love it. Some people hate it. I've seen people do it for very specific reasons. I think a lot of people find great benefit out of getting plastic surgery.
But I guess where the downside comes in is when you get to that comparison place a few times when we've been at events and you have different women in the same room say it's an orgy event and I've had a couple women express that they their their boobs are too small because they're looking around and they're seeing sizes bigger than an A cup or sizes bigger than a B or a C. We always say, oh my God, no, we love that you're different because you're different and you aren't us and you have something we don't have. It's like a candy store, right? Everyone's unique and we love the variety.
That's why we like swinging is because of that variety so i always feel a little sad when someone expresses that but i i understand and i understand that the desire to to make some body modifications if you choose to do so and if your driver for kind of altering your body in some fashion is based on And whether you're getting likes or follows on social media or whether people think your pics are sexy, that's probably not a good foundation for making those kinds of decisions. It's risky. And plastic surgery in and of itself is also a risky thing. It's a surgical procedure.
And so it doesn't come without some either a side effects or b potential complications so it's something to really seriously think about and not go into lightly just because you don't feel like you're as sexy as the other people who are posting on social media the other downside with comparing yourself to others is the the avoiding dates It's avoiding going out with people because you've gained too much weight. You've gained 10 pounds or 20 pounds since the last time you saw them, and you're not as confident anymore. It happens. I've been there, and you turn down that date.
Maybe you see a social media post of them, and they've lost a a lot of weight and now you're feeling even more self-conscious. I understand that and I understand wanting to feel good about your body before having a play date with somebody.
I wouldn't say force yourself to do that if you're not feeling comfortable in your body, for do what feels good to you but to turn down just a vanilla date even though you're a swinger you could still do that and I encourage you to do that even though it's not a play date you can still connect with your show your friends but please don't just and I add this too. We've got friends who we've known for a number of years and our reason for going out with them on dates has nothing to do with their physical appearance. Sure, we find them sexy, et cetera, et cetera.
But for us, it's that intellectual connection, that emotional connection that we have to those people and it's it's not about the physical and yeah weight fluctuations happen we all go through periods of time um covid was horrible for a lot of us um right around the holidays we all put on a little bit of extra weight etc etc for those of you who don't congratulations that's awesome but for everybody else you know it happens yeah we probably wouldn't have thought anything of it um if we had gone out with that that person and they had gained a little bit of weight either a we wouldn't have even noticed or if we had noticed we it wouldn't have affected our experience that night so yeah there you go in in a sense it's all in your head and you've got to to figure out how to quiet those voices somehow speaking of quieting those inner voices let's talk about FOMO a little bit and how social media kind of inspires this this sense of missing out Yeah, it's a big driver.
It's a big driver for events. It's a big driver for parties. You want to be where everybody else is. You've got this new shiny experience.
It's exciting exciting you want to go do fun things with all the people and you want to be there you you found a new tribe and when you can't financially or you you've got kids and they're in school you don't have child care right all the factors there is some serious FOMO with that and it sucks they're having these amazing experiences at desire or hedonism or wherever they are that week and it's week after week after week of people posting these amazing you know getaways and adventures and not everybody is in the financial position to be able to run off to an all-inclusive resort once a month.
We're certainly not, but we often feel like we're missing out on something because we can't do that. We'd love to fly around the world and see all of our friends all the time, but have you been to an airport lately? Or be on every cruise twice a year and be at every resort, although I'm not a resort person, every quarter, four times a year. I just don't have $20,000 or $30,000 laying around where I can go do that every year.
There's another aspect of this that we've heard about throughout the years that we've been doing that and that's the the swinger toy set the toy collection for example almost all areas there's a a swinger boat day there's a a swinger you know motorcycle ride there's's a swinger RV camping thing. And we know a number of couples who have gone out and bought the boat and bought the motorcycle and bought the RV or two just to be able to do those things with those groups when those groups do it. And inevitably, We talked to them after the fact because they felt like they were missing out.
Six months or a year later, they're like, oh yeah, we had to sell the boat because we couldn't afford to keep it or we only used it once a year or whatever. I have a motorcycle sitting in the garage that I won't get rid of because I'm afraid of missing out on something. So there you go. It's real and it happens. Yeah. The other part of FOMO is missing out on this new trend of getting invited to a special group. There are, oh my gosh, about nine telegram groups in our area and you want to be in all of them. You're like, what's that one? Well, well, how come I'm not in this one?
Well, you want to be in all of them you're like what's that one well how come i'm not in this one well you want to be in all of them and trust me when you're in nine at the same time it's impossible to keep up and work a full-time job it is a full-time job it is honestly a full-time job and what ends up happening is if if you if you're getting to the group late because what happens is the group forms because six to ten people get together and they loved the interaction they're like let's just start a chat group and then they invite somebody and they invite somebody and they invite somebody well by the time you get up to you know 30 40 50 people and you're just coming in you you don't know what's going on at this point you're you're way late to the game and they've all got their inside jokes even though you've you finally got invited because you had FOMO because you weren't even didn't even know about the telegram groups then you get in the group now you have FOM once you're in because you don't what the fuck everyone's talking about right it's frustrating really the groups really work is if you are on the ground floor of that group right so we've talked about all the kind of the downsides and the upsides of social media and i kind of proposed at the beginning that there were some alternatives for a more positive swinging experience.
And I think, I think there's a couple different aspects to this. I think one aspect of it is take social media for what it is. It's, it's plastic, it's fake, and sure you can be inspired by all these great, amazing vacations and these luxury lifestyles that everybody's living. And maybe it's something to aspire to, or maybe it inspires you to, I don't know, work harder or save more or do something. Maybe you save up for that one big trip each year. If you can use that as a positive motivator, great, but don't let it get you down.
The other alternative to social media, it's to take the media portion out and to just be more social. So get out, talk to real people, go to real events, have face-to-face conversations, and engage with people. A, you're going to have a much better experience. You don't have to keep up because you're right there. You're present and everybody talks about being mindful and present in life. And the best way to do that is to actually be part of life. If you're absorbing life through a five inch screen and scrolling, you're missing out on some key, amazing, sexy interactions with real people.
And who knows, maybe that interaction turns into something even more fun, but you're not going to get that through your phone and you're not going to get that through social media. So get out there and actually talk to real people, put the phone down. And unless it's to like call them and say, Hey, let's get together, but take it in smaller doses. Um, heck you could even look at, uh, Apple has this great screen time, um, metric that you can look at how much time you're spending on your screen each week. And you know what? Try and tailor some of that back.
Try and spend some of that time actually calling and having a phone conversation or a FaceTime conversation with real people. I don't know where that went, but it flew right through there. We've set up regular FaceTime calls with some of our really close friends. So even though they're 3,000 miles away, they're on the other side of the country, we can still kind of feel like we're having a face-to-face conversation with them and engaging with them. And honestly, we get more out of that than we do out of the social media, especially the stuff that we do for Swinger University.
Social media for that, really, it's just publicity. And we could do a whole episode on our FOMO in terms of publishing the podcast and having social media and the number of followers that we have. I mean, we have serious FOMO and we try and talk ourselves out of it all the time. We, we always feel like we're less than everybody else. Um, and it, it drives us, it drives us nuts, but we try to like take a step back from it and go, you know what, we're doing this because we enjoy it.
And because the people who watch us enjoy what we do and that's why we do it so And we get a lot of positive feedback. We do. We do get a lot of positive feedback. When we are in person with people, they come up to us often. And honestly, we rarely get any negative comments. I mean, I could count them on the one hand. Since we've. Yeah. So, I am thankful for that. We're either extremely lucky or we've had a good impact on a lot of people. So, there you go. There you go. In wrap-up, we could all use a break from social media.
This is our break from social media we don't have no access to anything that's it three this thing is the only technology that we have with us um out here backpacking so to speak and um and we have no no internet connection it's amazing three glorious nights with no no no nothing right give yourself a break and pull yourself away from social media occasionally seek real life connections with other couples those face-to-face conversations those group interactions those funny stories that you're all sharing together those are the real interactions and those are the ones that you really want to strive for anyway.
And guess what? People like talking to you at parties. That's better validation than some button that somebody pushed on a screen because they happen to see your post and they happen to be in the mood to like things. Having a good, positive a real human being face to face way better affirmation of whether you're a likable person or not and honestly i'm going to remember you more if we're having a face-to-face conversation than than your boob pick because i usually the boob pick doesn't match the face and i don't know whose boobs I'm looking at.
So if your boobs aren't out at a party and I don't recognize them. That may also be a good solution though to a different problem, having your boobs out at a party. Having your boobs out at a party. Yeah. Then we would recognize these people. Right. So it would be so much easier.
If you post boobs all the time and you're at a party party clearly you just need to walk around with your boobs out there you go can men walk around with their dick out depending on the party and where it is sure as long as nobody objects they do that at our nudist resort i mean i at some point in the evening i usually end up wandering around like that so there you have it thanks for tuning in we appreciate you joining our community and if you're interested in more spicy content please check out our patreon at patreon.com forward slash swinger university you can check out our website at swingeruniversity.com and if you have a great story we'd love to hear your.
Or if you just want to leave us affirmations and positive feels, you certainly can. We have a voicemail and we'd love to hear from you. We don't get nearly as much voicemail as we would like, except for those spam calls. I get a lot of those. 916-538-0482 or email us at swingeruniversity.com. Love to hear from you, so reach out and touch someone. Keep learning, keep growing, and keep it sexy. And we also are convinced that there are some alternatives for better swinging experiences than social media? Yes. Do you want to re-record this? Just re-record it. Okay. It's just a hot mess.
And you can use some of this as B-roll. We're only three minutes in. I know. Oh oh one last thing before you go if this episode helped you in any way the single best thing you can do to support the show is leaving a rating and review it takes 60 seconds and helps new people find us when they're searching for relationship education and we've made it easy visit swingeruniversity.com forward slash review Thank you. searching for relationship education. And we've made it easy. Visit swingeruniversity.com forward slash review. All the instructions are there.
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