Short spoken piece (YouTube video transcript) by Omar Babun advising moderation of YouTube and phone use to foster real-world personal connections. He describes YouTube’s usefulness but warns it can become addictive for children and adults, offers practical advice to limit screen time (e.g., play board games), and shares an anecdote about teaching a child to play Go Fish.
Chapters
Hey, everyone, I'm Omar Baboon and I'm one of the members of Team Better with Betsy. And I just wanted to talk about something real quick. One thing that I've noticed a lot of people are using nowadays, which is an excellent tool, is YouTube. YouTube can help you find so many things that you never thought you never needed to know. And it's great if you use it to some limitations. Yes, there's YouTube for kids, but I'll tell you that that really shouldn't be the one piece where kids are getting their information from. They really should be looking outside of the phone. Adults do the same thing. We end up going online looking for a tutorial on how to do that one project we're trying to get into. And then two hours later, we find ourselves watching a video on somebody jumping on trampolines with teddy bears. It makes no sense, but yet we've all been there. Three hours later, we still don't know what we're doing on our project, but our mind is numb. So one thing I want you to understand is, again, it's okay to use YouTube. It's great, but you have to find a way to limit yourself. And what I've noticed is YouTube has now become somewhat of an addiction. There's students and kids and adults that cannot find their way outside of YouTube. You see kids all the time. Look at dinner tables. Anytime you go to a nice restaurant, you'll have families, and then you'll have kids playing on their cell phones or watching cell phones. Anytime you go to, you know, a university, you'll see people intermingling, talking and whatnot. And then you'll see a bunch of people who have no way to connect to someone else other than through that phone. We all used to think that gaming was the thing that you had to keep your kids away from because gaming was going to lock them up and they wouldn't be able to get it to the outside world. Now kids are in the outside world sitting under a tree, staring at a cell phone. That's nothing better than being in your house and playing on that video console, whatever it may be. What we need to do is start slowly helping our kids, our adults, everyone else around us interact with one another on a personal connection. One thing I've seen is a lot of people, whether it's sitting under a tree or being outside, it really doesn't get them what they're looking for. We need to find a way to put the phone down. So some of the tips that I can have for that is again, go old school. I love old school. My wife makes fun of me all the time. And one thing I love are board games. One time that you spend with your family playing a little board game is going to be a memory they'll have to hold on to. I know it sounds really small and insignificant, but I guarantee you that one time you spend with them, they will remember and they'll even try and play that game with someone else. Okay? Today I had the privilege of teaching a little girl how to play Go Fish. Now, the frustration that went through to go through all the rules and just trying to match four numbers, it took us a while, but when that was all said and done, a little girl who could not sit in focus for more than 10 seconds, played an entire game of Go Fish with me and now wants to play with all of her friends. To me, that was one of the biggest accomplishments I've had in so much time, and I tell you that you should try the same. So for you, again, limit the time you're spending online and try and get some time in the real world.
