Themes discussed in this episode

• How technology and social media impact emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills
• The effects of instant feedback, comparison, and online validation on anxiety and confidence
• Why younger generations may struggle more with conflict and discomfort
• The importance of practicing real-world communication and human connection
• How embracing discomfort helps people grow personally and professionally

Episode Highlights

Time-stamped inflection points from the show

00:12 – Lori introduces guest Justin Allen of Hunter Engineering Company and sets up a conversation about how technology is impacting emotional intelligence and workplace communication.

04:23 – Justin explains his work training young automotive technicians and discusses how shorter attention spans and digital distractions affect learning environments.

07:27 – Lori and Justin discuss how social media has taught younger generations to avoid discomfort, conflict, and awkward conversations through blocking, muting, and scrolling away.

13:12 – The conversation shifts to the impact of social media validation, instant feedback, and unrealistic online comparison on anxiety, depression, and self-worth.

21:06 – Justin and Lori share practical advice for rebuilding human connection: getting out into the world, talking to people, joining groups, embracing discomfort, and developing interpersonal skills through real interaction.

Top Quotes

11:03 — “You didn’t have to talk about it. You didn’t have to engage in awkward conversation or anything else like that.”

16:03 — “The problem that we have with the youth today dealing with things like anxiety and depression is because strangely our brains believe whatever we see and hear.”

23:25 — “Start to think of discomfort as a feature of life, not a bug.”

31:36 — “You just got to keep swimming. You just got to keep pushing and waking up and brushing your teeth and doing the things.”

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Transcript

00:12
Lori: Hello everybody. I'm Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says, Don’t Be an Idiot. Today we are going to talk about the impact of technology on interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence. I met the coolest guy on LinkedIn. I was just blown away by just who he is online, and I watched his videos. His name is Justin Allen. He's with Hunter Engineering, and I was watching his videos, and I was like, “Oh my God, you need to be on Work Mom Says.” So I reached out to Justin and said, “Okay, tell me who you are and what you do. I think you might make a really great podcast guest.” And so we start talking about it, and oh my God, he's perfect for this show and this audience. Hi, Justin. How are you?

Justin: Hey, Lori, I'm doing great. I hope you are today.

Lori: Absolutely. And as we started talking, I realized that Justin is really tuned in with the young adults that he works with on the impact of technology and how it teaches you things that may not work in real life, right?

Justin: Absolutely. Yeah.

Lori: Justin, give us a little bit of background. Tell us about yourself.

Justin: Hey. Well, okay, so my name is Justin Allen. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I grew up working on anything and everything I could get my hands on. My dad was a Bob Vila fan, I guess, right? So we grew up working on the house, working on the cars, working on the bicycles, and just was fortunately blessed with a father who had a can-do attitude with those kind of things. And so we were just taught to fix things. Why would you pay somebody to fix it if you can do it yourself? And I think it created a curiosity about how things work, right?

And so here, 51 years later, I am very blessed to be able to help other people understand how things work and kind of pay that on, right? I work for Hunter Engineering Company as a regional trainer for North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and almost every day I get to be in front of humans that are nervous or anxious or confused about something that they're expected to do, and they don't know what they're doing necessarily, and it's creating a lot of stress and anxiety on their parts. And I get to try to turn that stuff around, and I love it.

02:38
Lori: I can tell. I could tell when we talked on the prep call before this recording. You have this really passionate desire to help other people. I mean, that's just obvious. Where does that come from?

Justin: Honestly, I'd say it comes from my parents. I was very fortunate to grow up in an environment with supportive and encouraging parents. I'm the middle of three children, so naturally I'm the best one, and so my parents loved me the most. And I'm just kidding. It was just a neat thing to have people saying, “Go get it. You want to do that? Let's go try it. What's holding you back? Give it a shot.”

And there's a lot of humans that don't come from that environment. There's a lot of people that are being held back by something, whether by parents or peers or coworkers or their friend group telling them, “Why bother doing that? You'll never succeed.” There's a lot of that kind of negativity. And so yeah, I'd say I really got it from my parents and honestly their parents before them. I don't know how to have opportunity and keep it to myself, I guess.

Lori: Love that. We need more people like you in the world, Justin. Let me tell you, more people like you in the world.

Justin: Honestly, like me, but at least with a heart, right? We don't need a bunch of me. I can rattle off all my toxic self-talk for you right now, but I know you're right. We need encouragers.

Lori: We all have that negative self-talk, right? It's all those little voices in our heads. Guess what? You're not the only one. Listeners, you are not the only ones with voices in your head.

Justin: That's it. We're on this ride together.

04:23
Lori: Exactly. So Justin, you work with a lot of young adults right now. Tell me a little bit more about the type of training you do with them that's maybe not EQ-based. So what are you typically training them on?

Justin: Right, absolutely. And so for people who don't know, Hunter Engineering Company is in the automotive industry. We produce equipment that allows shops all over the world to take better care of you and your car. So tire changers and balancers, alignment machines, brake lathes, things associated with advanced driver assist systems and technology.

We don't do a lot of different things, but we try to do them very well. And so one of the ways we try to help people utilize them very well is to provide training for them as well. And so I train in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and it is largely to younger technicians that are trying to get into a field that doesn't have a very good funnel. We don't have a very good funnel into our industry helping people with the natural skills, or at least the curiosity or whatever, to go into it.

So we're taking anyone and everybody that we can get our hands on and trying to help them be more comfortable with it. So for me specifically, it's helping them understand technically how does this hardware work, and how does the software work, and how do I physically make adjustments on a vehicle or change that tire appropriately to be as efficient and safe as possible.

Justin: And I've been in the automotive industry for 28 years at this point and had a number of different roles in it. And that's part of what's fun too. I am a professionally trained theater kid who went to college for theater stuff, and I landed in an industry that I didn't necessarily expect to. I love cars, I love people, and those are the two things that brought me there.

And in any industry, I think if you just show up and you want to learn more and you want to grow and you want to take care of people, they're going to make that work. And so yeah, it is a great industry, and people can come in and start changing oil in cars, and next thing you know they're managing a store, and then they're overseeing a bunch of stores, or maybe they move into airline mechanic work or whatever, right? Almost everything on earth is going to be dependent on some kind of motorized transport mechanism to make it functional. And so yeah, helping. There's a lot of humans to turn wrenches. Anybody who wants to come and join us, come on. We got space for you there.

07:27
Lori: So one of the things we talked about when we were on our call is not only do you train them with the technical skills to work with the equipment and in the field, but you also kind of inadvertently end up dealing with some of the emotional intelligence challenges that this generation coming up has, right?

Justin: Well, I have six children of my own as well, so I see, and my kids are in age range from 18 to 25 right now, and so a lot of the people I work with are in a similar age category. I get to see the struggles and challenges that they face from my own home vantage point and watching social things where you go off to school events or whatever and then seeing these technicians that are drawn to the glowing boxes in their pockets, just like you and I are in a lot of cases, right?

The humans all enjoy the glowing shiny boxes. And so just in that classroom environment, it's easy for all of us to get distracted by those kind of things. And so I found from an education point that, man, you got to keep moving. You got to keep them engaged, right? Because I think the TikTok-ification of entertainment has given us all a shorter attention span. And yeah, it's a very relevant thing to know that you're up against it when you're trying to teach people.

Lori: What I thought was really interesting is technology has taught our 20-somethings some interesting habits that work in virtual reality, but not necessarily in real reality, like avoiding things, avoiding conflict, blocking someone or muting something. And that has caused some emotional things that I didn't think were expected. I didn't realize that the tie was so close until this group of kids became adults and started entering the workforce.

Justin: Yeah. I mean, you figure the people that really started to get impacted directly in their human interactions by the social media things. I think I got on Facebook in 2008, I think. And they talk about the children that were born around 2001 to 2003. You get to 2011, 2012, 2013 or whatever, and they were of an age where they were getting their hands on phones, right? Because the parents, my generation, was unfortunately pretty quick to pass over that thing because it was so magical and it could calm that kid down at dinner out or something like this.

Like we created a monster by passing these off to the kids when they were younger because they started to learn some tricks about it. One of the things would of course be the fact that if they didn't like anything, just move on past it. There's always something else. There's always more entertainment or something else to engage you with. That whole dopamine engine that the internet can be.

10:38
Justin: But they also learned on social media that if something got awkward between you and somebody else, you could simply, with a couple of taps of a finger on the screen there, just block them. You didn't have to talk about it. You didn't have to engage in awkward conversation or anything else like that. You may never have to see them in person again, but you could certainly block them online.

And it is funny, like on the one hand, we know certainly that if somebody in your life is being abusive and hateful and creating chaos in your life, block them. It's great to be able to block them. But then in terms of the social skill development with people who actually are in your life, that may be family members or students that you're in school with or whatever, in real life you can't do that quite the same, right? I can't be angry with my child and just block them at home and never have to interact with them, not in a way that's healthy for a relationship, right?

Lori: No, it does not. And I think too, one of the things that came up for me is that the technology literally teaches you to make discomfort disappear, and that's everybody. Even to the point where, and I know I do this, I'm standing in line somewhere, I'm a little bored, bam, there goes the phone. I'm not bored anymore. I'm entertained.

So any type of tiny discomfort, from boredom to annoyance, you're annoyed with somebody, so you block them. So you don't get the emotional skills development because you're not engaging. But when it comes to your boss, your coworkers—

Justin: Yeah. I mean, that turned into that quiet quitting idea of work too, right? To just kind of not engage anymore, don’t participate anymore or whatever.

13:12
Justin: And yeah, it's interesting to be of an age where we have seen this entire experience. We've got the analog life before, right? And then we saw this transition. And our generation, you and I, we got excited. This has been fun. There's been a lot of fun stuff that we could see and do and engage in.

And now we're seeing these strange ramifications on the actual humans and their interaction. It is challenging. It's hard to imagine how it works next, kind of, you know? We're moving into an era where we can't believe anything we see on the internet anymore, period, because the imagery—

Lori: Yes.

Justin: It cracks me up that they're trying to make sure that you label anything created as AI. Make sure it has a little label on it letting people know it’s AI.

Lori: My eyes are rolling out of the back of my head.

Justin: I know. It’s like telling everybody, “Hey, what if we told everybody to wash their hands after they use the bathroom? That’ll fix it.” Same idea.

Lori: Other false lessons: instant feedback. These are other things that tech teaches young people or has taught young people. Tech has taught you things that you now need to unlearn. Feedback, right?

Justin: And not only feedback, but you're craving that positive feedback. We're only posting things that we think are going to receive positive feedback because that feels good. People like positive feedback.

And so yeah, we're doing anything we can do to possibly not feel a moment of quiet and boredom. We're doing anything to contort our bodies and positions to capture that golden hour sunlight in that particular outfit so hopefully so many of our friends are going to click that little heart button on Instagram or whatever.

16:00
Justin: And the kids, this is what's fascinating, and I'm sure it applies to adults to a degree, but the problem that we have with the youth today dealing with things like anxiety and depression is because strangely our brains believe whatever we see and hear. They believe it.

And so they see friends all over the place, all of their images on Instagram make it look like they’re having a glorious time. And so the kids believe that. Like, “Look at how great my friends’ lives are even though they know how hard they work to make it look great when it isn't great.”

So even though they know that's what they're doing, they see other people and they don't filter it that way. They genuinely believe that this other person has a life that's so much better than mine, and my life is miserable compared to that.

Lori: It really is. That's why I love the people that purposefully put themselves out there ugly. There's this one woman that does this thing where she calls it “chinning,” and she takes pictures of herself with as many chins as she can have for Instagram, and it's hilarious.

Because really that's one thing that I'm seeing maybe will help us turn this tide, is the overly perfect AI slop makes authentic things and visuals so much more appealing because your brain knows it's not real.

18:29
Lori: What do you think these problems, these challenges and these unique inabilities to actually practice some of these emotional skills, what is that causing? And are the young adults aware of it? Do they know it’s a problem?

Justin: I mean, there’s so much fascinating data out there about social interaction among younger people. I only heard this a couple of days ago and thought it was intriguing. Young people aren’t dancing. You want to know why? Because somebody’s going to record it, and if they look awkward then it’s going to be all over social media.

And it turns out teenagers are a little insecure about body image sometimes, right? The last thing they want is that stuff regurgitated all over TikTok or Instagram, and that's what happens. So the kids are literally not dancing as much.

Lori: There’s a big gap too. What I’m finding is young men will often be really, really confident based on their online experiences, their favorite game, how they’re at the top of the chart, they’re on Twitch and they’re just killing it, and then they get out in the real world and their job sucks and they’re not happy.

Justin: Yeah.

Lori: That gap of those personal skills that they supposedly are using online, you have to develop those in person too. So to me, what can we tell young people that will actually help them?

21:06
Justin: Oh gosh. Wouldn't it be nice to have the thing to tell young people that you knew would help them and then they would actually listen to you and do it?

We went through COVID with six teenagers, and the laying around on the couch and the watching YouTube all day and the misery of it all. Kids, you don’t need a whole lot to feel better than you do right now, but you're going to need to physically move your body and you're going to need to find some kind of purpose.

And on the interaction with other humans front, it’s so easy to sit on your couch and scroll through social media or dating apps. But I tell these kids, if you will go somewhere where humans actually are and observe that human across the room and then go talk to them, it’s okay. You’re allowed to talk to people.

Think of something you enjoy doing, if that's hiking or playing chess or board games or casual theater outside, whatever it is, and go do it with actual people. Join a church, join a bicycling club, it doesn’t really matter. Find something where humans are doing something that you find interesting.

And that’s going to be a lot more rewarding than sitting on the couch and trying to scroll through humans.

23:17
Lori: One of the things that I would say is going to accompany that kind of initiative is discomfort. Start to think of discomfort as a feature of life, not a bug, okay? Because the more—I remember hearing this when I was in my 40s and somebody said, “Get comfortable being uncomfortable.”

Because if you want to grow, that’s where the growth happens. If you want to make something happen, you can’t be afraid to pick up the phone. You can’t be afraid to walk in and talk to strangers. If you want to really make something happen with your life, even if you just want to make a really nice life happen for yourself, you have to engage with other people and create connected, positive relationships.

Learning how to do that is really important. Joining groups, going to networking events, show up, promise yourself you’re going to talk to three people and do it. Push yourself through it because the more you do it, the easier it gets.

24:55
Justin: And that is a tough thing for a lot of people, to show up to a room of strangers and go talk to people. And so the encouragement I’ll always give anybody is you’re going to walk in that room and it’s really easy to spot the people that are right at home. They’re the loud ones. They’ve already got two or three people around them.

Look for the people that also look like they’re not really all that comfortable. That’s a great place to start.

And if you walk up to them and introduce yourself and they reveal through their behavior that they genuinely want to be left alone, that’s easy to read. Well, that’s easy for me to read. I don’t know about these young people because they don’t read facial expression and they don’t read things like sarcasm the same way.

They’re so accustomed to reading text communication that any elevated tone is perceived as yelling. There’s a lot of range between elevating tone and yelling.

26:32
Lori: The other thing I would say too is intergenerational relationships are really important, and we don’t put enough emphasis on it. Having friends in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 80s, because you’re going to learn more and you’re going to develop those human skills.

Justin: Right. What do you do when you’re a generation that doesn’t have to talk to anybody to learn anything because you can learn it all on YouTube? Why would you talk to anybody, right?

Another sad way this is impacting us is family reunions and things like that are vaporizing rapidly because people think, “Why do I need to go see my cousins in person? I watch them on Facebook all the time.”

And it isn’t the same. That ease and convenience of the internet is impacting everything for sure.

28:27
Lori: We’ve got to get out of that. I know there are little pockets of people starting to go back to flip phones and things like that, but I think we’ve passed that point.

Justin: The pendulum is always swinging. I want to believe that after COVID and all of that isolation there’s going to be more hunger for real human interaction again.

My kids now crave phone calls. They don’t want to text anymore. They want to be spoken to. And I’m so excited about that because I literally had to ask them, “You guys aren’t responding to my text messages. What is your preferred method of communication?”

And they said they’d much rather have a phone call or FaceTime.

30:37
Lori: Oh, that’s great. I love that. Now I’d love to wrap up with the piece of advice that we talked about from Dory.

Justin: As a human who has had some ups and downs, I have sat on the front porch in the rain waiting and hoping somebody would come home to see me. I’ve been through divorce and had to walk away from my kids crying at the front door. Brutal moments.

And yeah, Dory in Finding Nemo really summed up what is my philosophy in life. We’re all going to have chapters. Some of them are heartbreaking chapters, some of them are working-three-jobs chapters, some are flat-broke-no-money chapters.

I believe you just got to keep swimming. You just got to keep pushing and waking up and brushing your teeth and doing the things.

If you have a vision for what you want your life to be like, it’s really not that hard when presented with a choice which way to go. Just keep trying to do the best you can.

And if you make a choice and things are miserable, congratulations, you’re allowed to make another choice. Thank goodness.

32:36
Justin: There’s another chapter waiting for you. Keep laying the bricks. Lay that foundation to get to whatever it is you want to do because you’re not as stuck as you think you are.

If you are miserable, maybe the choice, as painful as it sounds, is a bus ticket and you go to some other town and start over. You’re allowed to do that. Staying miserable under miserable circumstances is a tough way to live.

Lori: Absolutely. When I was in my 20s, about every seven or eight years I would change everything. New job, new boyfriend, new apartment, new car, new neighborhood, the whole thing. You can start over.

Tell me how people can find you if they want to connect with you online.

34:00
Justin: Absolutely. I love to connect with people that are looking for positive opportunities in life and to be encouraging. I’m found on most social media, which is hilarious when we talk about the evils of it. It’s as good or evil as you want it to be.

And so I choose to be a force for good out there if I can. My first initial, letter J, then my last name Allen, then the word Hunter. You’ll find me as that on just about everything. But on LinkedIn it’s just plain old Justin Allen.

34:42
Lori: Follow Justin seriously. You’ll have a happier day every time you see any of his content.

So again, I’m Lori Jo Vest. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Work Mom Says. If you are watching on YouTube, please do me a favor, give us a subscribe, a like, maybe even a share, and we’ll be back soon with another episode of Work Mom Says to help you learn how to play the emotional contact sport of business so you experience less drama and more success. Take care.

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Who is our ideal listener?

This podcast is for young professionals who want to learn to play the emotional context sport of business and experience less drama and more success.

How can you be more logical and less emotional? Be strategic, and Work Mom Says can help you.

“I tell people to back up, put down the magnifying glass, and look at the big picture when you’re responding to something,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom. “In doing this, you will understand that what’s really upsetting you right now will be something you don’t even remember next week.”

What value can people get from listening to this podcast?

Listening to Work Mom Says can help you grow your mood management skills, grow your ability to reframe situations, and look at things from a strategic point of view. This makes it easier to go into a work situation and get the most positive results.

On Work Mom Says, we also offer tips and tricks for creating connected positive relationships that last over time. People will want you on the team if you can create connected positive relationships and work environments. You become an asset, and you will be more successful when you’re an asset.

“I also like to talk about developing traits like optimism, persistence, tenacity, stick-to-itiveness, sticking with things, and approaching every project with a curious mind instead of a fearful mind,” said Lori Jo Vest, Work Mom

                                                                                                     

Why do I do this? A few more words from Work Mom

I do this because I naturally fell into the Work Mom role when I worked in the ad agency business and had so much fun with it. I also realized I had made just about every mistake there was to make. I don’t hold myself as a stellar example of truth and how you should be. I hold myself out there as someone who has been bruised, battered, and beaten up and learned some important lessons. I’d love to share these lessons with young people, so they don’t have to make those same mistakes or be the idiot I was.

I also want to help young professionals realize that many things our culture prioritizes aren’t really important. We talk a lot about what should be important and how to present your best face at the office so that you can succeed.

I’ve learned so much throughout my career, and it’s gratifying to share that with young professionals and help them avoid some of those mistakes and get to that success sooner.