TCSE: Ted Corpus Search Engine

Recorded at	April 10, 2022
Event	TED2022
Duration (min:sec)	09:48
Video Type	TED Stage Talk
Words per minute	142.94 very slow
Readability (FK)	59.13 easy
Speaker	Bryce Dallas Howard


1	00:04	In 2016, I filmed an episode of "Black Mirror" called "Nosedive."
2	00:11	It's about a woman named Lacie who lives in a futuristic world where everyone rates your social interactions.
3	00:20	And for anyone who hasn't seen it, a little spoiler.
4	00:24	I basically have a nervous breakdown, trying really hard to get liked.
5	00:29	For many, the episode felt a little too familiar.
6	00:33	Until recently, only a small fraction of the human population lived their lives publicly.
7	00:41	And while we haven’t entered the “Black Mirror” world yet, we’ve entered a new era.
8	00:50	Everyone has access to a global audience.
9	00:54	We all live in public.
10	00:57	Some more willingly than others.
11	01:01	There's pressure to share more of ourselves than we want.
12	01:04	We often feel we have no other choice.
13	01:08	To be relevant. To fit in. To get ahead.
14	01:11	To be trusted and liked. Accepted and understood.
15	01:17	This new compulsion toward self-exposure is possibly the biggest social experiment in history.
16	01:26	We're making life-altering decisions about our personal boundaries with no guidance and no precedent.
17	01:35	Fortunately, there is a blueprint.
18	01:40	Anyone who's lived in the public eye as an athlete, a politician or an entertainer has navigated a version of this.
19	01:49	My dad has been a public figure since he was five years old, as an actor, a child actor, and later as a director.
20	01:57	And I've been an actor since my early twenties.
21	02:00	In fact, my family has been in the business of entertainment for three generations, contending with how to handle putting ourselves out there for the last 70 years.
22	02:11	My mom, Cheryl, never wanted to be in the public eye.
23	02:16	She just happened to love a man who is.
24	02:20	My mom met my dad, Ron, when they were 16.
25	02:24	And by that point she had flown solo in an airplane, joined an all-boys gun club, gotten in tons of fist fights and helped her single dad raise her younger sisters.
26	02:38	This is to say, my mom was a passionate, busy young person who initially ignored the attention of the famous boy in her high school.
27	02:47	It was the early 70s, and my dad was known for playing Opie in the "Andy Griffith Show," and he'd soon film a pilot for a new show called "Happy Days."
28	02:58	Much of this was lost on my mom.
29	03:01	The only thing she watched on TV was "Star Trek."
30	03:04	(Applause) (Laughter)
31	03:07	It's true.
32	03:08	After they finally joined forces, after he actually proposed three times, and had kids, my mom transformed into a full-on warrior woman, ready to protect.
33	03:23	But it wasn't until I was given a movie script at preschool as a way to get it to my dad ...
34	03:33	(Laughter) that my mom realized his visibility was extending to the entire family, and that she would need to prepare us for something she herself had never experienced.
35	03:44	Growing up in the public eye.
36	03:48	And this entailed some extreme parenting tactics.
37	03:53	First. No coddling, like ever.
38	03:58	As a kid, I was terrified of snakes, so my mom got me a pet snake.
39	04:04	(Laughter)
40	04:06	When I blanked at my first piano recital and ran offstage crying, my mom insisted I stay and support my peers.
41	04:16	Years later, when my son grimaced at a chipmunk carcass, our cat had left in the driveway, Cheryl made him clean up the remains.
42	04:26	(Laughter)
43	04:28	My mom wanted to toughen us up so we'd have more courage and less fear when dealing with uncomfortable situations.
44	04:39	So that meant zero coddling.
45	04:43	Put your comfort away, she'd preach.
46	04:47	Any challenge that arose was an opportunity to find your sea legs.
47	04:52	Next up, confidence comes from character, not our looks.
48	04:59	Cheryl was a giant buzzkill.
49	05:03	When she noticed me glancing in the mirror as a kid, she decided to nip that in the bud immediately by covering up all the mirrors in the house.
50	05:15	(Laughter)
51	05:18	A loving compliment was, "You have wonderful character," not "You're beautiful."
52	05:25	Oh, and character was built by doing chores.
53	05:29	(Laughter)
54	05:31	When I wasn't mucking out the goat barn, I was shearing sheep, changing tires, scrubbing toilets, volunteering, shoveling snow.
55	05:38	Cheryl believed that hard work, particularly in service of others, breeds confidence, a trait we need more and more of when exposing ourselves to any kind of public attention.
56	05:53	But perhaps the most important lesson was: a private life makes a public life worth living.
57	06:02	Cheryl saw that while fame came with many blessings, there was an impact and a potential cost to living your life in public.
58	06:13	And so more than anything, she, like my grandparents before her, emphasized the value of privacy.
59	06:22	Because cultivating a private life is precious.
60	06:25	It's sacred.
61	06:27	Its value is inherent in what you don't share.
62	06:33	What you withhold.
63	06:35	And for whom.
64	06:38	The world is now one big small town.
65	06:43	But within that virtual town square, there are tiers of relationships, degrees of intimacy, and everyone deserves a different amount of you, a different side.
66	06:56	Now, where those boundaries lie is up to you.
67	07:00	But in order to make those decisions, we must all be our own Cheryl, our own protectors.
68	07:09	Because it's tempting to think that the more I share, the more ways you have to connect with me.
69	07:15	But there's a specialness in knowing that whatever I share with my husband or my kids or my best friend is just for them and no one else.
70	07:24	Without that inner circle, we're left with shallowness and a void.
71	07:30	We're known, but never truly known, even to ourselves.
72	07:37	Living in public asks us to be brave and bold, but preserving a private life empowers us to take those chances.
73	07:47	So when my 15-year-old son started a YouTube channel and my 10-year-old daughter asked to join TikTok, I asked myself, "What would Cheryl do?"
74	08:02	As much as I want to protect my kids, I know encouraging them to opt out is not the answer.
75	08:08	So I don't want my kids in the digital fray until they know who they are.
76	08:12	But you develop your sense of self by participating in the world.
77	08:17	So I try to help them discover themselves through these technologies, not despite them.
78	08:22	And I give myself that same protection and motherly advice by honoring two main principles.
79	08:32	The two day delay.
80	08:34	So whatever I'm experiencing, I try to wait 48 hours before posting and sharing because that way I can be present in private with the people I love before calculating how I'm going to publicly position it.
81	08:49	And post with purpose.
82	08:51	Before I share, I ask myself: Why? What's the purpose?
83	08:55	And most importantly, how does it serve the people I love?
84	09:02	The dangers and opportunities of living a life in public existed, honestly, way longer before any of this.
85	09:14	But it's important to know what my family knew then and knows now.
86	09:20	That your true value is measured by the richness of your private life.
87	09:25	The piece of you that only a select few, or perhaps only you, has access to.
88	09:33	Because the legacy we create in private is as powerful and lasting as any public accolade.
89	09:42	Perhaps even more so.
90	09:44	Thank you so much.
91	09:46	(Applause)

Bryce Dallas Howard: How to preserve your private life in the age of social media