Translator: Amanda Chu Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I was only nine years old
when I had my first conversation about addiction.
It still feels like yesterday.
It wasn't drugs or alcohol.
My drug of choice was a video game.
(Laughter)
You see, my parents had had this horrific divorce,
and I suspect that to ease the pain,
my dad came home one afternoon
with a brand-new, state-of-the-art Atari 2600.
(Laughter) (Applause)
This was a very big deal.
Spending money was out of the norm for my dad.
To this day, he still uses lemons and packets of sugar in his water
instead of buying the lemonade at the restaurant.
(Laughter)
But on that day -
(Laughter)
On that day, after the excitement and shock wore off,
my brother and I sat down, set up the console to start playing -
actually,
I had to wait for my brother to leave for practice until it was my turn.
But once it was my turn,
I plugged in the game "Pitfall" and I proceeded to play for hours.
I can still actually remember the sound the cartridge made
when you clicked it into place.
I kept the game's main character, Harry, running for hours,
picking up jewels, jumping over alligators.
If I missed even one, I would go back to the beginning and I would start again -
I was relentlessly pursuing perfection;
I was obsessed with getting the perfect score.
But this obsession didn't last long,
because out of the corner of my eye, I saw grandma Drake watching with concern.
My grandmother was somebody I treasured deeply in my life.
She was the person that kept me centered
in a time full of divorce, poverty, and even occasional homelessness.
My grandmother was somebody who no matter what she said to you,
it was always honest, sometimes brutally so.
On that day, I continued playing -
remember I was obsessed with getting a perfect score? -
and at last I did achieve perfection.
She had calmly sat there for hours, waiting for me,
and then invited me to come talk to her in her room.
It's something that she had done countless times before.
But on this day,
she sensed that there were some painful realities that I was ready to hear.
She talked to me about my family,
which I learned was wrought with addiction:
drugs, gambling, alcohol - you name it, we had it.
But what I was surprised to learn
was how deeply addiction ran in both sides of my family.
You can say I was doubly blessed
with what today I fondly call my genetic lottery.
But sadly, I'm not alone.
Scientists today estimate
that over 50 million Americans will be struggling with the issue of addiction
at some point in their lifetime.
50 million Americans!
Drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, sex;
even online shopping can be an addiction.
And today, these are some of our newest.
The difference with what I call socially acceptable addictions
is that we rarely discuss them.
Trust me,
no one sat grandma Drake down to have a conversation
about her collection of over 2000 zebras as a real problem.
(Laughter)
Today, we have a new socially acceptable addiction,
and it is technology.
(Laughter)
Every day, all around the world, children spend countless hours online,
posting to social networks, online gaming, and even just watching videos.
The more alarming part about this
is that many of these children
are receiving their own personal devices now as early as six or seven years old.
When you take into consideration the most recent census in the United States
that recorded over 21 million children in the United States under the age of five
and you look at the research
that says 85% of American parents have allowed these young children
to go online weekly and in many cases daily since infancy,
it means that in the US alone, we have over 17 million children
growing up endlessly connected to technology.
So when we overlay this excessive use of technology
at these critical developmental periods of children's developing brains,
it begs the question:
Could we potentially be creating a new generation of addicts?
Let's take a look at the science.
In this image, you see a healthy brain.
That nice robust red area is our dopamine receptors.
In contrast, the brain of a drug addict.
The dopamine receptors in this scan are significantly reduced.
Now most people still consider dopamine
to be that neurochemical that makes us feel good,
but scientists today understand
that dopamine has more to do with motivation and reinforcement
in our brain's reward center.
You can kind of think of it as a do-it-again system
rather than a feel-good system.
An addict's brain is motivating them to do it again and again.
But even natural rewards, like eating food, having sex,
they produce the same neurochemical responses.
The difference is, with drugs,
our brain is flooded with up to 10 times more dopamine,
which leads the user to repeat that behavior again and again,
and it leaves more natural rewards feeling inadequate in comparison.
So let's look at what it is to be a technology addict.
The scan that we're going to see
is a technology addict who spent routinely eight hours online
posting to social networks,
playing online games or viewing pornography.
As you can see in the scan -
the background looks a little different because it's really recent science,
but it's the same type of scan that's looking at those dopamine receptors -
you can tell that they've been impacted.
And when we compare them next to the healthy brain,
the damage? – obvious.
When we compare the technology addict to the drug addict,
the parallel in the damage occurring? -
indisputable.
So what does this all mean for us?
Well, we're all wired to seek reward,
and the tech companies,
they now understand how to tap into our primal drives:
Companies have begun hiring neuroscientists and behaviorists
to work along with their programmers
to develop products that keep users hooked;
it has gone beyond the goal of merely producing useful products
to the point where they are actively seeking ways
to keep us all endlessly connected.
And if that corporate strategy sounds familiar, it's because it is.
One comedian recently said,
"Philip Morris only wanted your lungs; the app store wants your soul."
(Laughter)
I think we can all agree that addiction is complicated;
it involves a relationship between a chemical or a behavior
in concert with genetics, learning or the environment.
Substance addiction is more easily understood
because when we take something into our body,
we can feel it make a difference,
but with behavioral addictions,
it's that much harder to identify because there's no substance
and consequently, that much harder to understand.
When we're talking about addiction,
what we're really talking about is our brain's struggle for control.
If we're able to avoid the substance or the behavior
when it's causing us problems,
great - we have no addiction issue.
But when we lose control,
and it starts to impact our relationships, our work, our school, our self-esteem,
or even our emotional stability,
then the vicious cycle of addiction begins.
"Microstructure abnormalities" is a phrase that should stand out to all of us.
There are hundreds of studies in development right now
by scientists who are trying to find answers to provide us all guidance.
Each of the studies is complex,
but they're looking at minute regions of the brain
and trying to help differentiate
between a healthy brain and a brain of a technology addict.
Here's the structure, generally, of a brain.
On the outermost area, you can see that is our gray matter;
it's primarily responsible for processing our information and our emotions.
Housed deeper within the brain is our white matter;
it's like the superhighway of her brain -
it facilitates messages between the brain
to make sure that we get our messages to the right place at the right time
so we can act upon them.
The scientific research on technology addiction
has shown that we have a loss of gray matter in critical areas
and a reduced density of white matter within the brain.
Even more alarming are the areas of the brain that are being impacted
have to do with motor control, cognition, and motivation,
as well as areas that process our emotions,
our decision-making, and our impulse control.
Generally, the 24/7 access to technology
is making us more impulsive, disconnected, anxious,
and emotionally unregulated than ever.
We know now that the more time that children spend online,
the more isolated and depressed they become.
And the more time they spend
viewing carefully curated, digitally altered social media post,
the more inadequate and depressed they feel.
You might be asking yourself, Well, how depressed can kids really become?
Well, one recent study that looked at 32 different hospitals
between 2008 and 2015
found that their hospital admissions
more than doubled for children aged 5 to 17 years old
for self-harm, suicidal thinking, and suicidal actions.
Another study reports that there's been a 200% increase in suicides
among young girls aged 10 to 14
and a 50% increase in boys the same age.
Most of these suicides, reportedly, related to an online incident.
The loss of human connection
through face-to-face communication, eye contact, and touch
is creating a future for our children
in which they have the emotional intimacy, the compassion, and the empathy
is disappearing.
Our society is becoming more focused on the number of likes or post received
instead of on the human connection that like is supposed to represent.
Remember these brain scans?
I lose sleep over the unintentional damage to our children's brains
under the misguided assumption
that technology overuse is totally harmless.
Of course we can't keep our children from technology,
or it would put them at a severe disadvantage
in a global economy that requires them to be proficient with it.
But I am also acutely aware from my education
that something as simple as a smartphone
can actually structurally alter my daughter's brain
and potentially trigger a lifetime of addiction.
The world is going to evolve whether we like it or not -
technology especially.
And technology has undoubtedly been net positive;
however, with all of this good comes some bad.
The question for us moving forward
is not whether we can figure out a way
to have a balanced relationship with technology,
it is how quickly we can get there
and, What is that healthy balanced relationship going to look like?
I have spent my career
learning and understanding and talking about the good and bad of technology.
Grandma Drake taught me about myself,
but most importantly,
she taught me that empowering children with knowledge
and then trusting them with that information
means that they will often make better choices because of it.
We can all step into the light together now
because I have proof that that actually works.
My team and I have been implementing a program
where we've empowered kids and parents and educators
with knowledge about healthy, balanced technology use.
And the results?
Children do in fact make better choices for themselves and for their friends
when they're given the knowledge and the opportunity.
This is some data from a middle school that I worked in,
not unlike any other middle school, likely in the US or in the world,
that had escalating issues with technology related incidents:
cyber bullying, inappropriate posting, plagiarism, even sexting.
As the graph shows,
their technology related incidents had gone from 40% to 72%
of all of their administrative time dealing with this in only five years.
After implementing our program,
the results were actually shocking, even to us.
Educating kids on how to be a good digital citizen
at the same time as giving parents and educators
the tools and the resources they needed
in order to support these kids through some change
reduced the overall technology-related incidents by over 50%.
It proves that when we trust our children with the emerging science,
and when we talk to them
about the educational and legal consequences that they're facing
in every facet of their lives for the rest of their lives,
it gives them good direction
on how to make better choices in this digital world.
I believe all children want to make good choices, given the opportunity,
but it's up to us in order to educate them
on how to do this in this new world -
everything that we do online is public and permanent.
So now that we all know this emerging science,
how do we all come together to make a difference
in this very real issue of technology addiction?
The answer is simply awareness and education.
This is an amazing time that we're living in.
And this, an amazing group of people,
who have all come together to devour ideas worth spreading.
Technology has enabled us to do so much good,
but it is not totally without consequence.
Pitfall - that's a really fun game to play as a kid,
but it was essentially a stick figure running across the screen
in maybe four colors.
(Laughter)
Today's games, apps, programs - much more sophisticated,
and the programmers, as we've learned - highly-skilled on our vulnerabilities.
It is imperative that we come together
and we address this issue boldly, honestly, and without fear.
We have the knowledge we need to rise above this.
Our children are counting on us to become their grandma Drake.
Thank you.
(Applause)