You probably don't realize that right now, you're actually looking at something quite rare. Because I am a millennial computer scientist book author standing on a TEDx stage, and yet, I've never had a social media account. How this happened was actually somewhat random. Social media first came onto my radar when I was at college, my sophomore year of college, this is when Facebook arrived at our campus. And at the time, which was right after the first dotcom bust, I had had a dorm room business, I'd had to shut it down in the bust, and then, suddenly, this other kid from Harvard, named Mark, had this product called Facebook and people being excited about it. So in sort of a fit of somewhat immature professional jealousy, I said, "I'm not going to use this thing. I won't help this kid's business; whatever's going to amount to." As I go along my life, I look up not long later, and I see everyone I know is hooked on this thing. And from the clarity you can get when you have some objectivity, some perspective on it, I realized this seems a little bit dangerous. So I never signed up. I've never had a social media account since. So I'm here for two reasons; I want to deliver two messages. The first message I want to deliver is that even though I've never had a social media account, I'm OK, you don't have to worry. It turns out I still have friends, I still know what's going on in the world; as a computer scientist I still collaborate with people all around the world, I'm still regularly exposed serendipitously to interesting ideas, and I rarely describe myself as lacking entertainment options. So I've been OK, but I'd go even farther and say not only I am OK without social media but I think I'm actually better off. I think I'm happier, I think I find more sustainability in my life, and I think I've been more successful professionally because I don't use social media. So my second goal here on stage is try to convince more of you to believe the same thing. Let's see if I could actually convince more of you that you too would be better off if you quit social media. So, if the theme of this TEDx event is "Future Tense," I guess, in other words, this would be my vision of the future, would be one in which fewer people actually use social media. That's a big claim, I think I need to back it up. So I thought, what I would do is take the three most common objections I hear when I suggest to people that they quit social media, and then for each of these objections, I'll try to defuse the hype and see if I can actually push in some more reality. This is the first most common objection I hear. That's not a hermit, that's actually a hipster web developer down from 8th Street; I'm not sure. Hipster or hermit? Sometimes it's hard to tell. This first objection goes as follows, "Cal, social media is one of the fundamental technologies of the 21st century. To reject social media would be an act of extreme [bloodism]. It would be like riding to work on a horse or using a rotary phone. I can't take such a big stance in my life." My reaction to that objection is I think that is nonsense. Social media is not a fundamental technology. It leverages some fundamental technologies, but it's better understood as this. Which is to say, it's a source of entertainment, it's an entertainment product. The way that technologist Jaron Lanier puts it is that these companies offer you shiny treats in exchange for minutes of your attention and bites of your personal data, which can then be packaged up and sold. So to say that you don't use social media should not be a large social stance, it's just rejecting one form of entertainment for others. There should be no more controversial than saying, "I don't like newspapers, I like to get my news from magazines," or "I prefer to watch cable series, as opposed to network television series." It's not a major political or social stance to say you don't use this product. My use of the slot machine image up here also is not accidental because if you look a little bit closer at these technologies, it's not just that they're a source of entertainment but they're a somewhat unsavory source of entertainment. We now know that many of the major social media companies hire individuals called attention engineers, who borrow principles from Las Vegas casino gambling, among other places, to try to make these products as addictive as possible. That is the desired use case of these products: is that you use it in an addictive fashion because that maximizes the profit that can be extracted from your attention and data. So it's not a fundamental technology, it's just a source of entertainment, one among many, and it's somewhat unsavory if you look a little bit closer. Here's the second common objection I hear when I suggest that people quit social media. The objection goes as follows, "Cal, I can't quit social media because it is vital to my success in the 21st century economy. If I do not have a well-cultivated social media brand, people won't know who I am, people won't be able to find me, opportunities won't come my way, and I will effectively disappear from the economy." Again my reaction is once again: this objection also is nonsense. I recently published this book that draws on multiple different strands of evidence to make the point that, in a competitive 21st century economy, what the market values is the ability to produce things that are rare and are valuable. If you produce something that's rare and valuable, the market will value that. What the market dismisses, for the most part, are activities that are easy to replicate and produce a small amount of value. Well, social media use is the epitome of an easy to replicate activity that doesn't produce a lot of value; it's something that any six-year-old with a smartphone can do. By definition, the market is not going to give a lot of value to those behaviors. It's instead going to reward the deep, concentrated work required to build real skills and to apply those skills to produce things - like a craftsman - that are rare and that are valuable. To put it another way: if you can write an elegant algorithm, if you can write a legal brief that can change a case, if you can write a thousand words of prose that's going to fixate a reader right to the end; if you can look at a sea of ambiguous data and apply statistics, and pull out insights that could transform a business strategy, if you can do these type of activities which require deep work, that produce outcomes that are rare and valuable, people will find you. You will be able to write your own ticket, and build the foundation of a meaningful and successful professional life, regardless of how many Instagram followers you have. This is the third comment objection I hear when I suggest to people that they quit social media; in some sense, I think it might be one of the most important. This objection goes as follows, "Cal, maybe I agree, maybe you're right; it's not a fundamental technology. Maybe using social media is not at the core of my professional success. But, you know what? It's harmless, I have some fun on it - weird: Twitter's funny - I don't even use it that much, I'm a first adopter, it's kind of interesting to try it out, and maybe I might miss out something if I don't use it. What's the harm?" Again, I look back and I say: this objection also is nonsense. In this case, what it misses is what I think is a very important reality that we need to talk about more frankly, which is that social media brings with it multiple, well-documented, and significant harms. We actually have to confront these harms head-on when trying to make decisions about whether or not we embrace this technology and let it into our lives. One of these harms that we know this technology brings has to do with your professional success. I just argued before that the ability to focus intensely, to produce things that are rare and valuable, to hone skills the market place value on, that this is what will matter in our economy. But right before that, I argued that social media tools are designed to be addictive. The actual designed desired-use case of these tools is that you fragment your attention as much as possible throughout your waking hours; that's how these tools are designed to use. We have a growing amount of research which tells us that if you spend large portions of your day in a state of fragmented attention - large portions of your day, breaking up your attention, to take a quick glance, to just check, - "Let me quickly look at Instagram" - that this can permanently reduce your capacity for concentration. In other words, you could permanently reduce your capacity to do exactly the type of deep effort that we're finding to be more and more necessary in an increasingly competitive economy. So social media use is not harmless, it can actually have a significant negative impact on your ability to thrive in the economy. I'm especially worried about this when we look at the younger generation, which is the most saturated in this technology. If you lose your ability to sustain concentration, you're going to become less and less relevant to this economy. There's also psychological harms that are well documented that social media brings, that we do need to address. We know from the research literature that the more you use social media, the more likely you are to feel lonely or isolated. We know that the constant exposure to your friends carefully curated, positive portrayals of their life can leave you to feel inadequate, and can increase rates of depression. And something I think we're going to be hearing more about in the near future is that there's a fundamental mismatch between the way our brains are wired and this behavior of exposing yourself to stimuli with intermittent rewards throughout all of your waking hours. It's one thing to spend a couple of hours at a slot machine in Las Vegas, but if you bring one with you, and you pull that handle all day long, from when you wake up to when you go to bed: we're not wired from it. It short-circuits the brain, and we're starting to find it has actual cognitive consequences, one of them being this sort of pervasive background hum of anxiety. The canary in the coal mine for this issue is actually college campuses. If you talk to mental health experts on college campuses, they'll tell you that along with the rise of ubiquitous smartphone use and social media use among the students on the campus, came an explosion of anxiety-related disorders on those campuses. That's the canary in the coal mine. This type of behavior is a mismatch for our brain wiring and can make you feel miserable. So there's real cost to social media use; which means when you're trying to decide, "Should I use this or not?", saying it's harmless is not enough. You actually have to identify a significantly positive, clear benefit that can outweigh these potential, completely non-trivial harms. People often ask, "OK, but what is life like without social media?" That can actually be a little bit scary to think about. According to people who went through this process, there can be a few difficult weeks. It actually is like a true detox process. The first two weeks can be uncomfortable: you feel a little bit anxious, you feel like you're missing a limb. But after that, things settle down, and actually, life after social media can be quite positive. There's two things I can report back from the world of no social media use. First, it can be quite productive. I'm a professor at a research institution, I've written five books, I rarely work past 5 pm on a weekday. Part of the way I'm trying to able to pull that off is because it turns out, if you treat your attention with respect, - so you don't fragment it; you allow it to stay whole, you preserve your concentration - when it comes time to work you can do one thing after another, and do it with intensity, and intensity can be traded for time. It's surprising how much you can get done in a eight-hour day if you're able to give each thing intense concentration after another. Something else I can report back from life without social media is that outside of work, things can be quite peaceful. I often joke I'd be very comfortable being a 1930s farmer, because if you look at my leisure time, I read the newspaper while the sun comes up; I listen to baseball on the radio; I honest-to-god sit in a leather chair and read hardcover books at night after my kids go to bed. It sounds old-fashioned, but they were onto something back then. It's actually a restorative, peaceful way to actually spend your time out of work. You don't have the constant hum of stimuli, and the background hum of anxiety that comes along with that. So life without social media is really not so bad. If you pull together these threads, you see my full argument that not everyone, but certainly much more people than right now, much more people should not be using social media. That's because we can first, to summarize, discard with the main concerns that it's a fundamental technology you have to use. Nonsense: it's a slot machine in your phone. We can discard with this notion that you won't get a job without it. Nonsense: anything a six-year-old with a smartphone can do is not going to be what the market rewards. And then I emphasized the point that there's real harms with it. So it's not just harmless. You really would have to have a significant benefit before you would say this trade-off is worth it. Finally I noted, that life without social media: there's real positives associated with it. So I'm hoping that when many of you actually go through this same calculus, you'll at least consider the perspective I'm making right now, which is: many more people would be much better off if they didn't use this technology. Some of you might disagree, some of you might have scathing but accurate critiques of me and my points, and of course, I welcome all negative feedback. I just ask that you direct your comments towards Twitter. Thank you. (Applause)
Probablemente non se dean conta de que agora mesmo están vendo algo bastante raro. Porque eu son un <i>millennial</i> escritor de libros de informática nun evento TEDx e inda así, nunca tiven unha conta nas redes sociais. De feito, a forma en que sucedeu isto foi dalgunha maneira fortuíta. A primeira vez que oín falar delas eu estaba na universidade, no meu segundo ano, foi entón cando Facebook chegou ao campus. Daquela, xusto despois da primeira quebra das puntocom, eu tiña unha idea de negocio en liña que tiven que abandonar pola quebra, e entón outro rapaz de Harvard, Mark, creou un produto chamado Facebook, que tiña á xente entusiasmada. Así que nunha especie de infantil ataque de celos profesional, dixen: ''Non penso usar isto. Non vou apoiar o negocio deste rapaz, tanto me ten ao que chegue'' Mentres sigo coa miña vida vexo que pouco despois todo o mundo está enganchado a iso. E dende a claridade que se acada cando un ten algo de obxectividade, algo de perspectiva, decateime de que parecía algo un pouco perigoso. Así que non me rexistrei. Dende aquela nunca tiven unha conta en redes sociais. Estou aquí por dúas razóns; quero deixar dúas mensaxes. A primeira mensaxe que quero deixar é que a pesar de nunca ter unha conta en redes socias, estou ben, non tedes que preocuparvos. Resulta que sigo tendo amigos, sigo sabendo o que pasa no mundo; como experto informático sigo colaborando con xente de arredor do mundo, sigo estando exposto regularmente a ideas interesantes, e raramente me describiría como alguén sen opcións de ocio. Todo o tempo estiven ben, pero ata diría que non só estou ben sen redes sociais senón que estou mellor sen elas. Creo que son máis feliz, que teño máis sostibilidade na miña vida, e que acadei máis éxito profesional porque non uso as redes sociais. O meu segundo obxectivo aquí no escenario é tratar de convencer á maioría de vós para crerdes o mesmo. Imos ver se podo conseguir convencervos de que sería mellor que deixásedes as redes sociais. Entón, se o tema deste evento TEDx é “Tempo Futuro”. supoño que, noutras palabras, a miña visión do futuro é un no que menos persoas usen as redes sociais. É unha afirmación importante, penso que preciso apoiala. Así que o que vou facer é coller os tres reparos máis comúns que escoito cando lle suxiro á xente que deixe as redes sociais, e para cada un deles tentarei desactivar a propaganda e ver se consigo facervos ver a realidade. Este é a primeira obxección que máis adoito escoitar. Non é un ermitán, é un desenvolvedor web hipster da rúa 8; non estou seguro. (Risas) Hipster ou ermitán, ás veces costa distinguilos. A primeira obxección é: ''Cal, as redes sociais son unha das tecnoloxías fundamentais do século XXI. Rexeitar as redes sociais sería un acto extremo de ludismo. Sería como ir traballar de a cabalo ou usar un teléfono de disco. Non podo tomar unha decisión tan extrema.'' A miña reacción a ese reparo é pensar que non ten sentido. As redes sociais non son tecnoloxía fundamental. Beben de tecnoloxías fundamentais, pero enténdense mellor así. É dicir, son unha fonte de entretemento, un produto de entretemento. A forma en que o tecnólogo Jaron Lanier o explica é que estas compañías ofrécenche regalos brillantes a cambio de minutos da túa atención e bytes de información persoal, que poida ser empaquetada e vendida. Así que dicir que non usas redes sociais non debería ser unha postura social, é só rexeitar unha forma de ocio como outras. Non debería ser máis polémico que dicir: ''Non me gustan os xornais, prefiro seguir as noticias nas revistas,'' ou ''prefiro a televisión por cable antes que a gratuíta.'' Non é unha cuestión política importante ou unha postura social dicir que non usas este produto. A elección da imaxe da comecartos non é accidental porque se miras de cerca estas tecnoloxías, non é só que sexan fontes de entretemento senón que son fontes de entretemento desaboridas. Agora sabemos que moitas das grandes compañías de redes sociais contratan a persoas chamadas enxeñeiros da atención, que aproveitan os principios dos casinos de Las Vegas, entre outros lugares, para intentar facer estes produtos o máis adictivos posibles. Ese o modelo de uso desexado para estes produtos: que os uses de forma adictiva porque maximiza o beneficio que pode extraerse da túa atención e información. Así que non é unha tecnoloxía fundamental, é só unha forma de entretemento, entre tantas outras, e algo desaborida se a miras un chisco máis de cerca. Esta é a segunda obxección máis común que escoito cando suxiro abandonar as redes sociais. Di así: ''Cal, non podo deixar as redes sociais porque é vital para lograr éxito na economía do século XXI. Se non teño unhas boas redes sociais da miña marca, a xente non saberá quen son, a xente non poderá encontrarme, non terei ningunha oportunidade, e desaparecerei da economía.'' A miña reacción é de novo: ese reparo tampouco ten sentido. Publiquei hai pouco este libro que se basea en múltiples evidencias para destacar que nunha economía competitiva do século XXI o que o mercado valora é a capacidade de crear cousas diferentes e valiosas. Se produces algo diferente e valioso, o mercado ha valoralo. O que o mercado descarta, maiormente, son as actividades fáciles de replicar e que producen pouco beneficio. O uso das redes sociais é o epítome dunha actividade fácil de replicar que non produce moito valor; algo que calquera neno de 6 anos cun teléfono intelixente podería facer. Por definición, o mercado non vai valorar moito estes comportamentos. En cambio, vai premiar o traballo profundo e concentrado requirido para acadar habilidades reais e aplicalas na produción de cousas --como un artesán-- que sexan diferentes e valiosas. Por dicilo doutra forma: Se podes escribir un algoritmo elegante, se podes escribir un estudo xurídico que pode cambiar un caso, se podes escribir miles de palabras de prosa que van enganchar un lector ata o final, se podes mirar un mar de datos ambiguos e aplicar a estatística e tirar conclusións que poderían transformar unha estratexia de negocio, se podes facer este tipo de actividades que requiren traballo profundo, que dan resultados diferentes e valiosos, a xente hate encontrar. Serás capaz de controlar o teu negocio e construír as bases dunha vida profesional exitosa, independentemente de cantos seguidores teñas en Instagram. Esta é a terceira obxección máis común que escoito cando lle suxiro a xente deixar as redes sociais, e creo que é unha das máis importantes. A obxección di: ''Cal, pode ser que teñas razón, non é tecnoloxía fundamental, quizais o uso das redes sociais non é o centro do meu éxito profesional, pero sabes que? Son inofensivas, divírtenme (que raro, Twitter divertido), non as uso tanto, son dos primeiros en usar todo, é algo interesante de probar e tal vez podería perder algo se non as uso. Que mal teñen?'' Entón volvo a dicir: Esta obxección tampouco ten sentido. Neste caso o que se perde é unha realidade moi importante, da que precisamos falar sinceramente: É que as redes sociais traen consigo múltiples prexuízos, significantes e ben documentados. Temos que enfrontarnos a eles directamente ao tomar a decisión de se adoptamos ou non esta tecnoloxía e a deixamos entrar nas nosas vidas. Un dos prexuízos que sabemos que trae consigo está relacionado co éxito profesional. Antes expliquei que a capacidade de concentrarse moito, de crear cousas diferentes e valiosas, de perfeccionar habilidades que o mercado valora, é a chave para a nosa economía. Pero xusto antes, expliquei que as ferramentas das redes sociais están destinadas a crear adicción. O verdadeiro obxectivo delas é que fragmentes a túa atención o máximo posible ao longo do día; para iso se deseñaron. Temos moita investigación que nos di que se pasas moito tempo ao día nun estado de atención fragmentada, moito tempo ao día rompendo a túa atención, para botar unha ollada, ver un momento Instagram, isto pode reducir a túa concentración de forma permanente. Noutras palabras, poderías reducir permanentemente a capacidade de facer exactamente o tipo de esforzo profundo que resulta ser máis e máis necesario nunha economía cada vez máis competitiva. O uso das redes sociais non é inofensivo, poder ter un impacto significativamente negativo na capacidade de medrar economicamente. Preocúpame especialmente isto nas novas xeracións, que son as máis saturadas por estas tecnoloxías. Se perdes a capacidade de manter a concentración, vas volverte cada vez menos importante para esta economía. Tamén hai prexuízos psicolóxicos provocados polas redes sociais que están ben documentados e que necesitamos abordar. Sabemos pola bibliografía que canto máis usas as redes sociais, máis probable é que te sintas só ou illado. Sabemos que a exposición constante aos retratos coidadosamente seleccionados e positivos da vida dos teus amigos pode facerte sentir incapaz e aumentar as taxas de depresión. E algo do que penso que oiremos falar moito no futuro próximo é que hai un desaxuste fundamental entre como están conectados os nosos cerebros e este comportamento de expoñernos a múltiples estímulos con recompensas intermitentes ao longo das horas. Unha cousa é pasar un par de horas nunha máquina comecartos en Las Vegas, pero se levas unha contigo e estás dándolle aos botóns todo o día, dende que te ergues ata que te deitas: non estamos afeitos a iso. Iso curtocircuíta o cerebro, e estamos comezando a encontrar que ten consecuencias cognitivas reais, unha das cales é a xeneralizada sensación de ansiedade. A avanzada deste problema encóntrase nos campus universitarios. Se falas con expertos en saúde mental nos campus, diranche que coa irrupción do uso continuo do teléfono intelixente e das redes sociais entre o estudantado do campus chegou unha explosión de trastornos relacionados coa ansiedade nos campus. Velaí o que nos vén enriba. Este tipo de comportamento é un desaxuste para a cablaxe cerebral e pode facernos sentir miserables. Hai un custo real no uso das redes sociais; así que cando esteas pensando “Debería usar isto ou non?”, dicir que é inofensivo non é suficiente. Debes identificar un beneficio claro, significativamente positivo que supere os danos potenciais, que non son triviais en absoluto. A xente a miúdo pregunta: ''Vale, pero como é a vida sen redes sociais?'' Pode meter un pouco de medo pensalo. Segundo as persoas que pasaron por este proceso, pode haber algunhas semanas complicadas. É coma un proceso de desintoxicación. As primeiras dúas semanas poden ser incómodas: sénteste un pouco nervioso, como se che faltara unha extremidade. Pero despois as cousas cálmanse, e a vida despois das redes sociais pode ser bastante positiva. Hai dúas cousas que eu podo contar do mundo sen redes sociais. O primeiro é que pode ser bastante produtiva. Son profesor nun centro de investigación, escribín cinco libros, entre semana, non adoito traballar despois das 5 da tarde. En parte estou intentando facer isto e porque resulta que se tratas a túa atención con respecto, se non a fragmentas, se a mantés íntegra, se protexes a túa concentración, á hora de traballar podes facer unha cousa tras outra, e facelas con intensidade, e a intensidade pode ser trocada por tempo. É sorprendente todo o que podes facer en oito horas se podes darlle concentración intensa a unha cousa tras outra. Outra cousa que podo contar da vida sen redes sociais é que fóra do traballo, as cousas poden ser bastante tranquilas. Adoito facer bromas con que sería feliz como granxeiro de 1930, porque se observas o meu tempo libre, leo o xornal mentres amence, escoito o béisbol na radio, sento nunha cadeira de coiro e leo un libro de tapa dura á noite despois de que os nenos vaian durmir. Soa anticuado pero ten unha finalidade. É unha forma reparadora e pacífica de pasar o tempo fóra do traballo. Non tes ese constante murmurio de estímulos, e a sensación de ansiedade que iso trae. A vida sen redes sociais non é tan mala. Se xuntades estes fíos veredes o meu argumento completo: non todo o mundo, pero moita máis xente agora mesmo, moita máis xente debería deixar as redes sociais. Para resumir, primeiro porque podemos descartar a inquedanza principal de que é unha tecnoloxía fundamental que debemos usar. Non ten sentido: é unha máquina comecartos no teu móbil. Podemos descartar que non vaias conseguir traballo sen elas. Parvadas: algo que un neno de seis anos cun móbil poida facer non é o que o mercado premia. É subliñei o punto de que hai perigos reais. Non son inofensivas. Tería que haber un beneficio significativo para poder dicir que este intercambio paga a pena. Finalmente mencionei a vida sen redes sociais: hai efectos moi positivos nela. Espero que moitos de vós fagades estes mesmos cálculos, polo menos valoredes a perspectiva que estou presentando agora mesmo: que hai moita xente que estaría moito mellor se non usara esta tecnoloxía. Algúns non estaredes de acordo, algúns teredes críticas duras e acertadas sobre min e os meus argumentos, e acepto, abofé, todas as opinións negativas. Só vos pido que deixedes os comentarios en Twitter. Grazas. (Risas) (Aplausos)