few of us can debate right that there's an increase in depression anxiety and suicide amongst young people I mean the statistics are alarming and so you have an entire generation that's growing up with lower self-esteem than previous generations the other problem to compound it is we're growing up in a Facebook Instagram World in other words we're good at putting filters on things we're good at showing people that life is amazing even though I'm depressed all of our validation now comes from the number of likes the number of followers we have you have an addiction and
like all Addiction in time it'll destroy relationships it'll cost time and it'll cost money and it'll make your life worse you know the problem with addiction is addicts know that it's bad for them there are plenty of Alcoholics who know that what they're doing is unhealthy but they're addicted which is why they keep doing it I think many of us can admit that what we do is unhealthy and that it is addictive and we may be addicted the question we have to raise is what are the costs of the benefits that we get from technology
cuz there is always a cost to everything that we gain nothing is free we know that engagement with social media and our cell phones releases a chemical called dopamine that's why when you get a text feels good right so you know we've all had it where you're feeling a little bit down or feeling a little bit lonely and so you send out 10 text to 10 friends you know hi hi hi hi cuz it feels good when you get a response right it's why we count the likes it's why we go back 10 times to
see if and if it's going if our my Instagram is growing slower I would did I do something wrong do they not like me anymore right the the trauma for young kids to be unfriended because we know when you get it you get hit a dopamine which feels good it's why we like it it's why we keep going back dopamine is the exact same chemical that makes us feel good when we smoke when we drink and when we gamble in other words it's highly highly addictive we have age restrictions on smoking gambling and alcohol and
we have no age restrictions on social media and cell phones which is the equivalent of opening up the liquor cabinet and saying to our teenagers hey by the way this adolescence thing if it gets you down that's basically what happening you have an entire generation that has access to an addictive numbing chemical Cod dopamine through social media and cell phones as they're going through the high stress of adolescence why is this important almost every alcoholic discovered alcohol when they were teenagers when we're very very young the only approval we need is the approval of our
parents and as we go through adolesence we make this transition where we now need the approval of our ears very frustrating for a parent very important for us it allows us to acculturate outside of our immediate families into the broader tribe right it's a highly highly stressful and anxious period of our lives and we're supposed to learn to rely on our friends some people quite by accident discover alcohol and numbing effects of dopamine to help them cope with the stresses and anxieties of adolescence unfortunately that becomes hardwired in their brains and for the rest of
their life lives when they suffer significant stress they will not turn to a person they will turn to the bottle social stress Financial stress career stress that's pretty much the primary reasons why an alcoholic drinks what's happening is because we're allowing unfettered access to these dopamine producing devices and media basically it's becoming hardwired and what we're seeing is as they grow older too many kids don't know how to form deep meaningful relationship their words not mine they will admit that many of their friendships are superficial they will admit that their friends that they don't count
on their friends they don't rely on their friends they have fun with their friends but they also know that their friends will cancel on them if something better comes along deep meaning for relationships is not there because they never practice the skill set and worse they don't have the coping mechanisms to deal with stress so when significant stress starts to show up in their lives they're not turning to a person they're turning to a device they're turning to social media they're turning to these things which offer temporary relief we know the science is clear we
know that people who spend more time on Facebook suffer higher rates of depression than people who spend less time on Facebook right these things balance alcohol is not bad too much alcohol is bad gambling is fun too much gambling is dangerous right there's nothing wrong with social media and cell phones it's the imbalance right if you're sitting at dinner with your friend and you're texting somebody who's not there that's a problem that's an addiction if you're sitting in a meeting with people you're supposed to be listening to and speaking and you put your phone on
the table face up or face down I don't care that sends a subconscious message to the room that you're not just you're just not that important to me that's what happens and the fact that you cannot put it away is because you are addicted right if you wake up and you check your phone before you say good morning to your girlfriend boyfriend or spouse you have an addiction and like all Addiction in time it'll destroy relationships it'll cost time and it'll cost money and it will make your life worse so you have a generation growing
up with lower self-esteem that doesn't have the coping mechanisms to do with Str stress now you add in the sense of impatience right they've grown up in a world of instant gratification you want to buy something you go on Amazon at arrives the next day you want to watch a movie log on and watch a movie you don't check movie times you want to watch a TV show binge you don't even have to wait week to week to week I know people who Skip Seasons just so they can binge at the end of the season
insta gratification everything you want you can have instantaneous everything you want instant gratification except job satisfaction and strength of relationships there ain't no app for that they are slow Meandering uncomfortable messy processor and so what this young generation needs to learn is patience that some things that really really matter like love or job fulfillment Joy love of Life self-confidence a skill set any of these things all of these things take time sometimes you can expedite pieces of it but the overall journey is arduous and long and difficult and if you don't ask for help and
learn that skill set you will fall off the mountain or you will the worst case scenario and we're already seeing it we're seeing an increase in this generation we're seeing an increase in accidental deaths due to drug overdoses we're seeing more and more kids drop out of school or take leaves of absence due to depression unheard of this is really bad those are all bad cases the best case scenario is you'll have an entire population growing up and going through life and just never really finding Joy they'll never really find deep deep fulfillment in work
or in life they'll just fine how's your job fine yesterday how's your relationship it's fine like that's the best case scenario which leads me to the the fourth point which is environment which is we're taking this amazing group of young fantastic kids who just dealt a bad hand it's no fault of their own and we put them in corporate environments that care more about the numbers than they do about the kids that aren't helping them overcome the challenges of a digital world and finding more balance that isn't helping them overcome the need to have instant
gratification and teach them the joy an impact and the Fulfillment you get from working hard over on something for a long time that cannot be done in a month or even in a year there should be no cell phones in conference rooms none zero and I don't mean the kind of like sitting outside waiting to text I mean like when you're sitting and waiting for a meeting to start nobody go this is what we all do we all sit here and wait for the meeting to start meeting starting okay we start the meeting no that's
not how relationships are formed remember we talked about it's the little things relationships are formed this way we're waiting for a meeting to start and we go how's your dad I heard he was in the hospital oh he's really good thanks for asking he's actually at home now oh I'm really glad that was really amazing I know it was really scary for that's how you form a relationship hey did you ever get that report on oh my God no I didn't I'll help you out I totally I'll can I help you out with that really
that's how trust forms trust doesn't form at an event in a day even bad times don't form trust immediately it's the slow steady consistency and we have to create mechanisms where we allow for those little innocuous interaction to happen when you're out for dinner with your friends like I I do this with my friends when we're going out for dinner and we're leaving together we'll leave our cell phones at home who are we calling maybe one of us will bring a phone in case we need to pull an Uber we'll take one phone and so
it's like an alcoholic the reason you take the alcohol out of the house we is because we cannot trust our willpower we're just not strong enough but when you remove the Temptation it actually makes it a lot easier and so when you just say don't check your phone people literally will go like this but if you don't have the phone you just kind of enjoy the world and that's where ideas happen the constant constant constant engagement is not where you have Innovation and ideas ideas happen when our minds wander and we go and you see
something I bet they could do that that's called Innovation right but we're taking away all those little moments none of us should charge our phones by our beds we should be charging our phones in the living rooms remove the Temptation you wake up in the middle of the night cuz you can't sleep you won't check your phone which makes it worse but if it's in the living room it's relaxed it's fine but it's my alarm clock buy an alarm clock they cost $8 so I think we cannot ignore these factors of which one of them
of course has to be the imbalance of social media and cell phones in our lives I'm not against it I'm against the amount of it right that that we can't go for dinner with a friend and put our phone in airplane mode for an hour and a half and just be present with our friends and so how do we combat this imbalance you do not get to say when you're being present you are present when somebody else says you are and the reason we meditate for example Le is because we learn things like calm and
quiet and focus and when you meditate you have a thought and you learn to label that thought and put it out of your head and deal with it later so that when you're with a friend and they're talking you're not thinking about your next thought you put your thought aside and you listen entirely to what they're saying you focus on one thing which is them and you are not present until your friend at the end end of the conversation says to you thank you for listening I feel heard thank you for being present isn't with
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