How social media makes us unsocial | Allison Graham | TEDxSMU

Hello thank you very much. I would like to start by asking everyone to turn off their devices during my talk and for those of you who don't know the power buttons on the top or side of your phone. I would also like to thank the guys at state.com for allowing me to use this video. I want to post about how good this coffee is, but I can't think of a funny way to say it. This post is like a page long how can I shorten this just remove all the vowels and still be like seriously Hi guys follow me on Twitter sometimes I want to move to another country where I would have to deal with this stuff #picoftheday# stop joking # multitasking # squirm # road trip friends not while driving man # YOLO is anyone going to read this quick coffee? friends subscribe what's up follow on facebook check out my new shoes unfollow I love police we're going viral driving selfie third world no one cares I'm going to hide you all buddy I made the page popular so I want to talk about three things this night: how

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is disconnecting us, what's happening now and how we can do better.

Gallup did a poll in 2001 and every average American said he had 10 very close friends, the same poll this year said we had two, so what happened? Where did everyone go? I think we know where. I think we've all seen this by now, maybe we're even a little guilty of it. I see families like this. going out to dinner all the time and it drives me crazy and I see couples on dates clearly together but on their cell phones it's one of the strangest things I've ever seen in my life, but to me, what does it say when we're together? that there is someone on the other side of the screen who is much more important than you and who is right in front of my face.

There's a Mary Maker study that says we touch or check our phones 150 times a day and upload 1.8 billion photos. to Facebook that's a little over six of the population per day for photos. Remember when the Internet was new. Those of us who do that were actually only 25 years ago, if you can imagine. I remember when we had pagers. Time seemed a little simpler. back then you would hear the beep, you could call back, you couldn't call back or when we had answering machines you could always say 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 technology divides us, the more we demand of it and I think that's a big risk we take in our society today, we have this reduced vocabulary, now it's all about texting, even my mom . she says just text me and she's a little older, I won't say it because she'll see this later so omg oh my god lol laugh out loud WTF why the face?

So when we abbreviate our vocabulary, what we risk is losing nuances and subtleties. and intimate aspects of our personalities that make up our rich American vocabulary and with that shortening we lose and run the risk of not being able to express ourselves and communicate fully as we move forward and that losing our vocabulary is equivalent to a potential loss of power to express ourselves how many times someone looks with horror when your cell phone rings with the personal call a whole conversation starts happening in your head when Tiffany rings why is Tiffany calling what does Tiffany want why is she calling me and then you have that last moment of the ringtone where you know you have to pick up that phone or let it go to a voicemail that you may or may not dial, hey Tiffany, what's up? all the while thinking that she could have sent me a whole text message if she had asked everyone at Here if they could take her phone, put it down, and walk away for an hour.

You could do it? An im

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te feeling of panic overcomes us. We'll turn the car around even if we're halfway to our destination, just to come back and pick up our cell phones. I had a Blackberry that I loved and kept for a long time, but you guys remember when we had blackberries, don't you know what we called them back then? That's right, crack berries, so it's no surprise where we've landed. ourselves now, so I took my Blackberry to the Apple Store when everyone else had their Apple phone and the transition was more than I could bear, experiencing phone shame and I walked in and of course the Apple Store was completely packed and she is pretty. a boy comes up to me and says, "I can help you," and I said, "Yes, you can." I wish I had a phone that could do this, so I grabbed my Blackberry and threw it on the ground. pop pop pop, go through the entire store. everyone stops in the store and gasps and I walk over and pick it up and said look the screen is completely intact and still working and he just looked without missing a beat and said we don't have a phone that can do that.

A new study by Cohen Children Medical Center in New Hide Park, their study this year says that texting while driving is now the number one cause of death among teens, more than drinking and driving, which this means is that there are a lot of drunks in On the way I was talking to some high school students and of course you know they are always willing to make some kind of deal and they raised their hand and said well what happens if you are at a stop sign or what if you are? at a stoplight and I said my message was: I don't think there's anything that can't wait until we get to our destination and don't forget that if you send that text at the stop sign, they'll probably text you back. back up while driving so maybe it's not the best idea and I'll give you an example: if you're driving 55 miles per hour and you look at your phone for 5 seconds, you just drove the length of an entire football. completely blind field and it's not just our children, it's us too, we are constantly at work, constantly connected and constantly distracted, each of us thinks of some kind of extreme vacation that we should take and where we can tell our bosses, you know ?

I'm going on a very extreme vacation, there is absolutely no way I can return anything during the day, but you will still be expected to return to the hotel and return your work emails, so if we as adults are that distracted , kids are watching this, we're always at work and where are they always on their devices and how many times have they heard, what do they mean, they don't know. I posted it on Facebook so for some reason now everyone is supposed to know about each other's lives because they posted it on Facebook and I don't know if you climb Mount Kilimanjaro you didn't tell me last week when we were at brunch and what we featured Really, when we are on Facebook we present an ideal life, perfect upbringing, excellent relationships, we almost never give bad news or copy about ourselves because that does not generate many likes.

A different group from high school I was talking to and they raised their hand and educated me on something I did. I don't know, they said, you know, we wait until 5 o'clock before we post our Instagram photos because that's when we know all our friends are out and we'll get the most traffic. I thought it was pretty interesting and then they started talking. a little more about how they get jealous, so if one person gets more likes on Instagram than the other, they just delete it, so all this emotional turmoil and conflict arises where our number of likes somehow equals our self-esteem.

Our own PR firms are always trying to figure out how we can boost our numbers, work sometimes demands that of us too, we certainly do it a lot in our personal lives and this is what we present on Facebook. I mean, this is who we really are. in real life and this is what we present on Facebook, a little guilty, now we have the selfie and if you think about a selfie, it's a pretty sad invention, it's us taking a photo alone, maybe we can take two more. people, if someone really has a long arm, the bathroom selfie, I find this funny, I see it all the time, I'm like, oh, cool, that's you in front of a mirror, cool, going to a party, I probably didn't get invited , that's what you're going for.

To tide you over while watching Home Alone on Facebook, we have the Oscar selfie that was so funny and blocked your Twitter feed. I think most people know that and then we have the funeral selfie that's not so funny. She looks very. I'm disgusted and we have the driving selfie because I mentioned that research shows that it won't kill you at all. I think we would all live better if we had hands to hold instead of keys to click. Thanks thanks. I think we should take that. take a pause in our lives make mud pies build a fort take the time to look at the clouds for rhinos and unicorns without a screen and if the change starts from within we are that change we can be that change and teach our children what it was like before living In life in front of a screen we can use

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media to create positive face to face groups and organizations and meeting places like the ones we have tonight, not hash # activism but people activism, we must look up and see who is our neighbor.

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 at me. Look at each other and look at yourselves. I'm going to ask everyone here to take a screen-free challenge, disconnect for an hour a day and if you like this message please share it thank you very much