Live in the Moment: Delete Social Media by Ryan Thomas (Transcript)

Full text of Ryan Thomas’ talk: Live in the Moment: Delete Social Media at TEDxAshburnSalon conference.

Listen to the MP3 Audio here:

TRANSCRIPT:

RYAN THOMAS:

Hi, everyone.

I stand here with a simple offer, an offer that, if accepted, yields instantaneous results and inevitable positive consequences.

My offer is this: the chance to purge yourself of social media and reclaim your personal identity.

I challenge everyone to try going one week without social media, and I guarantee it will change your life. I can attest to this, because I personally have been without any social media for almost a year. And it’s completely changed the way I view the world.

I’m not saying that all social media is bad. Social media can be used for marketing or to spread a positive message to the world.

However, apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat are taking over our lives. They’re taking us out of the present moment and causing us to exist only in a virtual world, and nobody should live like that.

Social media has taken over astonishingly quickly. If you think about it, when we meet a new person, the norm is no longer to ask them for their phone number. The norm is to friend them on Facebook or ask for their Snapchat or Twitter username.

In 2008, only 24% of the US population had a social media profile. Now 81% has one. This astronomical growth is because social media’s seen as a “do it all” platform. It’s widely replaced texting and email in a lot of cases, and it’s used as our main source of news. This leads to people spending hours a day with their noses just glued to their phones.