 and welcome to Virtual Abilities' 2019 Mental Health Symposium. I'm Larry Liborsky and I have high functioning autism. I didn't have the equipment to speak so I'll be using a keyboard while I have narrator speak for me. I have been in Second Life for 10 years and I love the adventures, whether they are created by me or wandering through an adventure created by other residents. I also work in Minecraft as a host for many servers. In real life, I'm a grocery store clerk and have worked at a supermarket for 20 years. Today, I would like to introduce to you Fatima Razae. She is a PhD candidate at Seoul National University. Her research interests are in the area of cyberspace, focusing on the design behind social media platforms that lead to users' obsessive behaviors. Her talk is titled, Designed Addiction. In her talk, she's going to share with us some of the ways that Facebook, Google and Apple are using attention to gain profit, as well as the psychology of how they and other platforms are exploiting our need for attention via smartphones from monetary gain. Audience, please hold your questions and comments to the end so as not to interrupt our presenter, who is very new to the things of Second Life. Welcome Fatima Razae. The floor is yours. Hello everyone. Am I being heard? Hello everyone. I am very excited to be in this virtual conference and thank you for inviting me. Now we are going to look at this picture, this illustration. What do you see in it? Yes, everybody, even the baby in the stroller, is looking down on some shiny device. And I'm pretty sure this is a very familiar scene for most of you. And you might have wondered, what is it about these devices that steal everyone's attention? Do you have your teleprompter on? So an average smartphone user spends 145 minutes on their devices every day and the number is 255 minutes for heavy users. This data is almost three years old and I'm pretty sure that these numbers have increased. And the teleprompter? Yes, please. Yeah, like that? Yes. Okay. You can read it off the screen if you want. This pie chart shows that services and applications developed by two giant companies meaning Alphabet and Facebook, get nearly half of all interactions. There is a correlation between depression and a smartphone addiction among both adults and teenagers. As you can see, the more depressed individuals are, the more addicted they are to their devices. And this chart shows that increasing the amount of time spent on electronic devices also increases the suicidal attempts among teenagers. You need to click quite a bit more. You're way behind. Why? I can only see my script. You can't see the text? There you go. Keep clicking. Okay, now I can see it. Sorry, I'm a very newbie. Okay, so this slide. There's a correlation between depression and smartphone addiction among both adults and teenagers. And as you can see, the more depressed individuals are, the more addicted they are to their devices. Researchers have also concluded that heavy usage of smartphone, aside from depression and suicidal thoughts, is associated with impaired attention, reduced numerical processing capacity, changes in social cognition, and reduced right-perfrontal cortex excitability. And the blue-violet light emitted from phone screens is harmful to eyes and hunching while staring at phones for its back, neck, and shoulders. So how did smartphones become so addictive? Well, Silicon Valley started with good intention and everyone. They wanted free and accessible internet for everyone. But to survive, they turned to digital advertising. And that was when the attention economy came into play. Engineers and designers with the help of psychologists and platforms because they wanted people to engage as much as possible so they get to show more advertisements and increase the ad revenue. For example, this is how Facebook looked in 2004. The next year there's an ad on the left and this is how it looks like now. There are more ads and sponsored contents than posts from friends and family. And this graph shows how Facebook ad revenue has increased since 2009. Now we are going to look at some responses to this problem from movements, challenges, and publications to apps and dump phones. Of course, I'm not able to cover all of the responses because recently there have been a lot of them. In 2013, a former Google employee named Tristan Harris raised his concern about constant attention disturbance and the lack of respect for users' time. He shared his concerns with Google and was promoted to work as a product philosopher. After three years of advocating for the more humane approach to technology, Harris left Google. His proposals were not welcomed because his ideas were in conflict with the attention economy business model of the company. Harris founded the not-for-profit organization named Center for Humane Technology where he continues to raise awareness about the Silicon Valley's attention monopoly. The pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, in his book 10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now argues about the harmful effects of behavior modification caused by social media. His response to this problem is to urge users to delete their accounts until a humane business model replaces the current attention economy-based business model of Silicon Valley. The Royal Society of Public Health in the UK announced the first scroll-free September in 2018 aimed at encouraging young people to take a break at different levels from completely cutting themselves from social media to limiting the use of it to a certain hours for the months of September. And the National Day of Unplugging movement, a project by the Jewish Organization Reboot, used cell phone sleeping bags as a means for stopping smartphone use one day a year. In 2018, they have already sent 35,000 bags to people who want to put their phones to sleep for a day so as to start living a different life. Changing the purpose and design of the phone itself is another kind of initiative that has been launched to meet the desire in the market for less addictive, overwhelming and distracting phones. Dom phones, opposite to smartphones, have communication as their core function. Dom phones are among successful responses that help people minimize distraction while staying connected. Punked MP01, designed by Jasper Morrison, is a phone that only provides the basic function of making and receiving calls, messaging, an alarm clock and a calendar. Punk sells 100,000 pieces every year and is popular with celebrities. Another phone is the light phone by Joe Hollier and Kai Wei-Tang. It's a successful project initiated on Kickstarter. The light phone has two versions, iPhone 1 with only the capacity to make and receive calls and a second version with added functions such as alarm and texting. However, comparing to iPhone, they are not doing very well in the market. And there are so many apps on the app store that try to somehow solve the problem of addiction. Now we're going to look at the responses from the creators of smartphone addiction. In 2016, Donald Trump presidential campaign powered mainly by social media shed light on how easy it is for Facebook to contribute to mass manipulation and a spread of fake news. A raise of awareness motivated Silicon Valley to act in response to concern regarding smartphone addiction. So on June 2018, Apple added a new feature named Screen Time in iOS 12 to help reduce the amount of time spent on smartphones. Features include detailed activity reports which show the time spent on each app in various categories, the amount of received notifications and how many times the phone has been unlocked. And the users can choose to limit the usage of certain apps by using time limit feature. Do not disturb mode silences the phone and notifications are not displayed until the mode is turned off. There's also a gray scale feature that takes away the colorful screen of the phone. On July 2018, Google announced similar features for Android Pie named Digital Well-Being. Features are time dashboard, app timer, do not disturb mode similar to what Apple had and wind down that turns the phone display into gray scale which is easier to find and use than Apple's gray scale feature. Now we're going to see what is wrong with Silicon Valley's newly added features. The newly developed features by Silicon Valley giants to address the serious problem of smartphone addiction are unavailing, inadequate and possibly harmful. They are unavailing because the addictive and seductive engineering is still in place and the business model of the attention economy is still fully intact. All the new well-being features do is returned in responsibility to the user by telling them that they are in control of their well-being and that the addiction can be addressed with a little bit of willpower. This approach fails to recognize that smartphone addiction rewards the brand with dopamine and users cannot easily change their behavior because controlling impulses stimulated by dopamine requires taking major life-changing actions. Silicon Valley's solution to smartphone addiction relies solely on addicts to activate the optional limitations and stick to them through self-discipline which users often lack. For Google, Facebook and Apple, time equals money, meaning they have made and continue to make profit through getting people to look at the ads as long as possible. The fact that their entire business model is in conflict with people using their devices less makes the recent attempts to add a screen time feature disingenuous. Timers, self-designated app limits, do not disturb mode and gray scale mode seems to be the very first and easiest solution to propose for such a complex issue of addiction. A user who is aware of their smartphone habit is able to modify the phone without the help of such features. For instance, airplane mode, pertaining off the phone is an alternative to do not disturb mode. The gray scale mode is a tasteless and quick response to making the phone uglier while an enormous amount of engineering and design has been dedicated to make the icons, menus and notifications look as alluring and attractive as possible. Facebook is the largest client of neurons, a company that measures the electrical activity of the brain while a consumer is interacting with the phone. However, when it comes to tackling the complicated problem of addiction, the easiest and most superficial solutions are implemented. The app limit feature with its constant reminders makes tapping on the ignore limit or modify the limit more of a routine for people who cannot control their impulses. These quick and tasteless responses are harmful because they hinder real conversation and efforts for addressing the core issue of addiction. Smartphone addiction is a serious problem of our time that was created by neglecting the negative aspects of technology in the pursuit of making the most profit. Technology is not neutral. All the designs and tools are there to serve a purpose. And in this case, the purpose is to extract as much time and attention from users' life as possible for profit. Deep negative psychological effects of this neglection on the brain and society needs to be profoundly studied before jumping to a self-serving conclusion, proposing shallow solutions and hoping that things will get better. Thank you for your attention. And thank you. You've given us a lot of insights into a significant problem that exists in smart phones. So I'm going to start off with questions today. How do you think we, consumers, would first approach the addiction to do less addicted to the smartphone? Is there anything individuals can do to help themselves? Yes. There are some people. Don't worry about typing. Transcribers will type for you. Just talk. Okay. Some people do a lot of things for themselves, but often it doesn't really help because, as I said, it stimulates your brain. So you just keep doing, like, not using your phone or using your phone less for a week or two weeks, and then you just give up because your brain is stimulated. You have to have a lot of willpower to do that. But some people can do. Like some people, they just don't use their smartphone. They just use a dumb phone or an old phone. Or they go regularly on digital detox. Digital detox is when you go to the nature, you don't take your phone, and you just relax for a while so that it just refreshes your brain. But again, as long as you have a smartphone in your pocket with all of its function, it's not going to be an easy challenge. I'm going to read another question for you. J.J. Brinkwater says, do you think we should try and find some other sources of dopamine? Other sources of dopamine? Well, something that is beneficial to you if it generates dopamine and it's good for you? Why not? If it's harmful, it's not okay. Along the same lines, Van Bauer is asking, she reads books a lot of the time. Is that an addiction? That's not an addiction. That's something that is good for your brain. You're gaining knowledge. You're not wasting your time. You're not doing things that have no benefits for you. And if you're using your device to read books, that's a great way to use your device. The devices are okay. The devices are not evil. And the platforms that try to draw you back, try to attract your attention with small notifications, with all the engineers behind the designs. That's what is not good for you. Okay, and Jesse has a comment, but I think I can make a question out of it. Jesse says, you should try and stop using your lizard brain. What else do you want to talk about? Is there something that you can do, like brain-raining yourself? Brain-raining? Do I get the question right? Yes, can you train your brain to deal with these addictive properties? You know, imagine that the Silicon Valley Giants, imagine them as an army with all the weapons and everything possible, that they want to invade your brain, your attention, because that's what makes profit for them. And you alone, you just want to train your brain. I mean, if you are a very strong person, if you exactly know what you're doing, and if you are a professional in training the brain, I think that can be possible. But you are one man against an army. So, I know that many people have tried, but not so many people have succeeded to completely gain back their attention. Okay, Amy is saying, anything smartphone or computer can be used as a tool, leading the person's disabilities. These can be valuable, but it does mean they will depend on it as well. I must take the good with the bad. So, if you're looking at the phone as a tool, you know, is it dependent on it or addicted? I think I talked about smartphone a lot in my presentation, but I'm not exactly meaning a smartphone, because maybe like in five years there will be something else. I don't know. I think the VR is becoming very popular. So, the device, the technology itself is not to be blamed, but the platforms and the whole business model of attention economy. That's what the problem is. If you are using your phone as a tool, it's perfect. It gives you a lot of power. It empowers you. That's a great tool. But if it's just making you less productive, making you depressed, making you compare yourself with others, making you constantly go to Instagram and then compare your life with others, then that kind of negative things should be out of that device because the device is supposed to serve us. We are not supposed to serve the technology. We are not supposed to give their attention to them so that they can make a lot of money and then bring all the advertisers just to sell our attention to them. So, the technology, the device itself, it's great. Like technology, even an axe is a technology. You cannot live without technology. But then again, when it's harming us, when it's taking our life, then it should stop somehow. So, thinking about one of the things we've said about stopping this problem, how much more about the phone sleeping bags? Where did we get those? Actually, in like the last two years, this whole topic is very hot. So, some people are making money out of it. They sell these like anti-addiction, like anti-smartphone addiction merchandise. So, you can just search online. And the reboot that I mentioned in my presentation, they sell sleeping bags. It's more like a campaign. You can buy it and then there is one day in a year that everyone that has that sleeping bag put the phone inside the bag. But also, you can buy a lot of these like merchandise that kind of try to help you to put your phone away when you don't really need it. Okay, and Laxie is asking, what is the difference between this and our advertising-driven society where ads have historically been intended to ask everything to be painted and dedicated? It's very different. You go on Facebook and then whatever you do, you're being watched. Like they are tracking your every movement. They know every detail about your personal life, the things that you like. And then they target that ad to you somehow. And they are like, they're tracking everyone. They are showing these targeted ads that is very different. And then they design the whole platform based on the ads because they just want to bring you back to the platform. So they get to show more ads to you, which is very different from what you see on TV, like commercials on TV or printed ads. They do not know what you like. They do not know what you have been eating, what you have been searching on Google. And they just print the ad and then leave it there. But the targeted ads, they're following you everywhere. Okay, now we have a true-life story. I would like you to comment on this. Amy is saying several years ago, she was visiting her parents in a watchable news station on television all day. This station kept having a sound like you might hear a breaking news story would happen. But they were playing that sound for almost every story. It was like a petroleum effect. And her parents want to leave this place because it was very, very popular. There are no other examples of what you're talking about. That's the same strategy. That's the same psychology that they used to just bring back people and get their attention, whether it be a sound that people think, oh, something important is happening because people, they always crave for information. They just want to know things because that's how we have evolved. And the same thing in the phone, the notification sound, the small red thing that you see and you have to tap on it because you don't want to see the red. You have to check notifications. That's all the same strategies, same psychology that they use. And Jayden added the acronym FOMO, Fear of Missing Out. Yes, exactly. Also the kind of urgency that newscasters use for almost every story. Yeah. I'm not even in newscasts. I hope so too. She says cell phones are so designed now to provide maps, phone, social interaction, and more. It's becoming part of modern life. It's almost a requirement now to keep up, keeping us all given away. Do you think technology, making our society so addictive for our brains are forgetting to think for themselves? I think that's true. I think that's true. You're always with your phone and you know, I was reading this paper that was talking about, that was saying that how we are not bored anymore. And when you're bored, when you have nothing to do, that's when your brain starts to get creative and do interesting things or have some reflection on your life. But we are missing all of these small moments because we don't want to think. We don't want to be alone with ourselves. We don't want to spend a minute on an elevator. We just have to look at the phone. So I think in the long term, if we do not address it right now, it's going to change us. It's going to change the society. And we will forget how the things were before smartphones. I think we have already forgotten how things used to be before smartphones. And I'm not quite sure if that's what we want to do. But the way I see smartphone addiction is like the way London was during the Industrial Revolution. The air was filled with black smoke and nobody thought it's harmful. Until later they found out it's killing them. So I think smartphone addiction is like, you don't know what's happening, but in the future, imagine babies like two years old babies, they are using them. So just think for yourself what's going to happen in the future if people don't know how polluted they brain are and how difficult for them is to just be alone with themselves, even for a moment. Well, you're getting a lot of interesting questions here. As well as, she found there are apps which only work on her phone and not on her computer. She doesn't consider it all addicted. She finds a cell phone difficult to use. But she's on the screen of some sort most of the day because she's homebound and it is her social interact. She's assuming here that the ads on computers have the same dopamine impact as those on phones. Now that's a good question. But she says she gets swept into the label of addiction and it's her hobby when, if she doesn't do this, to sit silently alone in her home with her cat. Are the ads on computers the same level of addiction? Computers and phones are slightly different because the phone is small. It's everywhere with you. So you tend to just reach your pocket and look at your phone all the time. But if they're using the computer the same way and she thinks that the computer is like drawing her back with the ads, which I don't think is really the case. I mean, if she's using Facebook, maybe. But if she's doing other things. Computers, I think Windows 10 has this notification function that tells you whatever is happening in your computer, which you can just turn it off. But computer, as they don't really notify you or the useless things, which is a little different. But if the computer is helping her, if it's beneficial, I mean, you can decide for yourself. If it's helping you, if it's empowering you, then you are not addicted. But if it's just like making you miserable, making you depressed, making you constantly compare yourself to others, then maybe she can find other sources of entertainment or other sources of ways that she can spend her time on. Here's another one. This is an observation from Mooc. She says, all new well-being features do is return the responsibility to the user. That's what she said. And that is the key point to her. It's the open point. Would you place equally a food addict in front of a 24-7 feast and claim you have taken legitimate steps to tackle their addiction? Because you've held that choice for them. These well-being features sound like the minimal token satisfaction conducted in legislation. We need more information. Yes. That's a very good observation. Yeah. Some people compare smartphone addiction to food addiction and say that you cannot live without food and you cannot live without phones. So if a food addict is being told that here is a food but you cannot eat, you have to just regulate yourself and they are doing the same thing for the phones. People are addicted. Their brain is being stimulated and manipulated but these features are saying, hey, there is this limits like app limit feature. You just use it and then you set a limit for yourself and you can deactivate it anytime you want. I think that's basically the same thing. That's a good observation. She says the phone everywhere is a generational thing. Her kids take their phones out everywhere. Who do you keep to take her first? Do you take the generational issue? Yeah. Teenagers and young people, they use it more. But also middle-aged people where I live, they are playing Candy Crush all day. On some way, I see what they're doing. I sneak under phones, which is not a good thing but it's good for my research. And yeah, I see kids and teenagers, they use more. And then imagine the next generation, they are living with the phone since they are a kid. And so it just says, humankind lived without these devices for endless years. Have we been so fast? New decade? Or was there something or some things in human cultural life prior to that, that functioned anywhere as these phones in the sense of playing something, listening or thought to be in our lives? I guess we're in human history. They love to be loved, they love to make connections, and they crave for information. And as I said, that's how we have survived because knowledge empowers us and we crave for more information and more information and we want to relate to people, we want to connect to them. And that's what these phones are apparently on the superficial level, are providing and our brain is not able to distinguish between what is a real connection, what is the information that is correct, that is like, worth my time to spend on it and read it, or the people, you have so many friends on these platforms but are they really your friends? How many of them you can count as being a true friend? We want to have a lot of friends, we want to be popular, we want to be appreciated. These are basic and very natural human needs and these platforms, they actually took advantage of these needs and they turned it to a money-making machine. I don't know if this is a question that you can answer or not, but I won't ask it. He's been five hours, I think he needs a day, five hours a day on Second Life. Is that considered ill-usage of Second Life? I don't know if you can answer. It depends on you, how do you feel about it? Well, if you feel great, then that's great. So many people don't feel great when they spend time on Instagram or they waste their time on some games, they don't feel great and they want it to stop but they cannot stop it because it's addictive. And Roxy asks if you think cell phone addiction is dumbing down the population? Well, there are... This is a very new issue, as I said, it's very hot and nobody knows what's happening exactly, so they have started to do some research, especially on the kids and how the screen time is affecting their brand and they have found that kids who are exposed to screens and phones and iPads, they are learning slightly slower than the kids who are just playing around and not using the devices as much. So it's definitely having some effect on the brain and we are going to see what's going to happen in the future but my personal opinion is, yes, it's dumbing us down smartphones and dumb people. That's what I think. Wow, that's like a bumper sticker. Smartphones and dumb people. Roxy, when you say you mean over all life skills, I'm not sure what you mean by that. Andy says, in response to that, in some way, these phones are making us stupid. Shida, we're dependent on them, similar to a calculator. If you use a calculator all the time, you become dependent and forget how to do math without it. So, Andy thinks that it is making us stupid. Yeah, like before smartphones or before phones, you memorize so many numbers. I don't know if you remember, like memorize your friends' numbers, your relative numbers, and you knew how to navigate, which you don't probably know now. So we are losing the skills but I don't really know if losing the skills necessarily makes us more stupid because we can use our brains in some other fields. But again, it's not very clear what these devices and these comfort is doing to us. And High Sky is pointing out that people no longer use live rules. It's an old technology. It was useful back in the old days before there were calculators, but maybe it was just a new kind of technology. Is that a question? Sorry, I didn't get it. Not sure it was a question. Shida has a question. She's heard you twice suggest that people who are happy or empowered they are not addicted. If the vision is self-defined, while or so many not aware that walking down the street and into a wall might indicate over-attachment. I don't really know how to answer that. You have to go and talk to those people who are endangering themselves by being over-attached. That's definitely dangerous. And if something happens to them, they're not going to be happy about their habits, their harmful behavior. And what I mean by if you're feeling empowered, because so many people are not feeling so great about these devices, but they do not know how to stop it. They want to have a way. They want to have some devices that are serving them, but they don't have any alternative. They just have smartphones and all these giant companies as I mentioned, Alphabet and Facebook, and they just have to use these services, and they don't want to do it. Okay, and I, Skye, so that's the thing is when technology fails like the platforms that knock out the technology, do we know how to use a callback? It's there. That's something I think that... No. Not in a lot of places. Maybe in some places that they have to keep going. Like they have some backup plans, but for the society as a whole, I think no. And it's a real danger. Like if some, yeah, some sunstorm just blow everything up, then we're going to go back to the Stone Age, probably. Okay, let me get this pasted in. There we go. Okay, Carrie asks, do you think we have to accept that we live in digital and optical where we are watched from all sides and although we wish to protect our privacy to be able to use some effect to live in the modern world, we have to tell a bit of our soul or a bit of our account? There is an alternative business model to this chaos. They don't really have to use our soul or our attention to provide us with services that make life easier for us. If you remember, I mentioned attention economy and there is this other business model which is called efficiency economy. And it's basically a subscription-based model that you pay for the service. You don't pay with your attention. You pay with the service and then they use it and that just makes you even more cautious about what you are buying because that's real money. So you pay to a company and then they use the service that they provide and you don't really have this much problem of companies trying to compete for your attention because you've already paid and you are using the service. But the thing is the efficiency economy also has its own problem. It kind of like centralizes the whole... It just kills the competition because the big companies, already giant companies, they are going to get most of the subscriptions and then others will die in the competition. It has also its own sort of problems and it's not clear if it's going to work but then there are alternatives that we don't have to sell ourselves. It's just a matter of profit like which one makes the more profit for these companies. And Eric has asked an extensive question here. What are your thoughts on the additional risks and rewards of augmented reality not just by using smartphones we need to see the world in a different way but also the rise of augmented reality headsets and glasses that may eventually be more common. I think that's going to make the world a very weird place that living together and public space has no meaning anymore. Even now you go anywhere you see people in their own world. They do not share the same world and with that AR it's going to be even worse that's what I think but I cannot predict how the society is going to look like if everyone is using those devices. And David says bubble worlds. Yes. And the bubble world as I said everyone is living in their own world and the world is designed for them because if they're using the phones and these platforms everything is designed for them like if you go to Instagram on the Explorer page that page is just designed for you and no one has the same page you see the things that you want to see you don't know what other people are thinking and like what kind of issues exist for others so you're going deeper into your bubble. Some dire predictions here. I'm sure the bubble is already exposed. Yes. I think we have time for one last question if somebody would like to ask one. I know we've asked you a lot of questions. I'm more than happy to answer. Okay, Shia has got the last question here. Self-employment is a form of business people to hold. Do corporations overly encourage their employees to own and use cell phones? Are the corporations responsible too? Corporations are encouraging people to use to own a cell phone. Yes. That's also a problem. That's also a problem and when you have a smartphone everyone expects you to be available all the time so they just send you a work related email I don't know 2 a.m. or early in the morning and then you are constantly in this stress of work and everybody expects you to be available all the time and I think they are responsible too but there are some cases I think in France that they made it illegal for the corporates and companies to send work related email after the working hour so there are some things happening some companies they already know how bad it is for the employees to be all the time available but yeah definitely they are also to be blamed everyone I think we all expect our friends to reply to the text within 2 minutes if they don't we are just going to be like what's wrong with that person why they are ignoring us but before all of these we had a phone I don't know how to call it a stationary phone that people used to call us or like send us letters and then we just didn't have that expectation but now everyone in the work in the university everywhere they expect everyone to be available all the time and that's a part of the problem too I think we are going to need to let Ms. Resty rest she is responding to a lot of questions so I am going to ask our audience to thank you for sharing your annual results it gives me a lot of pause and maybe I am very glad I do not phone a cell phone because I live in the United States so there is no coverage you don't have a cell phone gentle? no I do not have a cell phone there is no coverage I cannot receive or send any cell phone messages how do you feel about that? I am fine with it I have a landline you can live like that you don't need to be responding to everyone all the time you are an awful retired medical I hope the last person on earth to be zombified two weeks ago I changed I got another phone it's a new series by Nokia it's like nostalgia serious I think they make the old phones the way they were I got one of those and I have been using that for my research purpose and it's been great I told my close friends that I am not going to be on these apps like WhatsApp or we have here KakaoTalk I am not going to reply to you instantly I will check once a day and that's been working great I have a lot of time to do things that I enjoy not just looking at the screen at the black mirror that's what the serious name is so thank you thank you Ms. Jose this was really really good you have given us an honor it was my honor to be here thank you for audiences' sake if you have not heard unfortunately Dr. Shakir from the hospital he had a real life emergency and he can't be with us today we are definitely going to invite him back because the message is really important for us not to hear it so stay tuned for when we will get him to come back he has done some research that indicates that the teenagers with social media do not understand when they are being bullied that's I think really important so instead of having Dr. Shakir with us we are going to have a social hour which is a time to mix and mingle and get to know other people here at the conference who have similar interests in social media virtual worlds and mental health if Ms. Jose can stay we can ask her some questions I see some of our other presenters are here but first what I would like to do is I would like to thank all the people who have made this conference such a wonderful conference I want to work with it first of all we have a conference team that has been invaluable I want to recognize Luke Wheeler and Ice Guy Silverwood they have spent long months helping prepare and then run this conference and I usually do let that conference team take a week off once we have got the conference wrap-up work done before we start planning for the International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference IDRAC which comes in the fall so you're going to want to be looking for that I also want to give special recognition to the community members who are here to introduce the conference speakers that would be Linda starting off this morning Batsai, Moose, Lez, Melee and Larry we deserve recognition we also have a bunch of community members who greeted the audience as they came into the auditorium and that would be Carla DR42 Phoenix, Isabella Lauren, Vulcan Luzona, Leondra Mrs. Dye Gemma, Leandra Ty, Sonetus and Vivi I'm going to recognize N.A. Cappellini who is the director of social media and social media and security and she's also assisted some of our speakers with personalization of their avatars which is a very significant thing to do I want to recognize Pecos and Orange and Suellem and Alex who have worked on the social media presence as limited as it is we have a video team working today that would be Petlove and Marcus and Joey they've done a lot of setup work and they've been here all day we have fantastic transcribers who increase the sensibility of our conference for people who are unable to hear and that would be Lori Bond and Carolyn and Elektra Elektra's put up way late please, please go ice your wrists ladies and of course the most important people at the conference are the audience members and I want to thank them for their interest in mental health and how it can be supported in a virtual setting and now I would invite everyone to adjourn from the formal part of this conference and let's head outside the auditorium or the social hour you can mix and mingle with our presenters and the others who are at the conference