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Join James Petrossi in 'Leave the Feed: 30 Days of Disconnect' as he interviews creators and mental health advocates about their journeys, the digital quagmire, and tips to create a healthier relationship with social media.
[00:00:00]
James Petrossi: Hello and welcome to Leave the Feed 30 Days of Disconnect. Today is , One and the Same, and I am here with a phenomenal human being. Victoria Anderson, welcome to the show.
Victoria Anderson: Thank you very much for having me and already for calling me a phenomenal human being. I I'm flattered already. Just wait till I get into it though.
James Petrossi: let's learn about you.
Victoria Anderson: Okay.
James Petrossi: about your story, your passion for brands, culture, people, and strategist. How did your journey unfold at the intersection of these things and where has this path taken you?
Victoria Anderson: Okay, so I'm going to try and make a long story short, but it is a loaded question for me. It. Okay, so you're James [00:01:00] officially, but I call you Petro. Can I just shorten it to Petro?
James Petrossi: Yeah, that's
Victoria Anderson: None of this was intentional at first. I, find myself in NYC having grown up as one of nine kids in Texas from a very young age, I began to understand deeply like the power of learning and education, a great equalizer, but also a system that can let extraordinary potential like fade into the shadows.
So by the time college came around. I had set this grand ambition to revolutionize access to education, which for me is ultimately about prosperity. And especially for historically underserved and underrepresented groups, had no idea how I would actually do that. I figured I could become an education secretary or maybe run a foundation or something like that.
I studied economics and political science. With plans to go to law school at University of Texas and then graduation. Enter onto the scene. A dear friend of [00:02:00] mine, shout out to Ahed Kosh, who during the summer after graduation student loans came to, and he invited me to take a role at the advertising agency he worked at.
And that moment, or that. Invitation and me accepting it quite literally changed the trajectory of my life. So I met my wife. We ended up moving to New York and working at a marketing agency, a cultural marketing agency, and that double major, understanding human behavior, understanding economic behavior, combined with some great mentors along the way, sort of pushed me to think about strategy as a way to.
Deliver on my ultimate, I guess what underpinned that ambition again, prosperity, possibility, using culture to unlock connection. And so I've found a lot of promise and just [00:03:00] general motivation from this belief that you can align the interest of businesses, brands, and institutions with the people and communities that they serve.
And my passion as a strategist is to literally serve as the connector who finds and facilitates that kind of exchange.
James Petrossi: And what have you seen inside that power of connection and that power of connecting people and communities with brands and how it can overcome some of the challenges that you first inspired you when you were in economics, right? And that other type of ethos that was driving you earlier in your education and career.
Victoria Anderson: IF found that it all too often is a power we take for granted. And forget to access. We don't make the time, we don't have the patience. We forget about the power of making that connection and taking the time to [00:04:00] understand. And as a cultural strategist, as a leader of a, of a team.
As someone who works and is active in my community, I've just found that when you unlock the emotional, but also like literal, commercial, cultural outcomes are so much more rich and varied and lasting and useful.
James Petrossi: Now let's talk about unlocking, right? And when we wanna unlock these positive outcomes, social media has a huge role inside of that. are some of the positives? And let's stick with the positives first, like. social media is at the nexus of unlocking the potentials of communities, brands, people, all for good.
Victoria Anderson: The positives, I'd start with the fact that. It allows us to share to express and to quite literally [00:05:00] find community in ways that weren't possible before. And in terms of expression and community and exchange of ideas being sort of the foundations of progress of communication, social media enables that in a, in a beautiful way.
At times
James Petrossi: And what are some of the trends that are going to continue to shape the relationship we have with social media, each other, and our communities.
Victoria Anderson: One that. Comes to mind, even as I talk about the upside being that it lets us share broadly and find communities in ways that we hadn't before. One of the shifts that I'm seeing is what sociologists Dana Boyd calls the context collapse. And it's this idea that all of the different audiences in our lives are suddenly collapsed into one space.
So on social. We are, yes, [00:06:00] connecting with these various communities, but all too often we're also performing for them. We're performing for our friends, our coworkers, strangers, an algorithm all at the same time. And it creates this sort of pressure to self edit constantly. We are performing constantly and that downside is like just sort of the chip away at.
Self-expression because you're trying to be so many different things and so deeply aware of how all of those different categories of people perceive you.
James Petrossi: With that concern of perception of self, where does authenticity exist within the social space? And it's a loaded word that everyone loves to talk about, but with this sort of weight on our shoulders to be performative, what challenges exist within the word authenticity itself in these spaces?
Victoria Anderson: [00:07:00] It's just very difficult to be authentically engaged in a social media context without very sort of disciplined practice and clear intentions about why you're there, what you're trying to get out of it. How do you speak and interact from a place of truth where, you know, the way the platforms are set up aren't necessarily designed for intentional, authentic interaction?
It's volume, it's doom scrolling, it's all so algorithmically based.
James Petrossi: And what trends do you see in terms of disconnection and going back to IRL, like in real life experiences, how are we coming out of the pandemics a few years ago, but. Where are we evolving into now based on all of the time that we've spent getting TikTok going and now all of a sudden like saying like, oh my [00:08:00] gosh, wait a minute.
Like there might be more than just dance videos.
Victoria Anderson: I think one of the things that's interesting about social media is that it sort of, kind of collapsed the boundaries between work and play. And, you know, back to the, the point I made earlier, education or enrichment, and I think those are natural human desires. And because it's difficult to find them in a digital context or a social media context, I think there is a not, I think I've seen a human response to that.
To go out and find ways to, ways to play to sort of detox digitally and find ways to connect with the world around you. We've. You know, see the uptick in vinyl records. We see the uptick in digital cameras being purchased. By, you know, gen Z [00:09:00] and, and Gen A, we see live experiences being a huge share of people's wallet and, and priorities.
And I think that is a response to that desire for. You know, the, the sort of boundaries and the focus time in those spaces.
James Petrossi: And how have you personally? Manage your own boundaries with social media. What's your relationship been like? How has it evolved and where are you today?
Victoria Anderson: You know, I'm still working on it. For me so much of my work resides in. The space of understanding the latest trends, what people are talking about, being really on top of the news and the culture and the lingo. And so social media for me, back to upsides is a natural place to find and identify that and, and hear and see.
What people are caring about and how they express [00:10:00] themselves. It's also a portfolio, a networking space. It's entertainment. So it holds all of these sort of natural desires all in one place. But what I have found is that it makes it difficult, and I guess it's just sort of the draw to stay there and the difficulty with putting the phone down after you've gotten those intentional needs met.
That I've had to just like create a new habit around social media. And so for me, I kind of get most of the latest trends from those people around me and my wife, who's still very present on social. I've gone through periods of time and am now where I've I just cut off all use aside from maybe 15 minutes a day and just limit myself to that in the morning on the train, headed to work.
James Petrossi: Now, I think you brought up something really important about social media and the positives is that can find communities that. You never would've known, [00:11:00] existed. And there's a lot of people that we've had on this podcast that are creators, that social media, for all intents and purposes, saved life, right?
Because they were able to find. Someone that could listen to the challenges they were going through to uplift 'em. And know, you live in a rural town and you're only exposed to set amount of people, maybe a hundred in a graduating class. You can feel like an outsider. You go to social media, you find your people, finding your people can feel good.
Now the challenge is social media creates division. We only see our feed. get unconsciously programmed. There's innate challenges in that. Now today's. Lesson is one in the same and you know, one in the same. You know, really hearkens back to we're all part of this beautiful creation, right? This universe, and there's a universe inside of all of us, and we're all connected to that, but we all feel so [00:12:00] different and unique and personal.
We all have our expression. How can we continue to use social media as a valuable tool, but make sure we don't lose sight of that natural connection we have to each other. Whether it's your partner, it's the person that's filling up your coffee, or whether it's a stranger on the subway. How do we those connections and moments to further enrich our lives when we're outside of the feed?
Victoria Anderson: That's a beautiful question. I think the way you began it when you talked about those who have, you know, for whom social media has literally saved their lives, I think it speaks to this, sacred fact of the human condition, which is that we all have this need to be meaningfully understood and genuinely valued.
And so yes, a world shaped by [00:13:00] feeds and algorithms may make living that out a bit more difficult, but still very possible. And to your question at times even. Further enabled by. And so I guess one of the pieces of advice I would, I would give or think about in that context is that intention to be understood and valued means that we curate our digital inputs with compassion for ourselves and for others that we.
Look for ways to choose real messages about life and about ourselves, and about our passions and our interest that we think about how to create from a place of true expression and not performance. And yes, yes, yes. Find ways to reclaim moments offline where that connection that we, you know, sort of [00:14:00] find, and that starts to vibrate in those expansive ways on social that we give them time and space to actually breathe in real life and whatever that means to the individual.
James Petrossi: I think that's so important and to make sure that we all take time to touch grass and we all do
Victoria Anderson: Yeah.
James Petrossi: and we remember that you know what's happening in the screen even with you and now, we're. at a distance, we're apart. And this conversation, this connection would be so much more enriched if we were in the same room and probably even more if there was no microphones or equipment
Victoria Anderson: Sure. Sure.
James Petrossi: could just sit down and like catch up.
And I'm wondering for yourself, you know, you talked about your wife uses social media more than you do. You are able to connect with her on really deep spiritual levels. How do you the balance in that relationship? you [00:15:00] both have time off to connect and enrich that soulful experience.
Victoria Anderson: we make it a priority. We make it a priority to be present with each other and with ourselves. We believe in that. We see the benefits of that. And then, you know, back to your point about how yes, this conversation we're behind screens together, we've got, you know, microphones and we're using technology to, to connect with each other.
I'll come off of this moment and go and talk to her about our conversation in real life and we'll have a moment, to let even the exchange between you and I breathe between her and I. And I think that's the opportunity inherent in deriving the benefits and values from. From social, but then finding ways to bring it back into present.
James Petrossi: Right, right. Yeah. That back and forth, give and take between. Technology is a tool, real life [00:16:00] experiences, sharing knowledge, enhancing connection. So important. And you know, you said we've made sure to find moments, right? These moments where we can connect and to you, I. What are those moments?
What are the times when disconnection becomes the priority? And some of them might be ritualistic, and you do them inherently, but I'm sure people that are listening are like, I'm having trouble with it and I'm not really doing it that much. Like, what do they mean for you and what are they?
Victoria Anderson: So a few for me or for us. And, you know, we, we actually do adhere to this. We've, we've been married for 10 years and we committed to doing a date night every Wednesday. There have been a few Wednesdays where we're not in the same place. We're traveling. We don't, we, we don't have the date night, but for us, that doesn't necessarily mean.
You know, we're going out to a [00:17:00] Broadway show, though sometimes it does, or dinner in a movie or checking out our new favorite restaurant. That just opened. We've made the rule that in order to be able to keep a Wednesday date night every year for 10 years, the only rule is that we can't have our phones for three hours.
And we just put those aside. Now, if I got a big work thing, we, we make intentional exceptions, but that is just the underlying rule. And it may not be a Wednesday date night or three hours without the phone. It may start for someone as literally just 10 minutes of analog every day, just 10 minutes. Create a habit every day.
Analog, whether that's reading a book. Taking a walk, ideally being present, touching grass and in a moment and, and being intentional about that.
James Petrossi: [00:18:00] There's people right now that are listening to this podcast, that are going on this 30 day journey. Maybe they're scrolling for like six hours a day. I don't know. Maybe they've lost connection with themselves, loved ones, the world around them, and there's others that are just looking for inspiration, like, how do I have healthier habits?
I think you've. Brought up some good ones about setting boundaries and priorities with your relationships, but encouragement or advice would you have for anyone that's struggling to make sense of the digital quagmire and how they fit into it?
Victoria Anderson: My biggest piece of advice is to set your intention. Be really clear about what that is. Maybe instead of asking, how do I use social media less, the question is, what do I no longer want social media to take from me? Or if you're simply aiming for a healthier relationship, maybe the question is, what do I want social media to do for me, and how do I limit my use to that purpose?[00:19:00]
I always suggest writing those intentions down. And where possible having an accountability partner to hold you to that? Maybe doing the challenge with somebody else, maybe making the note to a friend or a partner or my wife's tip, because she's, she'll get up and scroll in the night.
She has a little sticky note on top of her phone that in order to get on and scroll in the night, she has to take the sticky note off that says, I choose peace. It's a little trick, but it works for her. Little things like that. I would, I would say, and, and my hope for people in doing this challenge would be not to strive for perfection.
It's to. Strive for more awareness, more clarity, maybe more peace, and maybe just rediscovering what it feels like to be more present. And I think in finding those things, you know, you sort of inherently start to move closer to [00:20:00] the behaviors that enable that.
James Petrossi: Yeah, well said. You know, I love the idea of having the sticky note on the phone and being reminded of that choice because it brings it to your consciousness, it brings you to a sense of awareness and. It creates an internal dialogue over something that's so simple. I interviewed this amazing thought leader who's written dozens of books on consciousness, and he said, I put sticky notes around my house just to remind myself to breathe
Victoria Anderson: Yeah.
James Petrossi: you get stressed out and you forget to take that breath.
Curious. Any other future trends we should be aware of as we start to look at the intersection of social media? And culture and creation.
Victoria Anderson: I think we've covered so many and I could probably go on and on. What I wanna be careful about is, i, I guess there's not a binary [00:21:00] conclusion. Social media is not good. It's not bad. It is a tool and it depends on the use of that tool and the user of that tool. The trend that's is so clear is that we're wrestling with this as, as a society, that we're seeing young people especially wrestle with sort of the mental health whiplash that can come from being inspired to anxious to connect it to discouraged all in the span of a thirty second scroll.
And I think the opportunity is to. Define what the benefits of social media look like for the individual first and foremost, and move towards that.
James Petrossi: Wonderful. Thank you so much. I love all of the insights that you've shared, all the personal stories and all of the nuggets on brilliant ways that we can disconnect and raise our awareness to be more conscious of our social media consumption [00:22:00] and make us better creators.
Thank you so much, v.
Victoria Anderson: Of course. Thank you for having me. A lovely conversation.
James Petrossi: And for all of you listening, share, Leave the Feed with a friend. Don't be afraid to disconnect and have an epic day.