How To Make Social Media GOOD For You with Isa Watson

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In today’s episode, our guest is Isa Watson. She is an entrepreneur, author, skydiver, and classical pianist. She is the co-founder and CEO of Squad, the fun way to build a world of your closest friends--away from social media. Named top 100 MIT Alumni in Tech in 2021, Isa is a physical scientist turned social scientist, building the next generation's social connection tool.</span></p> <p><strong>[3:50] Why should I listen to you? </strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You should listen to me because I have a great smile. </span></p> <p><strong>[4:38] Do you mind walking me through your human experiences as we progress through your book?</strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I don't know many, and I didn’t grow up on social media in the same way that a lot of kids today did. I came from a big Caribbean family. I grew up in North Carolina, Chapel Hill. My dad was a computer engineer who migrated to the US, and his mentality was if you can’t build it, then you shouldn’t be using it. From the time I was seven, my dad would buy me the parts of a computer to build them, and that morphed into me loving building things with my hands. I worked in the research labs at UNC Chapel Hill for a chemistry professor starting at 14 years old. I became one of the youngest published chemists in the world at 19 years old. I fell into Wall Street after, but I pivoted to finance via my MBA at MIT. I also started a tech company called SQUAD, and our thesis is that the future of social media is deeper. </span></p> <p><strong>[9:05] How can someone relate to the emotions you felt in those moments when you realized that you were a different person online? </strong></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It's interesting because it wasn’t just that I liked who I was online; I was a much broader person with broader interests. What happens with the feedback mechanism is that you get feedback online from the people who engage with you. You allow them to narrow the mental model of who you