How to Escape the Smartphone Doom Loop | Larz May, Elise Hu | TED

0:04 Elise Hu: Tell us a little bit about what led you here

0:06 and what it means to you to be a digital wellness entrepreneur.

0:11 Larissa May: The beginning of digital wellness started with digital sickness.

0:16 I literally was scrolling to death.

0:19 I was a college student spending 10 to 12 hours a day behind my screen.

0:24 I was scrolling more than I was walking, sleeping, or socializing.

0:28 And luckily, I had an RA that saved my life.

0:31 But I was going to the psychiatrist every day,

0:33 and I found it really interesting that they asked me about drugs,

0:37 sex and alcohol, but not the drug that was in my pocket.

0:42 And that was the beginning of the big idea,

0:45 10 years ago, which was maybe digital wellness is the new wellness,

0:51 in that as humans, we have to cultivate a healthy relationship

0:56 with technology if we want to be around for another millennia.

1:00 EH: Right.

1:00 How did it show up for you, when you said that you were kind of feeling sick?

1:05 LM: Well I think the thing that I’ve learned in the 10

1:08 years of exploration is that screens are really just symptoms.

1:12 So many young people— and adults too— we go to our screens

1:16 because it's more comfortable than actually

1:18 dealing with the emotions— whether it's sadness, depression, anxiety.

1:23 And for me, I just didn't have the skills,

1:26 the emotional resilience in the digital age that I needed.

1:30 But I was given a device and was told to, "Hey,

1:33 go through this life milestone, go to college, figure out how to be a human.

1:36 And by the way, you're going to have a stage

1:39 in your pocket the entire time." And then I started looking into it.

1:42 I think most of us, we look around,

1:44 we see our kids, our parents on their phones.

1:46 And then I realized, do we want to chase our dreams?

1:50 Or do we want to be behind these things that are

1:53 making billions of dollars for a couple of guys in Silicon Valley?

1:56 EH: You have said, and I'm quoting you to you, "The systems were not in place

2:00 for the younger generations to develop healthy relationships

2:03 with technology from the start." So a system that was sort of broken here.

2:07 What did you mean by that?

2:09 And are things getting better, now that we're in this age where we realize it?

2:13 There's a lot of books about this, and a lot

2:15 of discourse about social media and sort of the risks of it.

2:18 LM: The fact that I started this with $250 in my dorm room,

2:23 and I’m now on this stage, alone, is a win.

2:27 It’s a win for the movement that TED believes

2:30 that digital wellness is critical for the future of humanity.

2:33 Now when we talk about systems and systems change,

2:37 a lot of you might be in a state where there might be a phone-free ban.

2:41 And across the nation, because we haven't had a national legislation

2:46 in 30 years past, almost 40 states, this back to school, said,

2:51 "We want to ban phones now." There was a problem with that.

2:55 Creating a policy that you can't have phones

2:58 in school does not fix all of the problems.

3:00 And so what I did was say— we actually started this with the governor in New

3:05 York— "Why don't we build the next generation

3:09 of digital wellness activist athletes?" Let's train them,

3:12 let's give them grants, and let's have them help us implement and create

3:16 a new story and a new brand for digital wellness,

3:20 from "phone free" into "phone-free fun." And so what I believe

3:23 is that we have to put young people at the center,

3:26 but we also have to educate all stakeholders.

3:29 We need to ensure, in the future, that there are financial incentives for big

3:34 tech to actually edit these platforms, in the same way that we've

3:38 created tax incentives for the environmental movement,

3:41 because nothing has changed, but humans are changing.

3:45 EH: OK.

3:45 Two follow-ups to that.

3:47 One is, what are young people saying to you?

3:49 LM: Well young people want to be heard.

3:51 They want to be in the rooms where decisions are being made about them,

3:55 because they're the ones that are now forced to take their tests on iPads.

3:59 There is no longer that period of time

4:01 where you're feeling stressed to take a test,

4:04 then you're relieved, and you don't get your grade back for a week.

4:07 These kids are getting it from all sides— socially, academically,

4:10 a lot of pressure from their parents— and they're the ones that give me hope,

4:14 that say, "Hey, we want to be the leaders.

4:16 We want to show our school how to not just take away phones,

4:20 but how to make sure the kids that use phones at lunch because they didn't have

4:23 a place to fit in can sit at our friendship

4:26 table." Or "We want to take phones away,

4:28 and we actually want to make screen-free proms and make this feel

4:32 fun." Because if it's all about abstinence and the lack thereof,

4:35 you're never going to get kids on board.

4:38 EH: I get it, I grew up in Texas,

4:40 where abstinence was taught in schools— look at how well that worked.

4:46 We're talking a lot about systems and then both kind of big picture,

4:51 but also a lot that can be done individually and how we

4:54 can make changes in our own families or in our own homes.

4:57 I guess my next question is why is the onus on us?

5:00 You know, there's so many conversations about, like,

5:04 what we need to be doing to help our kids become more literate,

5:08 what we need to be doing to help solve

5:11 for this anxious generation or so-called anxious generation in our own homes.

5:15 What do those incentives look like at a system-wide level?

5:18 Like, how do we incentivize technology makers and companies to do

5:22 something different that would be healthier for the rest of us?

5:25 LM: I’ve been trying to do that for 10 years.

5:27 We still don't have a national legislation passed,

5:30 and AI is moving faster than any other social media platform in history.

5:34 So at this point, as humans,

5:37 the way I think about this is that technology is more like food than anything.

5:41 We have our own media metabolisms.

5:44 Every child is different.

5:45 Every family is different.

5:47 We must learn how to consume technology in a way

5:51 that is going to support us rather than hurt us,

5:54 because unfortunately, the systems are not built for us to thrive.

5:58 But the hope is that we can retrain young minds.

6:02 And if we start early,

6:03 well— I can't believe I'm going to say this— the average toddler,

6:08 40 percent of them have devices before they're even in preschool.

6:12 So if we're not starting then, the moment a child sees a blue light,

6:17 then we're going to be losing ourselves to big tech.

6:19 And, guess what, it's no longer about billionaires.

6:22 It's now about trillionaires and everyone else.

6:25 EH: How do you want kids as young as age six to be educated?

6:30 LM: I've been doing it for the last decade,

6:32 and what I believe is that wicked problems need wicked games,

6:37 and that if we want to drive behavior change,

6:40 we have to do it in a playful way that kids are going to engage with.

6:43 We know that just having PowerPoint slides

6:45 and telling kids what not to do doesn't work.

6:49 So I wanted to rewrite that playbook and put

6:51 young people at the center of designing, creating,

6:54 and now I’m even building technology that young people

6:56 are helping me design— because I know what's out there.

6:59 Surveillance and stalking our kids is not enough to support them emotionally.

7:04 And our world is broken.

7:06 EH: How should we be supporting them emotionally?

7:08 LM: Well I think one of the things I always

7:11 say is that if you’re a parent or a grandparent,

7:13 or even just someone that lives with someone you love,

7:17 is that you should never have more devices than people in a room.

7:20 And what I mean by that is that if

7:23 you want to watch something, watch it together.

7:25 If you want to scroll, scroll together.

7:28 When you're going to bed with your partner and you're on your devices,

7:31 or you’re sitting in a room with your kids—

7:33 a term I call “phubbing”— when you’re all on your phones.

7:36 EH: Guilty.

7:37 LM: I mean, we’ve all been there,

7:39 but it’s one of the great golden rules that we can start implementing.

7:42 And at the end of the day,

7:43 the kids are looking at us, and we are modeling that future,

7:46 and we need to be able to show them even though the headlines

7:49 say that you’re a victim and that you're anxious and you're depressed,

7:53 that's not a story that is going to empower someone to be up on the stage.

7:57 I pulled myself out of that story.

7:59 And so I want the next generation of young people to know that it is possible,

8:03 and that when social media is used as a tool, it can change the world.

8:07 EH: Do you draw a distinction between social

8:10 media or just digital tools for consumption versus creation?

8:16 LM: I love that you asked this question,

8:18 and I'm going to give my tip at the end on this.

8:20 But ultimately, the way that technology was

8:24 designed was for us to be passive consumers.

8:28 We were never trained to interact with it any other way.

8:32 And therefore, many of us, starting at a young age,

8:36 are caught in this doom loop and this vicious

8:38 cycle of "I'm going to die," "the world is going to end," "I'm never going

8:42 to have a job," "What's the point of studying?

8:44 The world is burning.

8:45 Kids are dying." However, I believe, and I know, that when we retrain our minds,

8:51 and we teach our kids to engage with technology,

8:54 with an intention to lead with creativity and the imagination muscle,

8:59 that we can actually activate joy and fight

9:03 against the doom loop into the joy loop,

9:05 which is really where we take back our creative power and say, "You know what?

9:09 I'm going to be the creator of my own digital story and my own digital world.

9:14 And instead of you hacking me, Big Tech,

9:16 I'm going to hack my devices so I can take back control of my life." EH: OK.

9:20 Which brings us to Ginko and how you have decided to work with AI.

9:24 Why did you decide to use an AI?

9:27 And can you tell us a little bit more about it?

9:29 LM: Absolutely.

9:31 In looking at all of these tools in the ecosystem,

9:33 I saw that parents were stalking kids,

9:36 but there was basically broken product-market fit.

9:38 Because kids, I’m going to be really honest— they’re smarter than all of us.

9:42 They break through everything.

9:44 They create their own Wi-Fi routers.

9:46 So the truth is that your kids are always going to win.

9:49 What I saw in the market is that— we’ve seen

9:52 a lot of OpenAI’s decisions lately and it’s a little bit scary.

9:56 I know a lot of kids that have also

9:58 lost their lives because of how AI impacted them,

10:01 and the way that social media impacted me.

10:03 And what I knew is that parents didn't

10:06 have a doctor-backed compass for the digital world.

10:09 What do you do if your kid is being groomed?

10:12 But also, they didn’t have a safe place to go.

10:15 The reason why I wanted to create an AI-based tool was:

10:19 one, because I had clinical research that I could build it with.

10:22 Two, I could make it HIPAA-compliant so

10:25 people could trust us with their family secrets.

10:28 But third, because I wanted to build a tool

10:31 that could take the data from a child's device, take those insights,

10:35 and make early predictions for parents of things that could go wrong.

10:40 Because technology shows us signals.

10:43 And if Big Tech is making billions

10:45 of dollars and selling our children face masks,

10:47 we, as parents, should be able to take that data, get those insights and know,

10:52 "Hey, if Lars is moving really quickly on her device and experiencing

10:56 a lot of mood issues and looking at different content..." My parents,

10:59 back when I was struggling,

11:01 might have been able to get a notification that said "Hey,

11:05 you should take Ginko to the parent, to the doctor's office, and show them,

11:09 because we think she might be dealing with anxiety or depression

11:13 or ADHD." And that is the big gap right now,

11:16 is that there is such a disconnect between our children's inner worlds,

11:20 the digital world, and our family's world.

11:22 And I want to rewrite that story.

11:23 EH: So basically, if you are a parent with a child who has a device,

11:27 or more than one device, you can use Ginko, is that how?

11:31 LM: Just ask Ginko, yeah.

11:33 Really, our vision, you know,

11:35 after spending a decade building half the story with young people,

11:38 I realized the next frontier of digital

11:41 wellness is bringing it into the healthcare space.

11:45 This is not something that's going away.

11:47 And in fact, in five years, we’re going to be sitting,

11:50 wishing that [we had] asked people to put their phones away,

11:53 because our tech is going to be embedded in our bodies.

11:56 And so what we need to figure out is how

11:59 do we preserve the part of us that makes us human.

12:02 EH: What is your answer to that question?

12:04 LM: Well I think we really need to get

12:06 out of the consumer seat and into the driver's seat,

12:09 when it comes to technology.

12:11 And what I mean by that is that you

12:14 can literally retrain your mind or your child's

12:17 mind by engaging with technology 20 minutes a day

12:20 and doing something joyful— sparking the imagination loop.

12:24 Instead of having your child scrolling passively on YouTube,

12:27 sit down [and] let them tell you a story and make it together on AI,

12:31 and [then] let them watch it appear like magic.

12:33 That is joy.

12:35 That is how technology can be used.

12:37 But more importantly, it will awaken our senses instead of suffocating them.

12:44 EH: If I asked you to just paint

12:46 a picture of a more affirmative vision of the future,

12:49 in which we have all of this digital technology and AI at our fingertips,

12:54 but it isn't so suffocating,

12:56 or at least not so fraught, what would that look like?

13:00 LM: It would look like young people believing

13:03 that they have a right to their mind.

13:06 EH: Say more about that.

13:07 LM: What I mean is that, like I said,

13:10 kids have just been taught to be consumers of technology.

13:13 I am watching kids every day say, "I'm going to put my phone down and I'm

13:18 going to take back control of my thoughts.

13:21 I'm going to think before I search.

13:23 I'm going to reflect before I say." Technology has, quite honestly,

13:29 told us more about our own stories than we've let ourselves reflect on our own.

13:34 And I know that in this new future,

13:36 we will have no minds left behind if we continue to give

13:40 young people the tools to rewrite that for the next generation.

13:43 EH: Before we let you go, what are some small,

13:46 actionable steps that we can take to get to this more affirmative vision?

13:51 LM: Swap screens with analog fun.

13:54 Have a notebook and paper.

13:56 Get your knitting.

13:57 Put your phone down.

13:58 Keep that at your desk.

14:00 It's a great way to tap into yourself.

14:02 The second thing is— and this is hard for all of us— challenge yourself,

14:06 one day a week, to not use any AI.

14:10 EH: And that's from an AI founder, you're saying this.

14:13 LM: Absolutely, and the truth is we have

14:16 to retrain our brains to actually answer our own questions.

14:20 The third thing is actually try to do a screen-free scavenger hunt where,

14:24 if you have a family,

14:25 have your kids write down a list of things that they want to find in the world,

14:29 leave your phones at home, and just go out and do it.

14:32 Go be free.

14:33 Escape the wild, wild web and get some screen peace,

14:37 which is really just peace of mind.

14:39 EH: Alright, you heard it from Larissa May— escape the wild, wild web.

14:43 Larissa May, thank you so much.

14:44 LM: Thank you.

14:45 (Applause)