[no audio yet]
[applause]
Social media is a drug,
and I, like so many people today, am totally addicted.
I'm addicted to scrolling.
I'm addicted to making every account on every social media site look perfect.
I'm addicted to liking, to commenting,
to seeing photos of random celebrities, to seeing drama of random celebrities,
and to refreshing the same page over and over again.
And with every drug comes a high--
a moment when one feels they're on top of the world
and nothing can stop them...
until everything just comes crashing down again.
For me, even if the picture I've posted looks nothing like me or isn't real at all,
when the likes and the comments start pouring in, that's the high.
I feel people MUST like me, my self-esteem goes up,
and I feel this temporary happiness and this temporary joy...
until a couple hours pass by
and the likes and the comments slow down,
and me and my self-esteem just kind of go crashing down again.
Social media can slash down your confidence
and, in a fraction of a second, make you feel like the loneliest person in the world.
And this is a problem that persists now within our modern society.
With a couple of taps on a smartphone,
anyone can make any account on almost any social media site
and make up a whole life that they don't even have.
And as our technology gets better every single day,
it becomes easier and easier for people to post a picture
where they look 20 pounds skinnier,
to Photoshop themselves into a party they never went to,
or in more extreme cases, do things like this,
where they put a toilet seat up against a window
so it looks like they're going on an exotic vacation,
even if they're actually not.
This phenomenon is particularly prominent
in what is now known as "influencers" on social media.
Influencers look like they live the amazing life.
They are usually on any social media platform (but specifically Instagram and YouTube)
and have millions of followers or subscribers.
As I said before, their life looks perfect
and even companies use them to promote products for easy advertising.
Looking at a social media influencer
can make the average person feel pretty insecure at times.
An example of one of these influencers is James Charles
[audience members cheer and Sam chuckles]
a 19-year-old makeup artist with over 15 million followers.
I'll admit it: He doesn't look bad on any single photo on his Instagram.
HIs makeup is always flawless
and he never shows you the time or the money it takes to put all that on,
so it looks quick and easy and like he did it in a minute.
Another one, Hailey Baldwin Bieber.
She has over 18.3 million followers and she posts pictures of herself
on the most beautiful beaches in the world.
Spoiler alert: Nobody wakes up and looks like that.
It takes time, energy, money, and so many different resources.
And I'm not a fancy influencer but I'll admit, I do it myself.
I mean, I know this talk is probably gonna be shared somewhere on the internet,
so I dressed up better than I normally do.
In real life, my hair is large and curly,
I wear glasses, and I prefer to wear big sweatshirts over anything else,
but on every single photo on my Instagram,
my hair has been straightened, I have my contacts in, my makeup's done,
and I'm dressed up far better than I do regularly.
Me, influencers, and so many other people now
only put on Instagram what we want other people to see.
When you're scrolling through Instagram,
you only see what the Instagrammer has specifically designed,
specific moments in their time
when they're looking happy and they're dressed up
and no one has to see any other part of their life.
According to sociologist Julia Albright from University of Southern California,
"People's persona online may be much more fabulous, much more exciting
than the everyday life that they're leading."
And this isn't a problem just for teenagers anymore.
I mean, my grandparents have Facebook.
I was born in 2001 on this weird, Generation Z/Millennial cusp,
and I'll find that I spend hours on Instagram and Snapchat
and just end up feeling sorry for myself.
I wonder why people I haven't even spoken to in years
look like they have their entire life together and I don't.
I wonder why it looks like everyone's having the best time ever,
and with these photos quite literally in my face all the time,
it's so easy to wonder: "Why am I not that pretty?"
"Why am I not that skinny?" or "Why am I not that popular or cool?"
I had a conversation with a teacher of mine, as well,
a millennial, who says one of the worst parts about social media is going onto Facebook
and seeing people she used to go to high school with now raising their own families.
This makes her wonder: Is she raising her family right?
And how can she make her son just as good
or even better than every single other kid she sees on Facebook?
And I've seen it in my little sister too, Generation Z.
I see her swiping through Snapchat,
wondering how it looks like every other middle schooler in the world
is the most secure person in the world.
(We all know that's probably not true.)
Although social media can make us so lonely,
it's so easy to feel alone when it looks like every other person has it together
and you feel like you don't.
So it shouldn't take any big scientific discovery to promote the claim
that social media has detrimental effects on our mental health,
but scientists have done the study and it has proven true.
Melissa G. Hunt from University of Pennsylvania stated
that using less social media than you normally do would lead
to significant decreases in both depression and loneliness.
And George Aalbers from University of Amsterdam stated:
"...passive media use... co-occurred
with a loss of interest, concentration problems, fatigue, and loneliness."
So what do we do?
We can't just avoid social media. It's everywhere.
It's on our news, it's in our schools, it's in our homes, it's in our workplaces.
It's impossible to just forget about it,
but it has given us a huge advantage in some ways.
We have the ability to communicate more than ever before, and that's amazing.
I'm about to go to college
and I've talked with people from all around the world
that I'll be going to school with next year,
and I've talked with my roommate so many times.
When my parents went to college,
they had no idea who they'd be living with for the next year.
And my TED Talks from the past two years have been put on YouTube,
and my message about mental health has spread to people who I will never know.
So in the words of Stan Lee and his favorite comic book, "Spiderman,"
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Social media has given us an amazing advantage
to communicate, to share ideas, to bring people from all around the word together;
but it has also made it easier for people to fake their lives, fake a personality,
and for us to become more insecure.
And going back to the Instagram influencers, it's hard sometimes to just remind ourselves
that not everyone is gonna look like their favorite celebrity.
Jameela Jamil, an actress known for the NBC show "The Good Place"
has now started a campaign called "I Weigh."
The purpose of her campaign is to call out and show celebrities
and point out to regular people
that celebrities and influencers have amazing resources to some of the best food,
the best personal trainers, the best gyms, and the best magazine editors in the world.
So no wonder they look better than the average person.
Jamil has also called out celebrities who are now using their fans' weight insecurities
to sell diet pills so everyone can look just as good as they do.
Jamil has become the beginning of an amazing campaign
to make us feel better in our bodies
and NOT to compare ourselves with every single person we see on the internet.
And sometimes, when you're just at your worst,
it's better just to delete the apps off your phone.
Sometimes, as I said, when I'm feeling my worst,
I just delete the apps off my phone.
I don't delete the accounts necessarily, but without the apps physically there,
there's nothing for me to be just checking throughout the day.
And usually I can go for weeks at a time
until I feel comfortable enough that I can re-download it
and it won't affect my mental health so much.
So I know it's hard, but I ask all of you:
Take one day, just delete the apps off your phone,
whatever it is (Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, MySpace).
Whatever it is, delete it for one day,
and I promise that it'll be like a huge weight taken off your chest.
And who knows, you may find
that you have more time to do things you like,
like making music, dancing, or volunteering with kids.
So if there's one message that you take from this talk,
it's [that] I hope you know that you are not defined
by the amount of likes and comments on your posts on social media.
Social media is not real, and no way can a single account on a social media website
encapsulate the entire brilliant personality of a single human being. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]