A Passage in Time

I’ve always taken pride in my sense of humility. I was cocky once – freshman year of high school. Thought I was athletic enough and good enough at sports and class to brag about shit. My friend called me out on it and I toned it down. Significantly.

But we’re going to forget all that and I’m going to resort my 2006 15 year old cocky ass ways. Because I was right about something. Something important. I wrote about it in 2013 and 13 years later, jurors were nearly unanimous in their decision to find Meta and YouTube negligent and guilty of designing their apps to be addictive and harmful to adolescents.

In 2013, I started my proposed senior commencement speech with an Albert Einstein quote: “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.” We’re there. We’re clearly there. I urge you to read the rest of my proposed speech in which I talk about the “domination of cell phones.” I think I probably had the word “addiction” in the first draft, and while my mom surely identified all my comma splices, my Dad usually butts in on 1-2 words here or there. My ideas, my dad’s occasional word choice.

The jury ordered the companies pay $3 million to the plaintiff, who testified that social media use that started before she was a teenager had dominated her life for years and had contributed to mental health issues, including anxiety, depression and body dysmorphia.

I think it’s very hard to attempt to lay out a timeline from when I started to notice

discouraging trends in 2013 to 2026. A lot has happened in those 13 years. Including the proliferation of social media.

One thing in the Wall Street Journal article that caught my attention was an analogy from the lawyer for the plaintiff – he compared social-media companies to lions going after weaker prey. I smiled when I read it. But it was both a sad smile and a happy smile. It was a sad smile because he’s right. It was a happy smile, because ever since I wrote my speech in 2013, I knew I would never become weaker prey. This is my cockiness coming out. But I knew I couldn’t. I felt deeply and saw deeply how bad it was. The difference between a good 30-minute conversation and 30 minutes of scroll/phone-time is an immeasurable difference. So much so that now people have turned to litigation. And studies (a la some stuff in the book Anxious Generation). I went out on Friday night without my phone for 5 hours. It was an amazing 5 hours. I did the same on Sunday afternoon. I practice what I preach and that remains very important to me.

Without coming off judge-y, how do I try to inspire my peers? I want to start a cult. I have a good name and the founding members. But with a 20 month old, a demanding job, and a busy life, time may be hard to find to educate members over a weekend trip at a lakehouse about steps we and you can take to not be weaker prey. Write. Call. Sit in silence (a huge one).

I remain incredibly worried about many things. But this is by far #1, and especially sitting in the US, where the influencer market seems outsized compared to other markets. However, there has been some positive momentum. As bad as Covid was in terms of accelerating this tech uber awakening, it happened so fast, people are now seeing how reliant we are, but don’t’ necessarily need to be, on our phones.

LA public school districts have dedicated phone lockers and they are not allowed during class. I think 20-25 states are following the same protocol in schools. And in a recent article, a small town in Ireland, through an initiative called “It Takes a Village” are adopting a “voluntary no smart devices code” and supporting it through local programming and events. The details on that are attached to the email I sent.

And Australia, the continent and country of Australia, has banned social media for everyone under the age of 16. People are starting to understand the detrimental impact of it. But are you? That’s my question. Because while I didn’t ask any of my Duke classmates directly in 2013 that question, I offered a gentle reminder to focus on the people around you, not the screens. Maybe they should have let me speak. Then I could actually send the video. Let’s be honest – I’m a good public speaker. People talk about my wedding speech who weren’t even there. It’s fun being cocky, I should do it more often.

But seriously, this is a significant legal outcome and case. And a unique development in the Irish villages and other similar areas. I would love you to read both, but social media and short-form content have taken away our patience strain to sit and read stuff like that (that thesis I am still figuring out why, because people do still read books). If you read both articles, I promise I will do something nice for you next time I see you. If you read my senior speech, I’ll hand deliver flowers, a box of chocolates, and a comedy on DVD.

The fervor is real in this country. The mental health struggles are front and center. We can fight back against the lion. We have to.