Recently, I had the opportunity to keynote the Orange County Department of Education (OCDE) Mental Health Summit, where I discussed my perspectives on technology and innovation and their connection to mental health.
Now, immediately in the keynote, I disclosed that I am NOT a mental health professional, and I am sharing ideas from my perspective, and that the experts (the people in front of me) have to decide what they do with that information. I don’t like being told what to do, or how to think, so I don’t do that with others. My role is to share ideas, but the people in front of me are the ones who create solutions. No one knows their context and community as they do.
Now there were three areas that I focused on, and they are the following:
How do we leverage technology to do the following?
Deepen Learning
Provide Opportunities that Did not Exist Prior
Improve Human Connection
I might go deeper into what I shared on those three areas another day, but I want to share some of the context I provided with the following two ideas,
First of all, the framing of the question before sharing my 3 ideas matters.
I will share it again:
How do we leverage technology to do the following?
The question is NOT the following:
How does technology do the following?
Because the second question suggests that technology is acting on its own. And maybe if Terminator 2 comes true, that might happen. We are not quite there yet. (Maybe in some ways we are, but I will continue.)
A participant kept saying in the breakout, “Social media does this, and social media does that…”
To which I asked, “Does social media do that, or does how we use social media do that?”
Some of the biggest advocates against social media use the same platforms they rally against to get their message out to the world. They are more concerned about how others use it than about themselves.
But if we aren’t thoughtful in its usage, it can definitely shape our thinking.
For example, I can see many people (adults and kids) can easily become obsessed with likes, comments, metrics, etc. In fact, if you become consumed by the metrics, you are more likely to say either what people want to hear or say something contentious because you will know it will create engagement.
They understand how the social media algorithm works, and they create content shaped to it.
But that is their choice.
Yet, that is not the only path.
Here is how I use it today, and have used it over the years: to share my learning.
Most of the time, I write something, create a video or podcast, and totally forget it is posted because I schedule it for publication.
I could be running, speaking at a conference, sitting with my family, and I have no idea what is happening with that piece of content online. It might be getting zero likes, or 50 (which seems low on social media, but would be amazing if you were in a room with 50 people cheering you on!).
But I have just made a conscious effort not to worry about metrics.
I share my learning in hopes that it can help someone else, and talking, writing about things, or whatever else I do helps me better understand what I am trying to share. In fact, writing this post right now is helping me articulate my own thoughts rather than worrying about whether it will go viral.
And I have benefited greatly from this process in many ways.
Doors have opened for me that I didn’t know existed, and my learning is much deeper than it has been before. That is what I hope to inspire in others.
But it wasn’t social media that did that; it is how I leveraged it.
There is a famous quote from Marshall McLuhan that goes: “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
I get it, but I want to add the following:
“We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us…If we let them.”
And this is not an easy process, which I have also given control over to in the past.
One of the main reasons I gained so much weight over the years was my insistence on looking at my phone first thing in the morning. Not only would I become consumed by what was online, and it had an impact on my mental health, but I would also often skip or significantly shorten my time at the gym.
It was technology shaping me, and I decided to shift that.
So, I turn off all notifications on my phone (24/7) and do not look at email or social media until I have finished my workout. I still use technology, but I shape how I use it.
And this has always been the case with technology.
For example, a pencil can be used for reflection, or you could poke (or worse) someone with it. One usage is great, while the other, not so much.
Now, you might be thinking, “A pencil? That is not a technology.”
Which leads to the second context I shared with the group:
Technology is not considered “technology” if it existed when you were born.
The way we look at cars and electricity is very similar to how my own kids look at AI and YouTube.
It just is.
Time Traveler: “Eventually, they are going to have phones you carry in your pocket?”
Person from 1920s: “Really? How did they do it?”
Time Traveler: “I mean, I don’t know how they do it. I think it is a satellite?”
Person from 1920s: “What’s a satellite?”
Time Traveler: “I shouldn’t even have said that.”
Would you know how the technologies we take for granted today would have functioned in the past? I would have no clue.
So what we make a big deal of as new things today is the only world many of our kids have known.
And if they aren’t guided through it and provided with the experience and wisdom of those older, we might be able to delay the inevitable, but it is more than likely the “tools will shape them.”
From personal experience, I know how detrimental that became to both my mental and physical health. I am doing my best to teach my own kids not to let any tool shape them.
Technology shapes us when we stop being intentional about how we use it.
That intentionality matters.
If you are interested in having George join you for an event to delve deeper into this or any other topics regarding innovation and building community, you can check out his speaking page here.
