[MUSIC]
My generation is the junk food generation.
Raised on Gushers and Capri Sun, double stuffed Oreos, and dollar menu McNuggets.
Forget fun size, we ate fruit by the foot, by the foot.
High fructose corn syrup was added to Coke in 1980 when the first
millenials were born.
And, in what cannot be a coincidence Dunkaroos were discontinued the year I
graduated from college.
Suddenly I was an adult, food science has give us the signals that
humans evolved to crave, salt, sugar, fat.
But without the substance they were once associated with in nature, real nutrition.
Junk food's engineered so that you literally can't resist,
once you pop you can't stop isn't empty marketing.
It's evolutionary science, junk food is engineered.
Junk food has divorced the signals we crave from the substance
our bodies need, it has made us sick as a result.
But social media, over the last decade and a half, has given us something worse.
Junk food for the soul, millennials first we fell for
Fun Dip then we fell for Facebook.
Humans crave connection, deep, personal connection with those around us.
Dozens of scientific studies indicate what we all intuitively know.
When our lives are filled with meaningful social interaction,
we're happier, we're healthier, we live longer.
So hypothetically, we should be lucky to live in this age of connectivity.
Where through text, and WhatsApp and Instagram, I can feel connected to nearly
everyone I have ever met, and yet we have this crisis of loneliness.
In the 70s and 80s between 10 and 20% of Americans said they regularly or
frequently felt lonely, by 2010 it was 40%.
Between 1985 and 2004 the percent of Americans who said
they did not feel like they had a single friend they could rely on to
discuss important matters more than doubled from 20% to 43%.
Not a single friend, the fact that we are so connected, yet
feel so alone, is only a paradox to someone who's never used social media,
who's never spent a Saturday night lying on their unmade bed,
scrolling through Instagram.
Because, obviously there's a difference between the virtual
time we spend together and the real.
And after spending real time with my friends,
I don't feel empty, I don't feel guilty.
I don't tell myself I'm going to stop seeing my friends so much and if I do,
it'll only be for five minutes and only if I've been really productive.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat,
they're engineered to give us the signals we associate with friendship,
sharing stories, liking pictures, remembering a birthday.
But without the substance of true connection,
we talk about Instagram celebrities as if they're unique in creating these filtered,
artificial versions of themselves online, but we all do it.
Celebrities just get paid for it, we complain about fake news on Facebook,
Facebook was built on fake news, it was just usually about ourselves.
It's no surprise that the heaviest users of social media report twice
as much social isolation as those who don't use it at all.
It's no coincidence that we're the generation that invented FOMO.
Of course I'm going to fear missing out if I spend hours a day staring at
definitive evidence of me missing out. >> [LAUGH]
>> At root,
these technologies are designed for our engagement but
not with each other, but the technology itself.
Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook and
the founder of Napster framed the question as how to we, we being Facebook.
Consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?
And his answer, create a social validation feedback loop.
When I post a picture, I keep checking to see how many likes I get,
every refresh is like another pull of the social validation slot machine.
And every like gives me that little hit of dopamine,
that little signal of friendship and social approval that I crave.
Eventually, it wears off, and so I post another picture,
another quarter in the slots.
It's an addictive feedback loop that, in Parker's words,
exploits vulnerability in human psychology and keeps us on the platform.
Once you pop you can't stop, it makes me wonder,
if video games Candy Crush or Call of Duty are similarly
doing more to deliver the signals of accomplishment and
the substance of having an impact in the world.
It makes me wonder if dating apps are doing more to deliver the signals
of romantic interactions than the substance of forming real relationships.
It even makes me wonder if music festivals and $34 workout classes,
are now giving us the signals of community and
purpose that we once looked for in spiritual practice.
I mean, it's called soul cycle,
all the signals we crave, but do they have the substance?
A friend as defined by Facebook is no more a real friend than
Doritos Tacos Locos is real food, it's empty calories.
It leaves us hungrier for true connection than when we started.
Mark Zuckerberg, for his part, is not blind to this phenomenon.
I remember this year he wrote, he now wants us to have more meaningful social
interactions, so the time we spend on Facebook is time well spent.
As a result of the changes he's made,
total time on the platform actually fell by 15 minutes per person per week.
Is it a healthier Facebook, or just a slightly less addicting one?
Yes technology can create community, but
only if it's facilitating interaction and not crowding it out.
If junk food capsizes the problem, maybe food can also offer the solution.
Because if we're the junk food generation, we're also the farmer's market generation.
We recognized that junk food was delivering an empty signal and
was making us sick.
And it's that sort of radical reorientation that we've taken with
regards to food that we now need to extend to our social life as well.
In the end, we have to be willing to be dissatisfied.
Because the greatest threat is not that we get nothing from social media.
But that we get just enough signal never to hunt for that substance.
That Farmville,
makes us feel just productive enough that we never produce anything.
That Tinder makes dating just easy enough that we never form a relationship.
That Instagram makes us feel just connected enough to leave us truly alone.
A few weeks ago, one of my best friends from growing up had a birthday.
And we're all scattered across the country now but over our WhatsApp group we sent
out our happy birthdays, and I typed one out under the desk during
class with a long string of emojis and it was funny, it was fine, it was nice.
But that night back in my room, sitting on the edge of my bed,
I picked up my phone and I called him.
And we conferenced in our other friends, and we talked and we laughed, and
we made fun of each other, we consoled each other, and it was great, it was real.
At the end of the call, after my other friends had hopped off,
he said to me, Mike it's just great to hear your voice.
I still eat gushers sometimes,
I still go on Facebook more often than I'd like to admit,
but now at least I can treat it for what it is, junk food for
the soul. >> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]