Smartphones The Dictators in Our Pockets.

[Music]

clickbait

what do you think about when i say the

word click bait

maybe you know what it means or maybe

you don’t

but i guarantee that you all have seen

clickbait somewhere

here let me give you an example stop

what you’re doing

right now and listen to me this is the

news you’ve been waiting to hear

all day you do not want to miss this

you yes you you are carrying around

a dictator in your pocket i know it

sounds crazy but

it’s true and if you click right here

you can find out more

you are carrying around a dictator in

your pocket yeah that’s a classic

example of what clickbait might look at

look like there are

bold statements that we see that are

trying to get us to click on

an advertisement or to watch

their latest youtube video but what i

think of most when i think about

clickbait

is news headlines you know like when we

get a drop down notification on our

phones

telling us about the next breaking news

story and we just have to click it

because we want to find out what’s going

on

and because the news is so regularly

available on our phones

i think that’s what makes our phones the

dictators in our pockets

because a lot of the time these news

articles can control

what we believe how we feel and how we

act

and it makes smartphones dangerous i

know such a shocker

a teenager who actually agrees that

smart fans are dangerous

but they are however i don’t think that

we should ban them

i think there’s a solution you see

during lockdown my phone it had such a

large effect on me

obviously we weren’t able to go out very

much so my phone was the only window i

had to the outside world

i had to do everything through my phone

and because i was spending so much time

on my phone every day

i realized how much of an impact it had

on me

it was so overwhelming i felt like a

spectator just looking out on the world

not able to do anything you know all

these news articles and these headlines

that we were reading about

the number of cases increasing people

dying

the lack of beds in icu it was horrible

i’ve never felt so alone yet

simultaneously aware of

everything that was going on in the

world at the same time

and that’s when i realized you know i

don’t want to be a spectator

i have to take some control back

so i was like tara like what would you

do if you were actually able to go

outside

i talked to my friends of course so i

decided that i would

get in contact with my friends through

my phone and

ask them how they felt and they felt the

exact same way

and i’d say a lot of you probably felt

the same way too

and so we just started we started

discussing

the things that we were seeing online we

started

checking each other you know making sure

each other were okay

making sure that we weren’t reading

anything that was fake and it was really

helpful

because i wasn’t so caught up in the

news headlines because i wasn’t just

mindlessly scrolling through everything

i actually had time to think about what

i was reading and to choose things that

i wanted to read about

i got really inspired by the past

climate protests that were organized and

the black lives matter protests and i

started educating myself

these people were able to organize these

amazing movements

through their phones they were miles

apart but they could still do amazing

things

all because of technology

smartphone addiction is a real problem

in this day and age

i like i’m not ashamed to admit that i

i’m definitely a bit addicted to my

phone

as most young people are but since

locked in and since realizing that i

could actually do good things i could

actually

educate myself i’ve realized

that we can’t possibly just lock our

phones away we’re not going to wake up

one day

with no phones it’s just not going to

happen it’s not realistic

so instead we have to have a better

understanding

of the way our phones work and how they

impact us

just by discussing things with my

friends

by being able to fact check my sources

by understanding that i need to manage

my screen time

i was able to make a change the way i

feel and the way i think

and so can everybody else the

responsibility is on

us to do this i had to stop and think

and learn how to think about what i was

consuming and so should you

yeah we do have dictators in our pockets

but we don’t have to be the spectator

no matter how cheesy it sounds but we

can be the change that we want to see in

the world

so i ask you in future

take a little time to stop and think

before you scroll

because the next time you pick up your

phone you never know what you can

achieve

thank you

[Music]

you