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The Current Transcript for January 18, 2023

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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Like many other women and girls in Afghanistan, she was an ambitious girl and wanted to deliver to her country.

MATT GALLOWAY: Since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021, lawmakers there have been scrambling for safety. Some, like former MP Mursal Nabizada, were hoping to flee to Canada and have been working with Canadian MPs to try to get here. This weekend, Nabizada and her bodyguard were shot and killed before that escape could happen. In 30 minutes, Afghanistan's former ambassador to Canada on the situation facing women and girls in her country, and her calls for Canada to do more now to help them. Also this morning, your mail on surgical backlogs and Ontario's plan to move some surgeries to privately run clinics. And later.

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This app is just you scrolling and just getting validation, even if it's just so fake and ungenuine. It's just something that is so alluring.

MG: It's not TikTok. It's not Instagram. It's called Gas. If you've got a high school student in your house, ask them about it. In an hour, how a wildly popular new app targeted at teens is once again raising concerns about self-esteem online. We begin though in the pub, and a rethink about the drinking habits of Canadians. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current.

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DRINKING GUIDELINES

Guests: Dr. Alexander Caudarella, Dan Malleck

MG: Are you attempting dry January? Coming off the busy and let's face it, for many people, a boozy holiday season. Plenty of us take a break from alcohol for the month. Now, some experts say we should be doing this year round or at the very least, reconsidering our relationship with alcohol. This week, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction updated its low risk drinking guidelines for the first time since 2011. The group is recommending no more than two drinks per week for the lowest risk from alcohol. That is a significant decrease from the 10 to 15 drink limit recommended per week a decade ago. Dr. Alexander Caudarella is chief executive Officer of the CCSA. Dr. Caudarella, Good morning.

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Good morning.

MG: What specifically are the risks of going beyond two drinks a week, as you understand it?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Well, I think what we've really learned is that there's no safe amount of alcohol. And so part of what it is is that there is an increasing amount of risk essentially for every drink added after that two. There's a little different way of thinking. Doesn't mean that everyone has to push themselves below that two drinks per week, but it does mean that if you're above that limit, you have to be comfortable with a certain amount of risk. And essentially, we're asking people to understand their risk for seven types of cancer and a number of other serious medical conditions, and to kind of place themselves at a level they're okay with.

MG: How statistically does that change when it comes to going above those two drinks per week in terms of the risks that people might face?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Well, the CCSA and more importantly, the scientific committee, which was represented by 16 different organizations, decided to put two points that you'll see as part of these guidelines. One is that two drinks per week. And that's chosen because being at that point, there’s a one in a thousand risk of a premature death. And then the other cup point you'll see is it's six drinks per week. At that point, people have a one in 100 risk of an increased or premature death. And then beyond that, we know that every drink you add in has a significant and almost exponential increase of harm associated with that.

MG: An exponential increase?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Well, that's the thing. Every drink is quite dramatic in terms of the increase that it adds of risk. So for example, if we take a look at something like diabetes or if we look at for example, liver cirrhosis, your risk might increase if you have seven drinks per week, from 200% over somebody who doesn't drink, to 400% if you have 14 drinks. It just keeps going up and up. And this has obviously a negative side to it. But then there's a positive side, which is if you're drinking too much, even cutting away one drink can have a dramatic improvement in your health.

MG: I think one of the things that people are trying to wrap their heads around is how we got to the two drinks or fewer per week number, because in 2011, the guidelines recommended no more than ten standard drinks per week for women, no more than 15 per week for men. That's not that long of a period of time. So what led to what I think a lot of people would characterize as a dramatic decrease in that?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: The past ten years have been associated with really significant growth in our understanding of how alcohol interacts with our health. So a number of new conditions, including what we call lower respiratory infections, these are things like pneumonias being associated with alcohol. But we also learned a lot about the association that alcohol has with different conditions. And one of the things we learned is that for a lot of them, especially the cancers, there's just no known low safe amount. I think before, we were thinking that if you were below a certain amount, you were really, really safe. And that just really hasn't panned out. As we've learnt more and more, we've really come to understand that there is some risk associated with even small amounts. So what this does is it takes this into account and it sets a cup point at which there is some risk and then another one in which there's more risk. And we essentially ask people to put themselves there.

MG: Are there groups that are more at risk than others when it comes to alcohol use?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Absolutely. So one of the things that this guidance tries to do is, especially in its technical parts that are really intended for physicians and health care workers, is to try and explain how alcohol impacts a variety of different conditions. So for example, if you already have a family history of breast cancer or other related diseases and you're already worried about that, then this is a good conversation to be having with your family physician, with your health care team, to really understand what your risks are. We can appreciate that not everyone is going to perceive risk in the same way or really be concerned about all of them in the same way. The other part is people who have a family history of either substance use issues would be more significantly impacted. We also make a note about pregnancy and how alcohol is best avoided during pregnancy. It's safest not to drink during that time.

MG: You also talk about how those risks to women's health, particularly when it comes to aggression and violence, are exacerbated if alcohol is in the picture.

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Absolutely. So we know that unfortunately, there is a lot more violence associated with men's drinking. Specifically around women's health, one of the questions we get is, well, in the past, there were different kinds for men and women. And although it's true that at the higher end of our spectrum that we've set, women will develop more and more significant complications from alcohol than men. With that kind of range up into including that six drinks per week that's really highlighted in this guidance, the risk is actually pretty similar between men and women. It's really only after that that women start to suffer a lot more risk.

MG: You and I are speaking in January, which in some corners is characterized as dry January. People use this month after perhaps a busy holiday season to rethink their relationship with alcohol. And alcohol as we know is present in many different social settings. What do we need to be thinking about in light of this research when it comes to again, how we think of alcohol in our social lives?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: I'm really glad that people are taking some time to think a little bit more about it, and I think that's all this is really asking people to do. There's something really important about that because maybe guidelines, maybe the way we as physicians, like and the way I've talked to my patients, we haven't fully been clear about the fact that even small amounts of alcohol carry risk. What we've heard is I think people are really keen to understand more. People are really interested in their health. I think this is why a lot of these things such as this concept of dry January is really being driven.

MG: But do we need to rethink more broadly just as a society, how we think about alcohol? I'm old enough to remember the days of, you know, when you'd watch a movie and people would be smoking in the movie or smoking on television. That doesn't happen now in many cases, or certainly the prevalence that it did in the past. Because as a society, we have had a big conversation about the impact of tobacco use. Do we need to have that same conversation around alcohol?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Well, there's no question that we as a society need to have more conversations about this. One of our biggest concerns is that right now in a lot of social situations, it's actually not considered okay not to drink. I think being able to move to a place where not necessarily people not to drink, but it's just okay and normal if people choose not to drink. That is really a goal that maybe society can put for itself. Increasing the number of people that can feel comfortable doing what they want to do for their health is going to be something that's going to increase the number of people who can participate in different things.

MG: Do you also need movement on industry? Again, if you go to the cigarettes world where there are mandatory warning labels on cigarette packages. Do we need to put the similar sorts of labels on bottles of wine or on a case of beer or whatever?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: One of the things the report highlights is that people have a lot of difficulty trying to understand how much they're actually drinking. Every beer, every wine has a different percentage. It's a different volume, it's a different size. And so we think that even just if there were possibilities to start by better informing people of how much alcohol is in each drink, would go a long way to helping people understand how much they're actually consuming. So for example, having the public summary of Canada's guidance on alcohol and health put on various products or available at what we call the point of port, could go a long way to helping educate people and helping them really be empowered to have the freedom to make their own decisions. This is one of the key takeaways from the report. We've kind of asked federal and provincial jurisdictions to really look at this and consider how can we better help people understand what to do? Really not to tell them what to do, but to help them make the decisions that they want to make.

MG: You’re a family doctor yourself?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Yes, I am.

MG: So the myth is that when the doctor asks you how much do you drink and you give a number, that family doctors will often double that number because they don't think people are telling the truth.

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: One of the things that I really like about the way this was developed by our scientific panel is that it really puts the freedom and the power back in people's hands. So in addition, you're right to the fact that maybe people don't know exactly how much they're drinking. Sometimes they're shy to endorse how much they are. But if we have messaging like this that says, you know what? Even if you're far end of that spectrum and you want to cut down even by one, good for you. It's never too late. It's never too little. Anything you want to do to improve your health is a great move. If that's the kind of messaging that's out there, if that's what we're really encouraging people to engage with their family physicians, I can tell you for sure that people will be much more willing and much more interested to engage in those kinds of conversations.

MG: I guess just finally, though, when you said earlier that there is no safe amount of alcohol that you can consume, as a doctor, do you want people to stop drinking entirely?

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: So as much as we want it to be more okay for people not to drink, we also recognize that alcohol is a big part of the social fabric in this country. Yes, cultures and norms need to change slowly, but I think it would be a mistake for us to go out. And certainly the message of this report is not for people to stop drinking. It is a message that if you drink less, you live more. And so you reduce it as much as you're comfortable. But we take risks every day. We engage in lots of risky behaviours in some degree or not. And I think the difference is really we just want people to be informed. We want people to be making their own decisions. And I think to ask people, especially when they're not ready or when it's not something that interests them, to stop alcohol entirely would be the wrong takeaway from this. It really is something where we want people to understand and then to make risks decisions accordingly. So for me, that's really, really important that people not look at this and say, Oh my, I need to stop drinking if I'm going to be healthy. I think it's this message of I'm going to reduce my alcohol as much as I can to get to the point that I'm at a risk that's comfortable. And I'm going to talk to my doctor, I'm going to talk to the people around me about it. And we're just really hoping that this can kind of spark some national conversation on that.

MG: Dr. Caudarella, we'll leave it there. It's good to talk to you. Thank you very much.

DR. ALEXANDER CAUDARELLA: Thank you so much.

MG: Dr. Alexander Caudarella is chief executive officer of the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction. The organization updated its low risk alcohol drinking guidelines this week, recommending that a safe level of alcohol consumption is two drinks or fewer per week. Not everyone is on board with these recommendations. Dan Malleck is a medical historian. He specializes in alcohol and drug policy. He's also a professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University, and the director of the school's Centre for Canadian Studies. Dan, good morning to you.

DAN MALLECK: Morning.

MG: Dr. Alexander Caudarella says this new alcohol guide is meant for people to better understand the risks of drinking alcohol and to minimize their risks with that information. To your understanding, has that been accomplished?

DAN MALLECK: I would say no. I mean, they definitely are interested in risk, and the CCSA’s focus is on harms, but they seem to be missing a lot of the benefits of alcohol. And in their study, they seem to have dialled out anything that talks about the benefits, the specific or broader benefits of alcohol.

MG: What are the benefits of alcohol?

DAN MALLECK: Well, this is one of the challenges. It's hard to get a lot of research on this, but we've seen lots of evidence of the benefits of red wine in cardiovascular health. Even beyond that, we look at the place of alcohol in our culture and in our lives and how it is not always a negative thing. It does have that social role. And that's not to say that people should be going out and getting blitzed all the time. But to focus only on harms doesn't really give people the full picture.

MG: Do you need that alcohol for those social connections? I mean, people used to say the same thing about smoking. Do you actually believe that people need alcohol for that social function?

DAN MALLECK: I don't know if they need it, but I can look at experiments from the temperance movement a hundred years ago where they tried to create non drinking spaces and they just were utter failures, like they just couldn't reproduce that. And part of it is because when some people think of drinking in a bar or a pub, and when some people think of this coming from this problem framework like the CCSA is presenting, which is basically saying alcohol has no benefit only harms, then they miss the fact that, you know, if you go out for a drink with a friend and have a drink, it might loosen things up a bit. People might feel more relaxed, people might, you know, enjoy themselves more, and there are positive benefits to those things.

MG: But again, presumably, those things are possible without drinking alcohol.

DAN MALLECK: No, you can. But it is part of our culture in a way that if you remove it, something will be lost. And we speak about this sort of theoretically, I guess, because the research on socialization, and actually, a lot of the research on drinking cannot be removed from its cultural context. But if you're looking at this from a harm perspective, you're looking at it and saying, well, alcohol is harmful. So if we're seeing maybe some harms, maybe some benefits, we're going to talk about the harms, we're going to break towards harms.

MG: But we know that alcohol is a carcinogen. We know that it can increase your risks of certain cancers, of heart disease. There can be an increase in car collisions. We know that it can increase violence as we've heard in some of the reporting. The Canadian Cancer Society says that if you drink three and a half drinks a day, that doubles or triples your risk of developing cancer of the mouth and the oesophagus, and it increases your risk of colorectal cancer as well. Why not arm the public with more information about the health risks that are associated with drinking alcohol?

DAN MALLECK: I guess the answer I'd give is how are we framing risk? And so when you start to talk about things like laryngeal cancer, which have very low prevalence and very low likelihood of dying from that, but you're putting all this pressure on people not to drink and concerned about their drinking, it does build a sort of a negative sense of something that has positive social benefit.

MG: But again, they aren’t telling people not to drink. They're telling people to drink with knowledge.

DAN MALLECK: Yeah. Yeah. And what that does is this builds around drinking this negative stigma. And I'm not saying people should be going out getting loaded, but we often see this when we’re talking about drinking in parks, when we’re talking about loosening liquor laws, that people go to the worst case scenario.

MG: One of the suggestions coming out of these guidelines is for labels to be applied to bottles of alcohol, that would articulate, would lay out some of the risks that we've been talking about. We spoke with Carolyn Hurst, who's the chair of the Ontario Craft Wineries Association, board member of the Wine Growers of Canada, obviously vested interest in this industry, to ask her about these guidelines and the proposed labelling of risks on bottles. Take a listen to what she said.

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CAROLYN HURST: Warning labels really provide limited value in their ability to provide meaningful information to support an informed decision. They also fail to really reach the consumers at the point of pour. So for instance, in bars and restaurants or even at your friend's house, you're not in physical contact with the bottle. We shouldn't underestimate Canadians’ ability to make their own health decision. Alcohol is not the only thing that impacts people's health. You know, as a consumer, I'm going to make a decision about whether I have a glass of wine or not based on my understanding of what my health choices are and my lifestyle is.

MG: Now, again, she has a vested interest in this as somebody who is the chair of the Ontario Craft Winery Association. Those labels perhaps could dissuade people from buying a bottle of wine. But is there a benefit from your perspective to having a warning label on a bottle of wine or spirits?

DAN MALLECK: I think it depends on the type of label. I mean, because some of the discussion is around warning labels about associations with cancer. If it would give relative risk, I think that might be not what groups like the CCSA and public health officials are looking for. One of the other things CCSA recommends is information about what actually constitutes a drink. Maybe that might be useful. So to say, you know, if it's like if you drink more than five drinks a week or six drinks a week, you have a high risk of or an increased risk of these cancers, that does distort the risk. I would love to see labelling that balanced it.

MG: What is this really about then, to your perspective? And what do you think these guidelines and this conversation that we're having in January when people might be rethinking their relationship to alcohol, what is this about?

DAN MALLECK: It's a really good time for this to come out if your perspective is to get people to stop drinking. I think also there is this tendency to think, and when we talk about sort of the woman from the wine industry, that she has a vested interest, but to think that organizations like the CCSA don't have a vested interest, we have to remember that if your job and your funding are based upon looking at substances as problematic, you're going to look at substances as problematic.

MG: Again, they're not saying to not drink, they're saying to drink mindful of what it is that you're consuming and what the impacts of that might be, and whether truly if we have these associations that you go out and you have a drink, whether it's with friends from the office, whether it's at a dinner party, what have you, that we need to rethink the culture, that we need to at least examine our cultural ties to alcohol.

DAN MALLECK: One of the interesting positions is here's the information, do what you want. But when you have this kind of information, it creates sort of a moral discourse around drinking that creates this room for people to judge. It does reinforce this sort of shaming or sort of guilt inducing. And those things themselves are unhealthy.

MG: Dan Malleck, we'll leave it there. I'm glad to talk to you. Thank you very much.

DAN MALLECK: Thank you so much, Matt.

MG: Dan Malik is a medical historian, specializes in alcohol and drug policy, also professor in the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University, director of the school's Centre for Canadian Studies. Your thoughts on this are welcome. You can email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your CBC News is next. And then:

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She texted me and she said, This is like getting too much. I can't stay anymore.

MG: Mursal Nabizada was telling friends it was time for her to leave Afghanistan. But she would never get the chance. The former member of Afghanistan's parliament was killed over the weekend. In just a moment, the calls for action from Canada in the wake of her death. I'll speak with Afghanistan's former ambassador to Canada. That's coming up in 6 minutes. My name is Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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AFGHAN AMBASSADOR

Guest: Shinkai Karokhail

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and you're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, scrolling for validation. How one new app is going viral with teenagers across North America. But first, the deadly cost of fighting for women's rights in Afghanistan.

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[foreign speech]

MG: That's the voice of Mursal Nabizada, a former member of Afghanistan's parliament addressing her colleagues a couple of months before the Taliban took over. Mursal Nabizada was killed in Kabul over the weekend by armed gunmen. She was 32 years old. She is the first lawmaker from the previous government to be killed since the takeover in 2021. Here in Canada, her death is being met with calls for action.

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What we're looking for is the government of Canada to sign off to allow them to come to Canada. It's a simple thing. We just need the government to take the action. These are members of parliament that we support, the Canadian government supported. You know, we claim to have a feminist foreign policy. We claim to have a feminist international assistance policy. Here's an opportunity for Canada to step up. And I certainly hope the government acts with the urgency that we need.

MG: That's NDP foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson. She is among a group of Canadian politicians who were working across party lines to bring Mursal Nabizada to Canada. Eight other women who served in Afghanistan's parliament before the Taliban takeover still remain in that country. Shinkai Karokhail served as Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada from 2016 through 2018. She is also a former member of the Afghan parliament. And she is with me in studio. Good morning.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Good morning.

MG: I am sorry for the loss of your colleague. This was shocking news. What went through your mind when you learned about it?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Well, absolutely. It was a very tragic one. And because she was very young, and she was energetic, and deserved to live and to pursue her future and her vision for Afghanistan and for her personal life. I suddenly found out she was brutally killed. And that wasn't very pleasant to hear about her.

MG: You knew her. And as I mentioned, you served with her. What kind of person was she?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: She was very nice, very friendly. And of course, it was her first experience as a woman parliamentarian. We represent the same province. But unfortunately, due to Corona and all this pandemic, we were not able to work too very closely. But anyway, it was the beginning of her career, especially after the collapse of my previous government, we were in touch. And she tried to leave Afghanistan because she knew something will happen to her. And even recently, we worked strongly together how to evacuate a few women which is left behind. And we contacted a woman parliamentarian in Canada. Unfortunately, before we did something, we lost touch.

MG: What do we know about what happened this weekend and how the circumstances such as they were that would lead to her death? What do we know about what happened?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Well, we don’t know what happened. But unfortunately, she was killed very close to some security point, especially for 4:00 in the morning. Well, everything’s in the control of Taliban, and they claimed they maintained the people's security. How somebody could enter the house, killed the bodyguards and killed her and then make different excuses. They said, well, we will follow. It means they cannot provide. But not only that, but we are concerned something must be behind.

MG: Well, the Taliban, to your point, had said that they had taken guns away from people in Afghanistan to protect the citizens.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: They did that. But now they should take the responsibility as well. But, you know, like even recently, they called every street representative which we have in the Afghanistan system, like one elder who’s always representing one street, they asked them to give the list of those who work with the previous government. So that's the biggest concern. Why are they asking about special work with the military? And definitely, politicians are also not safe if they want to identify because they want to arrest them. So I think this is the beginning. We have to be really concerned about the safety and security of those women who are members of parliament, work for the government, and especially work with the security sector.

MG: And she knew that she was in danger, as you said.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Of course. Of course. Because she personally contacted me as well, because I'm in Canada. And she said that how we can help her and her family to leave Afghanistan.

MG: We asked Sean Fraser, the minister of Immigration in this country, about the killing of Mursal Nabizada, and what exactly the Canadian government plans to do to help those other former parliamentarians in Afghanistan to get to safety. His office sent us a statement. It reads in part, “We will continue to do everything we can to welcome Afghans safely and quickly, and that includes working with members of parliament from all parties to advance our nation's efforts, specifically bring more women leaders to Canada”. What do you make of that response? Is it enough?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: I don't think it's enough because if you remember, few parliamentarians went in early 2022, and we informed him about all these.

MG: You told the minister directly?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: We told him. And he said, unfortunately, we cannot evacuate anybody from Afghanistan. Those who are outside Afghanistan, if they meet the criteria, then we will give them a chance to come. Unfortunately, that was not a very positive and good answer.

MG: Help me understand that, because the Canadian government promised to bring 40,000 people from Afghanistan to Canada. Those numbers have yet to be reached. But what are the obstacles? If these women are in danger and you told the minister that they're in danger, and we know that parliamentarians across party lines have been working to try and get them out, what are the obstacles in getting people like her out of the country?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Sometimes I don't know what kind of bureaucracy is in place, because they think that they should talk like that because they are just stuck too much with their own legislation. They think they could not change anything. It is better to revise all the laws and rules and regulations. Those who are really at huge risk try to hide themselves as low profile from one place to another. This is not the way they can survive longer. So it's better to think and make a different and new decision on how to risk reduce people.

MG: Is that what's happening? I mean, again, in speaking with other Afghan women who served in the parliament there, what are they telling you about what they have to do to stay safe in that country?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: They came from different provinces. They could not go back to their own province. They just hide in Kabul from one place to another place that people shouldn’t know them.

MG: So they're moving from one location to another.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Of course. Because they should not like be identified by people and to inform maybe the authority which currently controls Kabul.

MG: What do you think Canada's responsibility is to those women?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Well, I think at the moment, we need the generosity of Canadian government, not only 40,000, I think. More like they are generous with Ukraine. But Ukraine also has many other countries welcoming them.

MG: So you compare it to the situation in Ukraine.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: No. No. I mean, I'm talking about the numbers. Because like about 120,000 people are here. At list how to increase this number as well, because you think only this 40,000 people were at risk to come in Canada. But also if the minister remembers, he told us all those who already applied, we will consider those application. We cannot the new one. But, you know, those who are stuck in Kabul in Afghanistan because there was the issue of the visa, the passport and how to get to Pakistan. Some of these people are not safe in Pakistan because Pakistan is very close to Taliban government. So what? So they shouldn’t be included in this system to meet one of the criteria to come to Canada?

MG: I guess practically, how does that happen though, if Canada does not have any relations with the Taliban? If we don't have a presence there, how would we go about getting those women?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: You know, everything now is happening online, you know. When the women realize they will get their case number, they’ll find a different way to go to different countries. And from there, they could come to Canada. But now they are not sure because whenever we meet different authority of Canadian government, they say, we couldn't do that because we already have a system in place. There are criteria stated. So those criteria from third country, they will be here. But how they will be assured their application will be taken by the immigration system, because they will apply new. They are not from the previous year. So there are so many obstacles that they could not meet the criteria to come here.

MG: You sound frustrated talking about this.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Of course.

MG: This is a tragic event. But do you think that this will spur change in the Canadian government, that the Canadian government will act now and accelerate those efforts such as they are, given her killing over the weekend?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Definitely, I hope. It's tragic to lose a very young woman. And even like more than a year, she pushed us. We struggled to help her but we couldn't. I hope laws become that caused her to risk the rest.

MG: You emphasized a couple of times that she was a young woman. And one of the things that we have heard in speaking with people who are in Afghanistan is the commitment in particular of the younger generation that was trying to rebuild the country and still feel a responsibility to rebuild the country. When you hear about that younger generation, what goes through your mind?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Well, in Afghanistan, more than 60% people are of a very young age, you know, like under 30. So this is a positive thing, you know. So I mean, this woman was young. It was like the beginning of her career. She could be more like supportive or more positive for the future of Afghanistan. And she didn't enjoy her own life because she was just struggling with how to bring a change. And she thought she couldn't contribute, especially to the life of women in Afghanistan. But she couldn't reach that. And I think everybody has the right to live peacefully and pursue the goals he or she has.

MG: The dreams that she had. Yeah.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Yeah. Yeah.

MG: As you watch what's happening in Afghanistan right now, what goes through your mind? I mean, people have described this in some ways as the erasure of women and girls from public life. When you take a look at what's going on with, you know, the fact they're banned from parks and schools and gyms, that aid group can't work if they have women at the frontlines. What goes through your mind when you see what's happening in the country now?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Do you think it's very normal to see a society that half of the society should be erased from public life, have no right to study, to work, to move around? Because this is our fundamental right to be a part of the society and to contribute to that, and to have like a different and better life in Afghanistan. Because this is the worst feeling if somebody is not allowed to make her own decision, but somebody else should make a decision on which kind of life she should like have in Afghanistan. This is not only to erase her. We are facing terrible humanitarian crisis at the moment in Afghanistan. Nine million people are one phase away from famine. And this is a very terrible news. And in the famine stage, people might not have food for one or two days.

MG: We’ve talked about this, about the scale of a possible famine in Afghanistan and the scale of the crisis there. What are you hearing about how bad it is from people that you know?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: People already lost their life. We lost a few people just recently because the weather is so cold they could not resist one day. People start to sell a body organ to survive. A woman start to sell her baby on the market too, because she wants to protect him not to die because of the hunger. I think this is the worst experience. To sell your beloved one just to save her or his life. That's the worst experience. And they were just watching.

MG: What do you think the Taliban is trying to accomplish here? What is their goal?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Well, I think Taliban are not very much familiar with Afghanistan. They do not understand the reality of Afghanistan.

MG: What do you mean they're not familiar with Afghanistan?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Because we experienced 43 years of war and conflict. We lost millions of people. Only in Afghanistan, two years back, the survey showed we have two and half million widows deal with the breadwinner of the family. If you stop them not to make any income, what's the alternative? How they could survive? Taliban think that everybody has a partner to feed her, but they don't know they don't have a male companion to support their family. They are in a worse situation. And I don't know how they will survive this winter. That's why this situation is very much terrible.

MG: What do you want to see from the international community right now? Again, there are questions as to whether the Canadian government, for example, should figure out a way to engage with the Taliban so that the aid efforts that would help address the humanitarian crisis that you're describing could move forward.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Our expectation is that Canada should be proactive before worse things happen to the people of Afghanistan. At the moment, as I said, we are experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis. Canada should also adopt or apply the resolution, that U.S. security Resolution 2615, which they passed that sending aid or supporting humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan will not violate any criminal code of law in any country, including Canada. But at the moment, none of this Canadian organizations or any other organization funded by Canada could not assist Afghanistan or send humanitarian aid. I think that's why the first thing is how Canada should do quickly and sooner as possible to apply that resolution and send aid to Afghanistan.

MG: The hope is that perhaps that will happen by the spring. But do you think that will be too late?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: That will be too late. How are these people going to face the famine? How will they survive? The five million malnourished children, how will they survive? The IDPs, the five million IDPs in Afghanistan, how will they survive? That's one of the urgent action we need from Canadian government. Secondly, that also how they proactively advocate to bring up the issue of Afghanistan in an international platform, and the world should really consider the situation. It should not be acceptable, the gender apartheid system which is implemented in Afghanistan, how half of the population should be erased from public life.

MG: Do you feel as though it's been forgotten by the world?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: I think we are forgotten. We are forgotten. The way we were thinking that they should really take our issues seriously, they're not. The world, including Canada, should not put more sanctions on people of Afghanistan. If they want to put restrictions, it should be on those who make a decision for Afghanistan, not the public or the people of Afghanistan.

MG: You have great affection for your country. And I just wonder here in Toronto how difficult it is for you to watch what's going on back home.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Of course, it's not. Because every Afghan, including me, I think we are going through a very difficult stage of life because we could not accept what happened to the people of our country. And we are concerned about our people. You cannot live peacefully and enjoy your life in a country like Canada where you are safe and secure because you are still worried about what you left behind. And we struggle and we achieve so far with the support of international communities, especially Canada as well. But we could not preserve those achievements.

MG: Do you have hope of going back to Afghanistan ever?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Well, definitely. It’s one of my dream and hope to go back to my country and serve my people.

MG: What do you think that would be like? I mean, again, it's very difficult. You're here. What would that be like for you to go back to your country?

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Well, this will be well. I think the last aim and wish in my life is to be back home and live because after experiencing the worst situation in Afghanistan.

MG: Thank you for being here and telling us about what's happening right now, but also what you want this country and, as I say, the international community to do. Thank you very much.

SHINKAI KAROKHAIL: Thank you for inviting me. And I hope the government of Canada do something which we Afghans really expect from them at the moment.

MG: Shinkai Karokhail is the former ambassador to Canada from Afghanistan. She served from 2016 through 2018. She's a former member of the Afghan parliament and she was with me here in our studio in Toronto.

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MG: This is The Current on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Yesterday on the program, we talked about Ontario's new plan to use privately run clinics to tackle a backlog: the long wait times for surgeries.

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KEVIN SMITH: We all are very aware that people are frustrated by the current wait time. So if this is a solution or can be part of the solution, then I think if done right and carefully and that we don't have unintended consequences, it can be a great help to increasing the denominator of care.

MG: That's Kevin Smith, president and CEO of the University Health Network in Toronto. This is an issue that is top of mind for many Canadians. No surprise, many of you wrote in with your opinions and experiences. The Current’s senior producer, Karin Marley, is here with some of your mail. Karin, good morning.

KARIN MARLEY: Good morning, Matt. So first, a letter from Catherine Baker in Bainsville, Ontario. She writes: “There is a two tier system already in place. I recently had a fast onset of cataracts in both eyes, making driving at night impossible and computer work exhausting as my glasses are now useless. I am opting to have the surgery completed at a private facility to avoid the impossible wait time. I am luckily able to afford the cost, though I wish my tax dollars would help subsidize it. Many would not be able to go this route. I agree with expanding OHIP services.”

MG: Marlene Campbell is in Ontario. Marlene writes: “Why not invest the same amount of money, tax dollars, into the public system, using an equivalent amount of creative thinking to utilize staff and space more effectively? The public will be paying for these private clinics one way or another. The public deserves to hear the actual figures. What does this government intend to invest? There is a nursing shortage. Where will the clinics find nurses? This government capped their wage increases, but can now provide funding to private clinics? Simple cases will be done in these clinics at a profit. Difficult cases, or those that become so, will be done in the public system. Look at Britain’s experience with this. Mike Harris and for-profit long-term care homes! Did we learn nothing?"

KARIN MARLEY: This is from Gary Cole: "Cataract surgery is being done at a private for profit clinic in Ottawa already. Patients are being upsold and paying significantly for the cost of tests and higher end lenses. Credit cards are being charged and the system has at least two tiers. My big concern is that the current announcement will just distract from the real issue of recruiting staff. Where is the evidence that using private clinics will make a difference?"

MG: Deb Paterson wrote in to share her hopes and concerns about this. Deb writes: “I am one of those "unfortunates" hobbling around with a bad knee. I am seventy years young and still love to skate and ski and walk and hike, but no longer can I partake in any of these activities. It breaks my heart. I am very aware of my dwindling weeks on this good earth and so feel rather depressed waiting over a year now to even see an orthopedic specialist for an assessment, let alone surgery. As a person who strongly supports our public health care system, I have come to realize that new approaches are definitely required. Community based clinics with a single focus sound like the answer and I feel hopeful by the discussion. I worry about the profit motive but if that can be controlled and regulated, perhaps I can be convinced.”

KARIN MARLEY: And finally, Tenille Bonoguore writes to us from Waterloo, Ontario: "I am Aussie-Canadian, and over the last many years have watched from afar as the Aussie system gets more expensive for residents. It's two-tier, with public coverage for everyone and options to pay additional for private. Public wait lists remain horrendously long for minor and low-urgency surgeries. To get faster treatment, my family has paid thousands to private hospitals. Yes, even the people who pay for private coverage end up thousands out of pocket. While private options might make sense for the government's accounting, it looks like a costly mess for users. I don't know the answers. But I hope the province speaks to patients, not 'clients', and other jurisdictions too."

MG: Thank you, Karin.

KARIN MARLEY: You're welcome.

MG: Karin Marley, senior producer here at The Current. You can comment on anything you hear on this program. Do get in touch. As we say, we read all your mail and some of it, as you heard, ends up on the radio. Email us, thecurrent@cbc.ca. Well, coming up after your regional update, a new app is all gas no brakes in high schools across Canada and the United States. In just a moment, why teenagers are so enthralled by the validation this app brings, and what it tells us about the state of social media. My name's Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

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GAS APP

Guests: Mitchell Cait-Goldenthal, Alexandra Samuel

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to the Current.

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I think the core reason that the high schools are using this app is because we just have such a need for validation because of our training with social media that is starting to just not be satisfied anymore by like Instagram and Snapchat and stuff. This app is just you scrolling and just getting validation, even if it's just so fake and ungenuine. It's just something that is so alluring.

MG: That alluring app the student is talking about is called Gas. It's going viral in high schools in Canada and the United States. It's overtaken TikTok as the most downloaded free app. Mitchell Cait-Goldenthal is a grade 11 student in Toronto, and he’s with me in the studio. Mitch, Hello.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Good morning.

MG: We'll talk about the details of this. But I mean, just broadly, what is this? What is Gas?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Gas is a new, very popular social media app that uses a network of high school students from around where you're living. This app is basically a version of like a poll. It's based on giving compliments to people and getting compliments from people who are in your high school.

MG: How popular is it at your school?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: The app when it first started really boosted in popularity. It was like nothing I ever really saw before. But it's like it kept going up and across the stratosphere. It was something that even if you didn't have the app, you were still talking about it. It was still a point of discussion among a lot of different groups. Teachers were even talking about it to their students. So it was this really big thing.

MG: Okay, so you'll have to explain this because I'm old and I need further details. One is this thing is called Gas. What does that mean?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: It means gassing your friend up, which is basically just a term which is like giving a person a compliment or making them feel good or like boosting them up to give each other kind of this feeling of confidence that they haven't seen before. I mean, at least that's what the creator says it's for. But a lot of people say otherwise.

MG: Okay. So before we go any further, I mean, show me how this thing works. Do you have your phone there?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: I do have it right here.

MG: Okay. It’s on this phone. Okay. All right. What am I looking at right now?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Right now, you're looking at the main interface of the app. We have a question right in the middle of the screen which says they could run me over. You can choose out of four people who the question is most aligned to or who fits the answer for the question the best. And they will receive a flame in response to that. They will see that they got a flame, and it will say that it's from like a grade 11 boy or a grade 11 girl. And that's basically how the app runs. And what you can do is you can either shuffle the names if you're not really happy with the first list of people you got, or you could skip the question.

MG: For each question, I'm going to pick a name, and then it's going to give me another question, and I'm going to pick another name, and it’s going to continue on.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: And that goes on 12 times in a row until you reach the end and then it locks. And you can only play again in a given set of time from when you last finished playing. So it'll be an hour or so, but you can skip the wait. And it says right here on the screen, skip the wait by inviting a friend. And you can basically do that by just sending it to any number of people or selecting a person from your contacts who isn't on the app.

MG: And so it just builds and builds and builds.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: And builds and builds and builds. And you get more validation the more people you get on the app.

MG: And these names are coming from where exactly?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: When you log on to the app for the first time or create an account, you have to give your contacts and you have to give your location. And by having your location, it can tell you people who are like living in your area and like ask you to choose a high school out of your area. So I would choose the high school that I am going to, and from that it would give me the names of all the people who are going to my high school, the names of people who are friends with people going to my high school and all my contacts.

MG: And at the end of this, the point of this is to see how many times your name has come up, how many times somebody has picked you when they are using that app.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Yeah. At the end of it, you would be able to see how many times a person has chosen you for the questions. You would be able to see on the list of compliments or flames, how many times a person has said that they would choose you over all the other people in the poll.

MG: We've been speaking about it. But let's take a listen to some of the students at your school who are also using this app.

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I like got introduced to the app because I just saw it on people's stories. And so I wanted to download it. And then I immediately realized that it was kind of like this network of students from several schools, and like you could give people like anonymous compliments kind of which I thought was really weird. And I've actually like deleted the app now. But when I used it, it was just kind of like to see what everyone wants, like, Oh, is anyone going to send anything to me? Like what are people going to say to me? Usually it's not really anything personal, but it just like feels like it's this validation towards you. And like while you're on there, it's just like you're scrolling through basically hundreds of these notifications that are just like complements. And like definitely, I've seen people become like really quickly addicted to the app. When people download it, you just send a referral link if you want to see the names of people who picked you. So I sent the text to a bunch of people. And like the night before, they were like, oh my God, what is this like? And then the next day, I could just see them like scrolling down through it, like tapping it out, like watching a commercial to get to the new one again. And I got bored of it pretty fast, but I've seen people who are like really caught up by it.

MG: Hundreds and hundreds of compliments. I mean, it's not like six, seven, ten. That's a lot.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Yeah. Yeah. But there is a catch to it all, the app is free unless you want to see who is complimenting you. So there's a lot of compliments. There's like hundreds of compliments, but they're all anonymous. So if you really want to get, you know, more emotionally involved with it or really like figure out who likes you, and maybe it's the person who likes you back, you're going to have to pay for that. And it's not cheap. It's paying 8.99 a week.

MG: 8.99 a week?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: A week. Yeah, a week.

MG: And that can add up really quickly.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: It can. It can. And most of us since we’re just high schoolers and, you know, really the only jobs you can get are very much like part time jobs, we don't have a lot of spending money. So, you know, oftentimes people are spending their parents money for this.

MG: But this is one of those examples of an in-app purchase, right? So your app store might be connected to your parent's credit card or what have you. You get the app, it's free, but then you're pushing this button and you're not the one who's getting the bill, your parents might be getting the bill.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Yeah.

MG: Is the sense that people, I mean, get drawn into this, that they get lured into it Because the point of the app, as you've described it, if I understand it correctly, is to see who's kind of giving you those compliments. The anonymous compliments are one thing, but you kind of want to know who in the school is giving you a look.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Yeah. Yeah. I think a lot of people feel very, very lured into it. I myself, I kind of feel lured into it because when I first heard about it, I was like, Oh, it's like a poll app where you can kind of find out or hear who's saying what. There were people who went as far as paying the 8.99 a week because it was the only, you know, way that they could actually receive or hear who was giving them the compliments. And that's what they signed up for.

MG: So given that cost, I mean, that's a lot of money. And people perhaps weren't expecting to have to pay that money. The whole point of the app is to see who is giving you that love. Maybe it's anonymously or not, but you're kind of figuring out who is complimenting you. What are people saying about the downsides of Gas? Are they still using it or?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: A lot of people are still using it. But I think their engagement is a lot less than it was before. I talked to a lot of students about it, and I heard a lot of different criticisms. Here's what a few of them had to say.

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VOICE 1: I think I'm not on Gas and I'm against it because I feel like a lot of the time, I'm kind of overwhelmed with the amount of information and media that I'm being kind of like forced to read every day. Obviously, not like forced to, but I feel like the more social media that I have, it kind of just makes my life worse naturally. And I feel that knowing people's opinions about me isn't going to really benefit my life in any way because the opinions are not going to change regardless of whether or not I know them. So I think that it's kind of useless. And I also think it's weird that you have to pay to know. So I'm kind of just against it in general.

VOICE 2: Gas has a very simple interface and it gives the illusion that it's like, oh, it's like compliments and very sweet. But like if you go into profiles, you see the amount of flame someone has, and it turns into further a popularity contest. And it's social media and it's stupid.

VOICE 3: And I sort of get really like paranoid of it because even when there were compliments, I started thinking, Are these fake compliments? Like if it's like best smile, like because I have braces, it’s like a joke. Like, I feel like the longer I was on it, the more I just kind of felt like suspicious of it. And they stress me out. It's so soulless and just like fake. Like there's nothing real about it. It's just kind of like Instagram or Snapchat and all that stuff, like boiling down into its truest form, which is you just like sitting there looking at compliments, like just fake compliments basically.

MG: It's social media and it's stupid, says one of the people that you talked to. So you have it on your phone, Mitch.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Yeah, I do.

MG: In speaking with people who are critical of it, what do you think of the app now?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: I've definitely been using it less because at first, it was such an exciting thing, you know? Oh my God, so many compliments. This is what I use Instagram for. This is what I use Snapchat for. I definitely started using it less recently, and a lot of people started using it less recently because you don't have to keep any sort of persona up. You don't have to keep posting photos to keep your image, you know, intact. All you are there is a name. And when all you are is a name, it takes anything human out of it. It just feels robotic. It feels like there's nothing even remotely human about it.

MG: Do you think that something else will just replace this? This is a form of social media. Social media is all about validation. It's all about getting likes, getting a thumbs up, getting a heart. Is something else just going to come and replace it after Instagram, After Snapchat, now after Gas?

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Of course. I mean, if you look at the line of social media, there's always going to be a new social media to come and replace the social media that was there prior. There's always going to be something that's better at capturing people's desires and better at capturing the validation that students want. And the more we see these social media apps pop up, the more they're going to perfect how to Get High Schoolers Hooked.

MG: Mitch, thank you very much.

MITCHELL CAIT-GOLDENTHAL: Thank you for having me. It was really lovely being on here.

MG: Mitch Cait-Goldenthal is a grade 11 student in Toronto. Alexandra Samuel is a technology journalist and strategist in Vancouver, and the author of Work Smarter with Social Media. Alexandra, good morning to you.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Good morning, Matt.

MG: What do you make of what you just heard from high school students talking about this app that seems to be everywhere?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: You know, I feel like I am part of a group of people who owe a generational apology to these kids who have grown up in the online world that, you know, frankly, I helped build when I wrote my book and when I worked on what has now become social media, starting in the early part of this millennium. We were full of hope that it was going to be this great force for human connection and social change and growth. And instead, we have recreated and amplified the dynamics of the high school cafeteria, and no one is paying a higher price for that than the kids who are still in high school.

MG: How did it go sideways, social media, from your perspective? We’ll talk about this specific app in a moment, but more broadly, what went wrong, do you think?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, you know, I was very innocent and came into social media from a background in politics. And like many people in early social media, I was really inspired by the political and social potential of this new era of technology. Those of us who were interested in technology at the turn of the century had seen the shift towards more and more accessible, more and more usable technology as a way of really empowering regular people to create content, to participate in conversations, to connect with one another. And, you know, most of the projects I worked on between sort of 2005, 2015 were social change oriented. And it was a moment when it really felt like what people were excited about online were, you know, charitable organizations, political causes, neighbourhood causes, things that motivated people to really connect with other humans, other citizens. And then, of course, what happened was once this became a mass phenomenon, companies figured out how to spend their way into earning public attention and really shifted the game away from being about connection and towards becoming a form of promotion and marketing. And of course, that first began with the promotion of brands on social media, and then that served as a model for what we now call, you know, the personal brand, namely humans being repackaged as companies and trying to build their personal brands on Instagram and Twitter and TikTok and so on. And so we've moved from a medium that initially felt like actual humans connecting with one another, to a medium that's used for companies to connect with consumers and for consumers to start thinking of themselves almost like their little companies.

MG: So have you used Gas?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: No. No. No. Like for five minutes. I mean, the only way to use Gas was for me to impersonate a teenager at my kid's former high school, which made me feel like super creepy, but also really alarming. Like, you know, there was no obstacle to me doing that. You know, it ought to be difficult, if not impossible, for a 50 year old to pretend to be a teenager in order to interact with other teenagers. But there is no such guardrail in place.

MG: One of the creators, as I understand it, is from Facebook. And this sounds in some ways like the early incarnation of Facebook.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Yeah. I mean, it depends on how early. My own knowledge of Facebook weirdly intersects with its origins because my first research project really around the impact of the Internet was working with a guy named Bob Putnam, who's a professor at Harvard, doing the research on the impact of the Internet and social capital for his book, Bowling Alone. And interestingly, we just had a reunion last year to talk about, you know, what all of that looked like 20 years later, because he just released a new edition of the book. And his class was one of the first Facebook experiments, because when Zuckerberg was first getting going with Facebook at Harvard, I think his roommates were in one of Bob's classes. And so Putnam himself actually used Facebook very early on and kind of experimented with it as a way of using social media in the classroom. So if you go really far back, Facebook actually did have a moment of being constructive and powerfully used, but it was a brief moment. And when you look at the exodus from Facebook and you look at something like Gas, you know, there's really two kinds of Facebook exiles. One are the people who said, holy cow, I don't want to be part of this anymore. This is very disturbing. And I want to try and do social media or technology in a totally different way. And then there are people who took what they learned at Facebook and have figured out how to use it to make themselves rich somewhere else.

MG: When you look at the way that this app works, though, I mean, Mitch was talking about the polls, and you can have these polls, who's, you know, the prettiest girl in the school? Who would you like to go out with? What have you. What is the impact of that? You worry about on the students who are using this app?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: What happens on Gas is really just a distilled and sharpened version of what happens, sadly, on much, if not most of social media now, which is a continued performance of self and a continued process of voting on one another as if we are all contestants in a never ending episode of American Idol. And you know, there's a reason when you go to a party or a dinner with the group of friends, you don't sit there with those little feedback buttons and vote on one another all the way through dinner. It is not a dynamic that is conducive to authentic relationships, genuine connection, self-confidence, kindness, really any of the dynamics that we know to be healthy for individuals and frankly healthy for societies. We need to be building trust to build a sense of connection, to build a sense of commonality. And when you have people constantly voting on one another, it is the enemy of authenticity. It is the enemy of trust. It is the enemy of connection. And, you know, this is not a moment in world history where we can be eroding those incredibly crucial resources.

MG: What about the payment model? The fact that once you create… I didn't even get through the question and you laughed about that. What do you make of the way that the payment model is structured for this app?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, I mean, I don't want to call it extortion because in theory, one could live without knowing who doesn't like you. I myself was not a 15 year old with that level of psychological strength. And I don't know why I say 15 year old. I pay a crazy amount of money to LinkedIn every month so that I can see who's looked at my LinkedIn profile. It's not like 16-year-olds are uniquely vulnerable to needing to know what other people say about them. We're all like that. And, you know, frankly, the part of Gas that's most outrageous is that they figured out how much they can charge for it. And, you know, if you told people it was, you know, $5 a month, I don't think it would be raising so many eyebrows. But when you hear that they're charging teenagers $9 a week, it is a little bit of a shock.

MG: Is it about the amount or to your point, I mean, in comparing it to LinkedIn, people pay to see who is looking at their profile on LinkedIn, who might be linking with them, connecting with them. Is it about the amount or is it about the model?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: It's both. I mean, the dynamic of you can see a little bit but not the whole thing is a very established business model on the Internet. I mean, I just tried out a new career site the other day where, you know, you can see job openings, but if you want to be able to apply or actually get the application link, you have to subscribe. And it's very common, you know, hiring people, you know, you can see resumes, but if you want to see the person's last name, you have to pay. You can join the dating site and browse. But if you want to be able to reply to dates, you have to join. So in some ways that model is not that appalling. I think what makes it feel ickier in the case of Gas is the idea partly that it's aimed at teenagers, and partly that it is about, you know, there's no functional reason to give people that context. It's not like, you know, pay your fee and now you can reply to your compliments. It's just holding knowledge for ransom and knowing that you're preying on the social anxieties of teenagers. I mean, I honestly don't know how these people sleep at night because that's literally what they've done, is they've built an app to monetize the social and psychological anxieties of adolescents. And it's brilliant because that is like one of the world's guaranteed perpetual energy sources is adolescent anxiety, But boy, it just seems incredibly exploitative.

MG: Are you surprised at how successful it is?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: No.

MG: Why?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Because look at every adult. I mean, look, I've done a lot of research on social media, and I did a big survey actually just at the beginning, just before COVID, about the breadth of social media envy among adults. And virtually every adult, you know, however many years of therapy we may have under our belts, however much maturity we may have under our belts, virtually everyone admits to feeling anxious and envious when they are on Instagram, when they're on Facebook. I just had an email a couple of weeks ago from a woman in her seventies who wrote me about a piece I'd written about social media envy because she was feeling it so acutely over the holidays. So if you can be 75 and still suffer from envy pangs when you use Instagram, what hope does a 15 year old have when faced with an app that's being used by everyone in their school, and that is specifically designed to tap into adolescent anxiety? It's a completely undefended and indefensible approach.

MG: And so what are we broadly supposed to do? Because as Mitch said, Mitch, who has the app on his phone that he showed me in the studio, if it's not this app, it'll be another one, another app will come and replace that because that's the model, That's the business model. And those who are creating these apps know that there is a captive audience, not just for teenagers, but to your point, to us old folks as well.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Well, I mean, I think there's a few different prescriptions here. The first is that, you know, we do need stronger regulation of social media and technology companies in general. I think we need things like, you know, some jurisdictions have passed a right to be forgotten law that allows you to wipe your digital slate clean at 18. We do a lot of regulation around what social media is allowed to market to people under 13. I actually think it's a mistake that so many sites don't allow you to sign up until you're 13, because it means that we don't equip our kids to deal with social media until they reach the age when they're least likely to listen to us. We need to be equipping our kids to experience and learn to deal with the craziness of social media when they still think we are their parents and have something useful to say. So age nine, 10, 11, not 13, 14, 15. But that said, we do need to be regulating the market for social media apps that are aimed at teenagers. And, you know, I don't understand why we would allow people to develop and market apps to teenagers like this. I don't understand why we would be allowing them to target specific high schools. And I think that's something that we need to address at a regulatory level. That's a slow game. So meanwhile, as parents and as educators, we need to be intervening.

MG: So what does that mean? I mean, you can imagine there are a lot of parents and educators who are listening to this right now with increasing alarm and wondering what's perhaps on their kid's phone that they don't know about. What would you say to those parents?

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: So the first thing is don't ban it. Banning it is not going to work. We know from sex ed that abstinence education does not avoid pregnancy. And abstinence from social media as a philosophy is not going to lead to a healthier relationship with technology for your kids. What you need is to have conversations about the impact of social media, the impact of comparison. And you need to equip your kids practically and psychologically to make better choices around technology. That begins with role modelling. If your kids see you airbrushing your life on Instagram, you are sending a message about what we share as a family and how we share it.

MG: And what we value.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: And what we value. Exactly. So model vulnerability, model putting your own phone down, talk openly about how you set limits on your own social media use and how you grapple with some of its more insidious dynamics. The more you can talk to your kid about your own struggles, the more you open the door to them sharing what's difficult for them. And, you know, some of the most dangerous circumstances for kids are when they end up in really unhealthy dynamics online that they don't feel like they can talk to their parents about. And so you need to keep those communication channels open. And the best way to do that is with two way communication that acknowledges that this isn't easy for any of us.

MG: There's a lot to think about in here. Alexandra, I'm glad to talk to you. Thank you very much.

ALEXANDRA SAMUEL: Thank you.

MG: Alexandra Samuel has worked in tech and social media for years. Her latest book is Remote Inc: How To Thrive at Work Wherever You Are. Alexandra was in our Vancouver studio. We did reach out to Nikita Bier, one of the developers of the Gas app. We did not hear back. Alexandra was talking about how social media in some ways hasn't evolved in the ways that she'd hoped. We're going to pick this up with another conversation next week, but with a broader look at technology. I'll be speaking with a philosopher of technology. Her name is Shannon Vallor. She used to call Tech her happy place. Not anymore.

SOUNDCLIP

SHANNON VALLOR: When it really hit me was I was sitting on Twitter and looking at all of the new tech news that comes through my feed, and realizing that the feeling that I was getting from each new revelation of some new product or application, that the feeling I was getting was oppressive, was one of resignation. And the experience wasn't what I grew up with, which was constantly looking forward to new innovations, to new products, to new features and iterations of existing things that brought me joy and excitement and hope about the future. And I really had to stop and think, what is it that is at the root of this change in the way that I relate to technology? And so I posted about it on Twitter. Within minutes, I realized it had struck a nerve and there were thousands of people liking, commenting, retweeting on the thread. So it was really important, I think, to think about what has happened, and what it means for us that our relationship with technology has. Moved into this phase of disenchantment.

MG: Philosopher of technology Shannon Vallor will be on the program next week. That is The Current for this Wednesday. Q is up next on CBC Radio One. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you tomorrow.

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Wednesday January 18, 2023 full text transcript

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