[Applause] good evening everyone so today I'm here to talk to you about the effects of the internet and in particular social media on our generation how its shaped our generation in more ways than we realize so let's begin with a quick question how many of you check your phone first thing in the morning when you wake up yeah it's almost all of us for a majority of us the first thing that we do every single morning after waking up is that we check our phones and for a lot of us the last thing that we
do before sleeping at night is also to check our phones in fact a survey showed that 77% of the people between the ages of 18 and 24 reach out for their phones whenever they have any free time and I'm definitely one of them now I thought what's the big deal I mean yeah I use my phone whenever I have time how harmful can it be maybe it i spend a total of around 35 40 50 minutes on it well just to check i installed an app last week which tracks my usage of the phone and
the results were quite frankly astounding here take a look I spent an hour on Chrome browsing the web spent an hour on whatsapp 55 minutes on snapchat and 25 minutes on Instagram in one day so a total of roughly three and a half hours spent in just one day those little tidbits of time and we think we have free time and reusing our phones they can actually add up to a pretty big number and the results were similar when I asked my friends to do a similar test we don't even realize what of what a
big chunk of our day we spend on our phones now how is this relevant why am I even talking about this well it's because we've noticed a few interesting phenomena associated with smartphone usage we've noticed that the average attention span of a human being has now gone down to nine seconds just 9 seconds and why is that well some say it's linked to a phenomenon called instant gratification or instant happiness and how does that happen well there's a chemical called dopamine that's released in the brain whenever we experience this instant burst of happiness when here
attacks on your phone vibrates get a notification you get a bit excited don't you that momentary happiness you're excited to see who it is a little curious that's dopamine being released in your brain dopamine by the way is the exact same chemical that's released when you drink alcohol smoke a cigarette take drugs gamble in other words it it's it shows highly highly addictive behavior and we're seeing similar trends for smartphone usage in fact half of the 18 to 24 year olds said that they check their phones in the middle of the night a third of
UK adults check their phones within five minutes of waking up and this addiction of ours we really didn't see it everywhere brilliant graphic showing how we've evolved from apes to smartphone addicts another brilliant brilliant piece of art what's the point of being afraid of a zombie apocalypse when you're already a zombie on your phone the entire time and this addiction is no coincidence it is no surprise because all of these apps Facebook snapchat Instagram they all have very carefully tailored algorithms which ensure that we are hooked to our phones why because each minute that you
spend on these apps these companies make big money through advertising and you don't have to believe me hear it from Sean Parker Sean Parker one of the earliest investors of Facebook said this in an interview he said Facebook's earliest mission was how do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible he also said we were exploiting the vulnerability of human psychology just think about that just let that sink in all these apps their purpose was never to connect you to one another it was only to make you addicted to make money
off your backs and we can we can see it happening all everywhere all around us we're all addicted we're all trapped and this effects our mental health in ways that we just don't realize a report showed that social media is linked with increased rates of anxiety depression and poor sleep it also said that the rates of anxiety and depression have gone up by 70 percent in the recent past seventy percent so social media is linked to depression and this isn't honestly not that surprising because social media is great at providing that one thing that we
all love filters and only in just those those pictures fill up filters for our pictures no those cute snapchat dog filters that we send each other I mean something a little deeper we filter our very lives before projecting them to the world we show the happiest the best versions of ourselves sometimes fake versions of ourselves out on social media we don't put up stories of our set of us cramming the day before the exam having nervous breakdowns we don't do that we show to the world that we're having fun we're having a great time our
life is perfect it's sorted now imagine you're bored sitting in your room and you decide to open snapchat see what what people are up to and all you see all you see are just stories of people having a great time enjoying their lives with their boyfriend their girlfriend their friends their family having fun and it's it might just be fake it might not necessarily be true it might be something like this hashtag selfie hashtag good life on the left on the right we see the reality so when you're sitting alone in your room watching other
people's stories seeing them have watching them have fun how will that make you feel even more alone even more depressed and we've seen this happen high rates of anxiety high rates of depression largely linked to social media sometimes when all of this depression and anxiety builds up in the most extreme of cases and we've seen this happen in the most extreme of cases can build up and cause irreversible harm irreversible damage in the form of self-harm sometimes even even suicide cases just just take a moment just to think about it forget everything else for just
a moment and think about yourself and your relationship with these apps is it really any more different than being addicted to a drug how does the drug addiction even begin in our teenage years in in a persons teenagers day they're feeling a bit emotionally distressed a little sad which is completely normal happens to all of us and they're not getting enough support from people so they try out a cigarette a drug maybe some alcohol and then they like it why because dopamine is released and then they start depending on it it becomes an addiction now
whenever they're depressed or sad next they don't turn to a person they turn to the bottle - drugs - a cigarettes and we see a similar trend in our generation with regard to social media whenever weird we're distressed we don't turn to people anymore we don't want to have friends or families we turn to our phone screens and it's a cycle you're a bit emotionally too distressed maybe a little bored you check your phone you feel better start liking it get addicted to it and what does phone addiction do cause depression even more depression so
it's a continuous vicious cycle and an extremely dangerous cycle that so many of us are prone to now we just can't leave our phones alone for even one moment can we take a ride on the bus on the tube any everywhere you go everyone will be busy on their phones we don't have real life conversations with each other anymore we don't strike up a conversation with a stranger in a bus unheard of because we're all busy just chatting away texting away doing something or the other on our phones and it's all just in this country
not just in the UK not just in the Western world I've seen the same thing happen in India as well where I've lived for most of my life it's becoming a global trend you go for a meal with your friends we'll be busy on the phones after time this addiction of ours to our phones is driven by numbers the number of likes shares comments views that we get on our stories and on our posts these numbers to just keep buzzing in our head at such a fast speed no wonder our attention spans are so low
no wonder our patience levels have just gone down it's all way too fast we're trapped in this virtual world we care more about our snapchat streaks than we do about actual face-to-face conversations with our friends we've almost forgotten that there exists a real world outside this land of our smartphones next slide is true for so many of us Wi-Fi went down for a few minutes so I had to talk to my family they seem like nice people if the reality for so many of us now when we repeatedly prioritize these instant gratification giving apps over
our long-term goals something like a tug of war situation happens where on one hand we have our phones which give us instant gratification and a highly addictive dopamine rush and on the other hand we have our long-term goals which require patience consistence and discipline and what do we choose almost always our phones our priorities in life have just changed completely and when we continuously do that when we continually choose our phones over our long term goals which require work we come up with something called procrastination we've all gone through it remember the time when you
hide an entire month to do that essay but you ended up doing it the night before the night before the deadline remember that time when you had an exam to prepare for but instead you were on Instagram checking out what the Kardashians are up to these days you procrastinate it you know the exact science behind procrastination is incredibly complex and I won't be getting into that but in most cases it's fueled by the fact that we're addicted to our devices our phones our iPads our lap tops watching random YouTube cat videos Netflix series episode after
episode season after season without realizing how much time were wasting prime example I've known that I have to do this TEDx talk for the past three weeks and whenever I start working on it four days ago on Saturday why because until then I was busy watching season nine of friends on Netflix I was constantly choosing instant gratification over something that was productive something that required actual effort now I've given you enough problems and clearly we need solutions because our generation a bunch of smart talented self-aware hard-working motivated individuals are constantly falling prey to this cycle
of internet and Inter and instant gratification so we need solutions and I don't know whose fault it is maybe it's our parents who gave us unfettered unlimited and unsupervised access to the internet and smartphones maybe it's these devices who watch which are just made to make money off of our addictions maybe it's us for not realizing how our smartphone addiction is affecting our mental health but whoever's fault it is it is our generations responsibility to find a solution China came up with the solution China set up 250 internet addiction treatment camps which are basically a
military-style boot camp where they help teenagers get free of their internet addiction looks something like this now that's a bit too drastic for my liking I'm not suggesting something as rigorous as military-style rehab all I'm saying is is that just recognizing this just understanding the problem realizing in the different ways in which smartphones can affect us is the first step towards making a positive change then spreading this awareness to your friends your family to pip to people you care about and the key thing is moderation we need to be moderate about our usage of our
phones when you go out on the public transport go out for a meal with your friends on the dinner table just keep your phones away just don't don't have them on you you won't use them another very important thing most of us keep our phones by our bedside where something like this happens at 12:00 we get a text we see where it's who we see which from and we spend the next three hours just texting all our friends and then the next morning we wake up looking like a zombie because we haven't had enough sleep
so don't keep your phone by our bedside keep it in the kitchen keep it in the living room keep it in the bathroom for all I care just don't keep them by your bedside we need to understand that this is a serious big problem we need to free ourselves from this addiction of smartphones that's the only way in which we can ever even hope of moving towards a better future we need to free ourselves from the shackles of our smartphones I'm sure we can and I hope that we will thank you for listening [Applause]
