The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Costs of Social Media | Dino Ambrosi | TEDxLagunaBlancaSchool

Summary

In a thought-provoking TEDx talk, Dino Ambrosi delves into the significant chunks of time consumed by social media and screens in our lives, revealing the long-term mental and cognitive implications. Ambrosi visualizes the life months left for an 18-year-old and emphasizes how a major portion is squandered on non-meaningful digital engagements. He points out that our over-reliance on screens can lead to increased distraction, mental health issues, and a shallow understanding of relationships and the world. Highlighting the business model of social media platforms, Ambrosi urges viewers to reconsider how much their time is worth and to evaluate if social media usage justifies its cost, thereby motivating audiences to manage their digital consumption more mindfully.

Highlights

• Most 18-year-olds might spend 93% of their future free time on screens, not including necessary duties. 😲
• High screen time is associated with mental health issues like depression. 📉
• Frequent switching between digital stimuli trains us to be distracted. 🔄
• Social media platforms' business models intentionally capture and sell user time. 💼
• Reevaluate what you gain from social media versus the time you lose. 🤔

Key Takeaways

• Social media consumes a substantial part of our lives, potentially leading to regret if mismanaged. 📱
• High screen time is linked to mental health struggles like depression and anxiety. 😟
• Digital distractions can train us to be chronically unfocused. 🤯
• Social media platforms monetize users by consuming their time, capitalizing on distraction. 💸
• We often pay more for social media in time than if we subscribed monetarily. ⏳

Overview

In the opening of Dino Ambrosi’s TEDx talk, he challenges us to visualize our own lifespan in months. With a stark eye-opener, he illustrates just how much of that time slips away through sleep, chores, and other necessary activities, leaving us limited time for pursuing passions and enjoying life. He asks us to consider the deep impact of wasted time on screens.

As Ambrosi presses on, he highlights the grave consequences of excessive screen time, not only on mental health, which has been talked about a lot, but also on our attention spans. The way we flit between content conditions us to remain in a state of distraction, hindering our capacity for sustained focus. It’s a brief but powerful indictment of the digital era's cost on human awareness.

Finally, Ambrosi tackles the economics of social media, illustrating how platforms profit from our attention. By encouraging us to rethink the true cost of our digital indulgences, he serves a call to arms: reclaim the most precious resource we have — our time. As we wrest back control, the need for mindful consumption emerges as the virtuous path forward.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Life Expectancy Visualization The chapter begins with a discussion on personal evolution, encouraging a transformative perspective on self and the world. There is acknowledgment of starting the discussion on a serious note but with the promise of an uplifting progression. The chapter uses a visual representation of dots to symbolize months in an adult's life, assuming a life expectancy of 90 years, to illustrate the passage of time and prompt reflection.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Time Allocation and Free Time Reflection The chapter titled 'Time Allocation and Free Time Reflection' discusses the finite nature of time left in one's life, especially if you're 18 years old. The chapter uses an optimistic estimate of remaining months and highlights that a significant portion of this time, about a third, will be spent sleeping. Additionally, it notes that approximately 126 months will be allocated to schooling and career activities, prompting reflection on how one allocates their remaining free time.
• 02:30 - 05:00: Screen Time and Its Consequences This chapter discusses the allocation of time throughout a typical lifespan, with particular focus on the activities that take up significant portions of it. It mentions specific time expenditures, such as 18 months driving, 36 months cooking and eating, another 36 months on chores and errands, and 27 months on personal hygiene. These segments total up to 334 months that should ideally be available for remaining life activities. Through this breakdown, the chapter provides insight into how much of our life is consumed by routine tasks, prompting reflection on the time available beyond these necessities.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Messages from Social Media Platforms The chapter titled 'Messages from Social Media Platforms' explores the notion of making the most out of one's time. Emphasizing the importance of ticking items off a bucket list, pursuing passions, and traveling the world, it suggests that these actions not only enrich one's life but also serve as an investment in future quality of life. The underlying message is about the significance of spending and investing time wisely, as it will determine one's life quality.
• 07:30 - 11:00: Social Media Business Model and User Cost This chapter discusses the impact of how individuals choose to spend their time on their personal development, including their body, mind, and character. It poses thought-provoking questions to the reader about their priorities, such as how they want to utilize their free time, activities they wish to pursue, and with whom they want to spend their time. The emphasis is on taking conscious control of time investment for future growth and well-being.
• 11:00 - 11:30: Final Thoughts on Social Media Value and Moderation The chapter discusses the significant amount of time individuals, especially teenagers, spend on screen-based activities. The average 18-year-old in the United States is expected to spend the majority of their remaining free time, about 93%, engaged with screens through activities like scrolling through TikTok, binge-watching Netflix, and playing video games.

The Battle for Your Time: Exposing the Costs of Social Media | Dino Ambrosi | TEDxLagunaBlancaSchool Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Transcriber: Norhan Eliwa Reviewer: Sadegh Vahdati Nia By providing space for constant evolution, we can all transform how we view ourselves and the world around us. Bear with me, everybody. I'm going to start off today on a little bit of a heavy note, but I promise things will lighten up. The dots on this screen represent an adult life in months, assuming a life expectancy of 90.
• 00:30 - 01:00 So if you're 18 years old right now, this is an optimistic estimate of the months that you have left. Take a second to take that in. Probably not as many as you would expect. And I’m sorry to say that it does get worse because about a third of that time is going to be spent sleeping. On average, 126 of those months will go to school in your career.
• 01:00 - 01:30 About 18 will be spent driving, 36 cooking and eating, 36 doing chores and errands and about 27 in the bathroom and taking care of personal hygiene. So that leaves you with 334 months, optimistically, for everything else.
• 01:30 - 02:00 So this is where you tick the boxes on your bucket list. This is where you pursue your passions and travel the world and leave your mark. How you spend this time is going to determine the quality of your life. But this time isn't just something that you spend, it’s also something that you invest. Because what you do with it will quite literally determine
• 02:00 - 02:30 the kind of person you become. The body, mind and character that you will have in the future are being actively shaped by how you choose to use your time today. So take a second and ask yourself, “What do you want to do with that free time? What things do you want to do that you haven't done? Who do you want to spend that time with? What is worth investing it in?”
• 02:30 - 03:00 Now, I would be willing to bet that scrolling through TikTok, binge watching Netflix, and playing video games probably did not come to mind. But today, the average 18 year old in the United States is on pace to spend 93% of their remaining free time looking at a screen.
• 03:00 - 03:30 That is not counting time for school. So wrap your head around how sad that is. Imagine getting to the age of 90, seeing this visualization of how you spent all your time after the age of 18 and thinking about all the things you could have done that you did not do
• 03:30 - 04:00 because you got distracted. And I also want you to ask yourself, “What do you think over 26 years of screen time would do to you? What is that an investment in? How would it change you?” It's well established that there's a link between high screen time and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.
• 04:00 - 04:30 But recently we've started to unveil the cognitive consequences of excessive tech use as well. When we're staring at our screens, we are constantly switching our attention between different pieces of information. The average TikTok is about 15 seconds long, and over 55% of webpages are viewed for 15 seconds or less. And if you're switching your attention every 15 seconds for
• 04:30 - 05:00 an average of eight hours and 39 minutes a day, you are training yourself to become chronically distracted. Think about what that will do to your career, to your relationships, and to your ability to pursue the things that matter most to you. Unfortunately, the consequences of screen time are not limited to our mental health and our cognition.
• 05:00 - 05:30 Because every social media platform carries a message that affects what we believe. They influence the way we see ourselves and the way we see the world purely based on how they are designed. Instagram inherently says that your worth is largely defined by what you look like and what you do on vacations. It compels you to capture all the most meaningful moments of your life
• 05:30 - 06:00 on camera and share them with your entire social network. And it implicitly says that it's more valuable to have a thousand people that will give you transient social approval than a few that deeply care about you, even when it’s not your best day. Snapchat inherently says that the quality of our relationships is best measured by
• 06:00 - 06:30 the frequency of our communication, regardless of what we're actually saying. You get a point added to your Snapchat streak, even if you just send a picture of the side of your face with the caption streaks. Twitter says that anything worth saying can and should be reduced to an arbitrary number of characters. It says that the world is black and white. That it's more important to be updated about everything,
• 06:30 - 07:00 then deeply informed about anything. And when you start to compare the messages these platforms are sending with those of technologies from the past, you begin to get a sense of what we might be losing, because the inherent structure of a book says that the world is complex and it takes time to understand. It compels us to walk in the shoes of other people
• 07:00 - 07:30 and see things from their perspective with context. And it forces us to focus on one train of thought for an extended period of time, which nurtures our attention. And the letter tells us that our communication doesn't need to be frequent. It just needs to be deep. So when you factor all that in, it quickly becomes clear that the opportunity cost of this screen time is impossible to calculate.
• 07:30 - 08:00 And I have never shown this visualization to anyone that actually wants to spend 93% of their remaining free time staring at a screen. So there is a stark difference between how much time we say our screens are worth and how much time we actually give them. And it is critical to realize that is not an accident. That is by design.
• 08:00 - 08:30 It’s a consequence of a business model, that has incentives which are fundamentally misaligned with your wellbeing. Because you are the product that social media sells. These services are free because they are monetizing you. They profit by helping advertisers change your future behavior, whether that be where you spend your time,
• 08:30 - 09:00 how you spend your money or even who you vote for. In order to do that, they have to do two things. They need to figure out which ads are going to influence you by collecting as much data about you as they possibly can. And then they need to show you as many of those ads as possible. So social media is free because you pay for it with your time. Their profit is directly linked to how long they can get you to scroll.
• 09:00 - 09:30 And every social media platform is in a battle with each other to capture as much of your free time as possible. So let’s run a thought experiment. I want you to ask yourself, how much would you pay for your favorite social media platform if it charged you a monthly subscription fee? So pick the app that you use the most.
• 09:30 - 10:00 And raise your hand if you would pay at least $5 a month. Okay. How about $10 a month? 20? Don't see any hands anymore. Well, let's do a quick calculation to figure out how much we're effectively paying for an app like TikTok. We'll assume that you value your time at a rate of $20 per hour
• 10:00 - 10:30 and you're spending two hours a day on the platform or 30 days in a month. So you're effectively paying $1,200 per month for TikTok. So when you start to do this kind of analysis, it quickly becomes clear that most of us are drastically overpaying for social media. My ask of you is this: Figure out what it means for you to get a good deal out of social media platforms.
• 10:30 - 11:00 In order to do that, you have to do two things: You have to ask yourself, “What value do these services provide? And second, you have to ask, “How much of your time is that value worth?” Now, I want to be clear that I am not saying social media is without value. It can be an incredibly powerful tool. It can foster relationships. It can introduce you to new ideas. It can even spark social movements. But we need to learn to use it in moderation.
• 11:00 - 11:30 Don't let yourself get to the age of 90, only to look back on your life and realize that while you were trying to avoid FOMO, you actually missed out on living. That free time is your most valuable resource. Do not give it away for free. Thank you. (Applause)