Bryce Dallas Howard: How to Preserve Your Private Life in the Age of Social Media | TED

In 2016, I filmed an episode of "Black Mirror"

called "Nosedive."

It's about a woman named Lacie who lives in a futuristic world

where everyone rates your social interactions.

And for anyone who hasn't seen it, a little spoiler.

I basically have a nervous breakdown, trying really hard to get liked.

For many, the episode felt a little too familiar.

Until recently, only a small fraction of the human population

lived their lives publicly.

And while we haven’t entered the “Black Mirror” world yet,

we’ve entered a new era.

Everyone has access to a global audience.

We all live in public.

Some more willingly than others.

There's pressure to share more of ourselves than we want.

We often feel we have no other choice.

To be relevant. To fit in. To get ahead.

To be trusted and liked. Accepted and understood.

This new compulsion toward self-exposure

is possibly the biggest social experiment in history.

We're making life-altering decisions about our personal boundaries

with no guidance and no precedent.

Fortunately, there is a blueprint.

Anyone who's lived in the public eye

as an athlete, a politician or an entertainer

has navigated a version of this.

My dad has been a public figure since he was five years old,

as an actor, a child actor, and later as a director.

And I've been an actor since my early twenties.

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.

My mom, Cheryl, never wanted to be in the public eye.

She just happened to love a man who is.

My mom met my dad, Ron, when they were 16.

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.

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.

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."

Much of this was lost on my mom.

The only thing she watched on TV was "Star Trek."

(Applause)

(Laughter)

It's true.

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.

But it wasn't until

I was given a movie script at preschool

as a way to get it to my dad ...

(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.

Growing up in the public eye.

And this entailed some extreme parenting tactics.

First. No coddling, like ever.

As a kid, I was terrified of snakes,

so my mom got me a pet snake.

(Laughter)

When I blanked at my first piano recital and ran offstage crying,

my mom insisted I stay and support my peers.

Years later, when my son grimaced at a chipmunk carcass,

our cat had left in the driveway,

Cheryl made him clean up the remains.

(Laughter)

My mom wanted to toughen us up

so we'd have more courage and less fear

when dealing with uncomfortable situations.

So that meant zero coddling.

Put your comfort away, she'd preach.

Any challenge that arose was an opportunity to find your sea legs.

Next up, confidence comes from character,

not our looks.

Cheryl was a giant buzzkill.

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.

(Laughter)

A loving compliment was, "You have wonderful character,"

not "You're beautiful."

Oh, and character was built by doing chores.

(Laughter)

When I wasn't mucking out the goat barn, I was shearing sheep, changing tires,

scrubbing toilets, volunteering, shoveling snow.

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.

But perhaps the most important lesson was:

a private life makes a public life worth living.

Cheryl saw that while fame came with many blessings,

there was an impact and a potential cost to living your life in public.

And so more than anything, she, like my grandparents before her,

emphasized the value of privacy.

Because cultivating a private life is precious.

It's sacred.

Its value is inherent in what you don't share.

What you withhold.

And for whom.

The world is now one big small town.

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.

Now, where those boundaries lie

is up to you.

But in order to make those decisions,

we must all be our own Cheryl,

our own protectors.

Because it's tempting to think that the more I share,

the more ways you have to connect with me.

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.

Without that inner circle, we're left with shallowness and a void.

We're known, but never truly known, even to ourselves.

Living in public asks us to be brave and bold,

but preserving a private life empowers us to take those chances.

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?"

As much as I want to protect my kids,

I know encouraging them to opt out is not the answer.

So I don't want my kids in the digital fray

until they know who they are.

But you develop your sense of self by participating in the world.

So I try to help them discover themselves through these technologies,

not despite them.

And I give myself that same protection and motherly advice

by honoring two main principles.

The two day delay.

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.

And post with purpose.

Before I share, I ask myself: Why? What's the purpose?

And most importantly, how does it serve the people I love?

The dangers and opportunities of living a life in public

existed, honestly, way longer before any of this.

But it's important to know what my family knew then and knows now.

That your true value is measured by the richness of your private life.

The piece of you that only a select few,

or perhaps only you, has access to.

Because the legacy we create in private

is as powerful and lasting as any public accolade.

Perhaps even more so.

Thank you so much.

(Applause)