Can Gen Z break free from social media addiction?

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my name is ricky schlot and i was 11
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years old when i joined instagram
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i was constantly checking and i would
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say that probably over the span of a day
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was three four hours that i poured into
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these apps it really became this
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constant bombardment of the highlight
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reel of everyone else's life
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it used to be back in the day you'd see
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a magazine and you'd say oh she's so
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beautiful but now this magazine is
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following you around and it's in your
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pocket i was looking and scrolling
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through and seeing these idealized
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versions of other people and that was
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detrimental to my own self-worth and
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confidence
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my sense of self was developing in this
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kind of bizarre duality between
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instagram ricky and real life ricky
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looking back i'm missing a lot of photos
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of just being a kid and just being
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authentic and real
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[Music]
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when i was younger i didn't really care
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as much about what people thought of me
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and my instagram account but now i
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feel like
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that kind of affects me a little bit
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more
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when you're like feeling at your worst
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and then you go on instagram and you see
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models influences celebrities things
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like that and you're just like oh well
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i'll never be like that
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[Music]
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social media can exploit the parts of
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our brain that get us to connect with
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other humans our brains get us to make
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those human connections by releasing
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dopamine in the reward pathway
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which is the feel good neurotransmitter
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and
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what happens with certain types of
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social media apps is that they release
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so much dopamine in the reward pathway
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that they essentially become the
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equivalent
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of an addictive drug
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i really relied on having that constant
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access to my account as
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a sort of fail-safe for when i was
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feeling particularly
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low about myself so that i could have
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people bring me back up again other
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people's judgments become very very
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salient for the adolescent brain and
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that makes adolescents more vulnerable
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to the reinforcing
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and addictive potential of social media
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the more i've reflected on it the more i
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realized that social media is designed
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to be addicting and it gets better at
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addicting people every day
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the company's leadership knows how to
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make facebook an instagram saver but
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won't make the necessary changes because
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they have put their astronomical profits
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before people
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[Music]
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i'm concerned when any team has a bad
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experience on instagram but i want to be
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clear that that is not
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what these stolen documents say here's
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another survey pew research found in
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late 2018 26 said the sites make them
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feel worse about their own life there
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are plenty of other surveys we could
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point to
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a quarter of children that are on this
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site so it makes them feel worse
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and again anytime a single teen is
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having a bad experience that's too much
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that's why we ask these questions one
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thing that shows that we are
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prioritizing safety about profit is the
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very fact that we're asking these hard
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questions
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[Music]
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[Music]
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control means you're using much more
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than you plan to use
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compulsion means that there's a level of
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automaticity you find yourself picking
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it up without even thinking about doing
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it and then consequences it's
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interfering with things like sleep
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exercise
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when i decided to pull back from it it
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was
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it was a moment of clarity and i still
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used them
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maybe
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less than an hour a day because i do
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think that they're they're part of the
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language of being a gen xer you can't
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connect with people without some degree
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of online presence
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we really need to take this moment to
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say our childhoods were stolen but we're
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now young adults and reclaiming that and
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not allowing that to become a habit that
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continues into adulthood
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is
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enormously important for our well-being
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[Music]
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you