no one really knows what the world is going to look like or even 10 years from now if history repeats itself which it usually does one day someone will be examining the way we've chosen to construct our society and many of our social norms today may just very well be ridiculous things of the past so I wanted to take a moment observe our world the society we've created and talk about it what kind of things would you have to say now I would love to come up here and talk to you guys about religion or
politics or music or sports sadly I'm not an expert in any of those fields anyone who's seen me take a jump shot could tell you that now I've decided to analyze the world from the perspective of a teenager I wanted to find one problem one issue which if dealt with correctly may just change the world it's a big job so where do I start I turned to a friend a friend who has never let me down in the past and as long as I can remember a friend who has always been right I turned to
Google and Google told me well I searched in Google biggest problems for teens in under a second I was hit with over 16 million results I was bombarded with articles like top problems teen space and teenage hurdles life as a teen I quickly found that things like self esteem self belief and a lack of self fulfillment were some of the larger issues now it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone teenagers can be insecure but one thing I found interesting was a lot of teenagers are too insecure to talk about their dreams a lot of
young people don't feel comfortable talking about the person they aspire to be at first I didn't understand but I quickly remembered a conversation I was having with my family at the breakfast table in London one summer my parents were discussing my stance towards school and I told them my GPA is fine I take really rigorous courses and I have a nice-looking transcript the usual regurgitated responses they however felt that my issue wasn't my production at school or the quality of my work it was that I lacked the passion to be taking my courses their ambition
to like go to school and I completely understood a big reason why I went to school like many teams was for AP credits and a good looking transcript so in this point so at this point in the conversation my father asked me what exactly do you see yourself doing 15 years from now I gave him the same response I'd been giving since I was in the fifth grade I want to be a lawyer but at this point my sister bursts out laughing what could possibly be so funny though I said I was supposed to be
a lawyer at least a hundred thousand times why was this time any different when she was able to get her breath back my parents asked her what was up with the laughing and she replied he's too embarrassed to tell you he would rather be a rapper now at this point my face went red I never known my sister to embarrass me like that before and the conversation went on my dad continued and he asked me okay let me ask you a different question what would you be doing 15 years from now if you could do
absolutely anything I pause no one had ever asked me that before I didn't know for the most part I knew I didn't want to be I didn't want to be unhappy I didn't want to be struggling financially and I guess I just wanted to feel a sense of significance I was really struggling to answer the question because I think we've all been asked what do you want to do in the future that's different than being completely hypothetically ask what would you be doing if you could do absolutely anything so I started thinking about my significance
and I didn't want anyone else to tell me I was significant I didn't want my significance to be quantified through bank accounts or Facebook friends or degrees I just wanted to match my own definition of what it means to be significant and just reach the significance I dream of because in a world with seven billion people it can be kind of hard to make a name for yourself but I'm not the only one struggling with my dream which brings me to the center of my talk ladies and gentlemen I believe that we live in a
world in which it has become the norm for us to accept that one's dream is unobtainable unreasonable or unrealistic just off the basis that people say so but that is not a conclusion that came from my time on Google no over the past few months I've been conducting research to figure out what teenagers think about as far as goals dreams the future the purpose of life what are we as individuals here to achieve so the first thing I had to do was establish an audience I wanted my audience to be enriched with enough diversity to
make my findings credible I wanted people of different age groups people who practice different religions people who not only came from different countries but were raised in different countries eventually I was able to survey hundreds of teenagers from around the world okay I had an audience what kind of questions was I going to ask them I decided to start with the two questions that changed my whole mode of thinking that one conversation at the breakfast table first what do you see yourself doing 15 years from now eight percent of people didn't know 78 percent 78
percent found themselves choosing one of three occupations 78 percent felt that 15 years from now they were going to be a doctor a lawyer or an engineer so what do I do I jot down the names of all the lawyers because you never know when that's going to come in handy no but Susy my first reaction was 78% three jobs really guys but I quickly remembered since the fifth grade I myself said I was going to be a lawyer I was in the fifth grade I didn't know anything about law but when I said I
wanted to be a lawyer I got a good reaction from people I felt good saying it it seemed interesting I knew I had to do was talking so why was this number so high with thousands of honorable professional jobs out there why did people feel that they needed to be one of three I believe it is because of the norms that society is created we have put an emphasis on certain jobs and we as kids or young adults feel that we should we should want these type of jobs for ourselves I remember when I was
about seven or eight I came across this game and I love this game it's called some of you may know it's called the game of life right there's a recreation of the classical game of life and me and my cousins would play this all the time see the reason I love this game it's not just because I always win the reason I love it is because like life your status in the game is always changing now there's tons of ways that you can win at the game but the easiest is to have a lot of
kids pay your debt off early in the game and save a lot of cash now who can guess the three top paying jobs in the game of life they were doctors lawyers and engineers now that's just one really small really specific example but you don't need to play the same board games I did growing up to agree with me that society has put a large emphasis on what kind of jobs we should want for ourselves and that emphasis is created through the media through education and through family so the second question I asked it was
the question that changed my mode of thinking we've already established that 78% of the people felt they needed to occupy one of three jobs and what would you think if I stood here today I told you the majority of them would rather be doing something else the next question I asked was what would you be doing 15 years from now if you could do absolutely anything I found that 78% of people ended up changing their answer now I want to make this really clear it's not the same 78% that felt that they needed to occupy
one of the three more popular jobs it's 78 percent of the original group for example out of the 8% of the people who answered the first question not knowing what they saw themselves doing a lot of them were able to acknowledge for the second question oh that's what I would want to be doing and out of the answers that stayed the same the 22% whose answers stayed the same between the questions the most common job was doctor so I thought that was great people were saying the thing I'm seeing myself doing 15 years from now
is the one thing I want to be doing so what do I do with that I jot down the names of all the doctors because you never know when a good doctor might come in handy now here's why this is alarming first we establish that we live in a society where people growing up feel they need to occupy one of three jobs in order to become successful then we establish that they'd rather be doing something else from a young age they're able to differentiate between what they want to do and what they see themselves doing
they're able to come to the decision that this is the one thing I want to do in this world but this what I'm going to do they've decided for whatever reason that one thing is unobtainable so with this in mind I had a whole second set of questions I wanted to ask but I didn't put out a survey this time I didn't talk to hundreds and hundreds of kids I wanted to be more involved more personal so I literally went around the school for three days laptop in my backpack and I would stop people randomly
whether they were friends of strangers I would see if they had a couple minutes before class to take my survey to let me interview them so I began the interview why do you go to school now I was hoping for to get an education which I'll admit I got this was pretty much said in all of the conversations but one thing I was surprised to see that came up quite a bit was things like I'm forced to go and because I have to okay I continued what do you want to do with your education so
at this point everyone was giving me the same answers it were there were tons of different answers that basically revolved around the idea that I need my education in order to become successful but then success was defined by raising a family and having a lot of money okay to each their own my next question if this is what you believe to be success raising a family and having a lot of money in you education to do that what is it that you would want your children to achieve I was hoping for answers like I want
my son to change the world I want my daughter to leave a mark on history those are not the answers I got the most common thing that was said was I want my child to be happy which is great but when asked more specifically what do you want your child to achieve I got answers like I want my son to get a good education and I want my daughter to make enough money for herself I was starting to see a cycle a really boring cycle so we live in a world where dreams take a backseat
to job security and passion comes second to production so are we living to live or are we living to clock out are we just repeating this cycle so with this in mind I basically come to the conclusion that okay kids all around the world had given up on their dreams and the only reason we spent our entire youth attending school was so that we could one day make enough money retire and then teach our kids to do the same great this is all leaving me kind of upset I would told myself come on Lawrence it's
not too late to do a talk about sports the next day I got cut from my school's basketball team I decided no we're sticking with this talk so at this point I had one more set of questions I was going to get the answers to I put out another survey this time completely anonymous and from my survey there are two questions I really want to share with you guys today the first question do your parents know what your dream is 56% check the box indicating yes which left 44% of these parents not knowing what their
childhood dream was now 24 percent of the kids said no because my parents have never asked me they've never shown an interest in my dreams and the 20 percent felt that no because even though my parents are shown an interest maybe they've asked me they brought it up I don't feel comfortable talking about it I found this very alarming I hope off the basis of my talk alone these type of statistics could improve whether I'm interviewing hundreds of kids or I'm just talking to someone who lives in your households have these conversations so the next
question I asked in a world with seven billion people do you believe that you are significant 43% of the people who took my survey felt no my life holds no significance now the definition of what it means to be significant is different for every person one person might say being significant is having the entire world know my name and when something happens to me everyone knows why another person might say to be significant you just need to be meaningful to two or three people the people sitting at your table may be the definition of significance
varies between the individual but that is not what you need to take into account when you look at this what you need to take into account is the people answering my questions our kids some as young as 14 starting their first year of high school freshman when did we get to the point were 14 year olds we're giving up on their dream and deciding that my life was not significant this was all frankly depressing we live in a world where it's not realistic to aim extremely high just to miss that's considered failure it's it's not
smart to do that I for one believe you don't fail when you aim high and you miss you fail when you aim low and you hit you fail your community you fail your family and you fail yourself because from the young age of 14 when you have your entire life ahead of you you come to the conclusion you make the decision that you are not going to reach your full potential you are not going to achieve what you could achieve we live in a world where instead of being that special one in a million we've
all heard the phrase before that's special one in a million we sit back blend into the crowd of the other seven billion TEDx is about ideas we're spreading my my idea changing your mindset what if we lived in a world where everyone believed they could be significant what if we believed in a world where kids go to school because they want to go to school I for one want to live in a world where if you ask my child what's the difference between your dreams and your goals he says nothing because I'm young I'm ambitious
and I have my whole life ahead of me to achieve what I wish to achieve to change our social norms that would take a movement a movement that requires all of us it's not hard you just need to turn on a switch don't be so quick to doubt your neighbors don't be so quick to doubt yourself and don't be so quick to doubt your significance if there's one thing I want my talk to achieve it's that I hope anyone watching this take this into consideration and asks the questions I've asked today have the conversations that
I had at that one breakfast table in London because you never know how significant that conversation just might be ladies and gentlemen it's been a pleasure thank you so much you
