[Music] [Applause] social media fake envious addictive hate we need to step out of the dark and into the light although there are around 200 social media platforms and about 2.7 billion users it is safe to say that we are the social but not so social society the big question is are these 2.7 billion users benefiting from social media or have they let these apps control them the truth is that we humans naturally tend to blame everything else beside ourselves for our negative behaviors if a person who has social media accounts become socially isolated or their relationships break down or their behavior or actions impact people negatively they blame everything else other than themselves but is that right I you we all have to acknowledge that social media has changed the world in ways that mean we can never go back to how it once was despite this we often argue that these tools have impacted the quality of our lives but has social media changed the world for the better or for the worse since the first year of high school when I began using social media it wasn't until one moment one ordinary day in your eighth when something clicked after that day I thought about the other negative impacts of social media and how they impacted my life I wasn't convinced that I could just you blame the platforms I used for me King me feel so insecure about myself we're making me feel so low about myself I mean I was sure that snapchat wasn't created to harm anyone and I was certain that Instagram wasn't created to lower anyone's self-esteem these platforms are just tools right so maybe these tools these machines are producing output based on what we input I realized that this is the reason why the outcome is so negative because social media isn't so dark in reality it has become a reflection of our darker side when I say negative impacts I now need to clarify what I mean though there are many ways that people can use social media to harm others in this talk I've decided to focus on the behaviors we have that ultimately hurt ourselves firstly there are the things we expose ourselves to I'm referring to our feeds our feeds that resemble an endless stream of stress and negativity our feeds that often overflow with posts that make us feel so low about ourselves because each post is somehow screaming to our faces that were not good enough then there are the fake smiles and photoshopped pictures we upload to make us seem flawless we caption this post as love yourself but do we really love ourselves or are we just following the trends in the end it all came back to ourselves we chose to be impacted negatively and we chose to impact others negatively so is social media harming us or are we harming ourselves with social media about two years ago when I was 14 I decided that something had to change my self-esteem had gone from up here to down here I felt that I wasn't spending enough time with my family and like every other girl out there I was comparing my life to all the insta Faye miss influencers this was all a result of my actions online I was adding on to this feed of stress and negativity and I learned for my surroundings to strive for perfection but in reality I was never happy like the majority of youth today I was caught up in the hype I need a change at some point I decided to completely give up social media but within a short time I realized that completely abandoning social media wasn't the solution for me I realized that the solution I was looking for was so simple it may be different for everyone but for me it was to become conscious enough to step outside the trends of seeking self validation by likes and self-sacrificing our identities to be cool I stopped following people who negatively influenced me this included certain celebrities bloggers and even some people I knew in real life now this didn't mean I disliked this many people no but I realized that we have the opportunity of transforming our entire personalities by scrolling down our feeds for this reason I began following people who positively influenced me people who reminded me less about my insecurities and more about how amazing life can be for this reason I realized that life can be beautiful not because we can be flawless but because we all have flaws that make us beautiful I believe it's up to us on how we want to be impacted this is just by one-click the solution for me was to restrict myself from following people who have become so caught up in living an impossible perfect life to the point that they have forgotten what it is to truly live happily once you unfollow the people who negatively influence you your feet will become radically reduced and your feed will become more about the people you care about the people you love I still can't believe I unfollowed my favorite Instagram bloggers but it was for my greater good people who literally make you feel like rubbish aren't the people you should be following especially the youth out there now you may think I'm a crazy anti social media person but believe me when I say that we are the reason why young girls and guys will never be content with their lives or that they will never feel that they're good enough one of the most important lessons I learned in this journey of seeking truth and change was to be patient being truly happy and becoming aware of my surroundings didn't happen overnight and it certainly didn't happen easily I remember promising myself to have a 24-hour selective social media fast which included banning myself from following people who negatively influenced me but in the middle of the day I would catch myself watching Kylie Jenner snapchat story again oops this selective social media fast or deprivation for a day flourished to last a week a month and I most certainly hope forever you see the benefits I experienced by surrounding myself with bright positive people had such a major impact which is the reason why I'm here talking about it we need to make that effort to step out of the dark and into the light we need to stop blaming social media for negatively influencing us rather we need to make that extra effort to be responsible by ourselves and for ourselves because at the end of the day you are the one who is affected we have a choice of who to follow in other words we have a choice of choosing who can impact our personalities our lives I am now grateful to say that I'm truly living every moment of my life all of a sudden I have so much spare time to do more useful things I'm doing things that actually make me feel happy rather than feeling the need Cheng's myself to reach other people's standards I truly learn to love myself and to be content with my life because I surrounded myself with people who love themselves I learned to respect myself because I surrounded myself with people who respect themselves social media tools are designed to be addictive this means that if you press that button without even thinking about the kind of impact that person will have on you you have let enough control you more than a year ago my family and I traveled to Iran for a holiday we were staying there for about two months and I used this chance to just enjoy the moment and to deprive myself from negativity it was one of the best holidays I have ever been on and I can say that the prime reason was because I didn't constantly allow myself to check in by for example posting the food I ate the places I explored or a selfie I would have usually spent face turning for a good 30 minutes I simply allowed myself to cherish the moments I experienced during these two months I learned to use social media tools for good to simply and authentically share my experiences with my loved ones in these two months I learned to stop feeling the need to impress anyone and I stopped being so self obsessed before I would have blamed everyone else but myself for my negative behaviors but now I realize how self-involved I was and I realized that the person hurting me was in fact myself if I can give you any advice today it would be to be conscious of how used to ran yourself with people online the people we surround ourselves with online can have more impact on us than those who surround us in real life this is because on social media platforms it may take just one click to allow a person to influence you but it made days months or even years in real life some people are happy to completely abandon social media and others find it impossible as we're all unique in our own ways explore and test what you think will benefit you in this journey of change perhaps what works for me won't work for you but this certainly doesn't mean you should go back to your negative habits that lead to negative results because I believe that there is a solution for everyone it's just a matter of patience and effort maybe in the near or distant future the era of social media will come to an end or maybe social media will get out of hand but now as we're living the present let's learn to live with social media but by stepping out of the dark and into the light thank you [Applause] you