Larissa May

And then I realized...

Hmm, do we want to chase our dreams, or do we want to be behind these things that are making billions of dollars for a couple guys in Silicon Valley?

The fact that I started this with $250 in my dorm room and I'm now on this stage alone is a win.

It's a win for the movement that TED believes that digital wellness is critical for the future of humanity.

Now, when we talk about systems and systems change, a lot of you might be in a state where there might be a phone-free ban.

And across the nation, because we haven't had a national legislation in 30 years past, almost 40 states this back to school said, hey, we want to ban phones.

Now, there is a problem with that.

creating a policy that you can't have phones in school does not fix all of the problems.

And so what I did was say, hey, we actually started this with the governor in New York, why don't we build the next generation of digital wellness activist athletes, let's train them, let's give them grants and let's have them help us implement and create a new story and a new brand for digital wellness from phone-free into phone-free fun.

And so,

What I believe is that we have to put young people at the center, but we also have to educate all stakeholders, and we actually need to ensure in the future that there are financial incentives for big tech to actually edit these platforms in the same way that we've created tax incentives for the environmental movement, because nothing has changed, but humans are changing.

OK, two follow-ups to that.

One is, what are young people saying to you?

Well, young people want to be heard.

They want to be in the rooms where decisions are being made about them, because they're the ones that are now forced to take their tests on iPads.

There is no longer that period of time where you're feeling stressed to take a test, then you're relieved.

and you don't get your grade back for a week.

These kids are getting it from all sides, socially, academically, a lot of pressure from their parents, and they're the ones that give me hope, that say, hey, we want to be the leaders.

We want to show our school how to not just take away phones, but how to make sure the kids that use phones at lunch because they didn't have a place to fit in can sit at our friendship table.

Or we want to take phones away, and we actually want to make screen-free proms and make this feel fun, because if it's all about abstinence and the lack thereof,