Sadly that has not happened. And so, I am trying to take some of that advice. I have significantly changed the way I use Twitter. I engage a little less. And this is, this is the sad part too. I mean, I used to love being able to engage with people. I admitted this — I created a burner account. Not to go on and, you know, say great things about Governor Cox, or anything like that. The purpose of my burner account is it just follows a select group. Because I do get a lot of my media intakes, the reporters, the news that I get. I curate that through social media and through Twitter, and that’s really important for me.
Coaston: What does this mean for social media in Utah for everyone? You mentioned a little bit your increasing concerns, but I think that there are lots of people who routinely describe problems with social media, adults who are saying things like, they’re on it too much, it’s stressful, it’s bad. It’s making our discourse worse. Do you think that’s something that — obviously what adults do is a very different area — but is that something that could potentially lead to some sort of legislation in the future?
Cox: I don’t know if we can legislate that piece. Again, I think this is where the hard work of culture changing and of being a patriotic American actually takes place. You’re going to hear me talk a lot more about this over the course of the next year.
I’m really focused on how to disagree better and the toxicity of this moment, and how we can, as political leaders, but as just neighbors, as human beings. I don’t pretend like I’m going to be able to solve that. We have a problem as a country, and it is getting worse, and these social media platforms undoubtedly are designed to make it worse, right? I’m hoping I can convince more and more adults to stop making those poor decisions. But I don’t know that there’s a significant piece of legislation to allow that to happen. We may learn some things from these kids’ accounts that are helpful. Maybe some things around addictive algorithms and giving people the ability to turn those off.
But I don’t know that there’s an appetite for that. I don’t know if I have an appetite for that either. I’m much more of a, when it comes to adults, kind of, you know, let people decide and make those choices, and try to show them the better way.