3 Habits to Practice Curiosity — and Escape Your Phone | Nayeema Raza | TED
We're so entangled with our devices that online has started to feel more real than IRL, says journalist Nayeema Raza. As screens reshape how we connect and relate, she offers three practical habits to reignite curiosity, restore presence and break free from our phones. (Created in collaboration with @ignite; Recorded at TEDNext 2025 on November 11, 2025)
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Contributed by 刘嘉琪Transcript
- 00:04I ask questions for a living
- 00:06to people like Mark Cuban, Neil deGrasse Tyson,
- 00:10Esther Perel, Bill Nye.
- 00:13These masters of their field.
- 00:16And the most surprising answer I heard this year
- 00:18was from two 11-year-olds named Sophie and Dilan.
- 00:23They too are experts in being kids these days.
- 00:27So I asked them, how does time with people on screens
- 00:31feel different than real life?
- 00:34(Video) Sophie: It just makes you feel more with them
- 00:36when you're on FaceTime.
- 00:38Nayeema Raza: Even more than real life?
- 00:40Sophie: Yeah, because you're doing stuff together.
- 00:43Like maybe playing Roblox together.
- 00:45Because nowadays, when you’re with them, everyone’s on their phones.
- 00:50NR: Sophie's pointing out a profound paradox.
- 00:54When we are together physically, we are each alone on our phones.
- 00:58But when we're in our phones, that's when we can be together.
- 01:02The best way to not be distracted by your device?
- 01:05Just get inside of it.
- 01:07Now these 11-year-olds
- 01:09are not talking about some distant, anxious generation.
- 01:13They're talking about each of us.
- 01:15They're definitely talking about me
- 01:18and about a world that's increasingly driven by machines.
- 01:22So I stumbled upon an extreme metaphor for what this could look like.
- 01:27And it's this guy who's locked in a Waymo, and it's driving him in circles.
- 01:31So he calls customer service
- 01:32and finds out he's not the only one trapped.
- 01:35(Video) Woman: Working with the situation of the vehicle.
- 01:37If you have your app pulled up,
- 01:39I need you to tap My Trip on the lower left corner of your app.
- 01:42Man: Can't you just do it? You should be able to handle it.
- 01:45Take over the car. You don't need my phone.
- 01:47Woman: I don't have an option.
- 01:49NR: It is sexy to think that the tech apocalypse
- 01:52is Arnold Schwarzenegger and "The Terminator,"
- 01:55but it could be so much more mundane than that.
- 01:58Just us driven in circles,
- 02:00held hostage by drop-down menus,
- 02:03with gadgets, disintermediating us from each other,
- 02:06from our own bodies and from our curiosities.
- 02:09Because nowadays, when we have a question, we don't wait and phone a friend.
- 02:14We friend our phones.
- 02:16And that feels so empowering to have all of this knowledge at our fingertips.
- 02:21Yet early research from MIT tells us it's making us lazier and less smart,
- 02:27and it is definitely making us less connected.
- 02:30This is not what our parents and grandparents were sold
- 02:32when they saw this relic of an ad from AT&T which says,
- 02:36"Reach out and touch someone."
- 02:38And yes, for all kinds of reasons, it would not go down well today.
- 02:41(Laughter)
- 02:42But it is oddly prescient
- 02:45because we have never been more connected and more out of touch.
- 02:49Now I’m not anti-tech. I actually cover it as a journalist.
- 02:52I have every gadget under the sun,
- 02:54and most days I think I'm in a relationship with my ChatGPT,
- 02:57or as I like to call him, Chat Daddy.
- 03:00(Laughter)
- 03:01I am pro-human.
- 03:03And as we progress into an AI world
- 03:05that you've read 471.5 articles about today alone,
- 03:09I want to make a case for old habits.
- 03:12Three of them.
- 03:13And tell you how I learned them the hard way.
- 03:16The first is to pause,
- 03:18to take just one second
- 03:19when you feel that urge to reach for your digital pacifier.
- 03:23This, by the way, is a second.
- 03:26Studies show waiting that long before taking action
- 03:29lets your brain work better.
- 03:31The second is to wonder.
- 03:33Watch a movie without googling who the actor is and what else is he in,
- 03:37and how old he is, and is he single?
- 03:39You can float in your own curiosity
- 03:41instead of drown in information.
- 03:44And the third is to ask a question
- 03:46out loud again.
- 03:48Have that fight at a dinner party
- 03:50instead of playing footsie with your phone.
- 03:52Ask something to someone you thought you couldn't learn from,
- 03:55or someone you think you know everything about.
- 03:58Because the dumbest thing we can be is know-it-alls.
- 04:02A few years ago, my father passed.
- 04:05In the days leading up to it, I was glued to devices.
- 04:09They had all these answers.
- 04:11The number to his hospice nurse, how often to give them morphine,
- 04:15the signs to look out for, his heartbeat.
- 04:19But when he passed on a Sunday,
- 04:20a day before the data and the vitals suggested he would,
- 04:24that's when it hit me.
- 04:26The old habits were what mattered.
- 04:29Those seconds of pause that added up to minutes more.
- 04:34That weird and scary wonder about our own finite lives.
- 04:38And the little questions people ask me,
- 04:40like, "How can I be there for you?"
- 04:45Sophie was on to something, but we're grown ups,
- 04:48and we remember when presence and curiosity and connection
- 04:52were possible outside of technology.
- 04:55We have to practice these old habits
- 04:57if we hope to pass them on to a new generation.
- 05:00If we want to teach them how to be together
- 05:03when we are together.
- 05:05Right, Chat Daddy?
- 05:07Thank you.
- 05:09(Applause)