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