How social media makes us unsocial | Allison Graham | TEDxSMU

I thank you very much I'd like to start out by asking everyone to power down their devices during my talk and for those of you that don't know the power buttons either on the top or on the side of your phone I'd also like to thank the guys from state comm for permission to use this video I want to post about how great this coffee is but I can't think of a funny way to say it this post is like a page long how do we shorten this just take out all the vowels no stools it's double seriously hey guys you on Twitter follow me sometimes I want to move to another country where we're not to deal with this stuff now he knows you're anemic to test another it's the first Paris Academy on a shaper of the day hashtag awkward just kidding ash tag multitasker hashtag squirm work hash tag road trip dudes not like you're driving with hashtag Yolo is anybody even gonna read this back do you copy friends subscribe what's up face Paul look at my new shoes unfollow we're doing virals having selfie world nobody cares I'd all of you dude I made the popular page so I want to talk about three things tonight how social media is disconnecting us what's happening now and how we can do better Gallup took a poll in 2001 and every average American said that they had ten really close friends the same poll this year said we had two so what happened where did everybody go and I think we know where I think we've all seen this by now maybe even been a little guilty of it ourselves I see families like this out to dinner all the time and it drives me nuts and I see couples on dates clearly together but on their cell phones it's one of the strangest things I've ever seen but to me what does this say when we are together to me it says that there's someone anyone on the other end of the screen that's way more important than you who's right in front of my face there's a study by Mary Meeker that says we touch our phones or check our phones a hundred and fifty times a day and we upload 1.8 billion pictures to Facebook that's a little over a sixth of the population a day for pictures remember when the internet was new those of us that do that was really actually only about 25 years ago if you can imagine I remember when we had pagers times seemed a little simpler back then you'd get the beep you may return the call you may not return the call or when we had answer machines you could always say that you weren't home now we have a list of all these excuses that may or may not work but it seems like the more we talk about how technology divides us the more we demand from it and I think that's a huge risk that we're running in our society today we have this shortened vocabulary now it's all about the texting even my mom she says just text me and she's a little bit older I won't say we'll see this later so oMG oh my goodness lol laugh out loud WTF why the face so when we abbreviate our vocabulary what we risk is losing the nuances subtleties and intimate parts of our personalities that make up our very rich American vocabulary and with that shortening we lose and run the risk of not being able to fully express ourselves and communicate as we move forward and that losing our vocabulary equals a potential loss of being able to express ourselves how many times does anybody look in horror when their cell phone rings with the personal call a whole conversation starts happening in your head when it rings Tiffany why is Tiffany calling what does Tiffany want why is she calling me and then you have that last ringtone moment where you know you have to pick up that phone or let it go to a voicemail you may or may not check hey Tiffany what's up the whole time thinking she could have completely texted this whole message to me if I asked everybody in here if they could take their phone set it down and walk away for an hour could you do it an immediate sense of panic comes over us we will turn the car around even if we are halfway to our destination just to go back and get our cell phone I had a blackberry which I adored and I kept it for a really long time but you guys remember when we had BlackBerry's don't you what did we call them back then that's right crack berries so it's no surprise where we've landed ourselves now so I took my blackberry into the Apple store when everybody else had their Apple phone and the transition was more than I can bear experiencing phone shame and I went in and of course it was completely jam-packed at the Apple store and this cute kid comes up to me and he's like may I help you and I said yes you can I would like a phone that could do this so I took my blackberry and I threw it on the ground but pop pop pop it goes all the way across the store everybody just stops in the store gasps and I walk over and I pick it up and I said see the screens fully intact and it still works and he just looked not missing a beat and he said we don't have a phone that can do that a new study out by the Cohens Children Medical Center in New Hyde Park their study says this year that texting while driving is now the number one cause of death for teens more than drinking and driving so what this means is there's a lot of drunks on the road I was speaking to some high school students and of course you know they're always willing to make some sort of bargain and they raise their hand and they said well what if you're out of stop fine or what if you're at a stoplight and I said my message was I don't think there's really anything that can't wait until we get to our destination and don't forget if you send that text at the stop sign they're probably going to text you back while you're driving so maybe not the best idea and I'll give you example if you're driving 55 miles an hour and you look down at your phone for five seconds you just now driven the length of an entire football field completely blind and it's not just our kids it's us as well we are constantly at work constantly constantly connected and constantly distracted every every one of us thinks of some sort of extreme vacation we need to go on where we may say to our bosses you know I'm going to go on a very extreme vacation there's just absolutely no way I can return anything during the day but you're still expected to go back to the hotel and return your work emails so if we as adults are the distracted our kids are seeing this we're always at work and where are they always on their devices and how many times have you guys heard what do you mean you don't go I posted it on Facebook so for some reason now we're all supposed to know about each other's lives because they posted it on Facebook and I don't know that you climb Mount Kilimanjaro you didn't tell me last week when we were at brunch and and what do we present really when we are on Facebook we present an idyllic life perfect parenting great relationships we hardly ever give any bad news or copy about ourselves because that doesn't make for a lot of likes different high school group I was speaking to and they raised their hand and educated me on something I didn't know they said you know we wait until 5 o'clock before we post our Instagram pictures because that's when we know all of our friends are out and we'll get the most traffic I thought that was pretty interesting and then they started talking a little bit more about how they get jealous so if one person gets more likes on Instagram than the other then they just take it down so there's all this emotional turmoil and strife going on with our number of likes somehow equaling our self-esteem we are all our own public relations firms always trying to figure out how we can increase our numbers work sometimes demands that from us as well certainly we do that a lot in our personal life and this is what we present on faith I mean here's who we really are in real life and this is what we present on Facebook guilty a little bit of it we have the selfie now and if you think about a selfie it's rather a sad invention it's a us taking a picture of ourselves by ourselves maybe we can get two more people if somebody really has a long arm the bathroom selfie I find this hilarious I see it all the time upgrade that's you in front of a mirror great going to a party I probably was not invited to that you're going to be self eating your way through while I watch home alone on Facebook we have the Oscar selfie that was a lot of fun that crashed the Twitter feed I think most people know and then we have the funeral selfie not so fun she looks very unpleased and we have the driving selfie because I mentioned research shows that won't kill you at all I think we would all live life better if we had hands to hold rather than keys to click thank you thank you no I think we need to take that pause in our life make mud pies build a fort take the time to gaze at the clouds for rhinoceroses and unicorns screen free and if change starts from within we are that change we can be that change and teach our kids what it was like before we live life in front of a screen we can use social media to create positive face-to-face groups and organizations and meeting places like we have tonight not hashtag activism but people activism we need to look up and see who our neighbor is we need to look up and put that phone away make a human connection teach human interaction as if it were as important as the very breath we breathe look up at me look up at each other and look up at you and I'm going to ask everyone in here to take a screen free challenge unplug for one hour a day and if you like this message please share it thank you very much

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,137,656

Rating: 4.8503695 out of 5

Keywords: tedx talk, ted talks, United States, English, ted x, tedx talks, ted, Technology, Social Media, tedx, TEDxTalks, ted talk

Id: d5GecYjy9-Q

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 10 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/Bubbly_Hat]

The video before the TED talk reminded me of an SNL sketch without the laughing lol.