Questions Every Teenager Needs to Be Asked | Laurence Lewars | TEDxDhahranHighSchool

No one really knows what the world will be like even in 10 years if history repeats itself, which it usually does, one day someone will examine the way we have chosen to build our society and many of our current social norms may very well be ridiculous things from the past, so I wanted to take a moment to look at our world, the society we've created, and talk about it. What kind of things would you have to say now? I'd love to come here and talk to you. guys about religion, politics, music or sports, unfortunately I am not an expert in any of those fields.

Anyone who has seen me take a jump shot could tell you that I have now decided to analyze the world from the perspective of a

teenager

that I wanted to. Finding a problem, an issue that, if dealt with correctly, can change the world, is 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, for as long as I can remember, a friend. who has always been right, I turned to Google and Google told me right. I Googled the biggest problems for

teenager

s in less than a second.

I got more than 16 million results. I was bombarded with articles like the biggest problems in the teen space and the pitfalls of teen life as a teen. Teenager I quickly discovered that things like self-esteem, self-confidence, and lack of personal fulfillment were some of the biggest issues right now. It shouldn't surprise anyone. Teenagers can be insecure, but one thing I found interesting was that many teenagers are. Too insecure to talk about their dreams. Many young people do not 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 over the breakfast table in London.

One summer, my parents were discussing my stance toward school and I told them that my GPA was fine. I take very rigorous courses and have an attractive academic record. The usual regurgitated answers. However, they felt that my problem was not my production in school or the quality of my work was that I lacked the passion to take my courses, their ambition was that I would like going to school and I completely understood one of the main reasons. Why I went to school, like many teams, was to get AP credits and an attractive academic record, so at this So at this point in the conversation my father

asked

me what exactly do you see yourself doing in 15 years.

I gave him the same answer he had been giving since he was in fifth grade. I want to be a lawyer, but right now. period my sister starts laughing what could be so funny even though I said I was supposed to be a lawyer at least a hundred thousand times why was this time different when she was able to catch her breath my parents

asked

her what was up with the laughter and she said it's too embarrassed to tell you I'd rather be a rapper now at this point my face turned red. I never knew my sister embarrassed me like that before and the conversation continued, my dad continued and asked me if I was okay.

Let me ask you a different question: what would you be doing in 15 years if you could do absolutely anything? I pause. Nobody had asked me that before. I didn't know it for the most part. I knew I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be unhappy, I didn't want to have financial difficulties, and I guess I just wanted to feel a sense of importance. I was really struggling to answer the question because I think we've all been asked what do you want. do in the future that's different than being completely hypothetical asking what you would be doing if you could do absolutely anything so I started thinking about my importance and I didn't want anyone else to tell me I was important I didn't want my importance should be quantified through bank accounts, Facebook friends or titles.

I just wanted to match my own definition of what it means to be significant and achieve the importance that I dream of because in a world with seven billion people it can be a little difficult to make a name for yourself, but I'm not the only one struggling with my dream. Which brings me to the heart of my talk, ladies and gentlemen, I believe we live in a world where it has become the norm to accept one's dream as unattainable, unreasonable or unrealistic simply because people say so, but not that one. is a conclusion that emerged from my time at Google.

No, for the past few months I've been conducting research to find out what teens think about goals. dream the future the purpose of life what should we achieve here as individuals? 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. 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 all over the world. Well, he had an audience.

What kind of

questions

were you going to ask them? I decided to start. with the two

questions

that changed my entire way of thinking, first a conversation at the breakfast table, what do you see yourself doing in 15 years? eight percent of people didn't know, 78 percent, 78 percent found themselves choosing one of three occupations, 78 percent felt that in 15 years they were going to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer, so what do I do? , I write down the names of all the lawyers because you never know when that will be useful to you, no, but Susy, my first reaction was 78% three jobs, the truth is, guys, but I quickly remembered since fifth grade, I said myself that I was going to be a lawyer I was in 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 seemed interesting I knew what I had to do was talk so why was this number so high with thousands of honorable professional jobs why did people feel they needed to be one of three?

It is because of the norms that society creates, we have placed emphasis on certain jobs and we, as children or young adults, feel that we should want these types of jobs for ourselves. I remember when I was seven or eight years old 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, there is a recreation of the classic game of life and my cousins ​​and I We played this all the time, see why I love this game, don't you. just because I always win, the reason I love it is because, like in life, your status in the game always changes.

Now there are many ways you can win at the game, but the easiest is to make a lot of kids pay off your debt early. the game and save a lot of money now, who can guess the three highest paying jobs in the game of life? They were doctors, lawyers and engineers, that's just a very small, very specific example, but you don't have to play the same board games. I grew to agree with me that society has placed a great emphasis on what kind of jobs we should want for ourselves and that emphasis is created through the media through education and through the family, so the The second question I asked was the one that changed my way of thinking.

We have already established that 78% of people felt they needed to do one of three jobs and what would you think if you were here today if I told you that most of them would rather be doing something else? stuff? The question was what would you be doing in 15 years if you could do absolutely anything? I found that 78% of people ended up changing their answer now. I want to make this very clear, this is not the same 78% who felt they needed to occupy one of the three most popular jobs, it is 78 percent of the original group, for example, the 8% of people who answered the first question without knowing what what they saw themselves doing, many of them were able to recognize in the second question, oh, that's it. what I would like to do and of the answers that stayed the same, the 22% whose answers stayed the same across questions, the most common job was a doctor, so I thought it was cool that people said what I see myself doing.

In 15 years it's all I want to do, so what do I do with it? I write down the names of all the doctors because you never know when a good doctor can be helpful. Here's why this is alarming. First we establish. We live in a society where people who grow up feel like they need to do one of three jobs to be successful, so we establish that they would rather do something else from an early age, they are able to differentiate between what they want to do and what they see themselves as doing. By doing themselves, they may come to the decision that this is the only thing I want to do in this world, but this is what I am going to do, they have decided for some reason that one thing is unattainable, so with this in mind I had a second set of questions I wanted to ask, but I didn't post a poll this time.

I didn't talk to hundreds and hundreds of kids. I wanted to get more involved in a more personal way, so I literally walked around school for three days with my laptop in my backpack and stopped random people, whether they were friends of strangers. I would see if they had a couple minutes before class to take my survey and let me interview them, so I started the interview with why. are you going to school now? I was hoping to get an education, which I admit I did. This was said more or less in

every

conversation, but one thing I was surprised to see come up quite a bit was things like "I." I am forced to go and since I have to be well, I continued, what do you want to do with your education?

So at this point

every

one was giving me the same answers, there were tons of different answers that basically revolved around the idea that I need my education to be successful, but then success was defined by starting a family and having a lot of money, it's good for each one. My next question: If this is what you think success is, starting a family and having a lot of money for your education. To do that, what would you like your children to achieve? I was expecting 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 they said was: I want my son to be happy, which is great, but when I was asked more specifically what 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 earn 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 takes a backseat to production, so do we live to live or do we live to disconnect? Are we simply repeating this cycle? So, with this in mind, I basically came to the conclusion that children all over the world had given up on their dreams and the only reason we spent our entire youth attending school was so that one day we could earn enough money, retire and then teach our children. That the kids do the same is great, all of this is leaving me a little upset.

I said to myself, come on, Lawrence, it's not too late to give a sports talk. The next day I was kicked off my school's basketball team. I decided no, we will stay. This talk, so at this point I had one more set of questions that I was going to get answers to. I took another survey, this time completely anonymous and from my survey there are two questions that I really want to share with you today: the first question. Do your parents know what your dream is? 56% check the box that indicates yes, which left 44% of these parents without knowing what their childhood dream was.

Now 24 percent of the children said no because my parents have never asked me, they have never shown me an interest in my dreams and 20 percent felt no because even though my parents were shown interest maybe They asked me, they mentioned it. I don't feel comfortable talking about it. I found this very alarming, I hope that off the basis of My talk alone, these types of statistics could improve, whether you interview hundreds of children or just talk to someone who lives in their homes. Have these conversations, so the next question I asked in a world with seven billion people, do you believe that You are important? 43% of the people who responded to my survey felt that no, my life is not important.

Now the definition of what it means to be important is different for each person. A person might say that being important is that everyone knows my name and when. something's wrong with me, everyone knows why someone else might say you're significant, you only need to be significant to two or three people, the people sitting at your table may be the definition of meaningful varies by individual, but that's not what you should take. Keep in mind when you look at this, what you have to keep in mind is the people answering my questions, our kids, some as young as 14, starting their freshman year of high school, when do we get to the point where Do we give them to 14 year old children?

They realized their dream and decided that my life was not meaningful, all of this was franklydepressingly we live in a world where it is unrealistic to aim too high only to fail that is considered a failure it is not smart to do that, for my part I think not You don't fail when you aim high and you fail you fail when you aim low and you succeed you fail to your community, You fail your family and you fail yourself because from the age of 14, when you have your whole 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 before the phrase that's special one in a million we sit and mingle with the crowd of the other seven billion TEDx it's about ideas we're spreading my my idea changing your way of thinking what would happen if we lived in a world where everyone believed that they could be important and if we believed in a world where children go to school because they want to go to school, I for one want to live in a world where if You ask my son what the difference is between your dreams and your goals, he doesn't say anything because I'm young, I'm ambitious and I have my whole life ahead of me to achieve what I want to achieve. changing our social norms that would require a movement a movement that requires all of us it is not difficult you just need to flip a switch don't be too quick to doubt your neighbors don't be too quick to doubt yourself and don't be so quick to doubt your importance, If there's one thing I want to achieve with my talk it's that I hope that anyone watching this takes this into consideration and asks the questions I've asked today, has the conversations I had at that breakfast table in London. because you never know how important that conversation can be, ladies and gentlemen, it has been a pleasure, thank you very much.