Transcriber: Mary Morsman Reviewer: Michael Nystrom
I’m sorry, have we started?
Sticky tablet kids.
I’m sure they’re probably just enchanted by their bewitching device.
They stare into the colorful screen.
Eyes wide and mouths wide, probably with a hand inside.
Drooling as boogers stream down their face.
And they’re completely oblivious to the environment that surrounds them.
I’m sure we’ve all seen a sticky iPad kid before.
And apart from looking at them
and wondering what’s going on in their heads,
they disgust us.
But are we really so different from these toddler menaces?
Students in one of my classes
had an average daily screen time of six hours.
Six hours a day just on their phones.
And this wasn’t just any class;
it was an AP class, a college-level course.
And I surveyed the 28 students a week before midterms.
You’d think they’d be putting down their phone
and pick up a textbook instead.
And six hours may not seem like a long time to you,
but it’s around the same number of hours that we spend in a school day.
So rather than telling you all that you need to spend less time on your phones,
it’s important to understand why we spend so much time on our devices
and how they hook us into spending an endless time on our puny screens.
As you probably already know, app developers and many companies
are aware we’re hooked to their products,
and they spend time and resources
making their products even more addicting to hook us into them.
We’ve seen these apps like TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube,
and, if any of you still use it, Facebook.
(Laughter)
[The Dopamine Reward Loop]
You look up one YouTube video,
and I’m thinking, “Hmm. The next one looks interesting,
but that’ll be the last one I watch.”
But soon, you look up at the ceiling countless hours later and wonder,
“What happened with my time?”
You’re not alone, though.
As this happens, as YouTube itself admits
that people all across the globe watch 1 billion hours of video every single day.
That’s over a million hours -
That’s over a million hours of living.
That’s over a million hours of life per day, every day.
But how do they make these products so addicting?
They do this by manipulating our levels of dopamine,
a chemical that makes us feel good.
This chemical is produced in our brain and...
plays a crucial role in motivating us.
It gets released when we take a bite of delicious food,
after we exercise,
and also after we have successful social interactions.
It rewards us for beneficial behaviors and motivates us to repeat them.
And just like the use of hard drugs, although not as intense,
it causes a release of dopamine in our brain.
And phones can do this.
Phones can cause a release of dopamine in our brains.
When released, the chemical causes feelings of bliss, happiness, and relief.
And smartphones have provided us an unlimited supply with this chemical,
providing us with temporary feelings of pleasure at our fingertips.
The idea of getting a dopamine response out of the consumer
is something utilized by all companies because it’s so effective,
and many of us don’t even realize it.
If you watch a video on YouTube or TikTok that’s interesting or entertaining,
a small amount of dopamine will be released
when you experience the sounds or images
that you find satisfying or make you laugh.
You keep swiping and watching more videos to get this feeling of bliss,
and you’ll have a tough time breaking the cycle to get this dopamine increase.
And if you don’t know someone who’s addicted to the device,
I’m sure you know someone around them who is.
Freshman year of high school,
a student in my Honors English class told me about
how they had fallen asleep at 3 a.m. the previous night,
unable to stop exploring through TikTok.
And I was absolutely shocked.
Why don’t they just put down their phone and go to sleep?
But I soon found myself in the same situation countless times
but on a different app - on Instagram.
But when I went to San Jose for Thanksgiving break,
my cousin called my other cousins and [me] a “screenager.”
Now, why did my cousin Nikki call us this?
We didn’t get it.
But we soon figured out what it meant.
A teenager that spends a lot of time on their screens, a “screenager.”
And it doesn’t sound that annoying,
but when it’s directed at you multiple times an hour, every single day,
it makes you mad.
But we only really realized how intense the situation was
when we realized there were “scrudults” around us too - many of them.
In fact, according to a study published by Harvard University,
adults touch their phones more than 2,600 times a day.
Sounds like a “scrudult” to me.
But then, teenagers spend countless more hours than this on their phone daily.
So, this fact astounded me.
Did I touch my phone that much?
So I deleted my most used app, Instagram.
And what happened?
The next week, my screen time dropped dramatically.
But two weeks after that,
it increased exponentially
because I spent my time on different apps like Snapchat instead.
So...
This is because scrolling and watching videos
isn’t the only way our devices cause dopamine release.
It’s one of the most well-known ways.
The bright, and sorry,
bright and eye-catching colors,
pleasing sounds,
and familiar notifications
and messages and updates also release dopamine in our brains,
no matter which app or device we’re looking at.
Do you feel a sudden terror
or anxious thoughts suddenly flooding your brain
after you feel your pocket and realize your phone isn’t there?
And then you realize, “Oh, it’s in the bathroom,
where I left it moments before,” and a wave of relief suddenly hits you?
You’re not alone.
In fact, I'm sure most of us here feel that way about our devices.
It’s easy to fall into this mindset
where we get super irritated and turn into the Grinch
when people mention it or call it out to us as well.
It’s because you don’t just associate certain apps with dopamine.
You also associate your phone itself with dopamine.
Just by picking up your phone,
you get this feeling of relief, bliss, or happiness,
even if you haven’t unlocked it yet.
Josh, a young software engineer I know,
tackled this from a completely different angle:
he got rid of his phone.
He purchased a grandpa phone instead.
One that only had the functionality of calling or texting.
But something else Josh said stuck with me.
He said something along the lines of,
“If you don’t change what’s in your heart,
even getting rid of your devices won’t do anything
because you find every other way to waste time.”
So what does this mean?
This white space that we have in our lives,
that we feel we’re wasting on our devices,
we have to fill with something we love doing,
that interests us and have a passion for.
And once you can do this,
if you look around you,
people who aren’t addicted to their phones
if you look at them
they’ll do what they love doing with that white space in their lives.
And if we can do that,
we can begin to understand that technology is designed to be addictive.
But it’s up to us to change that.
It’s up to us to build better digital habits.
So, the next time you’re in your room alone,
you’re bored,
you’re in an awkward situation,
will you whip out your phone and be sucked in?
Will you be a “scrid,” a “screenager,” a “scrudult”?
Or will you be like the Grinch at the end of the movie?
A happy old chap.
Because now you understand what you can do.
Now you understand what makes you into the Grinch in the first place
and that you have the power to tackle that.
You can be different from those darn little old “scrothers”
you see around town,
and you can tackle this addiction
that affects every single hour of your day.
Thank you.
(Applause)