The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane

Raising Kids in a Digital World: (Smart Strategies for Modern Parents) | Ep. 115

• Fiona Kane • Season 1 • Episode 115

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Raising kids in a digital world comes with challenges most parents never had to face growing up. In this episode of The Wellness Connection with Fiona Kane, we explore how to guide children through the online space safely and mindfully - from social media to screen time, gaming, and beyond.

Fiona is joined by digital marketing expert Michael Furcciniti, who shares real-world insights about what children are actually seeing online and how parents can respond with calm, smart strategies.

Learn how to:
– Talk to your kids about what they’re seeing online
– Create healthy tech habits without fear or guilt
– Understand how algorithms affect your child’s view of the world
– Equip them with critical thinking and emotional awareness

👪 Whether you’re a parent, teacher, or carer - this conversation is packed with tools to help you raise grounded, self-aware kids in a tech-heavy world.

👉 Like, subscribe, and share if this episode helped you or someone you know.

Connect with Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-furcciniti-9885361b1/ 

Learn more about booking a nutrition consultation with Fiona: https://informedhealth.com.au/

Learn more about Fiona's speaking and media services: https://fionakane.com.au/

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Credit for the music used in this podcast:

The Beat of Nature

Music by Olexy from Pixabay



Fiona Kane:

Hello and welcome to the Wellness Connection Podcast. I'm your host, Fiona Kane. Today I have a guest and we're going to be talking about the Wild West of social media. His name is now. Just be kind to me about this one. I'm going to try and pronounce it right, but it's Michael Furccinti, is that right, Michael?

Michael Furcciniti:

That's fantastic. That's fantastic.

Fiona Kane:

Got one of those names that can be pronounced a few different ways, or is it just like there's the Australian way of saying it and there's a way that you actually say it?

Michael Furcciniti:

That's it. I mean you lose people if you spend 10 minutes trying to explain how to pronounce it. So whatever way, yeah.

Fiona Kane:

So, michael, the reason that I've invited you on today besides the fact that we've met a few times and we've had a coffee and I feel like we're quite, you know, maybe not best friends, but acquaintances, friends, whatever you said something on LinkedIn the other day. You were sort of showing some videos and some Instagram videos and things and just talking about like this is what your kids are really seeing and this is. You can't really stop it, but this is what you might be able to do. You know strategies, whatever. So I suppose it's kind of like that. I think what you were saying to me before we got started is, you know, we were talking about, like you know, the beginning, when we just said the wild west of social media is a bit of a wild west and so I don't think we can make it go away. So I suppose the question is you know, what can we do about it?

Fiona Kane:

But before I even start there, I'm very rude. How about you just tell us a little bit about who you are? We'll start there and then we'll get launched into the conversation.

Michael Furcciniti:

Sure, well, thanks for having me. My name is Michael. I do social media marketing for a living. Is Michael, I do social media marketing for a living? I suppose my interest in this particular topic is, or has been, piqued by the kind of work that I do, but also just how long I've been using social media myself. I have kind of tertiary qualifications in marketing and so on, but I think there's nothing like being raised by the internet and I think a lot of kids of my generation have seen a lot of things and I'm just interested to talk more about it and use that background that I have in my settlement and social media just to colour the perspectives of, maybe, the parents.

Fiona Kane:

So are you millennial or are you Gen Z?

Michael Furcciniti:

This is a great question. I don't know the difference. What are the guidelines?

Fiona Kane:

I don't know where it changes over. I think it changed over somewhere around 2000 or something, but I'm not sure I'd have to look it up. So you might be on a cusp somewhere, I don't know. I don't know your age. You might be on a cusp somewhere, I don't know. I don't know your age.

Michael Furcciniti:

You might be on a cusp somewhere, maybe just I'm 99, 1999, so I might be. That's the year I got married.

Fiona Kane:

Oh wow, you got married that year. Uh, and I was 27, making me feel really old. I think that might be on the cusp, maybe I don't know, so you might be like a, a late millennial, still a millennial, I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter, but you're somewhere on the cusp. There. I'm a Gen Xer, so you're certainly in that generation after me. So that's the thing, and a lot of people who listen to this podcast and watch this podcast are Gen Xers or over, and so I suppose, where would you like to start? What do we need to know? What do we need to know? What do we need to know about social media and about the internet? What are the things?

Michael Furcciniti:

that parents just don't understand when to start. I think the way that the social medians themselves are designed is that they want to keep you hooked, you hooked. So the idea is that every day you know, every, every year that we exist on these platforms, we're trying to push the envelope. And the things that are getting posted, um, you might, as a parent for a child that has a phone, might have no tools, the kind of things that they're saying, and they're not necessarily things that are illegal or immoral, but just the most bizarre, mind-numbing things that the overwhelming majority of children have not been prepped to be able to understand. So there's a gap between, there's an educational gap, I would say, and that's the thing that's missing from schools, from the educational system.

Fiona Kane:

And so when you like. Obviously, we've all heard of you know porn on social media and you know violence and things like that. That's a concern that people have and I don't know if parents fully understand how much the kids are saying that as well. But are you talking about something different to that then? What are you talking about?

Michael Furcciniti:

The porn's a big one. It's not. It looks a little different on social media because you can't have full-on nudity. But it's not just things like that. It's things like the online gambling culture that you know. Kids in early secondary are getting hooked on because they're hooked on sports and they love watching and they love bedding at lunchtime. It's like you said, the violence as well. It's very outlandish opinions that they might not have heard in their family or at school and they can be so strange that they're enticing. And if you don't understand that, other people have, you know, different backgrounds and different upwindings. It's um easy to get caught up, caught up in online communities where they're echo chambers, right, everybody agrees with the same thing. Yes, in a subset of the internet. Yeah, that's why I say it's not necessarily illegal content. It's just things that are a sea of ideas that it's hard to make sense of.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah, and look, I didn't even think of online gambling because it's just not my thing, so I just didn't even think about it. And that's the thing, too, that I don't understand, because I know you were just talking about sport there. But the other thing, actually, that parents have concern around and I hear that, oh, I shouldn't be so concerned, blah, blah, blah. I don't know the answer to this, but gaming online so the games themselves may or may not be a problem, but maybe their access to messaging within the games is a problem. To give me a bit of a, I had the last game on my well, the last game I played on a computer was Leisure Suit Larry.

Michael Furcciniti:

Oh, wow.

Fiona Kane:

And he used to play that with, like I think it was the, I think it was, I can't remember if it was. I think it was the little disks, the three-and-a-half-inch disks, and you know it would stop and you'd have to put the next disc in, and it certainly wasn't on the internet, it was just on your own computer oh, wow that was the last time I played a computer game, so I have got no idea.

Fiona Kane:

So just treat it like you're talking to an idiot, because honestly I have no idea. So just tell me a little bit about. Is there concerns about games, or is it more about messaging in the games games? What's going on there?

Michael Furcciniti:

Gaming, I will say, is not something I have a lot of exposure to. In my own social media algorithms, I think the biggest thing that I can see is not so much the gaming but it's the streaming culture. So it's very popular. It's a very popular pursuit for a lot of people influencers to stream themselves playing a game, and there have been several internet celebrities that have come out of that, not necessarily because of anything in particular, but just because they're funny to watch as they play um again, one of the things that parents can't quite wrap their heads around why are you watching someone else play a game that you can play yourself? But I suppose there's scope there for some strange ideas and some strange content, but I think, by and large, at a surface level, there's some crazy violence in the game. Not that that's anything new, and since probably the I can't recall, I don't know, maybe I'll be in the streets as well, but it's always been around.

Fiona Kane:

It's always been around, yeah, so violence is one of the issues in there. I do think that there is a messaging aspect as well, though isn't there that the people you're gaming with can message you, and that can be an issue for who's getting in contact with you and who you're talking to.

Michael Furcciniti:

That's true. That's true, that's true. There's definitely uh potential for, uh, I suppose, stalking and harassment, um, but not even that, even just some of the things that get said online. I mean, there's a was a whole subculture of memes about if the group chats got leaked from this particular game when the boys you know were playing when we were teenagers, we'd all be in prison. Yeah, and it's um, it's the language, it's the, it's the culture, um, but maybe not the game itself, but, like you say, the messaging component yeah, yeah, and I think there was always like I was.

Fiona Kane:

I was hearing some uh, I can't remember. It might have been on um someone's podcast the other day might have been chris williams and someone's podcast, and there's a couple guys talking about this and they were talking about look hey, if you guys in the locker room or guys in the pub or whatever there's always been like historically, I think if you recorded guys in those situations, whatever they said, it could be used against them in the future, because there's just like that bro talk, whatever you know, which is is one thing, but I suppose this is that on steroids, because it's a lot of it's anonymous, so people say all sorts of things and there's some some bravery about being behind the keyboard or you know, as opposed to being in person, that you might not say something in person. Or even if you did, it's a small group of friends that you're with as opposed to online. It's a lot more people will hear and hear what you're saying. Is that fair to say?

Michael Furcciniti:

yeah, that's, that's the biggest irony, right is that when people are anonymous, they are who they really are, so they can say exactly what's on their mind and they don't have to have any restraint at all yes, yeah, yeah.

Fiona Kane:

So the anonymity is what kind of brings out the I don't know. Yeah, like you said, you see who they really are, or or or just them sort of trying to play some character or be. You know, I think a lot of people it's like I'm bigger and braver and they're online and they, you know, it's that macho thing that they do as well. Is that part?

Michael Furcciniti:

of it. Yeah for sure, yeah for sure. You know, I know, maybe it's that. Yeah, it's frame in a way.

Fiona Kane:

So I suppose from that point of view look, I'm not a parent, I can't, you know, I talk about just what I learn about. But I would just say to parents that some of the stuff that you've been talking about really a big thing. What it comes back to for me is that really, when I was growing up, we used to sit down and have dinner at the table together. We didn't have phones then, so we weren't playing with our phones. The phone was a thing on the wall and we used to talk about our day and we used to talk about things. So if there was an election, we would talk about that. Or if something happened at school, or I think one day there was a fire at my school, whatever, we talked about that.

Fiona Kane:

But if you talk to your kids every day and you talk to them about just the world and things in the world, whatever you feel, age appropriate, but if you get them into having conversations about, well, these are our family values and these are why. But other people have different values and this might be why and you're going to be exposed to this in the world, because I think it's like we kind of understand that to a certain degree, but I think that we don't expect children, our kids, to be exposed to those sorts of things, maybe until they leave home or until they get to like they're in high school or they go to work or whatever. But with online, they're going to be exposed to it as soon as they're in high school or they go to work or whatever, but with online, they're going to be exposed to it as soon as they're online. So if those kids are online when they're 10, then that's the point at which they're going to start to be exposed to those ideas that maybe they just are not ready to deal with.

Michael Furcciniti:

Absolutely, and you can do all you can in your power as a parent to educate your children to to be around them, but then you can have, as soon as they get on the bus and they're fast enough, showing someone, or they go to school and they're meant to talk about whatever happened online, it's um, it's pretty clear that you can't shelter. You can only shelter them in the very few minutes you have with them, basically every day where they've got your attention, yes, and then it's open season. So you really have to make sure that, yeah, you communicate and you educate on the wide web. The danger is, if you don't talk to them about things before they see them, you are the second impression and it's I mean, exposure to certain things online is getting younger and younger. For children and they're no fault of their own it's just the content that gets attention, gets attention. Also, it gets pushed to everybody and if you don't beat it, you're, you're, you're coming second place, right?

Fiona Kane:

yeah, what you said there is actually really important is that if you, if you don't get in first, yours is the second impression, so the first they get is whoever random person out there is and it could be good or it might not be but if you get in first and you're sort of saying these are our values and this is why we believe in this and this is, you know, and this is what being a good human being looks like, and this is what being a good person looks like, and this is what being you know, and even to the point of, I think, some of the stuff I mentioned to you before we started, that I anyone who watches this, listens to this will know I've been talking a lot about adolescence and I know you haven't seen that yet, but in that there was this whole kind of it was about the dating scene, a little bit about that, and you know this boy had been rejected and so he was. He's what they would class as an incel these days, although really aren't all 13-year-olds incels, because an incel is involuntary, celebrant, right, and we want to hope that actually, all well, not involuntary, because we kind of just want to hope that they just are celebrant, let's put it that way. But certainly, you know, the majority of 13-year-olds are not up for that, not ready for that, shouldn't be doing those things, and so they would be anyway. But just these days, because the insult incels the word that they use sort of as, as somewhat of an insult. But they were talking again as a podcast I listened to the other day.

Fiona Kane:

I'm trying to think if it was Chris Williams I can't remember who it was, but they were saying that like don't we need. What we do need to do is teach children about. You know, maybe at school, when they, you know, they do the sex ed or whatever, but maybe they should do about dating, maybe they should do about online dating. Maybe they should talk about, uh, what to you know what sort of person you want to be. You know, like it's not as simple as who do I want, but it's who do I have to be to get that person.

Fiona Kane:

And so, uh, what? What does being a good partner look like? What is good being a good boyfriend or good girlfriend or whatever? What does that look like? What are the expectations and what are the expectations on you and you know, and what's what's considered normal? Uh, because even just things like, um, uh, I've seen young pop stars, uh, female pop stars, say that they think that getting strangled is normal because they've grown up seeing that sort of stuff online. Now, no one in my generation thought that was normal. I mean, my generation still thought that, you know, having hair in private places was quite acceptable, right?

Fiona Kane:

let alone this crazy, crazy town stuff these kids are being exposed to. But maybe we need to be like as awful as it might have to be having these conversations, but we actually do need to teach children about what are normal expectations and and what, and what are the healthy boundaries and what does a healthy relationship look like? And and can you choose? What can you choose or not, you know? Can you say no, blah, blah, blah. But I suspect that with some of these young people, boys and girls, if they're being exposed to that stuff which is way beyond their understanding, they're actually going to be, you know, frightened and freaked out about partnering up as well. Is that sort of? Do you think that's part of what's going on Potentially?

Michael Furcciniti:

Pot on Potentially, potentially. I think online dating is a whole other can of worms. School and education definitely has a part to play in that, in terms of getting people to socialise and well, but I think it comes down to the example that parents set in their marriage. Everything starts at the home, right.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah, it starts at the home.

Michael Furcciniti:

And if what they're seeing their parents do as a couple, if their parents are together and, you know, in a happy marriage, if what they're seeing does not match with what they're being fed online, then they'll have to choose. One of those things is helpful and one of those things is not. Yes, and I think it's probably not enough just to live by examples. Um, you have to, you know, communicate at the level that the child is at, you know, obviously not too much detail, too young, but, um, this is what a healthy relationship looks like. We're not perfect and you shouldn't go out there expecting to find someone as good as what you might see on social media, or if you have, you know, comparison to these superstar athletes or whatever you know, supermodels, it's just it's not really listed. And, um, or I suppose it is, if you're basically willing to sell your soul to a lifetime of injections and supplements, and both of us, yeah, yeah, I think that's the difference too.

Fiona Kane:

Like when I was growing up, you know, you were probably going to cook up with someone who lived in your town, maybe went to your school or maybe someone you met at work I met my husband at work but generally we met people who were kind of local and our competition was our kind of local group of people, really Okay, and we weren't competing with Instagram models or this or that. And you know, they did have. You know, I grew up in the time of the supermodel, so the Claudia Schiffers and the Elmwick Fersons and the Christy Turlington's and all that but it was very clear that like I wasn't competing with them, like they were going to be dating the other supermodels or the rock stars or whoever they were going to be dating, and I was going to be dating a regular guy. And so, even though that they was there and we saw them on the cover of magazines and you might have bought a lipstick because you wanted to look like them or whatever, you knew you couldn't be them and you knew you were still, you know, your, your dating pool was the people around you. But now that people are comparing themselves to all those sort of this instagram stuff and I think kids are growing up now so.

Fiona Kane:

So we didn't have cameras. Like, we had a camera but family might have a camera and it costs you a fortune to get the film developed. So you get a film developed once every six months, you know so, and they're all bad photos of all the heads cut off and stuff, whereas today kids are growing up with cameras in their pocket and so they're looking at themselves a lot more and they've got all these filters and all that. So we didn't really grow up looking at ourselves. You'd look at yourself in the mirror before you left the house, but that was it. So we also didn't have to obsess about well, do I look like that Instagram model or do I look like that influencer on TikTok or whatever. We just weren't affected as much by all the TikTok influencing and stuff. We were affected by the kids in the playground and maybe a little bit what we read in dolly magazine, but that was pretty much it. That was what we were exposed to and that was our world and that was so much simpler.

Michael Furcciniti:

But now we're looking at ourselves through cameras and and kind of seeing all these influences, and it's a very different world yeah, and this is why it's so dangerous for young girls, because they see, you know I mean I don't have studies to quite off the top of my head, but I know it's in terms of that comparison that is more common. You know young women who are saying these things in the inadequate and maybe the extreme lengths to get the validation that they look like that other girl that they see online.

Fiona Kane:

Yes, the other girls who actually don't look like that as well, most of the time they don't even look like, or if they do, they've had extensive stuff done, but a lot of them don't look like that. It's filters and makeup and all the rest of it.

Michael Furcciniti:

It is, it is, and that's the other thing that is not just a problem for the younger generation, but for everybody. Is that people be what's the word? I suppose the unpolitical correct way is everybody's VS radar in terms of seeing things that are real or that are clearly old-sides, clearly AI, clearly touched up, is terrible generally speaking.

Michael Furcciniti:

I mean, how many people, the amount of education we do on scams and phone calls from Nigerian princes and we all fall for it and there's a big gap between where we need to be to actually. I mean it's critical thinking. This is what kids need to understand from the one world is that you do not believe everything you see, yeah, and you have to be able to spot when something is not real.

Fiona Kane:

And that's the issue with being exposed to it at a younger age. Because if you don't get exposed to these things until you're older, see, I didn't see anything, I didn't see anything. I didn't grow up with the internet, so all this stuff came to me when I was older, so I'm able to look and I go, oh yeah, sure, whatever, I can look at most of it and reject most of it or just laugh at it or whatever. But if you're 70 years old, that's maybe not possible. And so you're seeing it and you're believing it, and apparently even now I I hear that people go to plastic surgeons. They're actually not just in my day. You take a picture. If you're going to do that, you take a picture of your l mcpherson or someone, right, I want to look like her but, now they actually want to look like kind of anime versions of themselves.

Fiona Kane:

So they don't want to look human. They, they kind of it is. It's this weird ai kind of vision, this non-human vision of how they want to look.

Michael Furcciniti:

So it's pretty messed up in my opinion yes, yes, and that's the the I I'm not too familiar with the supermodel scene of the of the 2000s and the 90s, but from what I understand, this is the 80s.

Fiona Kane:

This is the 80s.

Michael Furcciniti:

Forgive me, it's way before your time. Yes, the pendulum has swung back the other way, though, in the sense that it's not super thin I mean, I know Kate Moss is famous for this kind of cocaine-thin figure.

Fiona Kane:

Yes.

Michael Furcciniti:

I think again, I don don't have stats on this but generally speaking, women don't necessarily want to be super thin and wet, at least not everywhere and so that's where you get that exaggeration and wanting to be bigger in certain places and smaller in others and you can't physically do that the kardashian thing like how can you have a waist that small and big boobs and a big butt?

Fiona Kane:

you can't do Like, it's just not possible. No one has that Correct?

Michael Furcciniti:

Yeah, well, very few. And then the ones that want it will pay, you know, thousands and thousands for it, but it's just not. But that's what the kids don't understand. It's not the end of the world if you don't look at that person.

Fiona Kane:

Yes.

Michael Furcciniti:

I mean, if all you see is people adoring this person that they don't even know. I mean, none of those people have a relationship with Kim Kardashian, but they feel so indebted to looking like her and aspiring to be like her. Yeah, Big problem.

Fiona Kane:

I remember when I was younger and I first noticed that, like women who were whether they were supermodels or whether they were actresses with Academy Awards or whatever who were kind of the people who were my, the people I admired when I was younger, when they first started, you know, boyfriends cheated on them and they got divorced and things like that it was quite shocking to me that, oh, like they don't have a perfect life. You know, it's not all and it's not all perfect. No one has anything perfect. It's just you're able to make it look like that online, but it's not perfection for anyone. And when we're looking for that, we're looking in all the wrong places, aren't we?

Michael Furcciniti:

Absolutely, and that's the issue is that you almost don't settle because you know if you just scroll through for five seconds, you can see there's better options. Yes, there's so much more out there that if I just wait a little bit longer, I'll just, you know, there's partners around me that are potentially really good matches, but I know there's more girls out there. I just have to get out there and you know fast and try to get in. Yeah, endless comparison.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah, yeah, exactly, and that's the thing.

Fiona Kane:

It's like the girls who sort of going off and getting flown over to over to either the uae or somewhere for for parties with you know shakes and princes or whatever that sort of, on yachts, whatever.

Fiona Kane:

Girls looking at that sort of stuff. That wasn't even a thing when I was younger, but now there's this online world and girls are comparing, like looking at that, looking for towards that. People are looking towards that as um, as their goals, rather than, like you said, just looking around and just seeing the person around, people around you who are more likely people who you know for the most part, you know not saying that obviously you can be here with whoever you want and lots of things work out, but, generally speaking, the people who you grew up near and around and whatever, have similar values to you and it's a lot simpler way to go. Long term for most people is to pair up with someone who is similar values and from a similar place, but obviously it doesn't mean you can't do that differently. But yeah, the idea of meeting your love match on the other side of the world online and I don't know turning out to be the best thing not necessarily no, it's.

Michael Furcciniti:

It's completely unrealistic and it um I mean it does happen. You can always that's. That's the thing is. You know you've got to be balanced about all of this. The opportunity to it and those people and to network and to to find different communities is huge now and it's not necessarily all evil. It's just you have to understand that just because you see things a lot doesn't mean they know them.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah yeah, and you just said something there that's actually really important finding communities, right, because what we are looking for online, you know. What we look for as human beings is we look to be part of community, and when we're in school, it's you know. What we look for as human beings is we look to be part of community, and when we're in school, it's you know, our school friends, whatever, uh, or university friends, or our work friends, but it's also, uh, you know, online that's what we're looking for. We're looking for people we relate to. Now.

Fiona Kane:

If it was me, uh, when I was younger and still I do that now I connect with and I think you're, you're, you're a musician, so I connect with music stuff. Right, I'm not a musician, but I'm just really into music. So a lot of my connections are people who like the same bands, or they might be the people in those bands or whatever. It is similar music, or it might be other people that I've got similar interests. I've got lots of connections in the natural health industry, right? So many of my friends are naturopaths or nutritionists or whatever.

Fiona Kane:

But so we are looking for community, we're looking for people to relate to, and I suppose it depends on where we're at how vulnerable we are at the time, what our headspace is, as to what communities we might end up getting you know, ending up in or being attracted by, and they could be a community that's really, really supportive, or they could be a community that is quite the opposite.

Fiona Kane:

So I suppose that's the thing. It could be amazing, it could be great, it could be a community that supports you and pushes you to be the best you can be, and all of those things, because I suppose to me my comparison is right. So there's the Jordan Pedersons of the world who pushes you to be the best you can be and tells you to take responsibility and make your own bed and think about well, if you want a partner, well, think about what sort of person you are as a partner. Maybe start there, right. So there's that kind of community where you could go and find out someone who just says okay, well, you know, you do something about it and you take responsibility and you make yourself the best version of you. There's other kind of things. I suppose it's the Andrew Tate's of the world, or or the incel community, whatever the incel community.

Fiona Kane:

Basically, it's kind of a weird thing actually that there's a community where you can sort of go into this community and say, well, women are all horrible and they're all mean, and let's just join up together and accept that we'll never have a woman and there's no chance that we'll ever have a woman. So let's just hate on them and let's just join up together and be, you know, inverted commas losers together, or whatever. Or the Andrew Tate's of the world who you know. He diagnoses some of the issues in the world quite well, but his solutions aren't great and he's the way, his way of speaking to and treating women and, and you know, there's all these influences that talk about you know how you can, how you can trick a woman into dating you, and all this kind of stuff which is actually what came up in adolescence as well that the boy.

Fiona Kane:

The boy thought the girl had shared um, the girl had shared, shared nude or like a topless photo and had gone around the school and she'd been shamed because of that. And so this boy approached her at that time to go out on a date because he thought that she'd be feeling low and feeling like a loser and that because she was low, he might have a chance.

Michael Furcciniti:

Right.

Fiona Kane:

And then she rejected him and he actually killed her. So sorry spoiler alert, but that's pretty much right from the beginning it tells you that that's what happened. Okay, so that's that kind of incel thing of you know, all that kind of predatory kind of. It's the difference between hey, be the best you can be and be who you are and be kind, and you'll meet people and the right person might want to date you. And here's a way that you might trick a girl into dating you. You know, if you shame her and then go in for the kill, you know.

Michael Furcciniti:

Yeah, and I mean those are two schools of thought, I mean from from peterson, to take right but, I think what's potentially more dangerous is the people that are just one or two percent off.

Michael Furcciniti:

So you can you can go down the extreme route or you can find a community where the overwhelming majority of the opinions are values that you hold, but there are a couple of things that are that you just don't agree with, and because you grow in that community and you learn to trust those people, you can end up taking on some pretty extreme opinions as a package of being part of that community, and it's not necessarily.

Michael Furcciniti:

I mean, I don't know too much about the, the it's called the manosphere or the kind of andrew tape circles yeah, the manosphere yeah yeah, but I think you have to also think about there is value in everything um, and you know people agree and disagree with both of those people, but ultimately you have to look at what's online and you have to look up your minds. You have to adapt to the community, but you also have to make sure that you're not how do I put it?

Fiona Kane:

inalienable, but not too inalienable, yeah, yeah it goes back to that critical thinking you were saying before, which is why it's important that your parents teach that to you and your teachers teach that to you, that critical thinking, because you shouldn't really like, no matter what community you're in, if you agree with every single thing you might want to question. As human beings, we don't all agree with everything. I'm sure if you and I sat down and got going on a conversation, we'd agree with a whole bunch of stuff and then we'd find a topic that we just didn't agree on. Yeah, and that's fine, and that's healthy, and that's normal, and we're able to kind of do that and go, oh okay, it's all right, fair enough, we figure it out a way to agree or we just move on, right, but that's actually really healthy.

Fiona Kane:

But I think what's happened and this is actually and I know that we're kind of a bit short on time so I won't go for too much longer but I suppose this is the algorithm thing, right? Um, so maybe you can talk to us a little bit about that, because essentially, we're going to get back whatever you know. It shows us. Whatever the internet algorithm, the social media algorithm, wants us to see more of the thing that we like. So we tend to be in that echo chamber and so if you're following the andrew tate, so whatever you're following, you'll see more and more of that, and so, because that's all you tend to see in where the echo chamber, then we start to think that's how everybody thinks and we start to take on all of the views. So tell us a little bit about the algorithm and maybe what can we do about that. Is there any strategies that we can do in regards to the algorithm?

Michael Furcciniti:

Yeah, I think, at a basic level, you're right in that it shows you what you want to see. So by spending a fraction of a second longer in one video than the other, it will show you more of that. It doesn't lie. It doesn't suggest things that you will completely hate. It might suggest things that are kind of outside of your scope of what you'd like to interact with. It's controllable. You can wipe it. I think a lot of people don't know, and I'll put up some stuff about this in the next week or so. Um, all of these things can be wiped and reset on every platform, okay?

Fiona Kane:

so you can reset your history on facebook or instagram or whatever. Is that what you're saying?

Michael Furcciniti:

uh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you can reset the suggested content so that you start afresh. You can do it every day if you really want to. It's a feature that not a lot of people know, but it's sorry, flannery, your original question. Let's try.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah, yeah, no, that's all right. It's just, it's about the, it is about the algorithm, and I think so one. You said that you could potentially wipe it, and what we will do is we'll make sure that we put in some links to you so that people can go and find you and they can see you talking about this in more detail.

Michael Furcciniti:

But the other is, I think, the other day, I saw something that you showed on Instagram that you could click on. Click on it and say show me less of this or show me more or something. So how does that work? Yeah, so you can um, you can choose interested or not interested on certain pieces of content, and slowly too much slow, isn't that? You can train it on what you want and don't want to see. Problem is, firstly, not a lot of people know about that. Secondly, it requires a lot of willpower to be disciplined enough to actually say I really don't want to see this stuff. You can blacklist words as well.

Fiona Kane:

So you can blacklist certain words and say I don't want to see any content that has this word in it.

Michael Furcciniti:

Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah. I don don't want to see any content that has this word in it. Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah. I don't know if that extends into um speech or if it's just what's in captions and hashtags, okay, but you can definitely certain topics. If you hate a particular brand or whatever, you can just look. Um, you know it's four up and you'll have. I suppose the conversation with, or kids need to be told this is completely, completely within your control. It's not. You are not at the mercy of social media, provided you're diligent about it, yeah, and you can understand when things are getting out of hand.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah. So essentially, you have to know that, first of all, what you're seeing is not the whole world, it's just a little fraction of what they think you're interested in, and, secondly, you have some control over what that looks like about what you see. The other thing that I encourage clients to do I just encourage them to watch more of the things they want to see. So I had a client who was seeing a lot of stuff she didn't want to see on Instagram, so I got her to start watching. I always joke because lately I've been watching Capybara videos and because I've been talking about them and watching them. Oh my God, I get so much. Every time I open up my phone it's Capybaras. Yeah, there you go.

Michael Furcciniti:

Yeah, there you go.

Fiona Kane:

I think I've become an expert on capybaras. I know everything, but you know. But that's cute. They're just cute, right. So I just see this cute little animal. And the thing is, if you actively go on, I had this client who was. I got her to, I think, a couple of times a week. I was getting her to send me cute videos and the reason I was getting her algorithm by looking at them.

Fiona Kane:

So I said I want you to actively look for videos that make you smile, that make you happy, that feel good, and I want you to send them to me. So I know that you're doing it and what I've noticed is most of my content now is Cappy Burrows or it's cute videos and stuff. So you know you can change it just by what you look at.

Michael Furcciniti:

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. We have a lot more control over it when we think, yes, it's just, yeah, it's just having the discipline to control it, yeah.

Fiona Kane:

Knowing you can control it, learning how to do that, knowing that you're not seeing everything. It's not a balanced view on anything, and also just I think what it comes back down to is you know, these are discussions that parents have to have with their kids, and schools probably should have better discussions about some of these things. And you've really got to decide when you're going to introduce your kids to these things. But even if you're not giving them a phone or giving them the internet, they are going to be seeing things at school or at other friends' devices. So you still need to start some of these discussions, even if you're really careful about what you're doing with your own child. That's right, isn't it?

Michael Furcciniti:

Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's not something you can completely govern at all and it's not a matter of protecting them. It's not a matter of um. It's not a matter of protecting them to say, it's not a matter of equipping them with the right knowledge you just cut out a little bit at the end.

Fiona Kane:

So you said it's a matter of not so much protecting them but protecting them with knowledge. Is that what you just said?

Michael Furcciniti:

yeah, just equipping them with the right knowledge, making sure that they know equipping them with the right knowledge so that they know yeah, yeah, yeah it's like.

Fiona Kane:

This is the world I live in. So, rather than just try and completely protect them from it, how about equip them so that they can learn how to live in it? That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

Michael Furcciniti:

That's it. It's that first impression, right? Yeah, if you can explain something to them before they see it online, I mean yes.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah.

Michael Furcciniti:

You have a much better chance of giving them the right idea or helping them see things with a more balanced view than when they're still delivered by someone who doesn't care for their own doing.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah, exactly, yeah, okay, so that's probably a good place to leave it. But is there anything else that you would like to add, or do you feel like that's a good place to leave it?

Michael Furcciniti:

I think it's. At the end of the day, it comes down to what happens at home. There's education has a role in terms of what you get taught at school, how you manage all of these things, but it comes down to good parenting. You have to be able to have the conversations and have the courage to tell them what your values are. Yeah, and this is what we believe as a family. They can make up their own mind later, yeah.

Fiona Kane:

Yeah, talk to your kids. Hear them Talk to your kids, teach them your values. And gone are the days and this isn't a thing that came up in adolescence but gone are the days where you could be sitting there and the kid's in the bedroom on the computer and you don't know what they're doing and you don't understand it and you don't understand. Oh, instagram, oh, it's this thing. I've never heard of it, like whatever. You can't not know. Unfortunately, it's just not an option.

Michael Furcciniti:

Yes, yeah, yes, absolutely.

Fiona Kane:

So I will put your links in their bio but in the show notes.

Michael Furcciniti:

But look just where can people find you just if they want to find out more about this from you. Yeah, I think for this kind of content my LinkedIn is probably the best place. So LinkedIn, michael.

Fiona Kane:

Personality on LinkedIn with the proper spelling in the English speaking somewhere there yeah, you'll have to check the show notes for the spelling and also I'll put a link for the LinkedIn there as well. But you know, I think you've been sharing some interesting content. So, yeah, definitely, if you're a parent or just you're interested in this topic, it'll be worth following Michael on LinkedIn. So we will put you know. Check the spelling on the show notes or just go to the link in the show notes.

Michael Furcciniti:

So, look.

Fiona Kane:

Thank you so much, Michael. I really appreciate you coming on today to talk to me about this. Yes, thanks for having me. This is a podcast where I like to have real conversations about things that matter, and I think that it was a really good conversation about something that really matters a lot right now. So I appreciate you and thank you for everyone who's watching and listening. Please like, subscribe and share. I see that when I read the details in the back end, it tells me that 80% of the people who are watching my content or listening to my content are not subscribed. So please subscribe, because it makes a big difference to how many people get to see and hear this content. So I appreciate all of your support and I'll see you again next week. Thanks, bye.

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