Alone, Together: How Technology Separates Us | Henry Williams | TEDxTheMastersSchool

hi I'm Henry and I want to ask you how much of your time do you alone I'm not just talking about when you're by yourself I also want to know how much time you spend surrounded by others eyes glued to your phones your focus somewhere else I'm talking about when you find yourselves alone together maybe there was a lull in the conversation maybe an awkward silence or you got a text you just couldn't ignore well we're all a little guilty after all this is a world designed to exploit our humanity our need to be accepted and acknowledged today we never have to endure boredom so long as we carry our little magic mirrors everywhere we go to be alone together is to find a little niche apart from the world physically separated by inches but operating in internal spaces miles away it's a different kind of loneliness perversion of our human nature where our desire for togetherness pushes us further and further apart technology has a tendency of shaping us no matter what we try to do to hold it back in ancient Athens a common saying of Socrates was that the written word would make humanity lazy and forgetful somehow that approach didn't quite work for him since I got that anecdote from the book so I'm not gonna tell you to throw out your phones or even to turn them off instead I want to talk about the world we find ourselves with and the ways that our relationship with technology is changing even today but I have to warn you it gets worse before it gets better so what exactly is the problem with smart phones social media and the internet after all they allow us to talk across massive distances find people who share our interests and access the sum of human knowledge in our pockets it's easy enough to say that they distract us from the real world but so do TVs movie and in Socrates view books the real problem with our technology today is that it is so very good at exploiting our basic human psychology how much do you understand that the devices you see every day not much right well you're not alone we live in a society made up of people who could not design build repair or even operate most of the devices upon which their lives depend in this vastly complex world we are unable to offer a satisfactory explanation for the many human-made phenomena we see every day this is why our technology can control us instead of us controlling it the magic qualities of the digital world leave us in the passenger seat clinging to the little social media walls and websites that we do understand in the book sapiens by Yuval Noah Harare he explains that early humans evolved to work in groups to measure their status against other individuals and to crave social recognition and capital these are the ways our brains find a place for us in society and roles to play in the many relationships that make up our lives in the modern world however there are multiple overlapping hierarchies of status money fame education worldliness and more this overabundance of Status markers and hierarchies in our lives is difficult to navigate and this is where our technology is so enticing smartphones and social media provide bite-sized addictive chunks of recognition in the form of points like streaks followers views and more they give us quantifiable numbers on which to compare ourselves and a constant stream of buzzing flashing colorful reminders that we are recognized by those around us by the way you can follow me on social media after this performance in the 1990s at British anthropologist Robin Dunbar discovered a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size by extrapolating he found that humans can comfortably maintain about 150 stable relationships the so-called Dunbar number and this increasingly digitized an urbanized world we all have access to a massive social circle way larger than the 150 we could ever fully understand and the Internet is an overwhelming firehose more than 40 hours of video is posted on YouTube every minute this reach havoc on our primate brains but in another way the internet also provides the answer in the form of the endless subcultures groups and communities for interest ranging from Roman literature to memes about alpacas I know personally I'm a member of one such group weaving a culture and joining a subculture is a way for the monkey mind to cope with the modern world these subcultures can both nurture and isolates when I was in Middle School I was a confused and nerdy kid okay I'm still a little confused and a lot nerdy but back then I'd get home at 3:00 and play video games until late into the night I played with strangers from strange lands most of whom I'd never met in person of all ages and backgrounds some of whom didn't even speak my language we forged on behind our separate screens because we had a shared love of an online world öktem was 23 I hope you're watching this in a in a difficult shifting middle school social world that was my lifeline my island in a massive ocean of people uh in a massive ocean of people but even as that community became like a second family to me I found myself drifting away from the real world less able to cope with change and more anxious about human interaction this world of subcultures has had its largest impact on those who've grown up with it my generation the devices that have been placed in our hand from an early age have had a serious I have a huge effect on their lives and it's making us seriously unhappy according to researcher Jeanne twins rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed since 2011 the same year that rates of Americans with smartphones crossed 50% it's not an exaggeration to say that my generation is on the brink of one of the worst mental health crises in decades and much of this deterioration can be traced to our phones teens today are less likely to work date take risks go out or spend time with friends and family the shift is stunning today's 12th graders go out less often than eighth graders do and the number of teams who say they regularly go out with their friends has decreased by 40% since 2000 this shift has had a major effect on psyche according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse there is a direct correlation between time spent on social media and symptoms of depression and teens who spend 3 hours or more per day on electronic devices are 35% more likely to have a risk factor for suicide the irony is that this sadness comes most often from the most social people the ones with throngs of online friends and digital followers who are therefore pushed to spend more and more time on social media worst of all we can't know what the long-term effects of growing up like this will be adolescence is a key time for the development of social skills and interpersonal relationships something were often seriously lacking when tied to a digital niche so maybe you think I'm gonna tell you the solution is to forego our technology civilization and maybe even agriculture altogether and return to humanity's roots in hunting and gathering well I'm not gonna say that I like binging Netflix a little too much to give it up also eating the example of Socrates proves that crusading against change is unlikely to change anything instead I think there are reasons to be optimistic and ways that our relationship to technology is changing in the words of technology writer guan society looked at objectively has a lot of downsides if someone really finds a place in their subculture which gives them mental ease and physical health what right do the rest of us have to interfere and drag them into the main culture in this way subcultures better provide a space for kids like me with the specific niche interests people who find places of acceptance and love outside of the social norm culture is by definition vast and unspecialized culture can't cater to individual interests but subcultures can a world of subcultures may actually help us cope with the complexity we see in our day-to-day lives just as we're adapting to our technology it too is adapting to us the devices of today can predict our emotions from our words diagnose our sleep habits from our movements and bit-by-bit technology is learning how we act online when we feel alone the devices of the future instead of crudely exploiting our psychology are starting to act like little digital psychologists asking us how we feel and catering our digital experience to enlighten and enliven us instead of inspiring anxiety and frustration for example a Stanford researcher has I created a program called wobot a digital therapist for use in messaging clients that has shown huge advances in improving mood and diagnosing depression and this is just the beginning technology companies continue to advance these approaches because they to know that the status quo is unsustainable as technology comes to understand us better I hope that we humans will continue to work on understanding ourselves I hope that every one of you leaves this room with a better understanding of why it is that social technology so appeals to us as humans and I want to challenge you the next time you feel the need to look down at your phone I want to challenge you to look up instead at the people around you or in the next room or outside on the street the next time you feel alone I want you to look for another human being I know that what you're looking for isn't found in your pocket what you're looking for is inside them and maybe it's inside you as well thank you you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 19,516

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Social Science, Social Media, Technology

Id: Bp05RuefBqM

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 07 2018