Transcriber: Mirjana Čutura
Reviewer: Ivana Korom Hi, everyone. (Audience) Hey. I stand here with a simple offer, an offer that, if accepted,
yields instantaneous results and inevitable positive consequences. My offer is this: the chance to purge yourself
of social media and reclaim your personal identity. I challenge everyone to try going one week
without social media, and I guarantee it will change your life. I can attest to this because I personally have been
without any social media for almost a year. And it's completely changed
the way I view the world. I'm not saying
that all social media is bad. Social media can be used for marketing or to spread a positive
message to the world. However, apps like Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, and Snapchat are taking over our lives. They're taking us
out of the present moment and causing us to exist
only in a virtual world, and nobody should live like that. Social media has taken over
astonishingly quickly. If you think about it, when we meet a new person, the norm is no longer to ask them
for their phone number. The norm is to friend them on Facebook or ask for their Snapchat
or Twitter username. In 2008, only 24 percent of the US
population had a social media profile. Now 81 percent has one. This astronomical growth is because social media's seen
as a "do it all" platform. It's widely replaced texting
and email in a lot of cases, and it's used as our main source of news. This leads to people spending hours a day with their noses
just glued to their phones. Psychologists at
Trent Nottingham University found that we spend twice as much time
on our phones as we think we do. And that amount of time
is five hours a day - nearly a third of our entire waking lives. I'm sure you're familiar with this sight. That used to be me. In fact, I would wake up every morning
and immediately reach for my phone. The amount of notifications I had
would determine how good my morning was. "Yay! People want to talk to me." I would spend one to two hours thoughtlessly scrolling
though all my social media profiles before even getting out of bed. I would check Twitter,
then Snapchat, then Instagram, then go back to Twitter
to see if anything new had been posted just in the last 30 minutes. I was an addict wasting my time. And the time that I was wasting was being spent
looking at other people's posts and seeing how I thought
other people lived. This influenced me
to shape my life in a similar way, and I took on the values
of what I saw online. In hindsight, I wasn't living
my life at all. I was living society's life. This is one of the biggest problems
with social media. It causes people to live their life
based on some "societal" standard. Humans have always had
an instinct to fit in. Collaboration and cooperation
were necessary for our species to survive. Because of this, a sense of belonging is one of the most sought-after
and rewarding feelings anyone can experience. Think of the feeling of your favorite
sports team winning the big game or finally finishing a group project where each member of the group
knew their role and carried it out perfectly. Successful group interaction triggers the firing of the pleasure
centers in the brain and releases amounts of dopamine
synonymous with drug use. A feeling of belonging is sought in humans like drug addicts seek their next fix. And social media's designed
to exploit this. All the little features like comments,
likes, and being able to share posts are just gimmicks
designed to get us hooked by causing dopamine to be released. I was guiltier of just posting
what I thought everyone wanted to see than anyone. I knew that on social media,
I was simply crafting an image of myself, but I didn't care. I loved attention, and I loved the ability
to portray myself any way I wanted. It wasn't me. I was losing touch with my authentic self. And this problem manifests
mainly in my generation. As teenagers have grown up
with the internet, we spent our whole lives
interacting with our peers online. We're more comfortable on our phones
than in a face-to-face interaction. And this has catastrophic consequences
on our mental health. Studies have shown that kids who spend
more time on their phones have less developed frontal cortexes. And we need our frontal cortex to plan for the future,
think rationally, and solve problems. My generation is losing those abilities because we can't focus on anything
besides our phones. Combine that with the fact
that social media is our main source of forming connections with other people, and it's easy to see why teen depression
has skyrocketed 33 percent just since 2010 and teen suicides have gone up
31 percent in the same period. We are killing ourselves just to fit in. Yet everyone around me somehow thinks
they're better than social media. They tell me, "Oh, I only use it
to look at memes," or, "I just like to keep up with
my friends that I can't see every day." Yet the conversation
that I constantly hear is gossip and judgement: "Did you see my post? Did you like it?" "Did you see her posts? Why was she hanging out with him?" "Why did he say that? He's so creepy." "Why did she post that? She has no self-respect." The people around me
are addicted to stalking other people -- (Laughter) yet maintain the assertion
that they are somehow above it all. And all the features
that I talked about earlier, the gimmicks, they can't replace real-life interaction. A like can't replace a smile
or a compliment. But we treat it as if it can. We allow ourselves to become less social and lose touch with the face-to-face
interactions that really matter. In a study by Pew Research Center, 55 percent of participants said
they interact with their friends online on a daily basis. Only 33 percent said they interact
with their friends face-to-face on a daily basis. Think about this: How many of you have ever pulled out
your phone and stared at it just to avoid an awkward social situation? I know I see that every day in school. How many of you
have ever taken a long video at a sporting event or concert so you can "relive" the moment later or share it with your friends instead of actually making sure
that you're living in the moment and enjoying life as it happens? Last winter, I was
at a crossroads in my life. I've always been driven, but I really had no idea
what I wanted to do. Track has always been my main sport, but I didn't really think
I wanted to run in college. I've also always had dreams
of attending a top-level academic school. But schools like that
require true excellence. I had no motivating force and nothing that separated me
from the people around me. I cared more about creating the image
that I wanted of myself online than working to secure
the future that I wanted. Everybody has dreams of greatness
when they are a kid. Nobody wants to live
an average and unfulfilling life. Yet so few people
are willing to put in the work to developing themselves
and unlocking their full potential. I realized that if I devoted myself
to improving on the track, I would have a way of standing out
from other applicants and maybe reaching
one of my dream schools. So I began dedicating myself to track more and attempting to spend
less time on social media. However, about two weeks
into this new routine, I realized that while I
was training for track more, I was spending about the same amount
of time on social media. I was simply shirking my academic duties
and losing some sleep. I had to decide if running track
in college and my future was more important to me
than trying to fit in. And it was. Slowly but surely, I became
disgusted with who I was, and I wondered how I'd let myself
become so addicted to something that had no value
in the long run. I decided to quit
social media cold turkey. Instantly, it was as if a massive weight
had been lifted off my shoulders. I began to see the beauty
in the world around me. I've discovered my passion for life, and I found the sense of individuality
and contentment with who I was. In the week after I deleted social media, I changed more than I have
at any other point in my life. I reevaluated not only my actions but my mindset, my goals,
and my overall attitude towards life. I realized that at any given moment, I could be doing anything
I want to in the world. I simply have to choose
to do what's best for myself. And because of this,
I'm on my own path now and I'm my own person. I'm not standing up here proclaiming that I'm a perfect person
devoid of weakness just because I deleted social media, but I am claiming that I'm in control
of my own happiness and satisfaction with life. I'm also not claiming
that by deleting social media, you will immediately become
a better person, find happiness, and reach your goals. Deleting social media in itself doesn't bring anything
of a direct value to your life. It's simply an avenue
towards individual thought and freedom. Everybody spends their life
searching for happiness and yearning for fulfillment. Yet most people spend so much of it
looking at other people's lives online. If you have the super power
to be present in the moment and you aren't so preoccupied
with what everyone else is doing, you'll find that life is a little easier, happiness is always at hand, it's easier to treat
the people around you with kindness and have straightforward
but profound relationships. I think the world would be a better place
if everyone possessed this skill. Thank you. (Applause)
