do you know how when you’re really young
they obviously younger than you should
be to do it you’re about to do and you
feel all of this adrenaline in your
nerves you’re looking down at your
screen typing in some fake birthdate
because what else can you do and enter
there you have it your Facebook account
I was a 40 year old woman working at the
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry when that happened to me
grown up and at Hogwarts right the
social media me was already my dream on
a more realistic note though I was 12
cradled into the world of social media
by default by the hype and the buzz that
made me believe that I had to be a part
of it to be considered cool I knew
nothing about anything but hey I was
going to sail through this just fine
flourish in fact now being as young a
kid as dad it’s all very exciting
because all of a sudden you have the
control so I quickly started assessing
about how I was going to fit in all of
these social circles and how everyone
was going to be absolutely in love with
me I just had to find my people you see
since the beginning of time being
socially accepted has been synonymous to
fitting in so I moderated myself and
normalized my ideas into what I saw what
was very hard for me to understand back
then though was that nobody has a claim
on the word normal but everyone has a
claim on the word disguise and it was so
easily happening around me
as I gained exposure to social media I
fell into plentiful ways of entertaining
myself through it earlier my days
consisted of sowing seeds in farmville
going to school coming back home and
harvesting them happy days right but
they taught me one word addiction
eventually these habits metamorphosed
they metamorphosed into literally uglier
forms which involve me checking social
media to see if a friend had posted any
new picture going to school coming back
to look at the five hundred and fifty
likes she had got in relation to my
fifty and it’s amazing how one small
little pitfall can so easily lead to
another and another and another and by
this time I had learned everything about
how to look and how not to what to say
and what not to and ridiculously who to
be or not to be in accordance to the Pew
Research Center ninety-two percent of
teenagers having access to a smartphone
are said to revisit social media
constantly users between the age of 15
and 19 spend at least 3 hours on their
social media platforms and this is this
isn’t even including all that time we
waste thinking about how else to react
and what else to post four out of five
people claim that they have negative
side effects on their ok negative side
effects on their daily life if they
aren’t using their screens for even a
day this doesn’t only affect the way we
feel but also the way we live on a daily
basis now that is a serious problem for
a long time my social media profile was
so far away from what represented me and
I wasn’t okay with it
right I had to do something and I
realized that I knew nothing about
anything all over again
this brings you in a very unexpected
place because what next I went through
the internet I started looking at how
different people started using social
media I came across entrepreneurs and
influencers and was opened up to a whole
new array of possibilities of how social
media can be used despite all of this
diplomatic brilliance and just
awesomeness
I found inspiration in the most
unexpected place in my own locality it
was my neighbor Neela aunty who started
providing meals to the residents in my
apartment what was earlier just a small
representation of culinary delight turn
into an amazing business simply through
whatsapp from a customer base of just
the few families her social media
exposure expanded to more than 500 of
them now that is amazing
miksa a friend of mine now studying
environmental science spread a lot of
articles spent a lot of awareness
through articles and posts and she told
me that social media is actually a
wonderful way to spread your ideas to a
larger audience what I found in common
with both of these people is that they
use social media in relevance to their
real life to the work they do every day
and they try to spread it to a larger
number of people to gain feedback from
from here arose the concept of turning
addiction into addition how does what I
do on social media add value to my life
in almost no time articles pictures
statistics about the different ways the
different kinds of environment
Assad’s speeches on productivity and
inspiration and even newer subjects of
newer discussions of religion and
philosophy started becoming a bigger
part of my feed I also got to interact
with the different kinds of people
flourishing in different ways in
Bangalore right I started interacting
with chefs entrepreneurs designers
artists are even interacted with an
international power lifter the
conversations that I had with these
people online and offline were
invaluable in relation to the time that
I would have otherwise used endlessly
scrolling through my newsfeed I was able
to channelize this time into actually
growing right and it’s amazing how such
a small platform which was otherwise
used is further you know whiling away
time can be used for adding value to
your life the idea is that what is in
your phone does not have to be away from
you if because it won’t be harmful if
it’s relevant to your ideas your beliefs
to what really matters ultimately we are
all storytellers in one way or another
we all want to share our ideas to a
larger set of people prove something to
everyone prove something to yourself and
just leave something to be remembered by
that five-inch screen and your phone
does not have to be just for time pass
anymore the lesson here is that there
really isn’t any reason there’s no
reason to distant the concepts of your
real life from what you show because
there is so much more for the world to
see and just so much more to be and it
doesn’t matter if you’re 40 or 12 it
doesn’t matter if you have 10,000
followers or just
and what matters is what you’re willing
to do to look at social media as a tool
to improve your life to storyboard and
document what is true to you as a human
being because that’s where the real
change happens trust me it has the
potential to do so and honestly so do
you thank you [Applause]