oh that's good filter post hi
some of us fear the impact that social
media has on our lives we're afraid it's
making us more narcissistic depleting
our memory
diminishing our attention but are these
fears justified today I would like to
talk about each one of these and
challenge us to be fearless in our
approach to social media I was recently
invited to speak in London I used to
live in the UK and I was so excited
about being back I thought the energy
and the excitement so when I got on the
- that's what they call the subway there
I was smiling away trying to catch
people's eyes but no one looked at me
they didn't smile at me they were so
busy looking at their phones just like I
was when I walked out on stage your eyes
moving up and down the screen their
fingers scrolling furiously and I
thought what are we becoming
well we're becoming more connected we're
becoming more empathetic we're becoming
more fearless today's young people are
often called generation mimimi because
of the fear that social media is
creating a generation that is
narcissistic and obsessed with
self-promotion but I would like to share
a different perspective what if the
person I was connecting with on the
phone was standing in front of me would
you interrupt our conversation could we
reimagine that are online connections
but just as meaningful as a face-to-face
once and that these online connections
could help develop empathy let me
illustrate every winter our family goes
skiing and last year was no exception
but early into the trip I was skiing in
an expert run and I dislocated my knee I
spent the rest of the season on crutches
feeling very sorry for myself so while
my family was out enjoying the snow I
decided to post this on social media
with the tag I must have been naughty
this year
because all Santa brought me was a
dislocated knee I was blown away
complete strangers responded with such
warmth and kindness sending me prayers
healing wishes a couple of Santa's on
snowboards even obliged by sending me
this festive picture what would make
people who hadn't even met me reach out
with such warmth and compassion could it
be that social media may in fact
encourage empathy well if the
psychologist and a researcher I wanted
to test this hypothesis
so I conducted an experiment I gave over
400 people an empathy question I asked
some questions like sometimes I try to
understand my friends better by
imagining how things look like from
their perspective another question when
I'm upset at someone I try to put myself
in their shoes for a while I also asked
him about their social media use in two
ways
one in personal use how often do they
spend time chatting sending comments
commenting on their friends photos and
impersonal use how often do they share
links use the apps on social media
here's what I found that people who
spend more time connecting and engaging
with the personal use activities were
more empathetic when we take a moment to
actually engage with someone directly on
social media we have a chance to
practice and experience empathy more
well some of you might be thinking
that's great for empathy but what if
social media is damaging our cognitive
skills it's overloading us with
information depleting our memory and
affecting our learning as a result you
might even say it's the elephant in the
room it's the topic we're scared to talk
about like this elephant but you know an
elephant isn't just a symbol for topics
to avoid it's also celebrated for its
excellent memory and it's this side of
social media that I would like to talk
about today
that perhaps social media could help
improve a memory especially a working
memory you can think of working memory
like your brains conductor in the same
way that a conductor brings harmony to
an orchestra working memory is the
cognitive skill we use to bring order to
the myriad of information around us
we use it to process information
prioritize what's important and ignore
what isn't this is an especially crucial
skill when it comes to social media
because of the constant stream of
incoming information take a typical
social media feed we have to decide what
information is irrelevant that we aren't
interested in so you could be thinking
not another food picture ignore move on
ugly dog picture oh definitely move on
but we also use working memory to
prioritize information that's of
interest to us so for me it's post about
barefoot running but does this skill
have any real-world application I tested
over 100 high schoolers to find the
answer
I discovered that high schoolers have
spent over a year using social media
were adept at transferring this
cognitive skill to the test we gave them
they had higher working memory scores
compared to those who used it for less
time and when I lived in all the
different social media activities it was
checking friends updates that was most
linked to better cognitive skills why
well social media is a selection process
we have to quickly decide how to
prioritize and ignore information and
when we spend time checking friends
updates we get a chance to learn by
doing this more so maybe over time our
memory could look a little bit more like
the elephants another fear that we have
is that our brain is getting sidelined
that we can't focus our attention on the
person in front of us because of the
constant demands by social media we used
to use a brain like a spotlight focusing
on one thing at
I call this the spotlight brain but
today's world isn't like that
it's hard to use a spotlight brain to
stay on top of all the tweets the
updates the notifications and we miss
noticing important information
a classic psychology experiment
illustrates the spotlight brain
participants were shown a video of
people passing a ball and they were
asked to count the number of ball passes
now halfway through the video a man
shows up in an animal costume at the end
of the video participants are asked the
number of ball passes and they're also
asked did they notice anything unusual
because of the spotlight brain many of
them missed noticing the man in the
animal costume social media has changed
our attention now we use it like a
floodlight we can focus on more than one
thing at a time I call this the
floodlight brain in the same way that
you can take a phone call while cooking
you can listen to me talk while watching
these fantastic UNF basketball players
chase and Osbourne for helping me out
today
thank you I wanted to know more about
the link between the floodlight brain in
social media so I conducted another
experiment I gave you Li 300 young
adults an attention task where they have
to focus their attention on different
pieces of information I also asked them
how often they use social media the
results showed that those who use social
media more had this floodlight brain and
they were more accurate at the attention
tasks they were also nearly 5 times less
likely to miss the important information
social media has changed our attention
but that's not necessarily a bad thing
instead of an airball the floodlight
brain can give us a slam-dunk today I
would like to challenge us to rethink
how we approach social media here are
three things we can do number one use
the floodlight brain at work when you
have to be more productive and work with
more than one thing at a time
number two train your memory the next
time is scrolling through that social
media feed and a friend's name pops up
take a moment try to remember something
from the last post doing this can help
you process information more quickly and
strengthen your long-term memory number
three
empathy is a learned skill and we can
use social media to develop it as I was
preparing for this talk I reached out to
the people that I met on social media
and I asked them to share with me
stories of how they had been inspired
encouraged or challenged by others in
social media
I was so uplifted by what I saw stories
from runners encouraged by other runners
around the globe recovering from injury
doing yoga and handstands enjoying
nature encouraging us to play outside
and climb trees cooking to overcome
autoimmune diseases inspired encounters
meeting heroes supporting social causes
and professional dreams today I would
like to challenge you to do the same
take a moment connect with someone on
social media share an encouraging
message with them and use the hashtag
happy to connect to share your story
with us finally I'm happy to connect
with you today
thank you