LWID #7 - The effects of social media and drinking

Note: This podcast episode covers discussion around the Last Week in Denmark (24.11-01.12) Episode 41 Year 4 update.

After a hectic week of Romanian vote counting and office Christmas parties, Narcis and Arun got together on a late Tuesday evening to discuss this week's ongoings and the general geo-political landscape.

Topics covered in today’s podcast:

• Narcis & Arun's updates on Romanian elections and Christmas parties (00:13)
• Thoughts on the Danish petition to ban use of social media for those under 18 (06:18)
• Distinction of legislation that falls under Danish vs. EU levels (09:13)
• The TikTok effect (15:18)
• Is Denmark going the direction of the Systembolaget? (25:01)

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Chapters

• 0:00 Potential ban of social media for U18 in Denmark?
• 0:00 Legislation - EU vs. national-level
• 0:00 The TikTok effect on society
• 0:00 Will we see the Danish Systembolaget?
• 0:13 Romanian elections and Christmas parties

Transcript

0:00

[Music] Hello, hello. It's been a while since last time we talked. I've been quite busy. I don't know if you have noticed, but we had elections in Romania, so... And I was running a voting section down here in Aalborg, so my weekends have been gone because we had two weekends in a row and we still have one more. Next weekend as well that we have to do elections. So that's why I'm not the freshest mind out there this time. Just trying to understand... Yeah, yeah, yeah, but just trying to understand, so Romanian elections are happening and what is your... Or trying to understand what is your responsibility? Like you go and cast your vote, but what else do you... No, okay. I have to... I'm the president of the voting section, so I have to organize the voting section. I have to ensure there is a space where people can vote. I have to make sure I count the votes, follow all the rules, send the votes, secure them, all of that. So I was busy basically from Thursday night to Monday morning at 3 in the morning. Like party, it reminds me of party. Go to a party and then spend the whole night, in fact early morning, and then did you have a good sleep? Narcis. Yeah, Monday. I had a good sleep on Monday. Like I was waking up, waking up, then again, oh my goodness. I'm not fully recovered, but luckily soon there will be one more... There's only one round left and then we're done with elections for four years. Good. So how has it been your week? I mean, I understand what was busy with me. What about you? I'm also occupied. To start with, it was a fun activity. We had a work for a company and we had a Christmas party. Friday, completely Christmas party. The last couple of weeks, we were talking about Christmas party and I think I finally had the Christmas party. The company grew in size close to 2,000 now, employees and just in a short span. And imagine, it's like an Indian wedding, 900 people showed up to the Christmas party. It was like, wow. And that is a lot of people. We had party in the heart of Copenhagen close to Fiskertorvet. It's called Lokomotivværkstedet. That's the place we had a possibility to accommodate 900 plus. 900 people at the Christmas party. That's incredibly... Yes, incredibly. That shows the growth of the organization. It also shows the demand for jobs within pharmaceuticals. I could see that and it will be more as the year comes by. So, Friday was the Christmas party. So, I went late to bed and then Saturday, being part of Toastmasters club, we had the Christmas party with our club in Frederiksberg. So, that again party. And then I woke up Sunday, hopefully sober by noon. And then, yeah, the day just flew away. I had to clean. I have to recover. I was planning for Monday and then, of course, daily rituals and then stuff happens. So, I was quite occupied and I think it is good that we kind of stay a little flexible with the schedule. We weren't able to manage to do it on Sunday. But I think we are managing. Sunday was... I was counting votes, you know. One for you, one for you, one for you, one for you. It was so funny. In the middle of the night, it was like midnight. We did elections at 3F Holbrook. And in the middle of the night, the security guard just comes, beats at the door, is like, "What's happening here?" We were like 13 people, each of them sitting around, each of them with stacks. And I was screaming some names and giving it to them. And he was like, "What the hell? Is this some sort of illegal gambling rig that I have found in here?" You know, in the movies, when they go to Chinatown and they enter through some place and then they discover this very fancy gambling then. I think that was his reaction when he saw us like, "What in the hell is happening? What's with all those white papers giving, giving around us? Why are they all having different stacks of papers? And what is this crazy guy in the middle screaming? Just gambling guys. Nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was quite funny. To explain to him, what are we doing in there? Did we explain the whole thing to him? I had to explain at least in two lines what's happening, but then he remembered that we were supposed to be there. Good. But that was funny that his face, he was like, "What in the hell is this?" I mean, you come in the middle of the night, you're just security guard, probably it's your night shift and in the building that you're supposed to nobody to be there. It's like, "What's this room? Where is a lot of people?" That reminds me of my relationship with the security guards come to check the offices. Usually when I go late to the gym, I'm the only person in the company and you could see the automatic lights turn on when somebody approaches. So we kind of scare each other. If that guy comes in the other side of the building, you automatically see lights go on. And then he sends somebody, somebody is coming in this way. So he could possibly think that there is somebody working, but we kind of bump each other and he said,"Okay, it's security guard. I was afraid for a second." But yeah, it happens on a random day though. It's not like every day. And every time I see somebody new, so it's funny to know me. If you were so busy on Sunday, did you even have time to read newsletter? Oh yeah, talking about newsletters. I didn't have the time to read newsletter though. I spent half an hour before our podcast while we were recording today, Tuesday, the 3rd of December. I had two topics, I think one topic the most, which is about social media. My favorite topic. Allow these kinds of articles that pop up in the mainstream media. And I could see that the new petition advocating on ban of social media across 18 year olds using social media concerns about youth using digital platforms. And I wanted to talk about this because it's a thing in a lot of countries. It's not just Denmark, but I think what surprises me most is what is the role of the government here. Because it's more to do with let's say behavior because social media is one way to also share information. It's one way to learn. It's one way to also kill your time by binge watching or doom scrolling as we call it in the Gen Z terms. So it could be educational, it could also be something that consumes a lot of time doing nothing. So banning seems to be like a threat more than an opportunity from my perspective. So let's dive deep into what could be a possible outcome. I don't know. Maybe we can start from you. What do you think? What do I think? Well, to be honest, I'm not a big supporter of social media in the hands of young people because it has more damaging effects than it has educational effects. Books are still there in case you want more education. You don't necessarily need to go to social media to get the light from. But in terms of the proposal itself, you know, in Denmark, any citizen can make a proposal, right? For the parliament to be considered. There have been many, many, many such proposals made over the years, but only the ones who get 50,000 signatures will be considered by the parliament. And as you probably have seen, there's less than 48 or something like that that got approved, not that that got approved, that got to be discussed in the Danish parliament. And from which only seven became reality. So the chances of this to become reality is pretty slim, to be honest, first of all, because most of the political parties in the parliament do not favor it. There is, of course, the minister of digitalization, even her. She's quite against social media platforms. So the new minister that we have with digitalization, she's bent on doing something about it. But even she is not interested to raise the age limit to 18. It's too high. Most parties that are in favor of this are mostly going up to 16 tops, not 18. And another problem is that you cannot ban something just in Denmark. You need to ban it in the whole of European Union. So that best what they can do is they can, Denmark can pressure the other member states of European Union to follow the same trend. And together make a decision on European level. Yes, we want to have a ban on social media under 16. There is already one under 13. The problem is, is not enforced properly. They're trying to understand, they're trying to understand more deeper. So if if a petition is being passed and it's not a petition, it's a citizen proposal proposal. Yeah, so this has an official legislative framework. A petition is if I can go to Facebook say, hey, there's this open letter who wants to sign it. Me, me, me, me, me, me, me. There you go. Petition. Yeah. No, I'm just curious. Why can't Denmark decide what to ban? Why should EU be pulled into this conversation? Well, let's start with that first. It's because social media or at least digitalization falls under the competence of the European Union. You know, in European, we have certain competencies which are exclusive just at the European level. Some competencies are shared between European level and national level. And some competencies which are exclusive national level. What is exclusive national level? The healthcare system, the education system. Yeah, around that pensions. Financial, yeah. Yeah, not too much. There are certain financial ones that are co-shared with the European level. So yeah, it's simply that's one. And the second thing is that even if you was a national competence to do that, it's not possible because you need to ban in the whole digital space of EU so that people don't just switch to a Germany VPN and problem solve, right? Problem created otherwise in a new way. Yeah, you just make more business for the VPN providers. Exactly. Not VPN will allow this. No, I think it's interesting when you say that way. And it's also, for me, it's a fact. Wow. So when you are part of a union, you address certain things that are exclusively that your country could decide. And there are things that has to be abided by the union, which is, I think, quite similar to Indian agreements. There are certain things that my government in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, could say has independent or autonomous. There are things that the central government exercises. So it makes that use. India is a very close example of European. No, not far. It's a union of states, right? Yeah, you also have this diversity of languages and you're trying to somehow navigate it, even though you're so diverse in the same union. Agree. Yeah. Let's address the second part of the question that I have, which is, now that you said about slim chance of this getting applicable. So what if, let's say, if hypothetically this gets approved, passed and the law has been forced. I think, I think banning for 13 makes sense for me and not even 15. And I will tell you the reason why a lot of people at the age of 15, they start to think, they start to think, I don't know if it could be even lower. They start to explore what is possible for them. They have the autonomy to do it in Denmark, just like the way rules with alcohol, right? Who chooses to drink and what and social media could be seen in that way, depends on how much you want to consume. And what they could, what the government could actually do is educate in the right direction. Say, this is a tool that you could do to accelerate your career, accelerate your education, accelerate your journey, but it can also decelerate if you do it in the wrong way. And that could be a possibility. But I would say 15 to 18 is a prime age to also learn and consume and share and connect. I know for a fact Snapchat, a social media platform is used by SSR violence mechanism for parents because they exactly know where the children are, even though they go and have, let's say, a date night or something with other friends. They know for a fact that my child is safe having a good time with his friends. And that's a location tracker. Snapchat and sub approved. It's also under the GDPR. But I also see people send hatred. There's also a lot of misuse, a lot of efforts, where words and the culture is like, you know, getting worse and worse with what kind of information is shared that I agree. But there's other site, for example, open universities, access to information and also nobody said that you want to website banned websites. I mean, you can still have access to YouTube. You can still have access to other channels. It's just a question of banning the ones that are have algorithms that are highly damaging. So far, the negative effects of social media outweighs the positive ones, unfortunately. So we're not talking about banning YouTube. YouTube is not a social media channel. Right. Yeah, exactly. So we're talking about TikTok, mainly to be honest. We're talking about Instagram. We're talking about Snapchat. We're talking about Facebook. Maybe not. It's a 90s kids application. We're definitely not talking about LinkedIn. Nobody will touch LinkedIn. True. We're talking about access super damaging and it's a cesspool of bad stuff in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree. And I hate to say, TikTok has already banned in India. It was a huge market for a lot of countries. You managed. Yeah, yeah, we managed to succeed it. And I think Australia has done the same. Recently, I saw news that Australia has banned TikTok. It has disrupted the entirety. Funny, we did this many years back. It's not like recently. And there is some elements of geopolitics because TikTok is a Chinese app. So it is, I would say we don't have a proof yet, but what people with a majority feel is to send a signal to China that we banned TikTok because it's owned by a Chinese corporation. Nothing else. There's nothing else to do with. I mean, there is also Instagram, which has the equal influence, right? So TikTok does or Snapchat does. But why TikTok? And that's the big question because it's a corporation owned by, it's an application owned by a Chinese corporation. Yeah, but at least you eliminated one that is not a Chinese corporation. You eliminated one damaging tool from there because for the right reason. So, oh, yeah, it doesn't solve the social media problem. But I get your point. At least because in Romania, we are suffering now the effects of TikTok because Russia managed to use TikTok to kind of create a split in the society, bring from nowhere, nowhere, like a presidential candidate. Nobody knew who he was before the elections. And in the election night, he gets number one number of votes. And he goes second round. He was nobody before the election. Only people from TikTok knew who he was. And that was done with the help of the algorithm and the help of well targeted short videos. And they surprised everyone. And that created some sort of a very dangerous split in society between the ones who got their information from TikTok and the rest of us. So basically, they can rig an election with a lot of mass influence. And I know and that state was quite popular with the youths with his influence and spreading what he thought it was kind of a, it's also a lot of Gen Zs who followed Android rate for a while. See, that's the dangerous thing. So that's why I'm saying like social media just amplified, let's just say, the less desirable voices to be heard in society. There are some people who are better left without a platform. It's okay for them to express themselves, but it's really dangerous when others start reflecting or mirroring themselves into their opinions. And it's even worse when democracy is affected by this. So right now we have to rethink how democracy works. We have to rethink how political campaigns are being done. And we have to rethink, will we get into a world where we try to brainwash the users? And that's it. That's instead of door to door instead of traditional campaign, it's just to pay some specialists in TikTok, some videos, well targeted. And there you go. You won the elections. But there is also another side where platforms like as you mentioned, YouTube and Facebook could also be equally devastating because for example, recent elections, Trump was celebrated for a fact that he chose the right podcasters to stream his, I would say it was actually podcasters that influence grew when he was able to popularize amongst the youth and also a lot of people who follow them on social media. So there were a lot of influences using YouTube and a podcast series and also in Spotify, so constantly bombarding with the information and like a propaganda in itself. So yeah, I agree. YouTube is a very open platform. I search stuff in YouTube. But it kind of puts me in a situation why separately these two obligations when there's equally shots, for example, shots, YouTube shots, and also now there's a growing social media. LinkedIn has started videos also. So there's a lot of LinkedIn video is the talk of the town also in Denmark. The fees that I receive, you have a separate button, video button. So once you press, you can actually scroll through videos in LinkedIn and a lot of these financial influences, career consultants and also economic times, whomever you subscribe and follow could get the feeds. The algorithm is a bit different from other social media platforms though, but it's getting popular. They're trying to copy the model of TikTok basically. But what I'm trying to say is that the model should not be copied because right now the discussion at European level is that the algorithm needs to be basically muscled. So we were talking about not allowing the algorithm to give you, for example, let's say you watch a video. They shouldn't be allowed that immediately after there's a similar video coming further. You have to search for the video. You want to see a certain video, find it. It shouldn't be automatically recommended to you that you should see the next video again and again and again. So right now they're working on a legislation that will stop this automatic recommendations coming one after another. So you will be able to see the video and then you go to the search box, find more. I highly doubt that. But yeah, it will be interesting to see how can they do it because these recommendations are where the revenue comes for these social media platforms such as X. They can choose to leave the European Union if they don't like it. Well, but then a lot of countries have to agree. Like when it's a union, it's also something that Poland has to agree, Germany has to agree. It's fine. I don't think it will be difficult to get them to agree. It's never been a polarizing topic between EU countries. It's not something that they will fight over it. So if someone actually bothers to take the whole legislation to the end, it will happen. Now just it's a matter of seeing what's happening out there. There should be a new legislation on it in the next couple of months. But the point is there's a lot of warnings sent from the national level in many countries. People are really, really scared. First of all about the effects on democracy. Second of all about the effects on their children. So many parents at the stations are trying to see how to get out, not just social media, but how to get out screens out of schools and kindergarten. There's a whole movement I would say on a European level against, I don't know, let's just say we got too fast, too much technology. And people want to take a step back. Because we don't know what effects we'll have on our children. It definitely will affect the cognitive abilities, right? Because right now as we speak, people who consume social media, the attention span has lowered and lowered and lowered. Usually people watch a documentary, switch to short platforms where you spend 10 minutes instead of an hour. And now people are spending 5 minutes, 1 minute reel. But then they spend more hours watching reels after reels after reels and shots and tiktok videos. And then all of a sudden I find myself in the same scenario where I spend hours watching feeds. And my personalised feeds is more or less the same as 18 year youth would have. Basically, basically it shows whatever I am interested in. So my feed would look like financial gurus explaining about how to invest. There's also a feed about career development. There's also feeds about celebrities. Probably whatever I am interested in. It's the same with YouTube algorithm, right? Suggested for you. If you watch about expats in Denmark, then your suggestion feeds will find expats for making contents about Denmark. I don't know how easy it is for you to do this stuff. But yeah, let's see. I mean, legislatively they can just simply say the power of the algorithm is dangerous, you need to limit it. How do you limit it? This is the following proposal. No more recommendation videos next. Or at least the algorithm cannot. They can also stop the algorithm from reading you, from reading your preferences. And then you will not know what to give you next. So it will be random. That's another thing that can happen. So instead of giving you what you expect next, it will be random. Random as hell. So they can work on that. That's not a problem. Or they can choose to stop doing it in Europe. I remember when they implemented GDPR, right? A lot of American companies simply chose to not sell in Europe anymore. They deactivated their websites from the EU side. End of story. So they can invest in changing the algorithm or they leave. In the end, there's always space for European social media. We don't have one. I see that American, Chinese or Russian, I see lately. We spent roughly half an hour discussing this topic and it's also relevant topic. Do you mind what else do we can discuss about? Or do we have time enough to discuss more? I mean, one thing that really shocked the Danish society has been the proposal from the association of doctors in Denmark. They came up with a message saying we must drink less alcohol, which is a bit strange for Denmark. Because from all the Nordic countries, it's the only one where drinking alcohol is culture. Drinking alcohol is... it's equated with freedom, with liberty. No politician has had the desire or the ambition to come up with proposals that limit access to alcohol in general, like they did in Sweden and Norway. I don't know if you've ever been there, but if you've really noticed that you cannot just simply go to a store and buy alcohol. That is not that easy. Down there, they have special stores which are open in specific hours during the week at a very ridiculously high price for it. That's why when Norwegians come with a boat to Denmark, you can notice how happy they are when they first pass into Danish waters and then the store opens and then they go crazy. Same with the Swedish people. For Denmark, it has been a bit of a shock, the whole proposal, to be honest. They didn't expect this in general. But in the end, it's not that crazy. They just want to make sure that people on the 18 don't drink, just seem like they don't have access to social media, they should also not drink. They want to make it more expensive, they want to make it just like on nicotine products hidden behind the counters so you don't have to see it, so you get tempted to buy it. You shouldn't be able to buy it at night when you're most likely to buy it or in gas stations. This whole idea of promoting alcohol-free communities, that's a new thing. I have friends who have actually given up on alcohol for a couple of years just to see how it works and then they just got used to the idea and now they simply don't drink. It's a bit strange to have a mix of friends who don't drink and who drink because... A question that I have is, it makes sense like if the government decides to say, ban sales of alcohol between 10ish to 8am in shops. It makes sense to ban sales of alcohol in gas stations, so does marketing of alcohol products to a certain extent. Alcohol banning at school parties is something that concerns me because you can't stop a party because there's going to be a lot of different ways where people think on how to have parties that forfeits or maybe bypass laws. It will create a lot of other options. They can easily go outskirts and then decide to do the same thing when there's a ban happening. What is your thoughts about it? I'm not a big fan of the whole proposal. If you look at the prohibition in the US, it didn't work at all. It just created a whole underground flourishing underground business. That's even more dangerous. This is just a proposal of the doctor association. From a public health point of view, they consider that we must drink less alcohol. This is the suggestion they came up with. Politically speaking, will this be turning into a proposal? Hard to say, to be honest. This again, it will be difficult for the political parties to find majority in a country that drinks alcohol at lunch. It will be a country where in the buses, 14-15 year old drink alcohol passing it one after another after a sports match where they play together. It doesn't have to be boys. It can be girls just as much. Any politician or political party that will go in that direction, it will have a hard time because they will lose votes. It is a proposal. There's clear a desire for a bit of change in that direction. They have been slowly, slowly, slowly chipping away at it to raise the age under which you can buy which level of alcohol and so on. They have played a little bit with it, but we are far away from such restrictive measures. Maybe some of it could be taken in consideration. So far, there have been no comments from the political parties. They are staying away from the debate. Let's just say, let's see. I'm going to watch this week to see how the Javi team unfolds further. Yes, interesting. I think these laws are sort of aimed for something, but they at least go to a certain extent where something is implemented. I think you can follow these developments soon. I don't know when this decision should be made. This was basically the government is planning a health care reform and part of it is going to be about the public health or the alcohol effects on public health. And they asked the College of Doctors to make up the recommendations. They did so. So they will probably take it in consideration, but we don't know what the proposal will be like or how the reform will look like. So we have to wait and see. But not this year, most likely next year mid-spring. Q2. In corporate terms. Q2 next year. Exactly. Q2. We had a good discussion about two major topics that we managed to talk about today. Hopefully. Yeah, I think we really did a good job. I guess what do you think? Yeah, it was enjoyable and it's interesting that you can still cover quite a lot in so little time. What I like about in your articles is also, I would say it's crisp to the point and short and sweet. So it makes me think what could I know more about? And that is also why this podcast is kind of interesting for me is we dive deep into things in our own perspectives. What do we think about this topic? Tinker with the perspectives, right? Yeah. Amazing. Have a nice evening and looking forward to have you on the next episode. Hopefully soon. My pleasure. Always have a good evening to everyone. Of course, probably it's not going to be evening when you listen to this, but it's evening here where we're recording in the late evening on a Tuesday night. See you next week. Perfecto. Bye.