0:00:00.928,0:00:03.915
So a few years ago I heard[br]an interesting rumor.

0:00:04.389,0:00:06.801
Apparently, the head[br]of a large pet food company

0:00:06.801,0:00:10.789
would into the annual shareholder's[br]meeting with can of dog food,

0:00:10.789,0:00:12.829
and he would eat the can of dog food,

0:00:12.829,0:00:16.346
and this was his way of convincing them[br]that if it was good enough for him,

0:00:16.346,0:00:17.965
it was good enough for their pets.

0:00:17.965,0:00:20.639
This strategy is now known as dogfooding,

0:00:20.639,0:00:22.933
and it's a common strategy[br]in the business world.

0:00:22.933,0:00:25.456
It doesn't mean everyone[br]goes in and eats dog food,

0:00:25.456,0:00:27.644
but business people[br]will use their own products

0:00:27.644,0:00:29.204
to demonstrate that they feel --

0:00:29.204,0:00:30.686
that they're confident in them.

0:00:31.129,0:00:32.875
This is a widespread practice,

0:00:32.875,0:00:36.595
but I think what's really interesting[br]is when you find exceptions to this rule.

0:00:36.595,0:00:38.165
When you find cases of businesses

0:00:38.165,0:00:40.854
or people in businesses[br]who don't use their own products.

0:00:40.854,0:00:44.082
Turns out there's one industry where[br]this happens in a common way --

0:00:44.082,0:00:45.345
in a pretty regular way --

0:00:45.345,0:00:47.540
and that is the screen-based[br]tech industry.

0:00:48.377,0:00:50.289
So, in 2010,

0:00:50.289,0:00:51.351
Steve Jobs,

0:00:51.359,0:00:52.892
when he was releasing the iPad,

0:00:52.892,0:00:56.647
described the iPad as a device[br]that was "extraordinary."

0:00:56.647,0:00:59.061
"The best browsing experience[br]you've ever had;

0:00:59.061,0:01:00.278
way better than a laptop,

0:01:00.278,0:01:01.820
way better than a smartphone ...

0:01:01.820,0:01:03.299
It's an incredible experience."

0:01:03.299,0:01:04.523
A couple of months later,

0:01:04.523,0:01:07.238
he was approached by a journalist[br]from The New York Times,

0:01:07.238,0:01:08.761
and they had a long phone call.

0:01:08.761,0:01:09.866
At the end of the call,

0:01:09.866,0:01:13.209
the journalist threw in a question[br]that seemed like a sort of softball.

0:01:13.209,0:01:16.523
He said to him, "Your kids[br]must love the iPad."

0:01:16.803,0:01:18.456
There's an obvious answer to this,

0:01:18.456,0:01:21.099
but what Jobs said really[br]staggered the journalist.

0:01:21.099,0:01:22.503
He was very surpsrised,

0:01:22.503,0:01:25.101
because he said, "They haven't used it.

0:01:25.101,0:01:27.767
We limit how much technology[br]our kids use at home."

0:01:28.046,0:01:31.678
This is a very common thing[br]in the tech world.

0:01:32.081,0:01:34.421
In fact there's a school[br]quite near Silicon Valley

0:01:34.421,0:01:36.693
called the Waldorf School[br]of the Peninsula,

0:01:36.693,0:01:39.683
and they don't introduce screens[br]until the eighth grade.

0:01:39.880,0:01:41.872
What's really interesting[br]about the school

0:01:41.872,0:01:43.895
is that 75 percent[br]of the kids who go there

0:01:43.895,0:01:47.028
have parents who are high-level[br]Silicon Valley tech execs.

0:01:47.342,0:01:48.740
So when I heard about this,

0:01:48.740,0:01:50.963
I thought it was interesting[br]and surprising,

0:01:50.963,0:01:53.937
and it pushed me to consider[br]what screens were doing to me

0:01:53.937,0:01:55.864
and to my family and the people I loved,

0:01:55.864,0:01:57.331
and to people at large.

0:01:57.331,0:01:59.276
So for the last five years,

0:01:59.276,0:02:01.332
as a professor of business and psychology,

0:02:01.332,0:02:04.129
I've been studying the effect[br]of screens on our lives.

0:02:05.517,0:02:09.258
I want to start by just focusing[br]on how much time they take from us,

0:02:09.258,0:02:11.737
and then we can talk about[br]what that time looks like.

0:02:11.737,0:02:14.368
What I'm showing you here[br]is the average 24-hour workday

0:02:14.368,0:02:16.764
at three different points in history:

0:02:16.764,0:02:17.759
2007 --

0:02:17.759,0:02:18.759
10 years ago --

0:02:18.759,0:02:20.342
2015,

0:02:20.342,0:02:23.265
and then data that I collected[br]actually only last week.

0:02:23.265,0:02:26.099
And a lot of things haven't[br]changed all that much.

0:02:26.863,0:02:30.119
We sleep roughly seven and a half[br]to eight hours a day,

0:02:30.119,0:02:32.069
some people say that's declined slightly,

0:02:32.069,0:02:33.573
but it hasn't changed much.

0:02:33.573,0:02:36.922
We work eight and a half[br]to nine hours a day.

0:02:36.922,0:02:38.638
We engage in survival activities --

0:02:38.638,0:02:41.788
these are things like eating[br]and bathing and looking after kids --

0:02:41.788,0:02:42.942
about three hours a day.

0:02:42.942,0:02:44.620
That leaves this white space.

0:02:44.620,0:02:46.186
That's our personal time.

0:02:46.186,0:02:48.913
That space is incredibly important to us.

0:02:49.294,0:02:52.192
That's the space where we do things[br]that make us individuals.

0:02:52.192,0:02:53.560
That's where hobbies happen,

0:02:53.560,0:02:55.317
where we have close relationships,

0:02:55.317,0:02:57.201
where we really think about our lives,

0:02:57.201,0:02:58.290
where we get creative,

0:02:58.290,0:02:59.290
where we zoom back

0:02:59.290,0:03:02.051
and try to work out whether[br]our lives have been meaningful.

0:03:02.051,0:03:03.859
We get some of that from work as well,

0:03:03.859,0:03:05.776
but when people look back on their lives

0:03:05.776,0:03:07.976
and they wonder what[br]their lives have been like

0:03:07.976,0:03:09.216
at the end of their lives,

0:03:09.216,0:03:11.073
you look at the last things they say --

0:03:11.073,0:03:14.732
they are talking about those moments[br]that happen in that white personal space.

0:03:14.732,0:03:15.729
So it's sacred;

0:03:15.729,0:03:16.911
it's important to us.

0:03:16.911,0:03:18.666
Now what I'm going to do is show you

0:03:18.666,0:03:22.060
how much of that space[br]is taken up by screens across time.

0:03:22.060,0:03:23.380
In 2007,

0:03:23.380,0:03:24.395
this much.

0:03:24.395,0:03:27.594
That was the year that Apple[br]introduced the first iPhone.

0:03:27.594,0:03:29.523
Eight years later,

0:03:29.523,0:03:30.972
this much.

0:03:31.318,0:03:33.346
Now, this much.

0:03:33.346,0:03:36.787
That's how much time we spend[br]of that free time in front of our screens.

0:03:36.787,0:03:37.796
This yellow area,

0:03:37.796,0:03:38.796
this thin sliver,

0:03:38.796,0:03:40.095
is where the magic happens.

0:03:40.095,0:03:41.711
That's where your humanity lives.

0:03:41.711,0:03:44.105
And right now it's in a very small box.

0:03:44.362,0:03:46.105
So what do we do about this?

0:03:46.105,0:03:47.478
Well, the first question is,

0:03:47.478,0:03:49.477
what does that red space look like?

0:03:49.477,0:03:52.817
Of course screens are miraculous[br]in a lot of ways.

0:03:52.817,0:03:53.820
I live in New York,

0:03:53.820,0:03:56.159
a lot of my family lives in Australia,

0:03:56.159,0:03:57.594
and I have a one-year-old son.

0:03:57.594,0:04:01.533
The way I've been able to introduce[br]them to him is with screens.

0:04:01.533,0:04:04.714
I couldn't have done that 15[br]or 20 years ago in quite the same way.

0:04:04.714,0:04:06.910
So there's a lot of good[br]that comes from them.

0:04:06.910,0:04:09.057
One thing you can do is[br]you can ask yourself,

0:04:09.057,0:04:11.005
what goes on during that time?

0:04:11.005,0:04:13.355
How enriching are the apps[br]that we're using?

0:04:13.355,0:04:14.630
And some are enriching.

0:04:14.630,0:04:17.096
If you stop people while[br]they're using them and say,

0:04:17.096,0:04:18.836
"Tell us how do you feel right now,"

0:04:18.836,0:04:21.129
they say they feel pretty good[br]about these apps.

0:04:21.129,0:04:24.638
Those that focus on relaxation,[br]exercise, weather, reading,

0:04:24.638,0:04:26.204
education and health.

0:04:26.204,0:04:29.076
They spend an average of nine[br]minutes a day on each of these.

0:04:29.387,0:04:32.251
These apps make them much less happy.

0:04:32.251,0:04:33.614
About half the people,

0:04:33.614,0:04:36.020
when you interrupt them[br]and say, "How do you feel?"

0:04:36.020,0:04:38.064
say they don't feel good about using them.

0:04:38.064,0:04:39.661
What's interesting about these --

0:04:39.661,0:04:42.666
dating, social networking, gaming,[br]entertainment, news,

0:04:42.666,0:04:44.257
web browsing --

0:04:44.257,0:04:46.886
people spend 27 minutes a day[br]on each of these.

0:04:46.886,0:04:50.374
We're spending three times longer[br]on the apps that don't make us happy.

0:04:50.374,0:04:52.360
That doesn't seem very wise.

0:04:52.966,0:04:56.491
One of the reasons we spend so much[br]time on these apps that make us unhappy

0:04:56.491,0:04:58.385
is that they rob us of stopping cues.

0:04:58.385,0:05:00.740
Stopping cues were everywhere[br]in the 20th century.

0:05:00.740,0:05:02.630
They were baked into everything we did.

0:05:02.630,0:05:06.069
A stopping cue is basically a signal[br]that it's time to move on,

0:05:06.069,0:05:07.072
to do something new,

0:05:07.072,0:05:08.607
to do something different.

0:05:09.600,0:05:10.696
Think about newspapers,

0:05:10.696,0:05:12.151
eventually you get to the end,

0:05:12.151,0:05:13.482
you fold the newspaper away,

0:05:13.482,0:05:14.481
you put it aside.

0:05:14.481,0:05:15.641
The same with magazines,

0:05:15.641,0:05:17.497
books, you get to the end of a chapter,

0:05:17.497,0:05:20.040
prompts you to consider whether[br]you want to continue.

0:05:20.560,0:05:22.132
You watched a show on TV,

0:05:22.132,0:05:23.532
eventually the show would end

0:05:23.532,0:05:25.965
and then you'd have a week[br]until the next one came.

0:05:25.965,0:05:27.709
There were stopping cues everywhere.

0:05:27.709,0:05:31.326
But the way we consume media today[br]is such that there are no stopping cues.

0:05:31.923,0:05:33.547
The newsfeed just rolls on,

0:05:33.547,0:05:34.953
and everything's bottomless:

0:05:34.953,0:05:37.438
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram,

0:05:37.438,0:05:40.603
email, text messaging, the news.

0:05:40.603,0:05:43.533
And when you do check all sorts[br]of other sources,

0:05:43.533,0:05:45.873
you can just keep going[br]on and on and on.

0:05:45.873,0:05:50.297
So we can get a cue about what to do[br]from Western Europe,

0:05:50.297,0:05:53.627
where they seem to have a number[br]of pretty good ideas in the workplace.

0:05:53.627,0:05:54.634
Here's one example.

0:05:54.634,0:05:56.239
This is a Dutch design firm.

0:05:56.239,0:05:59.351
And what they've done is they've[br]rigged the desks to the ceiling.

0:05:59.520,0:06:00.714
At 6pm every day,

0:06:00.714,0:06:03.474
it doesn't matter who you're[br]emailing or what you're doing,

0:06:03.474,0:06:04.917
the desks rise to the ceiling.

0:06:04.917,0:06:06.085
(Laughter)

0:06:06.085,0:06:07.334
(Applause)

0:06:07.656,0:06:11.424
Four days a week the space[br]turns into a yoga studio.

0:06:11.626,0:06:12.630
One day a week,

0:06:12.630,0:06:13.630
into a dance club.

0:06:13.630,0:06:16.182
It's really up to you which ones[br]you stick around for.

0:06:16.182,0:06:17.812
But this is a great stopping rule,

0:06:17.812,0:06:19.676
because it means at the end of the day,

0:06:19.676,0:06:20.680
everything stops.

0:06:20.680,0:06:21.790
There's no way to work.

0:06:21.790,0:06:22.785
At Daimler,

0:06:22.785,0:06:23.901
the German car company,

0:06:23.901,0:06:25.566
they've got another great strategy.

0:06:25.566,0:06:26.718
When you go on vacation,

0:06:26.718,0:06:28.857
instead of saying, "This[br]person's on vacation,

0:06:28.857,0:06:30.631
they'll get back to you eventually,"

0:06:30.631,0:06:33.876
they say, "This person's on vacation,[br]so we've deleted your email."

0:06:33.876,0:06:36.795
"This person will never see[br]the email you just sent."

0:06:36.795,0:06:37.804
(Laughter)

0:06:37.804,0:06:40.309
"You can email back in a couple of weeks,

0:06:40.309,0:06:42.049
or you can email someone else."

0:06:42.049,0:06:43.100
(Laughter)

0:06:43.100,0:06:45.099
(Applause)

0:06:48.946,0:06:50.544
You can imagine what that's like.

0:06:50.544,0:06:52.955
You go on vacation and you're[br]actually on vacation.

0:06:52.955,0:06:54.883
The people who work[br]at this company feel

0:06:54.883,0:06:57.109
that they actually get a break from work.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But of course that doesn't tell us much

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
about what we should do at home[br]in our own lives,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and so I want to make some suggestions.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's easy to say between say,[br]five and six pm

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I'm going to not use my phone.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
The problem is five and six pm[br]looks different on different days.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I think a far better strategy is to say,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I do certain things every day,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
there are certain occasions[br]that happen every day,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
like eating dinner.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Sometimes I'll be alone,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
sometimes with other people,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
sometimes in a restaurant,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
sometimes at home,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but the rule that I've adopted is[br]I will never use my phone at the table.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's far away.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
As a far a way as possible.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Because we're really bad[br]at resisting temptation,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but when you have a stopping cue

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that every time dinner begins,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
my phone goes far away,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you avoid temptation all together.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
At first it hurts.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I had massive FOMO.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I struggled.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But what happens is you get used to it.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You overcome the withdrawl the same[br]way you would from a drug,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and what happens is life[br]becomes more colorful,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
richer,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
more interesting --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
you have better conversations.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You really connect with the people[br]who are there with you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I think it's a fantastic strategy,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and we know it works,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because when people do this,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I've tracked a whole lot of people[br]who have tried this,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it expands.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They feels so good about it

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
that they start doing it for the first[br]hour of the day in the morning.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
They start putting their phones[br]on airplane mode on the weekend.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
That way your phone remains a camera,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
but it's no longer a phone.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
It's a really poweful idea,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and we know people feel much better[br]about their lives when they do this.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
So what's the take-home here?

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Screens are miraculous.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
I've already said that,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and I feel that it's true.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
But the way we use them is a lot like[br]driving down a really fast, long road,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and you're in a car where the accelerator[br]is mashed to the floor,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
it's kind of hard[br]to reach the brake pedal.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You've got a choice.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
You can either glide by,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
past the beautiful ocean scenes[br]and take snaps out the window --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and that's the easy thing to do --

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
or you can go out of your way[br]to move the car to the side of the road

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to push that brake pedal,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
to get out,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
take off your shoes and socks,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
take a couple of steps onto the sand,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
feel what the sand feels like[br]under your feet,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
walk to the ocean

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and let the ocean lap at your ankles.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Your life will be richer[br]and more meaningful

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
because you breathe in that experience,

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
and because you've[br]left your phone in the car.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
Thank you.

9:59:59.000,9:59:59.000
(Applause)