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Channel / Source:
TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-09-19
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E7hkPZ-HTk
alright so you probably don't realize they're right now you're actually looking at something quite rare because I am a millennial computer scientist book author standing on the Ted stage and yet I've never had a social media how this happened was actually somewhat random it social media first came onto my radar when I was at college my sophomore year of college this is when Facebook arrived at
our campus and at the time which was right after the first dot com bust I had had a dorm room business I'd had to shut it down in the bust and suddenly this other kid from Harvard name mark had this product called Facebook people and excited about it so sort of a fit of somewhat immature professional jealousy I sound like a what's that going to she
was like all of my life I look up not long later and I see that everyone I know is really hooked on this from the clarity you can get when you have some objectivity some perspective on it I realized this seems a little bit bigger so I never signed up never have associate so I'm here for two reasons I want deliver two messages the first message
I want to deliver is that even though I've never had a social media account I'm okay not to worry it turns out I still have friends I still know what's going on in the world is a computer scientist I still collaborate with people all around the world I'm still regularly exposed serendipitously to interesting ideas I really describe myself as lacking in our came out okay but
I'll go even farther to go even farther say not only in my okay without social media but I think I'm actually better off I think I'm happier I think I find more sustainability and my life I think I've been more successful professionally because I don't use social so my second goal here on stage is try to convince more if you to believe the same thing to
see if I can actually convince more view that you two would be better off if you quit social media so if the theme of this tax event is future tense I guess than other words this would be my vision of the future would be one in which fewer people actually use social I guess that's a big claim I think I need to back up some I
thought what I would do is take the three most common objections I hear when I suggest to people that they quit social and then free to these objections are try to defuse the hype and see if I can actually question some more reality this is the first most common objection I hear that's not a hermit that's actually a hipster web developer down from the street lesser
if they're Herman sometimes it's hard to tell so this first objection goes as follows cal social media is one of the fundamental technologies of the twenty first century to reject social media would be an act of extreme blood is some it would be like riding to work in a horse or using a rotary phone I can't take such a big so my reaction to that objection
is I think that is nonsense social media is not a fundamental techno it leverages some fundamental technologies but it's better understood is this which is to say it's a source of entertainment entertainment product the way the technologist Jaron Lanier puts it is that these companies offer you shiny treats in exchange for minutes of your attention and bites of your personal data which can then be packaged
up sold so to say that you don't use social media should not be a large social stance is just rejecting one form of entertainment for others it should be no more controversial than saying I don't like newspapers I like to get my news from Agassi it's our I prefer to watch cable series as opposed to network television Sir it's not a major political or social stances
so you don't use product my use of slot machines appear also is not accidental because if you look a little bit closer at these technologies it's not just of their source of entertainment but they're actually somewhat unsavory source we now know that many of the major social media companies hire individuals called attention engineers who borrow principles from Las Vegas casino gambling among other places try to
make these products as addictive as poss that is the desired use case of these products is that you use it in a dicta faster because that maximizes a profit they can be extracted for your attention and data so it's not a fundamental technologies just a source of entertainment one among many and a somewhat unsavory if you look a little to close so here's the second comment
objection I hear when I suggest that people quit social media the objective goes as follows cal I can't quit social media because it is vital to my success in the twenty first century economy if I do not have a well cultivated social media brand people will know who I am people will be able to find me opportunities will come my way and I will effectively disappear
from the economy so again my reaction is once again this objection also is nonsense so I recently published this book that draws on multiple different strands of evidence to make the point that in a competitive twenty first century economy what the market values is the ability to produce things that are rare and are valuable you produce something that's rare and is valuable the market will value
that what the market dismisses for the most part are activities that are easy to replicate produce a small amount of value well social media use is the epitome of it easy to replicate activity this not directly produce a lot of value it something that any sixteen with the smartphone can do by definition the market is not going to give a lot of value to those behaviors
Stedman reward the deep concentrated work required build real skills and to apply the skills to produce things like a craftsman a rare that are valuable the put it another way you can write an elegant algorithm if you can write a legal brief the can change a case if you can write a thousand words of prose that's been fixated reiterate if you can look at a sea
of ambiguous data and apply statistics and pull out insights to transform home business strategy if you can do these type of activities which require deep work produce outcomes that are rare and valuable people will find you you'll be able to write your own ticket you label this build the foundation every me for success professional life regardless of how many Instagram all so this is the third
comment objection I hear when I suggest to people that they quit social media in some sense I think it might be one of the so subjective goes as follows hell maybe I agree with you maybe you're right it's not a fundamental technology may be using social media is not at the core of my professional success but you know what it's harmless I have some fun on
it we're Twitter's funny I don't even really use it that much on the first adopters is kind of interesting the tart try it out and and maybe I might miss out something about you what's the harm so again I look back and I say this objection also is nonsense in this case what it misses is what I think is very important reality that we need to
talk about more frankly which is that social media brings with it multiple well documented significant harm and we actually have to confront these harm's head on with trying to make decisions about whether or not we embrace this technology and let into our lives so one of these harms that we know this technology brings has to do with your professional success so I just argued before that
the ability to focus intensely to produce things around valuable to hone skills at the marketplace and I said this is what's going to matter in our economy but right before that I argued that social media tools are designed to be addictive the actual design desired use case these tools that you fragment your attention as much as possible throughout your waking that's how these two to use
well we have a growing amount of research which tells us that if you spend large portions of your day state of fragmented attention so large portions of your day we are constantly break after attention took a quick glance to just check on just quickly look at instant that this campervan we reduce your capacity for con in other words you could permanently reduced your capacity do exactly
the type of deep effort that we're finding to be more and more increasingly competitive kami so so smear use is not harmless can actually have a significant negative impact on your ability to thrive in the economy I am especially worried about this we look at the younger generation coming up which is the most shattering this technology if you lose your ability Stan concentration you're going to
become less and less relevant economy there's also psychological harm through will document the social media brings that we do need to address so we know from the research literature that the more you social media the more likely you are to feel lonely or isolated we know that the constant exposure to your friends carefully curated positive portrayals of their life and leave you to feel inadequate and
can increase rates of depression and something I think we're gonna be hearing more about in the near future I said there's a fundamental mismatch between the way our brains are wired and this behavior of exposing yourself to stimuli with interment remorse throughout all of your waking hours so it's one thing to spend a couple hours at the slot machine Las Vegas but you bring a slot
machine with you when you pull that handle all day long from when you wake up to when you go to bed we're not wired from it short circuits the brain were starting to find that it has actual cognitive consequences one of them being the sort of pervasive background home of anxiety now the Canary in the coal mine for this issues actually college campuses you talk to
mental health experts on college campuses don't tell you along with the rise of ubiquitous smartphone uses social media use among the students on the campus came an explosion of anxiety related disorders on this camp so that's the Canary in the coal mine this type of behavior is a mismatch for brain where you can make you feel miserable so there's a real cost to social media use
which means we are trying to decide should I use this or not saying it's harmless is not enough you actually have to identify a significantly positive clear benefit that can outweigh these potential I'm clearly not trivial harms the people often ask okay but what is life like without social media that can actually be a little bit scary to think about what I found from people I
know who've gone through this process there can be a few weeks they're difficult it actually is like a true detox process the first two weeks can be uncomfortable you feel a little bit anxious you feel like you're missing a limb but after that things settle down and actually life after social media can be quite positive there's two things I can report back to you from the
world of no social media use first it could be quite productive be quite productive so I'm a professor at a research institution of written five books I rarely work past five PM on the week part of the way I'm trying to able to pull that off is because it turns out if you treat your attention with respect so you don't fragmented you allow it to stay
whole you preserve your Billy to concentrate when it comes time to work you can actually do one thing after another and do it with intensity and intensity can be traded for time pricing how much you can get on an eight hour day for evil to give each thing intense com another something else I can report back from wife about social media is that outside of work
things can be quite peaceful so I often joke of a very comfortable being a nineteen thirties farmer because if you look at my leisure time I read newspaper while the sun comes up I listen to baseball on the radio I honest to god sit in a leather chair and read hardcover books and it's got a bit it sounds old fashioned but I tell you they're on
to something and it's actually a restorative very peaceful forty to actually spend your time at work you don't have the constant home stimuli and the background home of anxiety that comes along so I felt so to me is really not so so I pulled into these threads you see my full argument for why I think not everyone but certainly much more people than right now useless
me much more people should not be used and that's because we can first to summarize start with the main concerns that somehow it's a fundamental technology you have to use nonsense it's a slot machine in your phone we can discard with this notion that you're not going to get a job if you don't use social media nonsense anything a six year old the smartphone can do
is not going to be what the market reports and then I'd emphasize the point that there's real harms with it so it's not just harmless you really would have to have a significant benefit before you actually see this trade off is worth it to finally I noted that life without social media there's real positives associated with so I'm hoping that would mean if you actually go
through the same calculus you at least consider the perspective on making right now witches many more people would be much better off if they don't use this knowledge you look for some of you might disagree some of you might have skating but accurate cheeks of me and my point of course I welcome all negative feedback I just ask that you direct your comments ports Twitter thank
