Transcriber: Julia Pinhero Judice Menezes Reviewer: Anna Sobota
Good evening, everyone. My name is Alysa.
Now, before I begin,
I would like you to ask yourself if you can answer this question:
“Who am I?”
Now, I was 13 when I first got social media.
The first app I downloaded was Instagram.
Everyone had it at that time,
and I wanted to jump on that wagon as quickly as I could.
When I first open the app,
pictures of models with heavily photoshop bodies and makeup on popped up on my feed.
Naturally, I was hooked.
I wanted to look just like these beautiful women.
Coincidentally, I was also in Cancun at that time -
the perfect place to take pictures to post, right?
After hassling over what to wear over an hour,
I dragged my mom out onto the beach with me
where we spent three hours in the blistering heat,
taking over 300 pictures.
We did every possible pose to make my legs look longer
or my stomach looks flatter.
Now, I hadn’t realized it then,
but that was when my body image obsession began,
and Instagram subconsciously fed that obsession.
After taking those pictures, we went back inside
where I spent another two hours editing and mining for the perfect photo to post.
Now, this is not a unique experience.
Millions of teenagers feel driven to post the most perfect picture,
the one that captures them in their most complete moment.
As a society, we have given the impression to children and teenagers
that all social media stars lives are perfect
and they are always picture perfect ready,
and this is not true.
For too long, we have let them believe that these heavily curated Instagram feeds
are an accurate representation of these people’s lives.
It’s been extremely damaging to our mental health,
so much so that we base our self-worth off of likes and comments.
Now, since everything moved to a virtual format two years ago,
social media has grown exponentially.
The scope of the reach is endless,
because I’m sure everybody in here
has used TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat or YouTube at some point in their lives.
Influencers are getting paid more than doctors,
and everybody seems to want to be the next Charli D’Amelio.
But I’m not here to talk about how harmful social media is
because that’s already been talked about before.
Now, let me bring your attention to the up-and-coming metaverse.
It is the shiniest, newest and most advanced virtual reality world
we’ve ever seen.
It is the next step for social media.
It’s like social media, but on steroids.
Heck, Facebook even rebranded and is now called Meta.
But, despite all the recent buzz about the metaverse,
it can actually be dated back to 1992
to Neal Stephenson’s dystopian cyberpunk novel,
“Snow Crash”.
In it he writes about a metaverse
that uses VR technology very similar to the kinds we see today.
It's almost like he predicted the future.
Virtual reality goggles allow users
to interact with the metaverse while sitting in the comfort of their homes.
I mean, you’ve all seen those clunky goggles, right?
I would not want to go out in public with those on.
The metaverse allows users to connect through virtual chat rooms,
play enhanced versions of video games, invest in virtual land,
use their own NFTs, and so much more.
It’s the new version of social media. It’s Thomas Edison’s light bulb.
Most of the news surrounding the metaverse has been about monkey NFTs
or how to invest in virtual real estate.
But I’m looking at this from a different perspective.
The metaverse gives us the option to live a second life,
to be whoever we want to be in the separate virtual universe.
Every user has the ability
to create and customize an avatar however they want it to look.
My favorite color is pink.
I've always wanted pink hair. My avatar has pink hair.
Anybody could have pink hair.
Anyone can manipulate the settings to create their ideal appearance.
I mean, this is exciting, right?
We get to present any version of ourselves,
whether or not it’s true to this entire universe,
because we are in control of what we present and how we present ourselves.
We can pick and choose the best quality.
I get to be this ideal version of myself.
In this world, we are our avatars, our avatars are our identity.
But this isn’t your simple TikTok video or Instagram post.
The metaverse has so many facets,
and that presents a far more serious question,
the one that is at the foundation of our society, “Who am I?”
Am I this person I’ve projected into this metaverse
or am I insecure in who I am in the real world?
If I’m pretending to be somebody I’m not in the metaverse,
what does that mean?
Am I me or am I truly myself online?
The ability for users to fictionalize their identity can be very tricky.
This is far more serious than social media
because we are no longer looking and observing videos and posts -
we are in it now. The metaverse is immersive.
We are our avatars and we do what our avatars do.
The line between the metaverse and reality is very blurry.
When we present two different versions of ourselves into two different universes,
it’s hard to grasp who we really are.
Am I more me in the metaverse or am I more me in the real world?
The question of who am I is at the foundation of our society.
Most people don’t find the answer to that question
until they’re in their thirties or forties.
We spend most of our young adult lives and childhood looking for it.
Many of us are still looking, myself included.
Social media has already made finding our identity harder.
It's hard to come to grips with the fact that we aren't who we say we are.
Because the metaverse is immersive,
it will be much harder for users to differentiate
between reality and fantasy.
Everything in the metaverse is coded to perfection.
So what if we fall in love and we never want to return to the real world?
The real world is messy and chaotic.
Everything is pretty much out of your control,
and that's a hard pill to swallow.
When we unplug from our computers,
what will happen when we realize the ugly truth
that we live in the realverse and not the metaverse?
Oh, and if it wasn't obvious,
social media companies do not care about the mental health of teenagers.
They are there purely to generate clicks and money.
The highest streak I ever had was 632 days.
632 days is almost two years of my life.
Looking back on it now, it couldn’t be more obvious
than the fact that there is no point of a streak other than to incentivize users
to use the app every day.
Profit and exposure are at the heart of these companies.
Do we trust Mark Zuckerberg to have our best interests at heart?
All of these companies are aware of the power of platforms
and they fully intend on exploiting that power.
Of course, no one can better understand
the struggles of teenagers growing up with social media
than another teenager growing up with social media.
It is unfair that we have to grapple with balancing this act of duplicity
that we feel forced to present two different versions of ourselves:
one online and one in the real world.
Teenagers are in the process of learning who we are and who we want to be.
This metaverse is being developed while we are developing,
and that is simply unfair.
The timing is just terrible for us
and so impeccably well planned out for big tech companies.
Our parents never had to go through this.
The peak of my parents social media use
is downloading and possibly creating a Facebook account in 2012.
Ironically, Facebook is the company that is leading the metaverse charge.
We are simply the playground for these giant tech companies.
Now, I’m not here to demand that we all boycott the metaverse.
I’m here to advocate for caution against a rapidly advancing technology industry.
We must be aware of the extent
that the metaverse has on the psychological development
of young teenagers and children.
It's not simply the newest version of Minecraft.
In a sense, we are the pawns on this technological chessboard played from afar.
But there is still hope.
Unlike pawns, we can be free to choose our own paths.
We aren’t locked into side to side motions.
We should take leaps of faith knowing that our lives,
however messy they may be, are still our lives.
Thank you.
(Applause)