WEBVTT

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To most of you, this is a device

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to buy, sell, play games,

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watch videos.

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I think it might be a lifeline.

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I think actually it might be able to save more lives

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than penicillin.

NOTE Paragraph

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Texting:

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I know I say texting and a lot of you think sexting,

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a lot of you think about the lewd photos that you see --

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hopefully not your kids sending to somebody else --

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or trying to translate the abbreviations

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LOL, LMAO, HMU.

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I can help you with those later.

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But the parents in the room

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know that texting is actually

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the best way to communicate with your kids.

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It might be the only way to communicate with your kids.

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(Laughter)

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The average teenager sends 3,339 text messages a month,

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unless she's a girl, then it's closer to 4,000.

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And the secret is she opens every single one.

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Texting has a 100 percent open rate.

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Now the parents are really alarmed.

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It's a 100 percent open rate

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even if she doesn't respond to you

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when you ask her when she's coming home for dinner.

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I promise she read that text.

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And this isn't some suburban iPhone-using teen phenomenon.

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Texting actually overindexes

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for minority and urban youth.

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I know this because at DoSomething.org,

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which is the largest organization

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for teenagers and social change in America,

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about six months ago we pivoted

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and started focusing on text messaging.

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We're now texting out to about 200,000 kids a week

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about doing our campaigns to make their schools more green

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or to work on homeless issues and things like that.

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We're finding it 11 times more powerful than email.

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We've also found an unintended consequence.

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We've been getting text messages back like these.

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"I don't want to go to school today.

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The boys call me faggot."

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"I was cutting, my parents found out,

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and so I stopped.

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But I just started again an hour ago."

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Or, "He won't stop raping me.

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He told me not to tell anyone.

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It's my dad. Are you there?"

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That last one's an actual text message that we received.

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And yeah, we're there.

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I will not forget the day we got that text message.

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And so it was that day that we decided

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we needed to build a crisis text hotline.

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Because this isn't what we do.

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We do social change.

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Kids are just sending us these text messages

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because texting is so familiar and comfortable to them

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and there's nowhere else to turn

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that they're sending them to us.

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So think about it, a text hotline; it's pretty powerful.

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It's fast, it's pretty private.

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No one hears you in a stall, you're just texting quietly.

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It's real time.

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We can help millions of teens with counseling and referrals.

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That's great.

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But the thing that really makes this awesome is the data.

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Because I'm not really comfortable just helping that girl

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with counseling and referrals.

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I want to prevent this shit from happening.

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So think about a cop.

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There's something in New York City.

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The police did it. It used to be just guess work, police work.

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And then they started crime mapping.

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And so they started following and watching

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petty thefts, summonses, all kinds of things --

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charting the future essentially.

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And they found things like,

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when you see crystal meth on the street,

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if you add police presence,

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you can curb the otherwise inevitable spate

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of assaults and robberies that would happen.

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In fact, the year after

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the NYPD put CompStat in place,

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the murder rate fell 60 percent.

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So think about the data from a crisis text line.

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There is no census on bullying and dating abuse

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and eating disorders and cutting and rape --

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no census.

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Maybe there's some studies, some longitudinal studies,

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that cost lots of money and took lots of time.

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Or maybe there's some anecdotal evidence.

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Imagine having real time data

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on every one of those issues.

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You could inform legislation.

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You could inform school policy.

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You could say to a principal,

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"You're having a problem every Thursday at three o'clock.

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What's going on in your school?"

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You could see the immediate impact of legislation

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or a hateful speech that somebody gives in a school assembly

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and see what happens as a result.

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This is really, to me,

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the power of texting and the power of data.

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Because while people are talking about data,

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making it possible for Facebook

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to mine my friend from the third grade,

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or Target to know when it's time for me to buy more diapers,

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or some dude to build a better baseball team,

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I'm actually really excited about the power of data and the power of texting

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to help that kid go to school,

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to help that girl stop cutting in the bathroom

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and absolutely to help that girl whose father's raping her.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)