hi thank you very much uh 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.com 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 I shorten this just take out all the vowels still still
be like a seriously hey guys you on Twitter follow me sometimes I want to move to another country where would have to deal with this stuff # photo of the day # quit just kidding # multitasking # squirm # road trip dudes not while you're driving man # YOLO is anybody even going to read this fast coffee friends subscribe what's up Facebook follow look my new shoes unfollow I love cop we're going viral driving selfie third world nobody [Music] cares I'm going to hide all of you dude I made the popular [Music] 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 10 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 it 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 maker that says we touch our phones or check our phones 150 times a day and we upload 1.8 billion pictures to Facebook that's a little over a six 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 time 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 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 because she'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 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 Des ation just to go back and get our cell phones I had a Blackberry which I adored and I kept it for a really long time but you guys remember when we had blackberries 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 could 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 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 screen's 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 Cohen Children Medical Center in new hide 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 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 raised their hand and they said well what if you're at a stop sign 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 5 seconds you've 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 to 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 this 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 know 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 idic 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 on faceb 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 I see it all the time I'm like oh great 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 selfing your way through while I watch Home Alone on Facebook we have the Oscar selfie that was a lot of fun that uh crashed the Twitter feed I think most people know and then we have uh the funeral selfie not so fun um 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 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 hash # 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 gonna 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
